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Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Cryptocurrencies, Cryptocurrency Mining, and More

- if you don't know anything about cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin you'll probably be interested in this post. Obviously, the main currency is Bitcoin but there are a few alternatives out there
How Cryptocurrency Works
Bitcoin - How Cryptocurrencies Work
At the Speed of Money - How Cryptocurrency Will Transform Everything _ David Morris _ TEDxTampaBay
Keiser Report - Make Bitcoin Great Again (Summer Solutions E1099)
Keiser Report - Zombie Economic Woes (Summer Solutions E1098)
- the actual process of building a cryptocurrency isn't actually that difficult. The amount of code that it requires feels negligible at times? Im fact, I've been playing around with the idea of creating my own currency (out of pure interest)?
BasicCoin, a cryptocurrency in less than 600 lines of Python 
Beginners Guide to Investing in AltCoins.
cryptocurrency github
simplest cryptocurrency implementation
ethereum
- Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin mining is obviously the thing that most bystanders are interested in... Most mining programs are specialised but there are some generalised options out there for those who are just beginning to get into cryto-currency mining. There are obviously specialised operations out there that revolve around massive processing complexes/farms to mine cryptocurrencies full time 
Bitcoin miner life
A LOOK INSIDE AMERICA'S LARGEST BITCOIN MINING OPERATION
Life Inside a Secret Chinese Bitcoin Mine
Noob's Guide To Bitcoin Mining - Super Easy & Simple
Beginners Guide to Investing in AltCoins.
bitcoin mining primer
bitcoin mining
maxcoin mining
maxcoin mining linux
MaxCoin x32&x64 Windows&Linux Pool Mining
difficulty bitcoin mining
How to start Bitcoin mining for beginners (Super Easy With NiceHash Miner)
- you'll need a means of changing into a useful currency if you can't find a market for goods using the crypto-currency that you're currently dealing with and also a mechanism for storage (digital wallets)
selling maxcoin
currency exchange
- webminers are one of the interesting options out there but in most cases the examples I've looked at indicate that they are 'deprecated' and are therefore of limited use
webminer
[LTC] Online Litecoin Miner
php bitcoin mining tool
linux bitcoin miner
- don't forget you can mine on/via mobile and embedded devices though profitability is a key problem here. If you've done enough research you'll realise that many of the smartphones that may be in the possession of many people have limited capabilities and therefore have limited potential for mining
android bitcoin mining
- take all the free cryptocurrency you can get as it's no longer really profitable in many cases. You'll need some sort of advantage to be able to gain from it such as a high end ASIC, CPU, GPU, etc...
- as indicated (in some of earlier work and posts) from time to time I've had to deal with performance issues. Fiddling with algorithms, multi-threading, hardware upgrades, etc... only takes takes you so far. At some point you need to start sharing resources across your network...
cpu sharing linux
- there are underlying scalability issues that need to be worked on for crytocurrencies to be considered a genuine alternative to the current financial system we currently have in place
Keiser Report - Zombie Economic Woes (Summer Solutions E1098)
- when it comes down to it virtually all of the discussions dance around the question of what Bitcoin is actually mining. In spite of what some people say regarding mining being around random theoretical constructs I find it difficult to believe that someone wouldn't take advantage of this for whatever task that may require distributed computing capacity?
what does bitcoin actually mine
Noob's Guide To Bitcoin Mining - Super Easy & Simple
- look deeper and you'll realise that in a lot of cases it has become unprofitable to mine crypto-currencies. Moreover, ASICs are generally quicker then GPU which are quicker then CPU. Obviously, I find it difficult to believe that the average person will deal with ASICs and in the world of laptop proliferation need an external adapter 
gpu vs cpu bitcoin mining
usb to pcie adapter site:au
- if you're not already aware the volatility in the cryptocurrency market means it's a way to make (or lose) money quickly
Top 3 Cryptocurrency to Invest in 2017

