Maxim Bange

Iran informed the IAEA’s Incident and Emergency Centre on 28 November 2013 that no damage had been found at Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, after a magnitude 5.7 earthquake hit an area some 65 km northeast of the plant at approximately 14:00 UTC. It said the plant, which was in operation at the time of the earthquake, continues to operate normally.

Our week through the lens:
25-29 November 2013

Op uitnodiging van de Consumentenbond praten de Openbaar Vervoer (OV)- bedrijven...

The U.S. Defense Department may have found a new way to scan millions of lines of software code for vulnerabilities, namely by turning the practice into a set of video games and puzzles and have volunteers do the work.

Samsung lijkt te overwegen om Android 4.4 KitKat, naast voor zijn high-endtoestellen, ook voor goedkopere smartphones uit te brengen, zo blijkt uit een uitgelekte lijst. Het gaat onder andere om de Galaxy S4 Mini en toestellen in de Galaxy Ace-serie.

A service of thanksgiving for the life of ex-South African president Nelson Mandela has been held in London.

One Direction tried to steal the spotlight from "Saturday Night Live" host Paul Rudd during his opening monologue.

Too bad they didn't know Rudd had a secret weapon: his "Anchorman 2" crew. 

Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, and David Koechner came out on stage for a surprise performance of "Afternoon Delight" featured in the first film.

It was little surprise Ferrell appeared on SNL considering he's been popping up everywhere from ESPN to local newscasts.

Here's a photo of them all performing:

SEE ALSO: The best television moments of the year

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Goed bezig, SP. Nee, echt. Goed bezig SP. De SP Amsterdam, wel te verstaan. Die hebben een hele simpele edoch in onze ogen uitermate effectieve manier maatregel verzonnen om graaiers in de publieke sector te ontmoedigen. Instellingen waarbij bestuurders een...

ROME - De Italiaanse zakenman Antonio Percassi gaat 15 miljoen euro investeren in de noodlijdende luchtvaartmaatschappij Alitalia. Dat liet hij dit weekeinde weten. Alitalia is bezig met een kapitaalverhoging die 300 miljoen euro moet opbrengen. De investering van Percassi zal lopen via zijn controlemaatschappij Odissea.

Prinses Laurentien en haar vader Laurens Jan Brinkhorst hebben de campagne Vaders Voor Lezen geopend. Dat gebeurde na de première van de jeugdfilm 'Mees Kees op Kamp' in Ede, met de schrijfster Mirjam Oldenhave, die de boeken over Mees Kees heeft geschreven.

De campagne moet mannen enthousiasmeren om meer voor te lezen aan hun kinderen of kleinkinderen. Laurentien benadrukte hoe goed voorlezen is voor de woordenschat van kinderen.

Band

Mirjam Oldenhave is aangesteld als de 'bondscoach' van de nieuwe campagne. Haar Mees Kees geeft zijn leerlingen plezier in lezen en leren.

De helft van de ouders in Nederland leest helemaal niet voor, terwijl dat belangrijk is voor de ontwikkeling en het ook nog eens de band tussen ouder en kind versterkt.

Laaggeletterd

Van ouders die wel voorlezen is het in de meeste gevallen de moeder die het doet. Vaders hebben wat in te halen, vinden de organisaties die de campagne hebben bedacht.

De organisatoren wijzen op onderzoek, waaruit blijkt dat 13,8 procent van de 15-jarigen in Nederland laaggeletterd is.

What Santa should bring these three tech firms

Senses a disturbance in the system

Titanfall is one of the most hotly anticipated next-gen games, potentially even the first killer app for the new Xbox One, and there's good reason for that. Tonight, we've been treated to two new trailers ahead of the game's March 11th, 2014 release date. At the Spike VGX video game awards show, Respawn Entertainment introduced two more of the game's titular Titans, the hulking mechanized suits that bring devastating firepower to the battlefield.

Feast your eyes on the Ogre, a slow-moving brawler with heavy arm that can literally rip the arms off an enemy mech, and the Stryder, a far lighter Titan that can nimbly dodge missiles with rapid dash maneuvers and quickly flank foes:

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I'm changing my mind about Bitcoin.

I used to think it was a joke or at best a currency for clowns.

