Slowly but surely, the all-consuming eyes and ears of the surveillance industry continue to creep further and further into our everyday lives. This week, we learn that they are beginning to surveil the youths in Western New York with facial recognition technology. Following kids around on camera all day under the guise of protection against school shooters and sexual predators. A real-world example of "think of the children!" in the wild.

The interesting tidbit about this particular case is the encroachment of civil liberties was executed by a salesman looking to make a commission off the sale. A chilling reminder that the urge to spy and collect as much data on people is not quarantined to government agencies, but private enterprises as well. "Innovating" us into a Minority Report dystopian future.

Luckily, it seems like the parents of the youths in this particular district of conditioning prisons are taken aback by this move. So there is at least a small glimmer of hope that we may one day stand firm against the tyranny of the surveillance industry. But, of course, the school district and its "advisor" plan to move forward with the installation of the system anyway.

Hey teachers, leave those kids alone!

Full Nodes FTW

We just witnessed the beauty and importance of Bitcoin full nodes in the wild. It seems that a miner attempted to award themselves 13.2654 BTC instead of the predetermined 12.5 BTC determined by the protocol. The block was rejected by vigilant nodes out there. Including mine!

Bitcoin is such a beautiful system of incentives and checks and balances. This particular $150,000 mistake may be due to a mining software error on the miner's end. Potentially not malicious, but a mistake of adding the fees from a previous block it was building to the coinbase transaction.

Do your part. Protect the network. Run a full node. It's getting easier by the day.

Final thought...

Too hot for a beard right now.