Sunday, October 6, 2013

Cyberpunk Sunday 2.015 - Silk Road Seizure, bionic legs and auto tagging.


Okay first up is the government seizure of 'The Silk Road'.  A hidden website only accessible by using a TOR browser which is supposed to keep the user anonymous AND make it harder to actually find where the site is hosted.  Now first off if you didn't see this coming you really don't get reality to well.  It was being heavily used for the sales and transfer of illegal drugs using Bitcoin as it's main currency.  The owner is also under arrest for a variety of charges and probably won't be seeing the light of day anytime soon.

Of course this has also affected the value of the Bitcoin as its been on a jumpy ride ever since this happened.  But I will note that it is still very high above it's worth just last year.

Article on the seizure of the site and indictment of the owner.

Article on the current value of the Bitcoin after the seizure.

Now on to some cybertech!  Lets take a look at the development of the mind controlled bionic leg.  This tech has been in the bionic arms before but putting it into legs is a lot different.  As the article states one miscalculation could send the person spiraling to the ground.  Also notes that the US Army is funding the development of this as well.  So I'm assuming we'll be seeing disabled veterans being used to test these out in future testing.

Mind controlled bionic leg.

Okay and as we all know there are plenty of people out there who really don't like automatic face recognition software.  So they've been working on all sorts of ways around it.  From LED sunglasses to strange makeup and hairstyles that obscure facial features.  This one however is a bit less drastic.  A t-shirt meant to mess with the auto ID and causing the program to pick out the faces printed on the fabric as people.

Creepy auto tagging foiled by shirt.

Okay that's another week down.  Please tune in next week for another.





2 comments:

  1. I would say it's more fascinating how people have reacted to Silk Road closing than its seizure itself

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    1. I have to agree. Betting the next version of it that comes along has their servers hidden a little more. Also wondering how long until a good legitimate sales/auction site comes along that doesn't deal in the illegal stuff and accepts bitcoin as it's currency.

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