Now, I no longer think that. Now, I don't know what its future is.

Here, let me explain.

I've gone through two phrases writing about the "crypto-currency" called Bitcoin. I first started paying close attention to it early this year. In April, during its first big mega-spike, I wrote Bitcoin Has No Intrinsic Value, And Will Never Be A Threat To Fiat Currency.

Then the price of Bitcoin crashed, and I kind of lost interest.

Then a few weeks ago, as the price of Bitcoin started exploding again, I wrote a post that earned me all kinds of trolls and anger on the Internet. That post was titled Bitcoin Is A Joke. 

That post seriously caused a major ruckus. Everyone on the Bitcoin message boards freaked out. Someone tried turning me into a meme.

Other folks, like Max Keiser, eagerly anticipated the moment that I would commit suicide on live TV.

Since then, Bitcoin has exploded in price much more, going from about $300 per coin to over $1,000, and even hitting $1,200 at one point.

Now there's always a danger in changing your mind on something after a gigantic rally, because that looks like "capitulation" and that usually happens at the top, and then you're made to look like a fool twice. First you end up looking like a fool for being negative at the bottom. Then you look like a fool for changing your mind at the top. You see this kind of thing happen all the time, because humans are herders, and it's difficult to have contrary opinions, especially in markets where the price moves against you daily.

But I'll say at the outset (and this defense is going to end up being pointless) I don't think that that applies here. First of all, I've never really expressed a view on Bitcoin's "price." The whole thing seemed like a house of cards to me. And at this point, I still have no idea whether it will go up or down. If I had to guess, I'd still guess that the price of a bitcoin is still much more likely to go to zero than to have any durable value out into the future. At this point, I have zero idea what a "fair" price for Bitcoin is.

But I'm less convinced that Bitcoin is for clowns or that the whole thing is a house of cards destined to disappear at the first mention of wind. It might be a house of cards! I just don't think I know.

The more I've thought about Bitcoin though, the less valid some of my earlier objections to it seem, which is why in the interest of intellectual honesty and being someone who takes into account new evidence when presented with it, I'm writing this post now.

First of all, it's wrong to say that Bitcoin has no value. There's prima facie evidence that this is untrue. If you want to buy weed on the Internet, Bitcoin serves a useful purpose. First you convert your U.S. dollars into Bitcoin, which is a totally legal thing to do. With those Bitcoins you now have the ability to anonymously purchase anything you want on the Internet (like pot). The seller, the recipient of those bitcoins, can anonymously sell marijuana to you, and then convert those bitcoins back to U.S. dollars — again a totally legal action. Basically, both the buyer and the seller each engage in one activity that could theoretically be tracked (converting dollars into bitcoins and vice versa) while the actual illicit action (the selling of marijuana) is done in a system that is theoretically impossible to track.

It's easy to dismiss the foundations of a currency that provides the most value to people engaging in illegal action, but that's really not a good counterargument. Illicit action is a part of the economy and will always be with us. A protocol for buyer and seller to connect online anonymously is a useful thing for people in that economy, and so that alone offers at least some value to Bitcoin.

Two other arguments against Bitcoin, which I've stated in the past, are that the currency is too volatile to be a useful medium of exchange. And that it's also deflationary in the sense that if you assume the price is going to keep going up, then you have no incentive to ever spend your bitcoins, thus preventing the Bitcoin economy from becoming a vibrant thing.

But both of these counter-arguments have flaws.

Let's go back to the marijuana sale. If you're scouring The Silk Road, you're most likely looking to pay roughly the "street value" for the pot your buying, plus perhaps some premium for being able to purchase the product from the comfort of your own home. You probably don't really care what the bitcoin price of the pot is, just as long as it's pretty close to what you consider a fair value for it in U.S. Dollars. The bitcoin price is kind of a distraction — remember its main purpose is so you can complete a transaction with the veil of anonymity, which is something that's pretty much impossible using existing technologies on the Internet.

According to PriceOfWeed.com, the average price for an oz. of high quality weed is $352.88 in New York.

So the bitcoin price of an ounce of high-grade pot should be around 0.3 BTC.

If I'm the buyer I don't really care if yesterday the price was 0.2 or 0.5 or 0.1 or 1. The only thing that matters is that right now the bitcoin price is roughly in line with what I want to pay in USD. Then the only thing that matters is whether I can switch my USD bitcoin in a timely manner, and make the transaction. And then for the seller, the key thing is to be able to quickly unload the bitcoin for U.S. dollars, so that he or she isn't taking any big risk on bitcoin fluctuations (after all, selling weed is risky enough. You don't want a big currency risk as well).

Provided the market is liquid enough, and the transaction infrastructure is robust enough, both the buyer and the seller should be able to conduct a mutually agreeable transaction at a fair U.S. dollar-based price, with Bitcoin simply providing the anonymity needed for the actual swap. 

The same argument applies to the deflationary aspect of Bitcoin. If I'm buying weed online, what do I care if others are hoarding it, or if the price has gone up five times in the last day? So long as at the current price, the seller and me are able to come to a mutually agreeable price when translated back into U.S. dollars, the price rise just isn't that big of an impediment. In fact, the price rise might actually be helpful (more on this later).

Even if you don't think drugs, online gambling, and other illegal activity is enough to sustain a "currency," the same principle applied above could apply to something more important: money laundering or circumventing capital controls.

This is what the excitement about Bitcoin in China is all about. In the Bitcoin community, there's tons of talk about how the future of Bitcoin is in China, and there does seem to be tons of trading volume happening there. Here's the potential: China has lots of rich people, but a fragile banking system, and strict capital controls, meaning it's difficult to get your wealth out of the country. One way rich people get their wealth out of the country is by laundering it through Macau. Mamta Badkar wrote a great explainer of how this works.

Basically, your Chinese millionaire gives millions of dollars to a "junket" operator in the mainland. That junket operator then provides them with millions of dollars worth of chips at a casino in Macau. The millionaire then plays numerous hands of some game (probably baccarat) then at the end of the session cashes in the chips in Macau's currency, the Pataca. Then those Patacas are deposited into a bank in Macau, and voila, the millionaire has just escaped China's capital controls, having successfully moved millions outside of the Chinese banking system.

Bitcoin, theoretically, promises an even easier path to do this. Rich person buys a bunch of bitcoins, transfers them to a Bitcoin wallet associated with a financial institution outside of China, sells the bitcoins into some new currency, and then voila. 

Economist Tyler Cowen wrote a long post about Bitcoin and its potential in China last week:

Right now, you can think of the value of Bitcoin being set in the same way that the value of an export license might be set through bids.  If/when China fully liberalizes capital flows, the value of Bitcoin likely will fall.  A lot.  To the extent the shadow market value of the yuan rises, and approaches the level of the current quasi-peg, the value of Bitcoin will fall, by how much is not clear.  Or maybe getting money out through Hong Kong (or Shanghai) will become easier and again the value of Bitcoin would fall.  If Beijing shuts down BTC China, the main broker, which by the way accounts for about 1/3 of all Bitcoin transactions in the world, the value of Bitcoin very likely will fall.  A lot.  You will recall that the Chinese government shut down the virtual currency QQ in 2009; admittedly stopping Bitcoin could prove harder but still they could thwart or limit it.

If you are long Bitcoin for any appreciable amount of time, it seems you are betting that the Chinese economy will do poorly and capital controls will remain.  Then more people will be increasingly desperate to get more money out of the country.  Or you may be betting that the Chinese use of Bitcoin to launder money will increase due to the mere spread of the idea, through social contagion.  According to this source, the value of Bitcoin is up by a factor of 66 this year in China.

Now, earlier I mentioned that the rising price of Bitcoin, rather than being a hindrance, could actually be helpful.

Here's why. See, while everyone talks about Bitcoin, there are actually a ton of crypto-currencies. The website CoinMarketCap.com lists 42 different ones, and helpfully lists the total "market cap" of each. The "market cap" is just the price of each coin multiplied by the number of outstanding coins there are for each.

Here's a look at the top eight among them. Bitcoin, at over $10 billion, is the biggest. Feathercoin, at over $19 million, is still pretty substantial.

Now each one of these coin systems are pretty similar, but they have slightly different characteristics. The second biggest one is Litecoin, which advertises that transactions are faster, and that the mining system is fairer than bitcoins.

Theoretically, any one of these would suffice if you're a rich person in China looking to get your money outside the border. But in practice, several of these wouldn't suffice. For you to get your money out of China you need to be able to buy coins in size, and then be confident that once you've switched them to a wallet outside of the country, that you'd be able to sell those coins in size for roughly the same price.

If you wanted to move $1 million worth of Feathercoin, you'd be trying to move over 5% of the entire Feathercoin market. It's highly unlikely you'd be able to find that kind of liquidity in any reasonable period of time. You'd be taking a gigantic risk that when you wanted to sell your Feathercoin, that there would be no buyers, and you'd be totally screwed.

Now that Bitcoin has, notionally, billions of dollars in the ecosystem, moving $1 million (just ~1,000 bitcoins) is less likely to cause any kind of splash. You can probably obtain the coins and sell them without much disruption. So although theoretically the competing coins can technically do the job of getting past the border, you really need the network effects of a system with a high "market cap" to make it work. So in a sense, the rising price makes it easier for the whole system to operate. Rather than being discouraging to the Bitcoin ecosystem, it enables it, because there's enough money in the system to absorb the needs of buyers and sellers doing transactions.

Felix Salmon wrote a post titled Waiting for Bitcoin to get Boring in which he argued that Bitcoin bulls should be more excited by long periods with little volatility rather than the periods like recently where the price goes ballistic. But while that seems intuitive if you think of Bitcoin like a "currency" that needs stability, it doesn't necessarily jibe with the thinking above. Higher and higher bitcoin prices enable transactions in size. It's because Bitcoin has gone parabolic, and the number of dollars associated with it are now over $10 billion that it could become a plausible avenue for rich Chinese to start thinking of it as a way for them to get money out of the country. Rather than the high price being a hindrance, the high price expands the market.

There are all kinds of reasons to be compelled by anti-Bitcoin and to be deeply skeptical.

The Economist had a great piece Saturday about how there's a huge and growing technical strain on the whole Bitcoin network that could cause an implosion.

And the cult-like fanaticism of Bitcoin bulls spewing warmed-over goldbug cliches about the instability of fiat currency or the demise of the Fed should make anyone skeptical. If the advocates of Bitcoin are telling you to blow your brains out, it's a good heuristic to think that what they're advocating is a total fraud which you can safely ignore. But while that might work most times, it's not necessarily always right.

Then there are charts like this comparing Bitcoin to the famous South Sea Bubble, which Mebane Faber put together.

It's hard not to look at that and conclude that obviously Bitcoin is a bubble that will go to zero. But there is at least the possibility that what we're seeing is network effects pricing themselves in real time, and acting like any other Internet protocol (or company) whose value grows like crazy the more people who are using it. If you were able to put a "value" on Napster in its early days as more and more people put their files on it, the chart might have looked similar. Does that mean Napster was a speculative bubble? No (although eventually it crashed for other reasons).

Right now, Bitcoin has real-world value to people because there are speculators who will supply bitcoin on demand (almost) and buy bitcoin in a liquid manner, allowing people to conduct online transactions that they might not otherwise be able to using a traditional currency. If the speculators ever lose interest (which might happen if the price stops going parabolic) then the people who use it for real transactions are cooked. Real currencies, backed by a central bank, and whose value is the function of laws, don't have to worry about this. People have to hold dollars in the U.S. no matter what (to pay taxes, to use the banking system, etc.) so the speculators aren't that important for the conduct of actual transactions.

Whether the speculators will stick around Bitcoin, and always ensure that people using it for real purposes (to buy drugs, to gamble, to buy things with no fees, to circumvent capital controls) can swap in and out of it is an open question.

But it's an interesting question with real-world ramifications that is more intriguing than I first thought.

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Microsoft's Xbox One was the most commonly purchased console from retailers Target and Walmart on Black Friday, according to a survey from Infoscout.

Xbox One accounted for 31 percent of consoles purchased, while the PlayStation 4 made up approximately 15 percent. The Xbox 360 ranked second with 30 percent, while the PlayStation 3 accounted for another 15 percent. The Wii U came in fifth with six percent, while the Wii made up a mere one percent of purchases.

The survey does not include the number of consoles purchased, or how many customers were surveyed. The success of both Xbox consoles can be "largely attributed" to limited availability of the PS4, Infoscout said. Discounts on the Xbox 360 at Walmart also likely helped boost...

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The seventh installment of the Fast & Furious series may not have been entirely derailed by star Paul Walker's sudden death yesterday. Sources have apparently told The Hollywood Reporter that although production has been delayed, Universal executives and director James Wan met this morning to discuss how to proceed with the film while being respectful of Walker's death. The film was set for a release date of July 11th, but TMZ has reported that Walker was supposed to film several "key scenes" this week, and that other cast members are too distraught to return to the set any time soon. The Hollywood Reporter's sources also say that Walker and others were scheduled to shoot more scenes, though they say that a large part of the film...

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Or why your Android handset might not be as good as you thought

Maybe the vast majority of your recollected dreams involve public speaking in the nude, or repeatedly failing your college chemistry final. Or maybe you don’t recall having any dreams at all. According to Thomas Peisel, both scenarios are a profound missed opportunity: while you were helplessly flunking exams or snoring into a subconscious abyss, he’s been flying through the sky like Magneto and receiving sage advice from flame-covered monsters. And doing it all with complete cognizance.

Peisel, a long-time lucid dreamer, is the co-author of A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics (Workman, 2013). The book is a collaboration between Piesel, Dylan Tuccillo, and Jared Zeizel, all three of them filmmakers...

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Gives Apple a wedgy and runs away

Het verzamelen en analyseren van metadata is volgens de AIVD een 'minder ernstige inbreuk op de privacy' dan het aftappen van de inhoud van dataverkeer. Critici stellen echter dat uit metadata wel degelijk zeer gevoelige gegevens kunnen worden gefilterd.

Het PlayStation Network voor de consoles van Sony is vrijdag offline gegaan. Dit zorgt met name voor Europese gamers die zojuist een nieuwe PlayStation 4 hebben gekocht voor problemen: een zogeheten Day One-update is noodzakelijk voor diverse features van de console.

Aldi begint op 7 december met de verkoop van een Medion-tablet onder de naam Lifetab. Het gaat om een budgettablet die 179 euro moet kosten. De Lifetab beschikt over een 10"-scherm en een quadcore-soc op 1,6GHz.

The ongoing legal battle between Hotfile and the MPAA is nearing its climax.

In August the movie studios won summary judgment on the issues of DMCA defense and vicarious liability, while the file-hosting site was cleared of direct copyright infringement. The remaining issues, including the damages amount, will be decided during a trial early next month.

In preparation for the trial both parties have submitted motions to the court in recent weeks. Hotfile, for example, asked the court to prevent the MPAA from using “pejorative” terms including piracy, theft and stealing as these could misguide the jury.

District Court Judge Kathleen Williams has now ruled on these motions, with the file-hosting service scoring several important victories.

The Judge granted Hotfile’s “pejorative” terms motion, which means that the movie studios and its witnesses are not allowed to use words including “piracy,” “theft” and “stealing” during the trial.

“Defendants’ Motion in Limine to Preclude Use of Pejorative Terms is GRANTED IN PART. The parties may not use pejorative terms but may use terms of art,” the order reads.

The file-hosting service previously argued that since piracy and theft-related terms are derogatory, their use could mislead the jury and possibly influence their judgment. According to Hotfile there is no ground to substantiate the use of such terms.

“In the present case, there is no evidence that the Defendants (or Hotfile’s founders) are ‘pirates’ or ‘thieves,’ nor is there evidence that they were ‘stealing’ or engaged in ‘piracy’ or ‘theft.’ Even if the Defendants had been found to have directly infringed on the Plaintiffs’ copyrights, such derogatory terms would add nothing to the Plaintiffs’ case, but would serve to improperly inflame the jury.”

The MPAA countered that there is absolutely no reason to exclude words that are commonly used in cases related to copyright infringement. Banning the terms would make it hard for MPAA’s lawyers and the witnesses to describe the events that took place, according to the movie studios.

