M FIELD

Man finds long-lost brother by chance

David walks into a Noosa café and sits near a man who irritates him for hogging all the newspapers. Eventually the two begin talking and realise they are brothers. Both called David.

CASHLESSNESS

Government floats $100 note removal

Australia looks set to follow in the footsteps of Venezuela and India by abolishing the country’s highest-denomination banknote in a bid to crack down on the “black economy”.

Speaking to ABC radio on Wednesday, Revenue and Financial Services Minister Kelly O’Dwyer flagged a review of the $100 note and cash payments over certain limits as the government looks to recoup billions in unpaid tax.

Monday’s midyear budget update will include the appointment of former KPMG global chairman Michael Andrew to oversee a black economy taskforce. The black economy accounts for 1.5 per cent of GDP, given many cash payments are untaxed.

COSMOLOGY

New model points to an oscillating universe

Before the Big Bang there was another universe and a new one will emerge after ours collapses

In a new model of cosmology, the universe we see is just one in a cycle of many universes. Each of these universes has its own phases of expansion, contraction and a Big Bang.
Researcher Mir Faizal said, "Our spacetime is only an approximation to some purely mathematical theory describing reality, and the geometry of spacetime emerges from this theory.
"The fact that the geometry of spacetime is bounded by a minimum length and a maximum energy can be used to study quantum gravitational effects on cosmology, and doing this we have been able to study the pre-Big Bang cosmology".
The team took two inputs – that spacetime breaks down at a minimum length and that it is not possible for any object in this spacetime to have an energy beyond a certain maximum energy – and applied it to the thermodynamical description of general theory of relativity. What they ended up with was four distinct phases of the universe, supporting the idea of a cyclical universe.

CASHLESSNESS

Cashless society will come at a devastating cost

Within a generation, notes and coins will almost certainly be redundant — not just in practice but made so by law.
Shops and other businesses will be banned from accepting them. Banks will no longer distribute them.
Physical currency will be consigned to history, gathering dust on the shelves of collectors’ shops and in the recesses of our couches.

And the consequences will at once be brilliant and grave.

CASHLESSNESS

SA town of Burra runs out of cash


Residents and visitors to a town in South Australia's mid north have been left without any access to cash over the weekend, which is starting to affect tourism and business, locals say.

CASHLESSNESS

Debt row for Bitcoin man

Reported bitcoin 'founder' raided by Australian police 

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Police have raided the home of an Australian entrepreneur and academic identified by two US tech publications as one of the early developers of the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin and who could be figure known as Satoshi Nakamoto

On Wednesday afternoon, police gained entry to a home belonging to Craig Wright, who had hours earlier been identified in investigations by Gizmodo and Wired, based on leaked transcripts of legal interviews and files. Both publications have indicated that they believe Wright to have been involved in the creation of the cryptocurrency. 

Who is Craig Wright?

Bitcoin Foundation is “effectively bankrupt,” board member says

One of the newly elected board members of the Bitcoin Foundation—the 2.5-year-old organization that was meant to bring order to the famously open source and freewheeling cryptocurrency—has declared the group "effectively bankrupt."

…

The non-profit’s own tax filings from 2013 show that it ended that year with over $4.7 million in total assets—nearly five times as much as it had at the same time the previous year. It has yet to release financial details for 2014.

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Of its original five founders, one is now in prison (Charlie Shrem), another oversaw the collapse of the largest Bitcoin exchange (Mark Karpeles), and yet another has since left the US for a Caribbean nation known for offshore banking (Roger Ver). Of the original board members, only Bitcoin lead developer Gavin Andresen has remained.

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In a Saturday blog post, the new member, Olivier Janssens, claimed that the group has been hiding this financial distress from its membership. As he wrote:

The Bitcoin Foundation hates transparency. If they would have been transparent then everyone would know there is no money left. Something I think the members have a right to know, wouldn’t you think? Members have a right to know that the current board failed to tell them the truth, and that their way of running the organization resulted in it going bankrupt. But instead of taking responsibility, they want to find the next executive director that will come up with another magic plan. Ironically, being transparent from the start might have prevented this whole thing to begin with.

