Show Notes: linuxunplugged.com/439

The post Double Server Jeopardy | LINUX Unplugged 439 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Show Notes/Links: https://www.bsdnow.tv/342

The post Layout the DVA | BSD Now 342 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

The man who broke the music business, the major downsides to the container culture & yes, they really are trying to sell you Security Snake Oil.

Plus your great questions, our answers & much, much more!

Thanks to:

• Get Paid to Write for DigitalOcean

Direct Download:

HD Video | Mobile Video | MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | YouTube | HD Torrent | Mobile Torrent

RSS Feeds:

HD Video Feed | Mobile Video Feed | MP3 Audio Feed | Ogg Audio Feed | iTunes Feed | Torrent Feed

Become a supporter on Patreon:

— Show Notes: —

The man who broke the music business

• A story from inside one of the original warez and mp3 distribution groups on the Internet
• The guy worked at a CD pressing plant, and smuggled out the latest music up to a month before it hit stores
• He traded these mp3s for access to the “top sites”
• The top sites were the top of the warez scene hierarchy, and contained all of the latest movies and other pirated content
• He built some recording towers and burned movie disks he sold for $5
• He didn’t selling music to avoid raising suspicion on himself, because the cd pressing plant started cracking down
• It also covers how the FBI broke up the ring and prosecuted the members
• An interesting story especially if you were around at the time

The sad state of sysadmins in the age of containers

• “System administration is in a sad state. It in a mess. I’m not complaining about old-school sysadmins. They know how to keep systems running, manage update and upgrade paths.”
• “This rant is about containers, prebuilt VMs, and the incredible mess they cause because their concept lacks notions of “trust” and “upgrades”.”
• “Consider for example Hadoop. Nobody seems to know how to build Hadoop from scratch. It’s an incredible mess of dependencies, version requirements and build tools.”
• “None of these “fancy” tools still builds by a traditional make command. Every tool has to come up with their own, incompatible, and non-portable “method of the day” of building. And since nobody is still able to compile things from scratch, everybody just downloads precompiled binaries from random websites. Often without any authentication or signature.”
• “The Hadoop Wiki Page of Debian is a typical example. Essentially, people have given up in 2010 to be able build Hadoop from source for Debian and offer nice packages.”
• “To build Apache Bigtop, you apparently first have to install puppet3. Let it download magic data from the internet. Then it tries to run sudo puppet to enable the NSA backdoors (for example, it will download and install an outdated precompiled JDK, because it considers you too stupid to install Java.) And then hope the gradle build doesn’t throw a 200 line useless backtrace. I am not joking. It will try to execute commands such as e.g.:
• /bin/bash -c “wget https://www.scala-lang.org/files/archive/scala-2.10.3.deb ; dpkg -x ./scala-2.10.3.deb /”
• “Note that it doesn’t even install the package properly, but extracts it to your root directory. The download does not check any signature, not even SSL certificates.”
• “Instead of writing clean, modular architecture, everything these days morphs into a huge mess of interlocked dependencies. Last I checked, the Hadoop classpath was already over 100 jars. I bet it is now 150, without even using any of the HBaseGiraphFlumeCrunchPigHiveMahoutSolrSparkElasticsearch (or any other of the Apache chaos) mess yet.”
• “Stack is the new term for “I have no idea what I’m actually using”. Maven, ivy and sbt are the go-to tools for having your system download unsigned binary data from the internet and run it on your computer.”
• “And with containers, this mess gets even worse. Ever tried to security update a container?”
• “Feels like downloading Windows shareware in the 90s to me.”
• “When will the first docker image appear which contains the Ask toolbar? The first internet worm spreading via flawed docker images?”
• “Update: it was pointed out that this started way before Docker: »Docker is the new ‘curl | sudo bash’«. That’s right, but it’s now pretty much mainstream to download and run untrusted software in your “datacenter”. That is bad, really bad. Before, admins would try hard to prevent security holes, now they call themselves “devops” and happily introduce them to the network themselves!”
• I for one, am now less excited about the idea of building something docker like for FreeBSD Jails

