Technology

An Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to be the creator of bitcoin has been given a one-year suspended prison sentence after the high court in London ruled he was in contempt because he would not stop suing people.

Mr Justice Mellor had already found that Craig Wright, 54, repeatedly lied about his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the person or people who launched bitcoin – the cryptocurrency that was first mined in 2009 and recently soared in value to £79,000.

Wright had claimed intellectual property rights associated with bitcoin, but that was demolished when the high court found he lied about his role, deploying often clumsy forgeries “on a grand scale” and “technobabble”. The real Nakamoto is likely to be a billionaire because they are thought to own 1 million bitcoins.

Wright was then ordered to stop taking legal actions against bitcoin developers, but defied that court order in October when he brought suits against cryptocurrency developers amounting to more than £900bn in respect of his claimed intellectual property rights related to bitcoin.

Brian Merchant and Paris Marx are back with the very first guest of System Crash: Molly White! With Molly’s help, we walk through the biggest stories in the crypto world. We explore the resurgence of crypto, how its backers influenced the election and won Trump’s favor, what the crypto industry wants from the incoming administration—and how it plans to wield power.

More than 140 Facebook content moderators have been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content including murders, suicides, child sexual abuse and terrorism.

The moderators worked eight- to 10-hour days at a facility in Kenya for a company contracted by the social media firm and were found to have PTSD, generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD), by Dr Ian Kanyanya, the head of mental health services at Kenyatta National hospital in Nairobi.

The mass diagnoses have been made as part of lawsuit being brought against Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and Samasource Kenya, an outsourcing company that carried out content moderation for Meta using workers from across Africa.

The images and videos including necrophilia, bestiality and self-harm caused some moderators to faint, vomit, scream and run away from their desks, the filings allege.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/49967612

NSO competitor Paragon, creator of Graphite spyware used by Israel and U.S., sold to American defense contractor, marking a shift in ties of cyber arms between Jerusalem and D.C.

GUIs are certainly awesome, and they look like they’ll be the future of IT; but what if you desperately wanted one, yet all you had was a regular IBM PC? Lucky you, as Visi On was just what you needed; let’s explore it in our newest Episode of GUI Wonderland!

Police and intelligence services in Serbia are using advanced mobile forensics products and previously unknown spyware to illegally surveil journalists, environmental campaigners and civil rights activists, according to a report.

The report shows how mobile forensic products from the Israeli firm Cellebrite are used to unlock and extract data from individuals’ mobile devices, which are being infected with a new Android spyware system, NoviSpy.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/49891367

The Russian Air Force has demonstrated high confidence in the Su-57’s stealth capabilities, and has deployed the fighters for high intensity combat operations to parts of the Ukrainian theatre with particularly high concentrations of Ukrainian air defences.

The Su-57 program has prioritised reducing maintenance needs and operational costs to avoid the very low availability rates that have plagued America’s F-117, F-22 and F-35 stealth fighter fleets. One notable means by which this had been achieved is through reduced reliance on radar absorbent coatings, which was achieved by using innovative solutions such as radar absorbent fibreglass. In contrast to American stealth fighters which consistently cost far more to operate than their fourth generation predecessors, this approach allows the Su-57 to potentially achieve lower operational costs than its direct predecessor the Soviet Su-27, thus allowing Russia to move its fleet into the fifth generation without either significantly raising sustainment funding or contracting the number of fighters in service.

How cool is that?! AntennaPod creates a summary and stats of my year listening to podcasts directly on my device without sending it to the cloud!

My year 2024 in podcasts.

UPDATE: oh shit Verizon only has 5G but there's also apparently some companies called Brightspeed and GloFiber. anyone heard of them?