Bitcoin is a somewhat mysterious, fairly confusing type of digital currency that, until recently, you could use to buy large amount of drugs on the internet. But now you can use Bitcoin for something (arguably) even better than drugs: New York City real estate. A tipster recently sent along a listing for a $2,580/month one-bedroom sublet in 99 John Deco Lofts, accepting Bitcoin, which hit the market last month. And today, online apartment search marketplace RentHop announced in a press release that it will be accepting Bitcoin from people advertising NYC apartments on its site.
One of the top software engineers behind the Bitcoin digital currency wants to launch it into space.
Last month, Jeff Garzik floated the idea of Bitcoin in space on an internet discussion forum, pitching it as a way to always keep the system up and running — even if it’s attacked by malicious hackers.
The plan is to send up a Bitcoin computer on a tiny inexpensive satellite and have this machine communicate with terrestrial Bitcoin computers via radio. Garzik — who works at Bitcoin payment processor Bitpay and helps shape the open source software that drives the digital currency on thousands of machines across the internet — says that the satellite node could help the Bitcoin network fight back something known as a Sibyl attack. This is where malicious computers flood a node on the peer-to-peer network with bad data. It could give criminals a way of spending their bitcoins more than once, and it’s also part of the so-called selfish miner scenario that Cornell University researchers described last month, saying it could bring down the entire system.
By Sandra I. Erwin
A laser beam the size of a quarter fired from the back of a truck successfully shot down football-size mortar rounds and took small drones out of the sky.
In the world of directed-energy weapons, this was a milestone achievement, government and industry officials said. It happened between Nov. 18 and Dec. 10 during tests of the Army “high energy laser mobile demonstrator” at White Sands Missile Range, N.M.
Laser beams that can replace bullets and missiles have been a tantalizing prospect for decades, but the Pentagon has been less than enthusiastic. Directed-energy is what experts consider a “disruptive” technology that upsets the status quo. The notion that military forces would ditch proven kinetic weapons and take chances with light beams has made lasers a tough sell so far.
Transleadership
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Transleadership! By Mr. Andres Agostini
This is an excerpt from the conclusion section of, “…Transleadership!…” that discusses some management, leadership and futurism theories and practices and strategies.
To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of article:
EXCERPT. Ensuing:
(…SUMMATION OF WHAT A TRANSLEADERSHIP LEADER DOES AND IS …)
# 1 – Is An Actionable Statesman.
# 2 – Thoroughly moral and ethical in deed and spontaneously projected example.
# 3 – Happily located and navigating through Century 21.
# 4 – By far, focused on solid and increasing education and perpetual mind expansion, chiefly those acquired by solving truly complex problems systematically.
# 5 – Self-Pedagogue forever. Teaches to self-tech to his / her crew for Life.
# 6 – Leads, Co-Leads, Follows, Co-Follows, Executes, Co-Executes, Builds, Co-Builds, Envisions, Co-Envisions, Paves and Co-Paves Never-Thought-Of Pathways.
# 7 – Intuitive, Counterintuitive, and seamlessly blends both of the above.
# 8 – Takes all – encompassing curiosity as it is operated in real time – beyond known and unknown extremes.
# 9 – Makes every mistake – own or that of the competitor – into his / her won victory.
# 10 – Doesn’t care how fluid and amorphous the limits, contexts and the dynamics of his / her blurred theater of operations are.
# 11 – Can strategize and prevail through many operational frameworks at once without getting bewildered.
# 12 – Challenges every assumption, doctrine and dogma ruthlessly and relentlessly, beginning with his / her own ones.
# 13 – Learns something practical, meaningful, and decisively productive every day.
# 14 – Heightens crew’s sense of urgency and of focus.
# 15 – Re-adapts and re-invents resiliently and effortlessly regardless of whatever constraints and increasing pressures stemming from the frame of reference.
# 16 – Operates multidimensionally and cross-functionally.
# 17 – Constantly and boldly sets pre-conditions to maximize the likelihood of his / her triumphs.
# 18 – Always selects and develops his / her leadership constituency.
# 19 – Creates and applies his / her own – along with that of the team – body of knowledge.
# 20 – Does never ever institute “best practices,” but UNIQUE, premium-graded approaches.
# 21 – Carries on much swifter that “life cycles” intrinsic to products, services, challenges, and complex problem solving.
# 22 – Does not get concerned about his / her adversaries since the uniqueness and ever-upgrading quality of tactics, strategies and stratagems as applied.
# 23 – Harmonizes issues immediately.
# 24 – His / her leadership is always (and robustly so) linked to concrete and unambiguous objective and goals.
# 25 – Always updates his methods, approaches, techniques, tactics, strategies, especially using those that are extraneous to so-called and already disrupted “history.” (Which one, that wrote by winners or that stated by losers or that always failing to have sufficient objectivity?)
