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Sometime that afternoon, the bottom began to fall out of the market. Within a 10-minute period, as I watched trades being executed on Bitfloor, prices crashed from around $170 all the way down to $110. They rebounded later, and then began plummeting again. My heart was pounding. My fu...
An even more fundamental problem with bitcoins, and indeed any private currency, is that there is no way to limit its supply. True, bitcoins cannot be manufactured beyond the limits set by Nakamoto. But there is no way to prevent future Nakamotos from creating bitcoin substitutes—say,...
Rapunzel had better be doing some serious baby-making in that tower Screenshot via The Singaporean Fairytale With an aging population and shrinking workforce, there’s little doubt Singapore takes population growth seriously—according to figures from the Atlantic , it spends around $1....
Bitcoin is a “digital currency” invented in 2009 by a cryptographic expert who went by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, but whose true identity remains unknown. It exists only in computers, minted at a regular rate by a network of machines around the world, and its value isn’t regulate...
Naturally, when we realized this anniversary was coming up, we planned a special issue devoted to Phil Alden Robinson’s crowning directorial achievement. OK, Robinson is probably better known for the movie he made before Sneakers —Field of Dreams —and that sentimental ghost story cert...
Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back Photo by Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. While the debate over whether or not The Empire Strikes Back is the best film in the Star Wars franchise will likely never be resolved, it cannot be denied that it was a significant technological achievement for the ...
The script, written by Phil Alden Robinson, Larry Lasker, and Walter Parkes, is a wonder of the modern screenwriting world. It survives by wit and not tricks. It’s a caper movie that transcends the genre. It’s a technology movie that still isn’t outdated even though it was released 20...
A few years ago, artist and photographer Trevor Paglen collected several dozen military patches and published them in a slim volume, I Could Tell You … but Then You Would Have To Be Destroyed by Me . The twist: The patches, laced with obscure symbols and black humor , had been made by...