Security Vendor Snake Oil

• “As security breaches increasingly make headlines, thousands of Internet security companies are chasing tens of billions of dollars in potential revenue.”
• “we are alarmed at the kind of subversive untruths that vendor “spin doctors” are using to draw well-intentioned customers to their doors.”
• “What would do more good for most organizations than increased Internet security spending, is a tough love school out in the mountains where the leadership team learns what actual threats feel like and what kind of team work and planning it takes to build a secure environment. Security does not come from locks or weapons or cameras — rather, it comes from attitude and awareness and positioning. “
• “In the Cloud, everything is crystal clear, look here, we instantly see where attacks are coming from.” Except that we don’t! Most of the time we have absolutely no clue as to where an attack is really originating from.
• “In the Cloud, we can neatly distinguish benign user behavior from attack behavior.” Except, we can’t! This is actually one of the really hard problems of information security.
• “In the Cloud, we have instant knowledge and visibility when an attack occurs.” Except, we don’t! We really don’t! The latest statistics say it usually takes around 200 days to discover an espionage intrusion.
• “Just as “data” is being sold as “intelligence”, a lot of security technologies are being sold as “security solutions” rather than what they for the most part are, namely very narrow focused appliances that as a best case can be part of your broader security effort. “
• “Too many of these appliances do unfortunately not easily integrate with other appliances or with the rest of your security portfolio, or with your policies and procedures”
• What is needing is a platform where we can plug in various modules and do scoring and make intelligent decisions
• “The buyers of magical security boxes they don’t understand based on the promise of permanent safety are probably not applying vendor patches to their infrastructure, and that infrastructure is likely to be made up of other magical boxes that nobody quite understands.“
• “The weaknesses exploited by bad guys may appear to be on the perimeter of a victim’s network, or in the components of a victim’s infrastructure, but in fact the weaknesses we mostly see are in the culture of organizations and in the psychology of the staff and especially of the leadership, and no “security solution” wrapped in a black box can fix that. “
• “There are no silver bullets in Internet security — no way to kill the monster in a way that it stays dead. We in the Internet security business look for current attacks and learn from those how to detect and prevent those attacks and maybe how to predict, detect, and prevent what’s coming next. But rest assured that there is no end game — we put one bad guy in prison for every hundred or so new bad guys who come into the field each month.”
• “There is no device or method, however powerful, which will offer a salient defense for more than a short time. The bad guys endlessly adapt; so must we. Importantly, the bad guys understand how our systems work; so must we.“
• Speaking of how Attack Maps are all flash and no substance
• Threat Butt Attack Map

Feedback:

• Preemptively changing the key

• Can my guests also get secure wireless connection?

• Freenas and Zfs questions

• ZFS Setup Question

(OPEN GIFT)

Round Up:

• Evil Wi-Fi kills iPhones, iPods in range – ‘No iOS Zone’ SSL bug revealed
• NetNanny found using same MitM fake Root CA techniques as superfish etc
• It wasn’t easy, but Netflix will soon use HTTPS to secure video streams
• Behind the scenes of an eSports event, what it takes to make it happen
• New Android Exploit — Touch Jacking
• Facebook hacking tool
• FBI and TSA warn Airlines to watch for WiFi hackers
• Why a developer quit Apple
• Live streaming coding sessions improves quality of output?
• Virtuous Circle of DevOpsSec
• Top 10 API Security Considerations

The post Dormant Docker Disasters | TechSNAP 212 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

That Adobe breach we told you about? It’s about 10x worse than originally reported, we’ll share the details.

Plus PHP.net gets compromised, howto future proof your storage, and much much more!

On this week’s TechSNAP!

