Wednesday, June 29, 2011

LulzSec was right

I'm posting a story that someone communicated to me, which highlights how bad the state of IT security is. Take it with a grain of salt or a bar of chocolate (which is better than a grain of salt). I for one believe it. I've paraphrased some parts where I thought that idioms might hint at the identity of the person:

I decided, not for shits and giggles, but because I was bored, to see how easy it really is to find credentials on google.

It's *really* easy.

Friday, June 3, 2011

BitCoin and the Prisoner's Dilemma

I read a post the other day about how BitCoin generation is a Prisoner's Dilemma due to the fact that everyone could agree to use less resources with the outcome the same, except that human nature wouldn't allow it.
I think I've just come up with another example of the dilemma, which can be generalised to all other similar, speculative, trading vehicles: it's the balance between holding while the price is rising and selling enough to maintain liquidity.
If everybody holds onto their BitCoins, due to the belief that the price will keep increasing, then the price stops increasing due to a lack of liquidity, which I am certain would destabilise the unstable equilibrium that characterises a currency with no major backers. If everybody tries to sell to cash out, then the price stops increasing due to an oversupply.