# 26 – Continuously learns lessons – and improves those – both from incurred mistakes and from captured successes.
# 27 – Extracts information and knowledge – to be shared and brainstormed with the crew – out of everything done, thought, as well as to be executed regardless of the incumbent.
# 28 – Wins only based on merit, principle, legitimacy and lawfulness.
# 29 – Strategizes the granularity of detail of everything. There is no such a thing as a leader that is not a strategist and visionary.
# 30 – Embraces leading-edge (even weird) science and its stemming technological derivatives immediately.
# 31 – Enjoys phenomena and prevails as he / she navigates through said phenomena.
# 32 – Is never commonsensical and always challenging long-held assumptions as he / she institutes the most unorthodox and exuberant novel practices (lavishly so).
# 33 – De-tools, tools, re-tools the amplification of the individual and collective intelligence within his / her crew.
# 34 – Instills how to operate autonomously and jointly – in pursuit of the same goals and objectives – to his / her followers and co-leaders.
# 35 – Learns from his / her mistakes, but empathizes to learn also from the mistakes of others.
# 36 – Fluidly shares experience and practical knowledge across every incumbent in the crew.
# 37 – Only thinks and performs a la unthinkable thinking.
# 38 – Disrupt the boundaries of unthinkable thinking, always going beyond such boundaries.
# 39 – Transforms new problems and old problems into actionable breakthrough opportunities.
# 40 – In his / her case and exercising this type of leadership, strongly and coherently insists on and applies three aspects: CIVILITY, CIVILITY, CIVILITY!
# 41 – Before chaos, he / she instills more and more chaos – of greater magnitude, scale and speed – to level off and outsmart the frame of reference targeted.
# 42 – Drives OPS with directness and / or indirectness, as well as with the loose/control hybridization mode.
# 43 – Shares of defined values
# 44 – Elicits conceptions of practiced futures to deal with and countermeasure way in advance.
# 45 – Fuses technology innovation with business strategy as a tool for competitive advantage.
# 46 – Conceives early and distinguishes it and exploits it strategic surprises attributable to competitors.
# 47 – Ascertains that there is not a single stone left unturned.
END OF EXCERPT.
Please see the entire presentation at http://lnkd.in/dP2PmCP
Computerworld - China’s lunar probe, and the moon rover it carried, landed successfully Saturday night, marking a major accomplishment for the country’s space efforts.
This is the first time a spacecraft from China has landed on an extraterrestrial body. China becomes the third country, after the United States and Russia, to land a spacecraft on the moon.
China’s Chang’e-3 craft lifted off early on Dec. 2 on top of an enhanced Long March-3B rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China.
The clever automation service IFTTT is getting a lot more powerful today with the addition of location features. In an update to IFTTT’s iPhone app that’s rolling out now, the service will be able to begin watching your location, allowing it to automatically trigger tasks based on where you are. When you’re nearing home, you could have IFTTT automatically turn on your connected light bulbs, send an SMS to your roommate that you’re on the way, or send out a tweet that you’re back, among dozens of other possibilities. It’s also added in special triggers for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Foursquare that can let you automate a task whenever you post from one of them at specific location.
By Associated Press
The former owner of a Las Vegas casino says he’s willing to accept the online currency bitcoin in the $7.85 million sale of his home.
LAS VEGAS — A casino owner-turned-commercial developer is asking $7.85 million to sell a Las Vegas home, and he’s willing to accept the online currency bitcoin for the deal.
Jack Sommer said he got the idea to seek bitcoin for his 25,000-square-foot mansion from two of his sons, who’ve been involved in making and trading the currency.
“The advantage is that we’re expanding our market and adding some notoriety,” Sommer said.
Researchers at Cornell University have managed to 3D print a loudspeaker, according to the University’s newspaper. Using two customizable 3D printers originally developed at Cornell, a team of graduate mechanical engineering students managed to almost seamlessly print the loudspeaker’s plastic, cond
— The phone call came from a charming woman with a bright, engaging voice to the cell phone of a TIME Washington Bureau Chief Michael Scherer. She wanted to offer a deal on health insurance, but something was fishy.
Several Time reporters called her back.
By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO — BigDog, Cheetah, WildCat and Atlas have joined Google’s growing robot menagerie.
Google confirmed on Friday that it had completed the acquisition of Boston Dynamics, an engineering company that has designed mobile research robots for the Pentagon. The company, based in Waltham, Mass., has gained an international reputation for machines that walk with an uncanny sense of balance and even — cheetahlike — run faster than the fastest humans.
It is the eighth robotics company that Google has acquired in the last half-year. Executives at the Internet giant are circumspect about what exactly they plan to do with their robot collection. But Boston Dynamics and its animal kingdom-themed machines bring significant cachet to Google’s robotic efforts, which are being led by Andy Rubin, the Google executive who spearheaded the development of Android, the world’s most widely used smartphone software.