noelchurchill

I imagine they'd make it illegal to accept bitcoins as payment, which would remove all legitimate users from the market, but illegal drug buyers and sellers may still use it as payment, along with underground bitcoin/cash currency exchanges.

The anonymity of bitcoins may prove to create great enough demand, and help decentralize the illegal drug trade.

Comment · 15 years ago

I thought the HN crowd would have an appreciation for the number 1337.

Comment · 15 years ago

BTW I upvoted you to make your karma 1337 :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet

Comment · 15 years ago

Looks like the freedombox isn't available yet? I like the mission though!

Comment · 15 years ago

Or better, the good ol' "copy of a copy" analogy.

Or you might compare it to re-compressing a jpeg over and over.

Comment · 15 years ago

In response, AT&T issued a statement stating that the allegations were “without merit.”

I think it would come off a lot better if they just said "We're looking into the issue and will make it right if we've wronged anyone."

Comment · 15 years ago

I don't think anyone believes there is actually a bubble in diplomas. Obviously there aren't any DBS's (diploma backed securities), or diploma flipping schemes.

However you might be able to make the case that there is a bubble related to university costs, or the market for university grads. Tuition costs continue to rise while wages remain stagnant and jobless rates remain high. If this trend continues long enough, the demand for diplomas is bound to go down and universities will be forced to lower their costs.

Comment · 15 years ago

I think part of the problem is that people have been sold on the idea that Macs are safe and "there aren't any viruses for the Mac." There is this ill conceived notion that naive users hold that they aren't at risk so they'll more more inclined to install malware without thinking about or understanding the consequences.

Comment · 15 years ago

Yesterday I spent several hours going through discussions.apple.com and collecting requests for help from Mac users who have been affected by this issue. I found more than 200 separate discussion threads, many of them from people who have been tricked into installing this software and are desperately trying to remove it. It started with four posts on April 30; this past weekend there were 42 unique, new discussion threads on this subject.

I am not unfamiliar with Apple’s forums. I’ve done similar searches in the past, especially after reading some of those same posts that Gruber called out from 2008. I have never found more than one or two in-the-wild reports. This time, the volume is truly exceptional.

This appears to be the first widespread malware attack.

Comment · 15 years ago

Did you the article? Serious malware on the mac.