Bitcoin continues to circle the drain...
"Germany has declared Bitcoin as a 'unit of account',
which makes the virtual currency a kind of 'private money' and the
process of Bitcoin mining has been deemed 'private money creation.' The
recognition as 'unit of account' makes Bitcoin eligible for use in "multilateral clearing circles"
and because of this citizens are liable to pay capital gains tax, if
they profit from the crypto-currency by sale or purchase within a period
of one year – the same as they would have to in case they profit by
selling stock, bonds or other form of security. The question here is how
the finance ministry would come to know of a person's Bitcoin holding
as it is a decentralized currency with no governing body to keep count
on the number of Bitcoins a person has. The German government expects
that citizens declare their Bitcoin while filing their annual tax
return."

You rush up to the bathroom, crack open the medicine cabinet, and grab
your stick of Old Spice. You pop the cap off, and all of a sudden the
theme from Rocky begins to play. This scenario has become a reality
thanks to
11-year-old inventor Quinn Sheeran.
"Is it possible that we have been wasting our time typing programs.
Could voice recognition, with a little help from an invented spoken
language, be the solution we didn't know we needed? About two years ago
Tavis Rudd, developed a bad case of RSI caused by typing lots of code
using Emacs. It was so severe that he couldn't code. As he puts it:
'Desperate, I tried voice recognition'. The Dragon Naturally Speaking
system used by Rudd supported standard language quite well, but it
wasn't adapted to program editing commands. The solution was to use a
Python speech extension, DragonFly, to program custom commands. OK, so
far so good, but ... the commands weren't quite what you might have
expected. Instead of English words for commands he used short
vocalizations — you have to hear it to believe it. Now programming
sounds like a conversation with R2D2. The advantage is that it is faster
and the recognition is easier — it also sounds very cool and very
techie. it is claimed that the system is faster than typing. So much so
that it is still in use after the RSI cleared up."
New York Money
"The partner of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who
has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programs by
the National Security Agency (NSA), was held for almost nine hours
on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through the Heathrow airport
on his way home to Rio de Janeiro. David Miranda was stopped by officers
and informed that he would be questioned under the Terrorism Act 2000.
The 28-year-old was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows
before officers must release or formally arrest the individual.
According to official figures, most examinations last under an hour, and
only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.
Miranda was released without charge, but officials confiscated
electronics including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks,
DVDs and games consoles. 'This is a profound attack on press freedoms
[...] to detain my partner for a full nine hours while denying him a
lawyer, and then seize large amounts of his possessions, is clearly
intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been
reporting on the NSA and GCHQ,' Greenwald commented."
"Claire Suddath writes in Businessweek that the number of drive-ins
in America has dwindled from over 4,000 in the 1960s to about 360 today.
Since Hollywood distributors are expected to stop producing movies in traditional 35 millimeter film
by the end of this year and switch entirely to digital, America's last
remaining drive-ins — the majority of which are still family-owned and
seasonally operated — could soon be gone. 'We have challenges that other
movie theaters don't,' says John Vincent, president of United Drive-In
Theater Owners Association and the owner of Wellfleet Drive-In in Cape
Cod, Mass. 'We have fewer screens and can only show one or two movies a
night. Now we have to spend tens of thousands of dollars just to stay in
business.' According to Vincent, only 150 drive-ins have converted to
digital so far — the other 210 have until the end of the year either to
get with the program or go out of business. It may seem silly to fret
over the fate of 210 movie theaters whose business model is outdated,
even compared with regular movie theaters, but Honda Motor Co. is offering help with a program called 'Project Drive-In.'
The car company is planning to give away five digital projectors by the
end of the year. Winners will be determined by voting from the public,
which can be done online through Sept. 9 at ProjectDriveIn.com. 'Cars and drive-in theaters go hand in hand,' says Alicia Jones, manager of Honda & Acura social marketing, 'and it's our mission to save this slice of Americana that holds such nostalgia for many of us.'"
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