The lecture by Andreas Antonopoulos was highly entertaining with anticipated shots at banks.  In the audience of 400+ there were 6~ bankers so we were an easy target. Apparently banks are busy developing strategies he surmises for use of the blockchain without the currency, or with normal currency.  He poo pooed that idea noting that the bitcoins and the blockchain were inseparable. Having said all that and thoroughly enjoyed his talk I am still no wiser for the use case, let alone the business case for Bitcoin.  Some facts mentioned tonight are well known: bitcoin is unsupervised with no centralized authority Fintrac … Continue reading Bitcoin – what is the use case DEC_TECH

When I read the headline I assumed Microsft were getting out of the browser business, which might have made more sense.  However a new browser, Spartan is coming. Microsoft sends Explorer into retirement Internet Explorer — the software that launched the browser wars of the 1990s and became a symbol of the Seattle company’s former stranglehold on the tech world — is about to be ushered into retirement. The group confirmed this week that it would not use the IE name for the new browser that it plans to ship with the next version of its Windows operating system, due … Continue reading New Microsoft Browser coming with focus on cross platform

As banks adopt the new best practise approach of tokenization to ensure that real card information is not passed to merchants, new risks will appear as the potential for breach is shifted upstream to new attack vectors. Chase Launches Robust Digital Banking Services, Own Wallet Platform Coming Soon Tokenization ensures sensitive customer data is never passed to the seller, greatly reducing the risk of identity theft and security breaches Bad guys will seek the next easiest attack approach: Banks that haven’t adopted tokenization still have their customer card information sitting on multiple store databases. Tokens themselves will be subject to attack. … Continue reading Tokenisation of payment solves one problem for Banks but not all future attacks

I got into another discussion yesterday about what is bad about Apple products. Someone looked at my Mac and immediatley went into the usual tirade.  It is a familiar refrain but as someone who has used Windows, Linux and iOS/ OS X extensively I thought it time to get behind this discussion and explore why the apparent sides in this matter feel this way. Some of the main points were: Apple controls everything Apple is not open I do not wat to be controlled Apple is expensive Yesterdays particular discussion shifted to taking a couple of old laptops running now unsupported Win … Continue reading The eternal Apple vs the rest debate

Net neutrality as a concept is a disaster. President Obama has introduced a new law that contains principles which are worrying. US watchdog heeds Obama on net neutrality Advocates of the open internet principle — known as “net neutrality” — want to ensure that broadband providers are banned from setting up fee-based internet fast lanes or “throttling” content from websites that use a lot of bandwidth or compete with their affiliates. Why you may ask do I feel this way. The concept of net neutrality is often reduced to internet as a utility such as electricity or water.  Internet is … Continue reading Net neutrality as a concept is a disaster