China Wants To Ban Bitcoin Mining

• China’s state planner wants to eliminate bitcoin mining in the country, according to a draft list of industrial activities the agency is seeking to stop in a sign of growing government pressure on the cryptocurrency sector.
• China is the world’s largest market for computer hardware designed to mine bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, even though such activities previously fell under a regulatory grey area.
• The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Monday it was seeking public opinions on a revised list of industries it wants to encourage, restrict or eliminate. The list was first published in 2011.
• The draft for a revised list added cryptocurrency mining, including that of bitcoin, to more than 450 activities the NDRC said should be phased out as they did not adhere to relevant laws and regulations, were unsafe, wasted resources or polluted the environment.
• It did not stipulate a target date or plan for how to eliminate bitcoin mining, meaning that such activities should be phased out immediately, the document said. The public has until May 7 to comment on the draft.

Samsung’s Galaxy S10 Fingerprint Sensor Fooled By 3D Printer

• A Samsung Galaxy S10 user has managed to fool the in-display fingerprint reader on his smartphone using a 3D print of his fingerprint.
• In a post on Imgur, user darkshark outlined his project: he took a picture of his fingerprint on a wineglass, processed it in Photoshop, and made a model using 3ds Max that allowed him to extrude the lines in the picture into a 3D version.
• After a 13-minute print (and three attempts with some tweaks), he was able to print out a version of his fingerprint that fooled the phone’s sensor.
• The Galaxy S10’s fingerprint sensor doesn’t rely on a capacitive fingerprint scanner that’s been used in other versions of the phone, using instead an ultrasonic sensor that’s apparently more difficult to spoof.
• darkshark points out that it didn’t take much to spoof his own fingerprint. A concern, he notes, is that payment and banking apps are increasingly using the authentication from a fingerprint sensor to unlock, and all he needed to get into his phone was a photograph, some software, and access to a 3D printer
• . “I can do this entire process in less than 3 minutes and remotely start the 3d print so that it’s done by the time I get to it,” he writes.

UBer plans to expand Booze delivery, e-Scooters in Canada

• Bikes, booze and e-scooters are part of Uber Canada’s plans for 2019.
• Uber – “We want the Uber app to provide you with access to each type of transit that is relevant for you”.
• “We are going to increasingly be providing you with access to different modes of transportation”
• E-Scooters in Canada
  • Lime has pilot e-scooters in waterloo Ont, Bird is looking to expand into Canada.
• Jump, Lime and Bird have gotten in trouble for having “dockless” e-bikes and scooters.  Abandoned and littering cities.
• Social media is also showing people destroying e-scooters by throwing them off buildings, lighting them on fire, smashing them and dumping them in the ocean.
• Uber Booze = alcohol delivery.  Already in BC. Tied to Uber Eats

Cloudflare Says Its New VPN Service Won’t Slow You Down

• Cloudflare has announced that it’s adding a VPN service to its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver app.
• The 1.1.1.1 service, which first came to mobile back in November, currently attempts to speed up mobile data speeds by using Cloudflare’s network to resolve DNS queries faster than your existing mobile network.
• “We wanted to build a VPN service that my dad would install on his phone,” says Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince.
• “If you tell him that it will make his connection more private and secure, he’d never do it. But if you tell him it will make his connection faster, make his phone’s battery last longer, and make his connections more private, then it would be something he’d install.”
• Mobile phone users can begin signing up for the service, dubbed Warp, through Cloudflare’s mobile app 1.1.1.1 on Monday;
• The technology that Cloudflare uses is called Warp fast, a protocol invented by Google called QUIC, and it could one day make the rest of the internet faster and more reliable.
• QUIC is essentially a substitute for TCP, the venerable protocol now used for most internet connections. TCP, introduced in 1981, made reliable internet connections possible, says Jana Iyengar, who worked on QUIC for Google; \

‘Fortnite’ May be a Virtual Game, But It’s Having Real-life, Dangerous Effects

• “They are not sleeping. They are not going to school. They are dropping out of social activities. A lot of kids have stopped playing sports so they can do this.” Michael Rich, a pediatrician and director of the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders at Boston Children’s Hospital
• “Fortnite: Battle Royale” — a cartoonish multiplayer shooter game — is having on kids, mainly boys, some still in grade school.
• “We have one kid who destroyed the family car because he thought his parents had locked his device inside,” Rich said. “He took a hammer to the windshield.”
• A year and a half since the game’s release, Rich’s account is just one of many that describe an obsession so intense that kids are seeing doctors and therapists to break the game’s grip:
• in some cases losing so much weight — because they refuse to stop playing to eat — that doctors initially think they’re wasting away from a physical disease. The stress on families has become so severe that parents are going to couples’ counselors, fighting over who’s to blame for allowing “Fortnite” into the house in the first place and how to rein in a situation that’s grown out of control. Further reading:
• ‘Fortnite’ Creator Sees Epic Games Becoming as Big as Facebook, Google.
• Prince harry hates it too.

The post 33 – The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin – Tech Time Podcast appeared first on BAPGO.