Thanks to:

Adobe breach worse than originally thought, number of impacted customers now atleast 38 million

• Adobe is continuing its flurry of password resets, which now extend to more than 38 million customers
• Adobe has also revised its original list of applications for which the source code was leaked to include the entire photoshop family of programs
• “This past weekend, AnonNews.org posted a huge file called “users.tar.gz” that appears to include more than 150 million username and hashed password pairs taken from Adobe” – This number apparently includes inactive and test accounts, the 38 million number mentioned earlier are those considered ‘Active’
• A company spokesperson said Adobe has no indication that there has been any unauthorized activity on any Adobe ID involved in the incident
• As part of its resolution of the breach, Adobe is offering customers a years worth of free credit monitoring… from Experian (See last weeks story about how Experian was caught selling personal data to identity thieves)
• Additional Coverage

PHP.net compromised, serves malware and is blocked by Google Safe Browsing

• On 24 Oct 2013 06:15:39 +0000 Google started saying www.php.net was hosting malware. The Google Webmaster Tools were initially quite delayed in showing the reason why and when they did it looked a lot like a false positive because we had some minified/obfuscated javascript being dynamically injected into userprefs.js.
• To summarise, the situation right now is that:
• JavaScript malware was served to a small percentage of php.net users from the 22nd to the 24th of October 2013.
• Neither the source tarball downloads nor the Git repository were modified or compromised.
• Two php.net servers were compromised, and have been removed from service. All services have been migrated to new, secure servers.
• SSL access to php.net Web sites is temporarily unavailable until a new SSL certificate is issued and installed on the servers that need it.
• Over the next few days: php.net users will have their passwords reset. Note that users of PHP are unaffected by this: this is solely for people committing code to projects hosted on svn.php.net or git.php.net.
• As part of this, the php.net systems team have audited every server operated by php.net, and have found that two servers were compromised: the server which hosted the www.php.net, static.php.net and git.php.net domains, and was previously suspected based on the JavaScript malware, and the server hosting bugs.php.net.
• All affected services have been migrated off those servers. We have verified that our Git repository was not compromised, and it remains in read only mode as services are brought back up in full.
• As it\’s possible that the attackers may have accessed the private key of the php.net SSL certificate, we have revoked it immediately.

Researchers at Vicarious software claim to be able to defeat 90% of Captchas

• “Vicarious is developing machine learning software based on the computational principles of the human brain. Our first technology is a visual perception system that interprets the contents of photographs and videos in a manner similar to humans.“
• The claim that using this technology, they can defeat 0% of common anti-bot technology used to defect websites from automated usage
• While no paper or code has been shared, they provide a demonstration video that appears fairly compelling
• If their claim is true, this could be a huge setback for the internet
• Captchas are often used to prevent automated signups for services, to defend login systems from brute force attempts, and to moderate spam in online discussion and comment forums
• CAPTCHA creator Luis von Ahn of Carnegie Mellon University says “This is the 50th time somebody claims this. I don\’t really get how they think this is news :)”
• The writing from ScienceMag jumped on a skype call with the company and send them 4 sample captchas, a recaptcha and a paypal captcha were both solved, however another containing cyrillic characters was not (the company says they have not trained their system on non-latin characters yet), and one containing a checkerboard pattern was also not solved immediately.
• If this research got into the wrong hands, it could be used to defeat protection systems across the internet, flooding websites with spam, evading brute force protection systems and otherwise wreaking havoc

Feedback:

• ZFS Choices

  • iXsystems Amazon Store – buy a FreeNAS Mini and support JB at the same time

• freenas/zfs with raid many enclosures

• Software RAID vs LVM

Round Up:

• Announcing The Dark Mail Alliance – Founded by Silent Circle & Lavabit
• Keynote: Tradeoffs in Cyber Security – Cyber Security Symposium, University of North Carolina
• NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say
• ShellCheck – a “Static” analyzer for shell script, finds many common flaws and mistakes
• How the NSA is infiltrating private networks
• Researcher exposes issues with online music charts like Spotify, how to make money with fake music + amazon EC2 instances, and how to get your rival’s account suspended
• Why you shouldn’t interupt a programmer
• FAA develops new guidelines for the use of Personal Electronic Devices during all phases of flight – Airlines must test each airframe and pass a safety approval process
• Bluecoat security blog Roundup of recent news
• HP sues seven optical drive manufacturers over alleged price fixing
• De-anonymizing users of french political forums
• Cyber Dialog 2013 – Canada Centre for Global Security Studies, University of Toronto
• Doing Strong Cryptography in the Browser

The post TrekSNAP | TechSNAP 134 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

The best of Bitcoin podcasting join forces to discuss how Bitcoin could potentially disrupt the big media monopolies and fund a new generation of independent honest content, controlled by its audience.

Plus more challenges facing Mt. Gox, fixing Bitcoin’s infrastructure problem, and the quiet little Litecoin hack no one is talking about.

Downloads:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes Audio | Ogg Feed

— Support the Show —

• Donate to the network with your worthless fiat or your fancy bitcoins!

• Tip address:

  1HE36CMdeYCF9N7rmpfa5BwKMGb1PfkNyD

— Show Notes: —

— Feedback —

• Gox\’s Ploy?

• Mining in a VM

• If Bitcoin were the de facto

Help spread the word on iTunes with a Rating and Review:

• iTunes – Plan B by Jupiter Broadcasting

Call or txt the Show:

1 (352) 587-5262

(352) 58-PLANB

— Discussion —

• Fixing Bitcoin\’s shaky exchange infrastructure

That means bitcoin exchanges like Tradehill would have to register as a money transmitter with the federal government. That is the easy part, says Kenna, requiring little more than a single page form. The hard part is getting the relevant licence in each US state. They all have different rules, and some (sources single out New York and California) are particularly difficult.

Time (at least a little of it) is on Tradehill\’s side, however. Even though the FinCEN guidance came into immediate effect, it only applies to businesses 180 days after they begin trading in bitcoin. This gives it until mid-September to get its paperwork in order.

• Don\’t trust anonymous e-currencies like Bitcoin

In the real world, if you lose your credit card, checkbook, or even bank account log-on password, your money isn\’t gone. In fact there are lots of services and laws to protect you and your money. Not so in the e-currency world — check out a statement posted on a Bitcoin Wiki Faq regarding the potential loss of Bitcoins: \”Consider it a donation to all other bitcoin users.\”

Ultimately, most e-currencies possess the security of whatever your email address and password is. If hackers break into your computer, learn your password — or even break in and steal all your money at the bank — it will be replaced fairly quickly. This is absolutely not true of e-currency sites.

I\’m not saying that e-currency schemes are evil. And I\’m not saying fiat money is perfectly trusted or protected — the runaway inflation that led to wheelbarrows of money being exchanged in Weimar Germany come to mind. I\’m just saying that by comparison, over the long run, there is no comparison. The trust equation isn\’t even close.

• Bitcoin – the next global reserve currency?

“That committee has chosen to grow its balance sheet by $85 billion per month, to well above $3 trillion in total, by monetizing US Treasury and Agency debt. Accordingly, the long term outlook for the value of the USD will be subject not only to the supply of new money, but also bubbles caused by synthetic support for state-favored asset classes, and record high national debt.”

“In a world of increasing global communication and trade, a nation-agnostic currency would solve many of the problems we’ve seen repeated throughout history and potentially ease the associated international tensions. An asset for which the value is determined solely by international demand, immune to influence from central planners, is a necessary step forward towards a free market.”

• Litecoin Pool Exploit

“Suspected fake miners were clocking at up to150MH/s for 3-4 days. We suspect more cheaters were involved over the past 3-4 days which could have been at least partially to blame for the pools bad luck.”