Random Stuff:
- as usual thanks to all of the individuals and groups who purchase and use my goods and services
http://sites.google.com/site/dtbnguyen/
http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com.au/
- latest in animal news
Bears Dancing To 'Jungle Boogie' - Planet Earth II
Biker Bear - Not only humans ride motorcycles on Russian streets
Meet Brother Cream, Hong Kong's coolest cat
Enormous Kodiak Bear Loves to Cuddle
Grizzly Bear Waves To Camera Cute! Kodiak Bear
Kodiak bear grabs Jim back as he walks away...
Kodiak bear rolling in the grass at the Kodiak Brown Bear Center
Kodiak Bear Waving
Polar Bear Waves to a Little Girl
Orphaned Wildlife Center
- I wonder how bananas would feel (if they could) about this situation?
China Bans Erotic Banana Eating
- interesting stuff for adrenaline seekers...
- latest in science and technology
Shenzhen - City of the Future. The high-tech life of China’s Silicon Valley
Human poo transformed into clean fuel for Kenya's urban poor
find entropy in block text file
asus expressgate setup from wim
- latest in defense
Breaking - US Soldiers Killed in Fierce Battle North Afghanistan
Nuking transparency - Pentagon hides nuclear weapons inspections reports
Money For Military - Trump appoints defense industry lobbyist as army secretary
Military Muscle - China deploys troops to first overseas base in Africa
‘Peace Sentinel’ - Over 1000 soldiers take part in NATO drills in Bulgaria
War as a Working Place. Syrian reporters risk death to bring news from the frontlines
Hitting the target - Russian military helicopters take part in aerial tactic drills
RAW - Russian frigate Admiral Essen departs for Syrian coast
'Patience is over' - US, North Korea latest exchange of threats
Chance for Peace - South Syria ceasefire agreed by Putin, Trump at G20 takes effect
Spectacular launch - Tochka-U tactic missile complex in action
Heading home - German troops start withdrawal from Incirlik airbase in Turkey
THAAD shoots down IRBM in anti-missile test over Alaska – US Missile Defense Agency
Inside Story - Is the threat from ISIL over
F-35 fighter jet is ‘a turkey, not good at anything’ – military expert
Busting myths about the T50
PAK FA Busting Myths Video
Military Channel
- latest in finance and politics
Al Jazeera Selects - Resistance
Was Qatar a victim of  fake news
Soft Occupation. Investigating America’s influence on German politics
Inside Story - What triggered the violence at al-Aqsa Mosque
Inside Story - Is Israel changing the status quo around Al Aqsa
Keiser Report - Zombie Economic Woes (Summer Solutions E1098)
Keiser Report - Anarchy Currencies (E1093)
Keiser Report - Trump's Agenda (E1094)
Keiser Report - Trump’s Wall & Avocado Prices (E1095)
Keiser Report - Lifetime of Financial Crises (E1096)
Keiser Report - Gutting of America’s Wealth Creation Machine (E1097)
Israel Playing Into The Vatican's Agenda
Can the 'resistance' win against Trump - UpFront
The Stream - Will Al Jazeera be shut down
CrossTalk - Post-Handshake
CrossTalk Bullhorns - Handshakeology (EXTENDED VERSION)
Crosstalk Bullhorns - Lawyergate (Extended version)
CrossTalk - Remembering USS Liberty
CrossTalk - Will Trump Survive
[154] Healthcare Debate Fraud, White House Secrecy Beyond Belief & More
[155] New Lies For Wars, July 4th Hypocrisy, & Why History Repeats Itself
[156] Wall Street Pillaging Continues, Major Facebook Leak, & more
Talk to Al Jazeera - Ahmadinejad - 'You can't rule with war'
Donald Rumsfeld talks to Al Jazeera
Radio of Terror - Imam FM suspended over broadcast of lectures by Al-Qaeda leader
North Korea May Derail Putin Trump's New Relations
The US Federal Reserve's balancing act - Counting the Cost
Prophetic Alert - King of the North Speaks Out
'Moving forward with Russia' - Trump optimistic, but officials skeptical
'America loves Poland' - Trump delivers speech in Warsaw (STREAMED LIVE)
Mosul paid price for anti-ISIS op, civilian casualties massively increased on the ground - HRW
Hobby Lobby fined for buying ancient Iraqi artifacts
The war in Yemen, explained in 3 minutes
Inside Story - Does world still need US for leadership
David Icke - Secret Societies & The Ruling Elite
What Really Happened in the Closed Doors Meeting Between Trump and Putin
UN report - Gaza is 'de-developing' even faster than expected
Russia: A resurgent superpower? 

