Today the iconic Bitcoin white paper “celebrates thirteen years of financial disruption,” notes Cointelegraph, “after being first published on Oct. 31, 2008, by an anonymous person or entity named Satoshi Nakamoto.” (Here’s a 2013 story from Slashdot about version 0.3.) Cointelegraph writes: The white paper, titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, foresaw the need…

Out of the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto, remnants of resistance emerge, thanks to advanced geoscientific tools and a team determined to keep the horrors of history from fading. …read more Source:: CNet

The U.S. Copyright Office “is expanding a legal shield for fixing digital devices,” reports the Verge, “including cars and medical devices.” Earlier this week the office “submitted new exemptions to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bars breaking software copy protection. The resulting rules include a revamped section on device repair, reflecting…

[Kevin Norman] got himself a smart body scale with the intention of logging data for his own analysis, but discovered that extracting data from the device was anything but easy. It turns out that the only way to access data from his scale is by viewing it in a mobile app. Screen-scraping is a time-honored…

Millions of young players have been unable to access their games for several days. …read more Source:: CNet

“NASA scientists have just published a commentary article in Nature calling for a framework for reporting extraterrestrial life to the world,” reports Cosmos magazine (in an article shared by Slashdot reader Tesseractic): “Our generation could realistically be the one to discover evidence of life beyond Earth,” write NASA Chief Scientist James Green and colleagues. “With…

“In a world of inequality, we are well accustomed to rich, powerful, connected people getting preferential treatment…” argues an opinion piece in the Washington Post. “The notable exception is Wikipedia.” There, VIPs have been shouting “Do you have any idea who you are dealing with?!” for years, only to be told either, not really, or,…

A star in its death throes wears orange and red “cobwebs” like a shroud. …read more Source:: CNet

Horror movies. Haunted houses. A trauma specialist break downs the roots of our obsession with fun-filled scares. …read more Source:: CNet

Commentary: Flagship phones are giving us only incremental improvements, and our upgrade culture makes less sense than ever. …read more Source:: CNet