“During deployment of the fix, we logged changes in valid hash rates. The biggest detected confirmed cheater was Cryptopower who went from 30MH/s to 1MH/s”

• Another Gox funding option eliminated

“After some deliberation and discussion with Technocash, an Australian service for Mt. Gox customer account funding and withdrawals, it has been decided that our customers in Australia will no longer be able to deposit and withdraw funds in AUD using Technocash starting June 15th, 2013.”

• — Adam B. Levine —

• Adam B. Levine (GamerAndy) on Twitter

Writer & Speaker with a passion for explaining complicated topics in understandable terms.

• Let\’s Talk Bitcoin! • Adam B. Levine – Editor-in-Chief – Bio

He is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Let\’s Talk Bitcoin!

• YouTube is Broken by Adam B Levine

Happy Cakeday bitcointip bot

• Bitcointip

— Watch Live —

Tuesday 2pm PDT / 5pm EDT / 9pm GMT

• JbLive.tv

— Plan B Subreddit —

• Plan B Show

— Contact us —

• Chris on G+
• Drew on G+

— Music —

• Thanks to Ronald Jenkees and his fantastic track 7 Times

— Support the Show —

• Donate to the network with your worthless fiat or your fancy bitcoins!

• Tip address:

  1HE36CMdeYCF9N7rmpfa5BwKMGb1PfkNyD

The post Bitcoin Will Disrupt Big Media | Plan B 9 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

The funding methods around Bitcoin are under attack, and we chat with TheGenesisBlock.com’s managing editor about what this means for the future of Bitcoin, and more.

Plus picking the right wallet for offline cold storage, a look at BitAngels the distributed Bitcoin angel fund, our concerns with Ripple, your emails, and much more!

Downloads:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes Audio | Ogg Feed

— Support the Show —

• Donate to the network with your worthless fiat or your fancy bitcoins!

• Tip address:

  1HE36CMdeYCF9N7rmpfa5BwKMGb1PfkNyD

— Show Notes: —

— Feedback —

• Why Bitcoin over other crypto-currencies?

• Cold storage

Help spread the word on iTunes with a Rating and Review:

• iTunes – Plan B by Jupiter Broadcasting

Call or txt the Show:

1 (352) 587-5262

(352) 58-PLANB

— Discussion —

• OKPAY takes Bitcoin hiatus

Although OKPAY themselves provided no rationale for their decision, OKPAY’s trust in the viability of bitcoin in their system may have been shaken after an OKPAY user reported on bitcointalk.org that they had successfully double-spent over 211 BTC to OKPAY and a seperate address controlled by the user during the block chain fork of 12 March 2013. The same user also reported that an approximately 65 BTC he had sent separately to OKPAY was not successfully credited to the appropriate account. Somewhat of a standoff ensued, but was resolved with OKPAY refunding the 65 BTC only after the customer returned the double-spent 211 BTC. OKPAY support staff confirmed the situation on a bitcointalk.org forum thread started by the double-spender.

• Canada becomes bitcoin-friendly

We now have our first answer from FinTRAC. Generally, it views bitcoin exchanges as entities that do not have to register, identify clients, and report under the money services business rules.

• Next Generation Bitcoins with Ripple – YouTube

Primer Interest Producer Bob English and Perianne traveled to the Bitcoin conference in San Jose, California over the weekend. They got a chance to speak to many of the movers and shakers in the up and coming crypto-currency realm. Bob interviewed Chris Larsen, CEO and co-founder of OpenCoin, which is developing Ripple.

• 60+ Investors Band Together To Form BitAngels, The First Multi-City Angel Network & Incubator For Bitcoin Startups | TechCrunch

BitAngels is launching (what it believes to be) the first multi-city angel network and incubator created to invest exclusively in cryptocurrency startups. Fittingly, in the spirit of Bitcoin, it\’s a distributed network of angels and entrepreneurs and one that was hacked together in a few days after the Bitcoin 2013 Conference.