Random Quotes:
- Glorious prince of the Heavenly Host,Saint Michael the Archangel,defend us now in this conflict against the rulers of this world of darkness,against the spirits of wickedness in high places!Come to the rescue of men,whom God has created in His likeness,and has redeemed from the tyranny of evil. In the name of Dominus, depart. Let God arise! And let his enemies be banished! And let them that hate Him flee before his face! As wax melteth before the fire,so let the wicked perish at the presence of God!By the precious blood of Christ,we command you to depart and go where the Lord sends you!By the authority of Christ,and by His power alone,I cast you out!
- In an unusual study, researchers decided to find out how much more charitable we become after eating eggs.

They already understood that serotonin, as well as maintaining mood balance and our sense of happiness, is associated with social behaviour - acts of generosity and kindness, for instance.

The researchers also knew that an amino acid, called tryptophan (TRP) - found in whole eggs, poultry, beans, oats, fish, cheese, tofu, seeds and nuts - converts into serotonin in the body.

Now the researchers, from Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition in The Netherlands, have found that eating foods full of Tryptophan can increase our willingness to give to charity by as much as double.
- Okay, but were the Russians taken in by Kerry’s performance?

Heck no, in fact, they acted exactly as one would expect them to act.  They treated Kerry with the utmost respect, listened politely to everything he had to say, nodded, smiled and shook hands at all the appropriate times, and then got back to the business of bombing the holy crap out of the US-backed terrorists operating in Syria.  That’s the way Moscow conducts business, they never take their eye off the ball. Here’s what Putin said immediately after Kerry left:

    “I have repeatedly stated and I am ready to stress once again: we will never agree with the idea that a third party, whoever this party is, has the right to impose its will on another country. This does not make any sense and it’s a violation of international law.”
- The war in Vietnam resulted in the deaths of more than 58,000 Americans and more than 3 million Vietnamese. Twenty years ago, the United States and Vietnam normalized diplomatic relations in an effort to put the terrible legacy of the war behind them.

But for the survivors — both Vietnamese and American — the war continues. About 5 million Vietnamese and many U.S. and allied soldiers were exposed to the toxic chemical dioxin from the spraying of Agent Orange. Many of them and their progeny continue to suffer its poisonous effects.
- “The West risks making a strategic failure by focusing only on IS. Defeating it militarily will not end global jihadism. We cannot bomb an ideology, but our war is ideological,” said the report, due to be published Monday, as cited by the Guardian.
- While widely believed to count with relatively few followers, ISIS in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been moving into Taliban strongholds and clashing with its fighters in parts of the country, particularly in Nangarhar. On Dec. 7, the group took aim at the Taliban with a video saying the Afghan group's leadership had deviated from the righteous Muslim path. 
- Russian counterespionage services have “exposed 320 personnel and agents of secret services of foreign states as well as their accomplices,” the Russian President said as he spoke to the Russian secret and security services on their professional holiday.
- Longer term, China is working to upgrade its own education system to keep more of its students at home and attract others from abroad. Beijing has poured billions of dollars into its universities in recent years.

But for now, analysts say Beijing worries international programs let many students bypass much of the national curriculum.

“They’re definitely worried about the phenomenon,” said Wang Xiong, vice president at Beijing-based 21st Century Education Research Institute. Students need to learn Chinese history, they need to learn to be patriotic—these are national requirements. The fear is that these goals are being lost.”
- Much as with Islamic banking models than ban usury, the Orthodox Financial System would not allow interest charges on loans. Participants of the system share risks, profits and losses. Speculative behavior is prohibited, as well as investments in gambling, drugs and other businesses that do not meet Orthodox Christian values. There would be a new low-risk bank or credit organization that controls all transactions, and investment funds or companies that source investors and mediate project financing. It would explicitly avoid operations with active financial risks. Priority would be ensuring financing of the real sector of the economy, its spokesman stated.
- Thailand's government says seafood exports to the United States, Europe and Australia have not been affected through reports of slavery and forced labour by campaign groups and the media.

Thailand, as the world's third-largest seafood exporter, faces increasing pressure to crack down on illegal fishing or face the risk of bans on its fish exports, and calls to investigate accusations of slavery in its seafood industry.
- David’s Sling can intercept short-range to medium-range rockets and ballistic missiles, including guided projectiles, cruise missiles, aircraft, and drones. Its range of coverage means it can destroy incoming threats over enemy territory, away from Israeli skies.
- During the Group of 20 meeting in Ankara in November, Putin said he would let Ukraine settle the debt in three $1 billion instalments from 2016 to 2018, so long as Western governments or banks provided a repayment guarantee. The proposal fell through after the U.S. refused to offer the financial backing.

Even if a diplomatic solution is reached, Ukraine’s other bondholders must sign off since the debt deal barred the government from giving any holdout better terms. Franklin Templeton, Ukraine’s biggest investor, would therefore need to approve.

Any accord must also appease the IMF. Its aid package is contingent on Ukraine making savings of $15.3 billion in debt-servicing costs over four years.
- Tom Fitton runs Judicial Watch, a conservative nonprofit that has gone to court to force the Obama administration to provide documents, such as Hillary Clinton’s stash of private emails while secretary of state.

“On classified material, it is tough to overcome the withholdings,” Mr. Fitton said. “Of course, they can always declassify material. In my experience, typically material like this is withheld because it is not helpful, as opposed to it would harm the nation’s security or harm foreign relations. If this material were helpful, if the administration is Democrat or Republican, they will often release it.

“My view is, where is the harm in getting the type of information you want?” he said. “What weapons Syria had and where they might have come from, I think, is relevant to the current debate.”

Karen Kaiser, the Associated Press’ general counsel, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in May of maddeningly long delays by this administration in trying to obtain basic information.

“Obtaining documents through FOIA remains a slow and difficult process, and one which unfortunately is becoming increasingly arduous to use,” she said. “Despite promises of greater transparency at the outset of this administration, most agencies are not abiding by their obligations of openness under the law. We are witnessing a breakdown in the system — both on the procedural front, in the form of continual delays and agency nonresponsiveness, and on the substantive front, with the vast overuse of exemptions and redactions.”

Ms. Kaiser said the Obama administration cited national security and privacy (the issue faced in The Washington Times case) a record 555,000 times last year.

“This administration started in 2009 with a promise to be the most transparent administration ever,” she said. “Yet these statistics speak to the opposite result.”
- Beijing (AFP) - China will turn contested islands in the South China Sea into pleasure-trip destinations for "patriotic" tourists, state-media said Friday, in a move likely to further stoke regional tensions.

China claims almost all of the strategically vital South China Sea despite rival claims from Southeast Asian neighbours and has rapidly built reefs into artificial islands capable of hosting military planes.

But the Asian giant hopes to turn the area around Woody Island in the contested Paracels chain into a "major tourist attraction comparable to the Maldives", the state-run China Daily said.

Holidaymakers will be able to windsurf, fish, dive, take sea plane trips and attend island weddings "for romantics", it explained, with no mention of rival claims to the island by Vietnam and Taiwan.

"It is not an easy trip, but many people with a patriotic spirit want to try it," Xiao Jie, the mayor of Sansha city, on Woody Island, told the paper, adding that it was "like a blank canvas".

Tourists have been allowed to travel to non-militarized areas of the South China Sea since 2013, it said, with Xiao estimating that 30,000 have already visited.

Cruise ships brought 16,000 tourists on six trips to the Paracel islands -- known as Xisha in Chinese -- last year, the paper added.
- BEIJING (Reuters) - China will focus on protecting intellectual property and commercial secrets, while

offering a fair playing field for both domestic and foreign companies, premier Li Keqiang said on Tuesday at a technology summit.

Li also said that new innovations should be given room to grow, free from over-regulation, even if new and traditional industries sometimes run into conflict.

China is pushing entrepreneurship and innovation to encourage economic growth, although government oversight and support for state firms remains strong.

"We should not regulate new things to death, but should first observe. This gives them a chance to develop, which also helps expose gaps in regulation and will make subsequent policies more fair and effective," Li said at the conference, according to a report on a government website.
- Street violence is routine in France. Somebody is always on strike over something. Last week, it was librarians. But this week, unrest took an ominous turn. First, the suburban train system in Paris. Stoppages at airports. Then, blockades of oil refineries. Forty percent of French gas stations are now out of fuel, producing panic-buying and endless lines of fuming motorists.
- But what explains the social disaster of white Middle America?

First, an economy where, though at or near full employment, a huge slice of the labor force has dropped out. Second, the real wages of working Americans have been nearly stagnant for decades.

Two major contributors to the economic decline of the white working-class: Scores of millions of third-world immigrants, here legally and illegally, who depress U.S. wages, and tens of thousands of factories and millions of jobs shipped abroad under the label of “globalization.”

Another factor in the crisis of middle and working class white men is the plunging percentage of those who are married. Where a wife and children give meaning to a man’s life, and to his labors, single white men are not only being left behind by the new economy, they are becoming alienated from society.

“It’s not surprising,” Barack Obama volunteered to his San Francisco high-donors, that such folks, “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them…”

We all have seen the figure of 72 percent of black children being born out of wedlock. For working class whites, it is up to 40 percent.

A lost generation is growing up all around us.
- The world's smallest submarine, no bigger than a single molecule, is ready and waiting for launch. The minuscule sub, comprising a total of just 244 atoms, has a variety of potential applications and promises to revolutionise the world of underwater travel.

The nano-sub, as its developers call it, is so small (no more than billionths of a metre across, or a tiny fraction of the width of a human hair) it has to be built and monitored by special high-resolution microscopes.

    These are the fastest-moving molecules ever observed in solution - and they promise to transform the world of nanotechnology. 
    Professor James Tour, Rice University

Constructed in the Rice University laboratory of chemist and nano-engineer James Tour, the motor-equipped subs, powered by ultraviolet light, have tail-like propellers that drive them forward.
- Abusive online harassment is hardly limited to pro-Russian internet trolls. Ukraine and other countries at odds with the Kremlin also have legions of aggressive avengers on social media.

But pro-Russian voices have become such a noisy and disruptive presence that both NATO and the European Union have set up special units to combat what they see as a growing threat not only to civil discourse but to the well-being of Europe's democratic order and even to its security.

This "information war," said Rastislav Kacer, a veteran diplomat who served as Slovakia's ambassador to Washington and at NATO's headquarters in Brussels, "is just part of a bigger struggle." While not involving bloodshed, he added, it "is equally as dangerous as more conventional hostile action."

For Aro, the abuse increased sharply last year when, following up on reports in the opposition Russian news media, she visited St. Petersburg to investigate the workings of a Russian "troll factory." The big office churns out fake news and comment, particularly on Ukraine, and floods websites and social media with denunciations of Russia's critics.

In response to her reporting, pro-Russian activists in Helsinki organised a protest outside the headquarters of Yle, accusing it of being a troll factory itself. Only a handful of people showed up.

At the same time, Aro has been peppered with abusive emails, vilified as a drug dealer on social media sites and mocked as a delusional bimbo in a music video posted on YouTube.

"There are so many layers of fakery you get lost," said Aro, who was awarded the Finnish Grand Prize for Journalism in March.
- As the world's number two economy faces a slowdown and struggles to adopt much-needed reforms, economics students at Chinese universities should study a curriculum composed of at least half Marxist courses, said the petition, otherwise they will become the "grave diggers of the socialist economic system".

It is the latest effort by China's ruling Communist party to push its ideology in classrooms as President Xi Jinping, who has overseen tightened media censorship and a crackdown on dissent, has called for the Communist party to increase control over universities.