Failed bitcoin exchange Mt Gox gets U.S. bankruptcy protection
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The failed Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange, Mt Gox, received court approval on Tuesday to begin Chapter 15 bankruptcy proceedings in the United States as it awaits approval of a settlement with U.S. customers and a sale of its business.
Mt Gox was once the world's leading exchange for trading the digital currency, but shut its website earlier this year after saying it lost some 850,000 bitcoins - worth more than $500 million at current prices - in a hacking attack.

It subsequently said it found 200,000 bitcoins.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

 

Spy poisoning: suspect ‘to talk’

ONE of the suspects in the London murder of the former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko is willing to co-operate with the inquiry into his death, the hearing heard yesterday.

Mr Litvinenko died from radioactive poisoning three weeks after meeting former Russian agents Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun at a Mayfair hotel in November 2006. Kovtun and Lugovoi are suspected of slipping radioactive polonium-210 into Litvinenko’s tea. Both deny involvement and remain in Russia.

COSMIC CONNECTIONS

Replica of Ernest Lawrence’s first cylcotron, on exhibition in the CERN Globe of Innovation.
Like the original, it is only a few centimetres across Photograph: Wimox/Wikimedia

Sizing up a new particle accelerator, and the 'cosmic stupid' limit

Now, let us assume that the effective cross section for the inelastic scattering of two cosmic rays is of the size of the Universe.

Physics is in an interesting position, now that the Higgs boson has been discovered. The “Standard Model” doesn’t predict any more new particles, no matter how tiny, and it could be considered internally complete. However, it is very far from being a theory of everything, failing to account for such major experimental facts as gravity, the different amounts of matter and antimatter in the universe, and the 85% or so of stuff that seems to be “Dark Matter”. It also struggles with neutrinos.

COLD WAR II

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warns the 'world is on the brink of new Cold War'

The former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev has warned the world is on the brink of another Cold War.

Mr Gorbachev used an event to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall to issue a series of statements urging Russia and Europe to settle their differences over Ukraine.

"The world is on the brink of a new Cold War. Some are even saying that it has already begun," he said.

THE QUICKENING

The world is warming faster than we thought

It's worse than we thought. Scientists may have hugely underestimated the extent of global warming because temperature readings from southern hemisphere seas were inaccurate.

Comparisons of direct measurements with satellite data and climate models suggest that the oceans of the southern hemisphere have been sucking up more than twice as much of the heat trapped by our excess greenhouse gases than previously calculated. This means we may have underestimated the extent to which our world has been warming.

Journal reference: Nature Climate Change, DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE2389

EXTRAORDINARY KNOWING

Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer Ph.D.

Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer Ph.D. is an attempt to break through the silence imposed by fear and to explore what science has to say about these and countless other “inexplicable” phenomena.
From Sigmund Freud’s writings on telepathy to secret CIA experiments on remote viewing, from leading-edge neuroscience to the strange world of quantum physics, Dr Mayer reveals a wealth of credible and fascinating research into the realm where the mind seems to trump the laws of nature.

CASHLESSNESS

Digital Wallets: Cashless through digitalisation

In contrast to physical cash transactions that mandate bank details and have certain limitations, a digital wallet possesses a rich digital signature that captures the when, why, what, where and why of a transaction. This digital signature leveraged along with customer data and social data empowers different stakeholders across the payment ecosystem to understand their customers better.

WHOLE TRUTH

Second mysterious black hole discovered in Siberia

A second mysterious black hole has been found in Siberia one week after a similar deep crater was found in the region.

Locals discovered the second hole, which is smaller than the first, 88km from the village of Antipayuta.