BitAngels brings together a posse of angel investors who are looking to help entrepreneurs turn their Bitcoin side projects into full-time jobs. To do that, the angel network pooled together about $6.7 million in Bitcoin, which it will invest in approximately $20K chunks.

BitAngels is not a formal fund, so the Bitcoins are soft-circled, not in escrow, but all 60 angels that have joined thus far (the number of angels has almost doubled in the past week) are all accredited investors with extensive experience investing and, naturally, have a lot of Bitcoin.

• Why Bitcoin Won’t Probably be a Reserve Currency in our Lifetime

Trace Mayer on Prime Interest May 24, 2013.

— Greg Managing Editor of The Genesis Block.COM —

• DHS Inquiry Leads to Lowest USD/Bitcoin Trading Volume In Months
  > Bitcoin trading volume has plummeted since news broke that the Department of Homeland Security issued a seizure warrant that stopped all activity between Dwolla and the Mt. Gox exchange. As of today, the 5-Day moving average of USD trading volume is at the lowest level in at least a year and a half (the data is a bit spotty beyond that), other than the last week in December 2012.

In addition to total market volume declining, Mt. Gox is losing footing as the dominant player in the space. As of May 17, Gox was doing roughly 81% of total USD bitcoin volume. Today they did just 59%.

• Bitcoin Trading: Are We Primed For A Major Move Higher? – The Genesis Block

Yesterday we wrote about the low volatility after Mt. Gox\’s accounts were seized. The following graph from that article illustrates how we haven\’t seen volatility this low on Mt. Gox since December of 2012.

— Watch Live —

Tuesday 2pm PDT / 5pm EDT / 9pm GMT

• JbLive.tv

— Plan B Subreddit —

• Plan B Show

— Contact us —

• Chris on G+
• Drew on G+

— Music —

• Thanks to Ronald Jenkees and his fantastic track 7 Times

The post Then They Fight You | Plan B 8 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We’ll cover some of our favorite ways to buy things with bitcoin, from the new and exciting, to the dark and shady.

Plus we chat with Forbes writer Kashmir Hill about her week of Living on Bitcoin, tackle the big stories of the week, answer your emails, and more!

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes Audio | Ogg Feed

— Show Notes: —

— Feedback —

• Andrew Voicemail

• How can we value a BTC if we can never know how many BTC are active!?

• With a few questions

Frequently n00bed

• How a Bitcoin Transaction Works
• Bitcoin: What is it? | Khan Academy

Help spread the word on iTunes with a Rating and Review:

• iTunes – Plan B by Jupiter Broadcasting

Call or txt the Show:

1 (352) 587-5262

(352) 58-PLANB

— Discussion —

• Gates, Buffet, and Munger on Bitcoin

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger on Bitcoin, tax rates, bank regulation and the Federal Reserve policy.

• Liberty City Ventures Launches $15 Million Fund To Invest In Bitcoin And Other Digital

New York City-based Liberty City Ventures is announcing its Digital Currency Fund, a $15 million commitment to Bitcoin and other digital currency startups.

• A bet on Bitcoin: new VC fund invests in currency startups

The latest buzz comes by way of the Bitcoin Boost Fund, a new Silicon Valley fund that announced on Tuesday that it will hand out $50,000 to seven or so Bitcoin startups.

All of the startups will be graduates of Boost VC, an accelerator program that seeks to mentor would-be Bitcoin barons. The accelerator, created earlier this year, is run by Adam Draper, who describes himself as a “fourth generation VC” and who is hosting a hackathon at the “Bitcoin: Future of payments” conference in San Jose this weekend.

• Keiser Report: Virgin Bitcoin vs Old Hag Pound

In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss the currency of an independent Scotland. Max argues that bitcoin will force the banking system to reinvent itself or die, for what can be more of an invisible hand but a cryptologically guarded, invisible currency.

