Ethereum and other altcoins

As you all probably know I am a fan of Bitcoin, but I am not that much of an alt-coin guy. What I mean by that is that I think that a main property of money is that it is universal means of exchange. It is good that you can store your wealth as savings […]

Report from 30C3: There’s no privacy

Chaos Communication Congress is the oldest hacker conference in the world and the largest of its kind in Europe. It takes place at the end of each year in Hamburg and brings current research in the field of security, networking and increasingly also politics and other topics related to “hacking” – the unconventional use of […]

Migrating from iPhone to Android 4.4 (Nexus 5) – the geeky review

For the past few years, I have been an iPhone user. At first I was jailbreaking, that got frustrating pretty soon, so I forgot about phone freedom, which for me means I can install any app I want, not any app that Steve or any other guy (however nice) approves of. I mainly missed a […]

Interview with me about Bitcoin and other virtual currencies

There was an interview with me on a Slovak web about money and I decided to translate it to English (and do a few minor edits). Enjoy! Is Bitcoin a pyramid scheme? Certainly not, is more like gold. Juraj Bednar talks about the most popular virtual currency in the world. Mining and buying are two […]

Avoid news

If you have an intellectual minute, read Avoid news by Rolf Dobelli I highly agree. I have not watched TV for years now (we don’t have a subscription and I did not bother installing an antenna) and I’ve been practicing a healthy news diet for more than a year now. It really helps, especially with […]

OHM2013 – hackers are camping

The evocative video made by conference organizer tried to convince the audience that the hacker campgrounds are a Dutch tradition – as well as tulips, windmills, Gouda cheese and wooden shoes. Since 1989, every four years hackers gather in a traditional Dutch style campsite. Imagine a large music festival, substitute concerts with tech lectures and […]

Stuck Bitcoin transaction and play with double-spend

A few days ago I was sending my friend a payment of 1.2 BTC. My account had only slightly more than this amount available, not even enough for recommended transaction fee. Instead of borrowing or waiting for a miner to generate more, I decided I would push a transaction with a much smaller fee to […]

Spying, liberty, NSA and USA vs. Europe

When I discussed the loss of American liberties with people here in Europe few years ago, my position was simple – we get the same draconian regulations without any opposition or fanfare here in Europe. Remember export controls of cryptography? We should have been fighting against this barrier because it was primarily against our interests […]

On darkness: Your fear of death attracts such strange objects

I am widely known for listening to darker genres of music. It makes some people feel I am a complete weirdo (which is true). A few weeks ago I was sitting in a cab with a full album (!) of Aqua playing on a radio. Happy songs of happy days, so unauthentic. It thankfully ended […]

Raspberry Pi and Block Erupter on Fidora

My AsicMiner Block Erupter USB miners arrived a few days ago thanks to Andreas and people from Bitcoin Austria who processed the order and the chief Bitcoin economist Peter Šurda who drove them to Progressbar. I shipped some of them abroad to friends. Although I appreciate the work guys that created minepeon do, I decided […]