Talynebear

On Monday, the US Marshals Service (USMS) announced that it will auction off 50,000 bitcoins belonging to Ross William Ulbricht. Ulbricht, allegedly under the moniker Dread Pirate Roberts, is suspected of running the first Silk Road, the hidden website that was often used to traffic drugs and other illegal sales. Ulbricht had 114,000 bitcoins stored on his various computers when the devices were seized by federal authorities during an arrest in San Francisco last October.

The USMS auction will take place on December 4. Today, a bitcoin is worth about $377.60, making the assets up for auction worth around $18.88 million.

The announcement comes several months after an initial auction of bitcoins taken from the Silk Road's servers. In June, venture capitalist Tim Draper bought almost 30,000 bitcoins for $18 million. (Five months ago, bitcoins were worth about $200 more per unit than they are today.) The auction itself went off relatively smoothly, but not until after the USMS sent an e-mail CCing, rather than BCCing, all those interested in it.

Images posted of rows of federal police vehicles in a Missouri hotel garage got the employee who took them fired—and branded as a terrorist and traitor by the hotel's security chief.

Mark Paffrath via Facebook

Mark Paffrath, a Navy veteran who worked as a housekeeper for the Drury hotel chain, claims he was fired from his job on Saturday after posting photos and video on Facebook of dozens of vehicles from the Department of Homeland Security massed in a Missouri hotel garage. Paffrath told CNN that Drury’s head of security “called me a terrorist, saying that I dishonorably served my country for posting those pictures and videos on Facebook.”

The vehicles and a large number of people from Homeland Security’s Federal Protection Services arrived last week, apparently in preparation for the announcement of a grand jury decision on whether to charge police officer Darren Wilson in the death of teenager Michael Brown. They were parked at the hotel where Paffrath worked, a short drive from Ferguson in suburban St. Louis. Paffrath posted the video and images of rows of federal vehicles on Thursday, including one with the caption “Why are all these vehicles here, I wonder if it has anything to do with Ferguson? #Ferguson, #No justice, no peace."

Paffrath’s former employer would not comment on how the hotel learned of the posted images, some of which are still publicly viewable on Paffrath’s Facebook page. A Drury hotel spokesperson told CNN, “We do not publicly discuss confidential personnel matters. The safety and privacy of our guests and our team members has always been and will remain our top priority." The hotel management may have seen the photos as a violation of the privacy of guests.

Submitted by: (via Ax By Mag)

Overnight, the European Space Agency (ESA) got a clearer picture of what happened during yesterday's landing on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The news is mixed. Philae is definitely on 67P, but it did not land flat—only two of its legs are in contact with the comet. It also landed in the shadow of some of the comet's topography, which limits the amount of solar power it can generate. But perhaps most significantly, we're not entirely sure exactly where Philae sits.

Last night, as the initial data from various instruments started to come in, some data suggested that rather than landing, Philae had bounced twice before settling, executing a total of three landings. Today, the ESA has confirmed that there were two bounces, and one of them was rather large. The initial touchdown was within 100 meters of the intended landing site. But the first bounce was large, lasting about two hours and taking the lander roughly a kilometer away. That was followed by a low-velocity bounce (3 cm/second) that lasted only seven minutes.

Incidentally, we reported that the lander's harpoons had successfully fired yesterday, which could have prevented these bounces. That idea came up in today's press conference as well. It turns out that sensors had read that the harpoons had read the touchdown signal and responded by starting to wind in the cables, which made it appear that they worked as intended. Further checks, however, revealed that the touchdown signal never triggered the firing mechanism.

Submitted by: (via The Gentleman's Armchair )

A Virginia Circuit Court judge ruled on Thursday that a person does not need to provide a passcode to unlock their phone for the police. The court also ruled that demanding a suspect to provide a fingerprint to unlock a phone would be constitutional.

The ruling calls into question the privacy of some iPhone 5S, 6, and 6 Plus users who have models equipped with TouchID, the fingerprint sensor that allows the user—and ideally only the user—to unlock the phone. It is possible for users to turn TouchID unlocking off and simply use a passcode, and Apple has provided certain extra protections to prevent TouchID privacy issues—requiring the entry of a passcode if the phone hasn't been used in 48 hours, for example. But if a suspect simply uses TouchID to open their phone, police could have a window to take advantage of that when apprehending them.

The case in question this week involved a man named David Baust, who was charged in February with trying to strangle his girlfriend. The Virginian Pilot reports that Baust's phone might contain video of the conflict but that his phone was locked with a passcode. Baust's attorney argued that passcodes are protected by the Fifth Amendment.

Stockmonkeys.com

Since 1998, breaking most types of digital locks, often called Digital Rights Management (DRM), is against the law. Even well-lawyered companies that tried to plead fair use, as RealPlayer did in 2008, have been crushed. What chance does a regular Joe have?

But if you have a legal use for copyrighted content, there is an "out." Every three years, the Copyright Office accepts petitions on what activities should get an "exemption" under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The sixth tri-annual rulemaking is now upon us, and the deadline is this Monday, November 3.

"It's not a heavy lift to file a petition," said Sherwin Siy, VP of legal affairs at Public Knowledge, an advocacy group that's long been active on copyright issues. "Five pages, max, short and sweet."

This is really what it's like when I have to pick up after another engineer. It's usually cheaper to just start over :-/

Comic by: NeilRashbrook (via Nothing Short of Awesome)

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