• Bitcoin Network Speed 8 Times Faster than Top 500 Supercomputers Combined

The bitcoin network hashrate estimate on bitcoinwatch.com passed 1 exaFLOPS (1,000 petaFLOPS) this week – over 8 times the combined speed of the top 500 supercomputers.

The FLOPS estimate is based on the opportunity cost of computers using their hardware for mining instead of other applications. Miners are using their graphics cards to perform hashes instead of other FLOPS-based distributed computing.

• Department of Homeland Security Shuts Down Dwolla Payments to and From Mt. Gox

The Department of Homeland Security appears to have shut down the ability to use Dwolla, a mobile payment service, to withdraw and deposit money into Mt. Gox, a Bitcoin trading platform. A Dwolla representative confirmed the move to Betabeat.

• Dwolla no longer allowed to do business with MtGox?

— Spending Your Coins —

• 21 Things I Learned About Bitcoin From Living On It For A Week

I lived on Bitcoin for a week. This is what I learned.

• Humble Bundle now accepting Bitcoin using Coinbase bitcoin merchant tools

Humble Bundle, known for its flash sales of millions of $s worth of games from high quality developers, is now accepting Bitcoin using Coinbase merchant tools.

• Mobile Gift Card App Gyft Partners With BitPay To Start Accepting Bitcoin Payments In Its Android App

Mobile gift card company Gyft has partnered with BitPay to start accepting bitcoins within its app.

This is a big partnership for both, as BitPay’s CEO, Tony Gallippi, says that the company currently processes $5 million per month in bitcoin transactions for its merchants. Gyft allows you to purchase gift cards at more than 50,000 retail locations in the U.S., including Brookstone, Lowe’s, GAP, Sephora, Gamestop, American Eagle, Nike, Marriott, Burger King and Fandango. So, technically, you’ll now be able to use bitcoin to pay for a Whopper.

• Gyft – Mobile Gift Card Wallet

• BitPremier

BitPremier’s mission is to provide astute buyers in the Bitcoin community with access to unique, high-end luxury items and opportunities. We believe in a customer-centric, secure, and friendly marketplace environment where we give individual attention to every item proudly listed on our site.

BitPremier is backed by the NYC-based Bitcoin Opportunity Fund. Other investments of the fund include CoinLab, BitPay, BitSpend, OpenCoin/Ripple, Coinsetter, TradeHill, and Coinapult.

• Pot Shops Can’t Take American Express or Deposit in Banks – Bitcoin Opportunity?

“We’re just looking for a solution where we can bank legitimately like any other industry,” Smith said. “Wherever you stand on the marijuana issue, it serves everybody’s interest to have banking access.”

Aaron Smith, executive director of the Washington-based National Cannabis Industry Association

• Bank officials say they are complying with federal law:

At Wells Fargo, “our policy of not banking marijuana dispensaries is based on applicable federal laws and our own assessment of our responsibility,” said Seitz, the bank’s spokesman.

American Express Co. (AXP), the biggest U.S. credit-card issuer by customer purchases, “has made a decision to not allow card acceptance for medical marijuana,” Sanette Chao, a spokeswoman for the New York-based company, said by e-mail. “It is our policy to adhere to federal law in such matters.”

• Credit Card Processors & BitPay Discriminate Against Medical Marijuana

U.S.-based BitPay, has refused to enter the fray. As a processor, BitPay offers same-day conversion of merchant bitcoin into a US dollar bank account. CEO Tony Gallippi explained in an interview that although several have applied, “medical marijuana is not allowed in our terms of service.” Of course to be consistent, other merchant types not allowed by BitPay include ecstasy, MDMA, any controlled substances, weapons, gambling, and sports betting. They will however support transactions for file sharing, storage/backup services, and VPN services, because “freedom of information is important.”

