Topic: NEWS english - on December 31, 2013 at 2:41:00 PM CET
Giant yellow duck explodes in Taiwan…again
A giant yellow duck on display in a northern Taiwan port exploded Tuesday, just hours before it was expected to attract a big crowd to count down the new year.
The 18-metre-tall (59-feet) duck on show at Keelung burst around noon and deflated into a floating yellow disc, only 11 days after it went on display.
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Topic: NEWS english - on December 18, 2013 at 5:43:00 PM CET
Who Owns the World’s Biggest Bitcoin Wallet? The FBI
In September, the FBI shut down the Silk Road online drug marketplace, and it started seizing bitcoins belonging to the Dread Pirate Roberts — the operator of the illicit online marketplace, who they say is an American man named Ross Ulbricht.
The seizure sparked an ongoing public discussion about the future of Bitcoin, the world’s most popular digital currency, but it had an unforeseen side-effect: It made the FBI the holder of the world’s biggest Bitcoin wallet.
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Topic: NEWS english - on December 4, 2013 at 3:20:00 PM CET
Tracking 96,000 stolen Bitcoin in realtime
Sheep Marketplace -- a Bitcoin-based market that grew sharply after Silk Road shuttered -- was the target of a 96,000 Bitcoin (~£60m) hack last weekend. It turns out that laundering that much Bitcoin is very tricky, and the denizens of r/sheepmarketplace on Reddit have been taking countermeasures against the thieves (or thief) to track and de-anonymize the Bitcoin as it moves through various "tumblers" -- services that obfuscate the origin and destination of Bitcoin fractions. It's an exciting chase across the darknet, full of math, intrigue, and crime.
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Topic: NEWS english - on December 2, 2013 at 2:38:00 PM CET
The Quietest Place On Earth Will Cause You To Hallucinate In 45 Minutes
Industry Tap reports that there is a place so quiet you can hear your heart beat, your lungs breathe and your stomach digest. It's the anechoic chamber at Orfield Labs in Minnesota where 3ft of sound-proofing fiberglass wedges and insulated steel and concrete absorbs 99.99% of sound, making it the quietest place in the world. 'When it's quiet, ears will adapt,' says the company's founder and president, Steven Orfield. 'The quieter the room, the more things you hear. You'll hear your heart beating, sometimes you can hear your lungs, hear your stomach gurgling loudly. In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.' The chamber is used by a multitude of manufacturers, to test how loud their products are and the space normally rents for $300 to $400 an hour
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Topic: NEWS english - on November 25, 2013 at 2:52:00 PM CET
Study Suggests Link Between Dread Pirate Roberts and Satoshi Nakamoto
Two Israeli computer scientists say they may have uncovered a puzzling financial link between Ross William Ulbricht, the recently arrested operator of the Internet black market known as the Silk Road, and the secretive inventor of bitcoin, the anonymous online currency, used to make Silk Road purchases.
nytimes.com Ron-Shamir: Bitcoin-Silk Road-Pirate-Nakamoto [pdf]
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Topic: NEWS english - on November 23, 2013 at 2:37:00 PM CET
Just 90 companies caused two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions
The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by just 90 companies, which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the dawning of the industrial age, new research suggests.
The companies range from investor-owned firms – household names such as Chevron, Exxon and BP – to state-owned and government-run firms.
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Topic: NEWS english - on November 13, 2013 at 5:35:00 PM CET
Occupy Wall Street activists buy $15m of Americans' personal debt
A group of Occupy Wall Street activists has bought almost $15m of Americans' personal debt over the last year as part of the Rolling Jubilee project to help people pay off their outstanding credit.
Rolling Jubilee, set up by Occupy's Strike Debt group following the street protests that swept the world in 2011, launched on 15 November 2012. The group purchases personal debt cheaply from banks before "abolishing" it, freeing individuals from their bills.
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Topic: NEWS english - on November 13, 2013 at 5:12:00 PM CET
Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)
Today, 13 November 2013, WikiLeaks released the secret negotiated draft text for the entire TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. The TPP is the largest-ever economic treaty, encompassing nations representing more than 40 per cent of the world’s GDP. The WikiLeaks release of the text comes ahead of the decisive TPP Chief Negotiators summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 19-24 November 2013. The chapter published by WikiLeaks is perhaps the most controversial chapter of the TPP due to its wide-ranging effects on medicines, publishers, internet services, civil liberties and biological patents. Significantly, the released text includes the negotiation positions and disagreements between all 12 prospective member states.
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Topic: NEWS english - on November 7, 2013 at 3:25:00 PM CET
Deer rescued from French garage roof
A deer got stuck on the garage roof on Monday night in the town of Verneuil-sur-Indre in the Indre-et-Loire department of central France.
After a three-hour rescue mission conducted by local government agents, the animal was finally back on firm ground. Reports say that the animal probably ended up on the roof by way of a perch from a neighbouring garden.
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Topic: NEWS english - on November 5, 2013 at 2:54:00 PM CET
Incredible Footage Shows Skydivers Surviving Plane Collision
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Topic: NEWS english - on October 23, 2013 at 1:48:00 PM CEST
How To Lose $172,222 a Second For 45 Minutes
Investment firm Knight Capital made headlines in 2012 for losing over $400 million on the New York Stock Exchange because of problems with their algorithmic trading software. Now, the owner of a Python programming blog noticed the release of a detailed SEC report into exactly what went wrong (PDF). It shows how a botched update rollout combined with useless or nonexistent process guidelines cost the company over $172,000 a second for over 45 minutes.
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Topic: NEWS english - on October 22, 2013 at 3:05:00 PM CEST
Fart-proof Underwear
A healthcare underwear company has designed a range of briefs and boxers which use chemical warfare technology to filter unwanted gas. The hi-tech pants, created by Shreddies Ltd. based in Leicestershire, England, feature a highly absorptive carbon cloth back panel which traps and neutralizes flatulence odors.
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