“It is in essence an ideological class struggle wherein the bourgeois class clashes with the proletariat class in education,” the letter’s co-author told the state-run Global Times Tuesday, adding that the letter had dozens of scholars supporting it.
- An Australian study shows more than 45 million people are currently trapped in modern slavery across the world, up by 28 percent compared to similar estimates two years ago.  

The figures were released Tuesday in the 2016 Global Slavery Index, a research report by Australia’s Walk Free Foundation, which examined practices such as forced labor, human trafficking, child exploitation and forced marriage.

The findings, which were based on interviews with 25,000 people in different world countries, showed that modern slavery is rampant in Asia-Pacific, where two-thirds of a total of 45.8 slaves live.

The index found that India has the highest number of slaves, with 18.35 million trapped in modern slavery, followed by China with 3.39 million slaves. Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan also come behind China in the study.

Meanwhile, North Korea has also the highest incidence, with 4.37 percent of its population held as slaves.

Commenting on the study, Australian billionaire mining magnate and philanthropist Andrew Forrest, the Walk Free Foundation founder, urged the adoption of more robust measures to end global slavery.
- Beijing's push for increasing soft power is particularly pronounced in Africa, Latin America and parts of the Asia Pacific region where countries are increasingly reliant on Chinese trade and investment. And Beijing - long frustrated by the dominance of American and Western media - is making up for lost time in trying to achieve a level of global soft power and influence commensurate with its economic and political heft.

Wanning Sun, a professor at the University of Technology Sydney who tracks Chinese and diaspora media, says Beijing has become increasingly flexible and adept at finding ways to push its content in different countries, "whether it's a liberal democratic country or a former communist bloc [one]".

"The Chinese propaganda [push] has been quite aggressive and quite concerted and they have a lot of money to spend," she said. "They're not worried about budgets and they're leaving no stones unturned."

Professor Sun said China was mainly motivated by a "strong sense of injustice, because they have felt for decades the West has represented China in a very unfair and biased kind of way".

"They are actually motivated by a historical memory of being invaded by the Western imperialists and they see this current situation as a continuation of the Western imperialistic discourse over China."
- This does not mean we are all unhappy! Quite the opposite: The virile ruler, the vodka, the endless mounds of sour cream—they are pleasing to some. It’s just that grinning without cause is not a skill Russians possess or feel compelled to cultivate. There’s even a Russian proverb that translates, roughly, to “laughing for no reason is a sign of stupidity.”

Russians’ fondness for the gentle scowl seems even more unusual to expats than its actual, climatic cold. And the cultural difference cuts both ways: Newcomers to America often remark on the novelty of being smiled at by strangers.

So why is this? Why do some societies not encourage casual smiling? I got my answer, or at least part of one, when I stumbled across a new paper by Kuba Krys, a psychologist at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In some countries, smiling might not be a sign of warmth or even respect. It’s evidence that you’re a fool—a tricky fool.

Krys focused on a cultural phenomenon called “uncertainty avoidance.” Cultures that are low on this scale tend to have social systems—courts, health-care systems, safety nets, and so forth—that are unstable. Therefore, people there view the future as unpredictable and uncontrollable.
- The alternative is a regulator like the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). It has a reputation for being so no-nonsense that one senior banker in Singapore described what MAS does to misbehaving banks in language that cannot be repeated here.

Obviously our regulators' culture must be scrutinised. We need to imbue them with some backbone, not just to walk around like they are in police fancy-dress, but to actually act like a cop on the beat.

And it's not only MAS from whom we can draw inspiration. The ACCC is widely regarded as highly effective and no-nonsense.

Much of that is credit to Alan Fels, former chairman of the ACCC, who was a regulator's titan. He went on record in the Financial Review recently to say, if he was running ASIC, he would be cracking the whip.

The timidity of our regulators, and their "nothing-to-see-here" approach can be summed up with this analogy: our two financial regulators are like a clown car with two drivers, hurtling down the freeway. One driver – ASIC – is passed out at the wheel.

The other driver – APRA – refuses to watch the road. The fed
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Market Consolidation/Neo-Feudalism, Random Stuff, and More

- it never occured to me until recently how consolidated things in the world were in the global market place. In this post we'll take a ...