Local Mikhail Lapsu told NBC that: "Inside the crater itself, snow can be seen."

Scientists who visited the original hole put the phenomenon down to global warming.

"It causes an 'alarming' melt in the under soil ice, releasing gas and causing an effect like the popping of a Champagne bottle cork," Anna Kurchatova from the Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Centre told the Siberian Times.

 

THE QUICKENING

Warm water melting Antarctic ice

Australian researchers have identified how warm water is increasingly pushing out cold water around Antarctica prompting further ice melt and greater sea level rise.

WATER WARS

Protesters rally against water shutoffs outside the Detroit water department in May. The group chanted, "Water is a human right." (Jessica J. Trevino / Associated Press)

Thousands go without water as Detroit cuts service for nonpayment

"It's frightening, because you think this is something that only happens somewhere like Africa," said Hill, a single mother who is studying homeland security at a local college. "But now I know what they're going through — when I get somewhere there's a water faucet, I drink until my stomach hurts."

Hill is one of thousands of residents in Detroit who have had their water and sewer services turned off as part of a crackdown on customers who are behind on their bills. In April, the city set a target of cutting service to 3,000 customers a week who were more than $150 behind on their bills. In May, the water department sent out 46,000 warnings and cut off service to 4,531.

PSYCHO ACTIVE

Professor Colleen Loo. Photo: Grant Turner, Mediakoo

‘Game changing’ drug could be effective in suicide prevention

A drug traditionally used as an anaesthetic and sometimes used recreationally could be effective in preventing suicide and lifting the mood of severely depressed patients, according to a UNSW academic who has trialled the drug in Sydney.

Ketamine, which has the street name ‘special K’, has been shown to be effective in most patients who were part of the trial, at least temporarily. The participants were suffering from Major Depressive Disorder and had exhausted all other medical treatments.

“This is a game-changer in treating depression,” says UNSW Professor Colleen Loo, who is the lead author of a study published in the World Journal of Biological Psychiatry. “The real advantage here is that the effect is almost instantaneous and that it appears to work on the majority of patients.”

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Anna Politkovskaya trial: Five convicted of killing Russian reporter, investigators yet to identify who ordered killing

A jury in Moscow has found five men guilty of taking part in the 2006 murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, though investigators have yet to identify who ordered the killing.

The journalist, human rights activist and fierce critic of president Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin was gunned down in the lobby of her Moscow apartment in 2006, raising alarm about the danger faced by those challenging Russian authorities.

LEAKY MEDIA

Australian government spies and companies monitor billions of private mobile phone calls

Mobile phones are the real weak link, they have revolutionised communications and monitoring [spying], Professor Ball said.

Australian citizens are supposed to be protected from an army of electronic eavesdroppers by strict laws that forbid agencies such as the ASD from spying on their own citizens within Australia. However thanks to the Snowden leaks we know that such protections count for little when it comes to the deeply interwoven and complex world of America’s spy agencies and their loyal allies including Australia and Britain. A leaked slide prepared by the NSA’s Special Source Operations group proves the point; “Much of the world’s communications flow through the US. Your target’s communication could easily be flowing into and through the US,” it says.

FREE THINKING

An Ancient Freedom

The idea goes beyond just not being interfered with. It takes on a stronger notion, whereby the individual is empowered to look others straight in the eye without fear or deference;  what Petit calls the eyeball test.

‘Polybius describes theliber —the free person—as having no dominus, a commander or master. You have a range of choices on your own terms. Just as there is no master, there is no public domination either and that space is created by common law; a law that all share in the making of.’

END OF PRIVACY

Heartbleed bug prompts experts to urge passwords reset
Computer security specialists says a bug dubbed Heartbleed has been discovered in online data-scrambling software and hackers can use it to their advantage. Cyber-defence specialists at Fox-IT say the bug found in OpenSSL encryption software lets attackers illicitly retrieve passwords and other information from servers.