“Terms like ‘piracy’ and ‘theft’ are commonplace terms often used in court decisions, statutes, and everyday speech to describe the conduct in which Hotfile and its users engaged, and for which the Court has already found Defendants liable,” MPAA’s legal team wrote.

With her ruling Judge Williams clearly sides with Hotfile’s argument that the jury could be misled by piracy and theft-related descriptions. This is a clear win for the file-hosting service, but it also leads to the awkward situation that several witnesses can’t name their job titles, such as Warner’s head of Global Corporate Anti-Piracy.

Additionally, the MPAA can no longer quote Vice President Joe Biden’s famous comment: “Piracy is theft, clean and simple.”

The full list of motions Judge Williams ruled on includes more good news for Hotfile. For example, with regard to Hotfile’s countersuit over alleged DMCA abuse by the movie studio, Warner’s motions to exclude the term “perjury” and the studio’s audit of its anti-piracy system from trial were both denied.

On the downside, Hotfile’s request to prevent the MPAA from bringing up the criminal indictment against “Megaupload” was denied. This means that in describing the Megaupload case the movie studios can’t quote passages that reference piracy or theft.

It will be interesting to see how the MPAA tackles Hotfile now that they are restricted in the language they can use. It probably means that the term “copyright infringement” will be used more often than they had hoped.

To be continued.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.

Yesterday's double dose of holidays and slew of family gatherings may have sent your Instagram feed moving quicker than ever: the social network says this Thanksgiving was its busiest day yet. Instagram didn't dive into the specifics, but it's easy to imagine that photos of turkeys, menorahs, football, and the countless beautiful arrangements of food gave its users plenty to photograph and filter. And this is the second Thanksgiving in a row that's set a busiest-day-ever record for Instagram. Last year, the network said that it saw over 10 million photos on Thanksgiving, coming in at a rate of around 200 images per second. Instagram has only been expanding since then, so it's no surprise to see it crack that number this year.

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A reader of Rupert Murdoch's tabloid The Sun would normally find something like this on Page 3:

Except the UK's censorship laws allow readers to see the model's bare breasts and panties. It's a trashy tabloid tradition that's been going on for over 40 years, despite protests from some women's groups.

But today's lusty readers would have found this instead:

The apology to "Rosie, 22 from Middlesex" is a celebration of the PlayStation 4's UK launch on Friday at midnight. The video game console is likely to sell out by the end of the day.

The reception to the ad on Twitter has been overwhelmingly positive, with Sun fans and critics alike commending Sony for the joke:

Great #PS4 ad on page 3 of today's Sun pic.twitter.com/XvicNHSJJg

— Andrew Bloch (@AndrewBloch) November 29, 2013

Brilliant piece of advertising! I'm making notes of this piece of genius @PlayStationEU @TheSunNewspaper #Page3 #PS4 http://t.co/avtKygnhjp

— CLEMENT MARFO (@ClementMarfo) November 29, 2013

Wow, that's one HOT Page 3 in the Sun this morning! pic.twitter.com/OqbbtgpcAb (re: @jonfaec, @TomPhillips151, @FredDutton)

— Chris Boers (@boersc) November 29, 2013

Diehard Page 3 fans' disappointment would be short-lived, however, since agency Manning Gottlieb OMD secured the spot by bumping Rosie to page 5.

SEE ALSO: Murdoch May End Topless 'Page 3' Girls In The Sun

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Het aantal drugsbehandelingen op de spoedeisende hulp van ziekenhuizen is de afgelopen vijf jaar met 45 procent gestegen, vooral door ghb. Adviesbureau VeiligheidNL heeft dat in kaart gebracht op verzoek van Nieuwsuur.

If you’re a fan in 3D printing, there is a new tool coming from Microsoft for you. Microsoft has released a new 3D Builder app for Windows 8.1 to allow [...]

The post 3D Builder App for Windows 8.1 3D Printing Free Download appeared first on My Digital Life.

Research in mice indicates that using steroids can have muscle building benefits for far longer than previously believed.

Supermarktketen Aldi gaat dit weekend opnieuw stunten met een budget Android smartphone. Voor 99 euro is vanaf morgen de Wolfgang AT-AS40D2 in een opvallend compleet pakket verkrijgbaar.