It's Monday, which means it's time for your comments, a travel guide for toilet challenged
Chinese tourists, and world ending self-assembling robots, all bought to you in beautiful technicolour
neon-t-shirt vision.
It's MONDAY BRIGHT!
But why wear cotton when you can wear silk road?
Oh no, you can't because the darkweb-based drug marketplace has been shut down after
an FBI investigation and sting operation.
Alleged mastermind Ross Ulbricht, AKA dread Pirate Roberts, is charged with running the
site and trying to arrange the assassination of a site user.
The FBI claim the would-be assassin was actually one of their agents, and they pinned him after
finding his real email address.
He's appeared in court and denied everything.
BUT the court case is probably the least interesting thing to come out of the story.
What's far MORE interesting is that the site wasn't bought down from the inside by the
FBI - it was as a result of human error, not cracking the anonymous TOR browser which allows
access to the darkweb.
Secondly is what's happened to the loot the FBI recovered.
They seized bitcoin worth, then, about £2.2 million.
And they've been holding onto it in an online wallet ever since, presumably whilst they
try to work out what the hell to do with it.
But crafty bitcoin users have found the FBI's account.
And have started trolling it.
Believe it or not users have been paying microscopic amounts into the account.
Why?
Because that allows you to send a personalised, and public, message which anyone can read
and is attached to the wallet.
And there are dozens of them, trolling the FBI, prohibition, the Government, and everything
else.
There's also the small matter that the bitcoin may not be dread pirate Roberts loot - they
may simply be cash that was being 'held' by the site on behalf of buyers and sellers.
And since plenty of what you can buy on the site isn't actually illegal, and you can't
tell what was being used to buy what because it's anonymous, the FBI may have to give it
back.
Aaaaand then of course there's the fact that you can't remove anything from the internet
as certain pop stars know.
Pipe down Bey.
Work has apparently already started on a new and improved Silk Road, and rival services
that already existed have picked up the baton, meaning that the eternal game of whack-a-mole
that is trying to make something lots of people like illegal, is going to carry on regardless
And now it's time for your comments.
On last week's Monday show, MikeJ5337 wrote "i want to be﻿ in next mondays video, but
i cant come up with a good enough comment."
Well Mike, your wish is our command.
Top tip, write something about unicorns.
We bloody love unicorns.
And in our piece about the deconstruction of Anonymous expert Barrett Brown, unamaxify
wrote: "The U.S. is currently enraging computer-nerds all over the world, while simultaneously computerizing
all of it's﻿ infrastructure.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out where that's going to end."
Well Unamaxify, it just so happens the US is perfectly good at screwing up its own computer
systems without needing to enrage nerds all over the world.
In fact, it's so simple, your rich, big business supported, out of touch, wilfully ignorant,
lazy, scummy, wage collecting and self-declaredly essential government employee granddads could
do it.
Good work chaps.
And now on to some of the other stories we've spotted and like from the week.
And first, the Chinese Government, in the wake of a series of unfortunate faux pas by
it's travelling citizens including defacing ancient Egyptian carvings, tickling dolphins,
and throwing sweets at North Koreans, has issued a 64 page guide to its citizens travelling
abroad.
The obvious things are covered, don't spit, throw litter, blah blah blah, along with some
more country specific stuff about taking off shoes at the right time.
But what's more interesting is just how scatological Beijing seems to be.
Rule three, alongside advice about sneezing, includes a line about not defacating or urinating
wherever you want to.
Not leaving footprints on the seat is another, as is not standing on the seat whilst going.
The guide urges citizens not to go in taxis, or swimming pools.
Which you'd hope would be pretty much common sense.
But bizarre as it sounds to us, China's economy is booming and many people exploring the world
for the first time, so there's bound to be some cultural misunderstanding, after all,
I'm British and we don't have a fantastic record for going abroad and respecting other
people's cultures.
And finally check this out, humanity is properly done for.
These blocks are individual robots that can jump and self-assemble into a myriad of shapes,
including humanity destroying robots.
They're called M blocks and have been designed by MIT to operate in swarm and although there's
currently not that many of them and they are controlled by people, it's only a matter of
time before they learn to self replicate and eat people's brains.
Fact.