Enter the Silk Road

• Underground Website Lets You Buy Any Drug Imaginable

Making small talk with your pot dealer sucks. Buying cocaine can get you shot. What if you could buy and sell drugs online like books or light bulbs? Now you can: Welcome to Silk Road.

• r/Silkroad

• Sites:

• Bitspend | Spend Bitcoins Anywhere! Purchase anything online and pay with Bitcoins

• BillPay For Coins – Pay bills using bitcoin!

— Watch Live —

Tuesday 2pm PDT / 5pm EDT / 9pm GMT

• JbLive.tv

— Plan B Subreddit —

• Plan B Show

— Contact us —

• Chris on G+
• Drew on G+

— Music —

• Thanks to Ronald Jenkees and his fantastic track 7 Times

— Support the Show —

• Donate to the network with your worthless fiat or your fancy bitcoins!

• Tip address:

  1HE36CMdeYCF9N7rmpfa5BwKMGb1PfkNyD

The post Spending Your Coins | Plan B 6 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

From the trenches of discount Wednesday, we launch the beta of our new show: Plan B. We look at the media’s slowly improving bitcoin coverage, discuss the major selloff today, and why people shouldn’t fixate on the price.

Plus: the Mt. Gox problem that faces the bitcoin community, and how it gets gamed.

Then a look at the self appointed “face of bitcoin” Max Keiser and the big money he’s trying to get involved in bitcoin speculation, and brief Litecoin chat…

And so much more!

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes Audio | iTunes Video

Show Notes:

— Getting Started —

Through the lens of the ever increasing media coverage of Bitcoin, we\’ll explain some of the reasons we find bitcoin fascinating. And the fundamentals we believe show bitcoin\’s about to see an availing of new uses and speculators.

Previous Jupiter Broadcasting Coverage of Bitcoin:

• Bitcoin Explained | TechSNAP 9 June 2011
• Perfect Passwords Tips | TechSNAP 11 We cover an early Mt Gox hack
• Amplifying the Hype | TechSNAP 104 We Bring back the Bitcoin Blaster segment

— Discussion —

• Bitcoin price fluctuates wildly after massive run-up, losing up to 50 percent of value

• Bitcoin Suffers A Correction Amid Apparent DDOS Attacks On Some Exchanges | TechCrunch

• Nick Colas | LinkedIn

• Bitcoin 2012 London: Max Keiser – YouTube

• Max Keiser | Financial War Reports

• Keiser Report — RT Shows

• Bitcointip Reddit Bot

• BitVegas | A new world of bitcoin gaming

— Litecoin —

• Litecoin

• Litecoin – Bitcoin

• WeMineLTC.com

• burnside\’s Litecoin Mining Pool (LTC) – My Stats

• EasyLTC–The Easiest Litecoin GUIMiner!

• ScryptMiner GUI – Simple GUI for Litecoin mining

— Watch Live —

Tuesday 2pm PDT / 5pm EDT / 9pm GMT

• JbLive.tv

— Plan B Subreddit —

• Plan B Show

— Contact us —

• Chris on G+
• Drew on G+

— Music —

• Thanks to Ronald Jenkees and his fantastic track 7 Times

— Support the Show —

• Donate to the network with your worthless fiat or your fancy bitcoins!

The post BETA | Plan B 1 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Coming up on this week’s TechSNAP…

Buckle up and prepare for our Ultimate ZFS overview!

Plus, the next generation of Stuxnet is in the wild, but this time is laying low, collecting data.

All that and more, on this week’s TechSNAP!

HD Video | Large Video | Mobile Video | MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | YouTube

Subscribe via RSS and iTunes:
Subscribe... --RSS-- TechSNAP HD TechSNAP Large TechSNAP Mobile TechSNAP MP3 TechSNAP OGG --iTunes-- TechSNAP iTunes HD TechSNAP iTunes Mobile TechSNAP iTunes Large TechSNAP iTunes MP3

[ad#shownotes]

Show Notes: