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South Africa targeted in $135,000-a-day Bitcoin ‘Ponzi scheme,’ thousands duped

Jul04
by on July 4, 2019 at 10:08 am
Posted In: Around the Web, cryptocurrency, Hard Fork


Thousands of people in South Africa may have been duped in what’s thought to be a Bitcoin Ponzi scheme.  According to a local report, residents in Ladysmith, a city 365 kilometres south of Johannesburg, were enticed to invest in a company called Bitcoin Wallet. The company promised easy and big returns on investments. People are reported to have queued overnight and slept outside Bitcoin Wallet’s offices in a bid to invest their hard-earned cash. Rumours about possible wrongdoing surfaced in June after local outlets reported about a possible cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme, which promised returns of 100 percent in 15 days. At the time,…

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Female-founded podcast network Earios releases its first shows

Jul04
by on July 4, 2019 at 9:20 am
Posted In: Around the Web


Right now, there are more than 700,000 active podcasts and more than 29 million podcast episodes, as illustrated by Music Oomph. And although there seems to be a podcast for everyone, nearly all of the networks that host, develop, and promote shows are managed by men — including popular shows like Gimlet, Crooked Media, and Earwolf. Almost half of podcast listeners are women, yet just 22 percent of the shows they listen to are hosted or co-hosted by women.  Podcasting has already shaped the way we consume media, and we can’t let it become yet another boys club. This is…

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How to know for sure if Facebook (or any social network) is down

Jul04
by on July 4, 2019 at 8:51 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Basics


Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. In the past couple of months, Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks have faced a lot of outages. But how can you make sure that if the site’s actually down or if it’s just your phone or network provider? There are multiple ways to do it. First, you can check the official source of each site. For Facebook, you can head to its developer dashboard. Twitter has a developer status board for its APIs. But not…

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Bitcoin scammers texted victims informing them they’d been conned out of $30,000

Jul04
by on July 4, 2019 at 8:08 am
Posted In: Around the Web, blockchain, cryptocurrency, Hard Fork


Normally, you won’t immediately know when you’ve fallen victim to a cryptocurrency scam. You might start to wonder where your money has gone and why no one is responding to your questions. Eventually though, reality will set in after you recognize that scammers have made off with your money and are nowhere to be found. Well, some cryptocurrency con artists are taking a different tack and have actually told their victims they’ve been had. After being duped into putting more than AUD$43,000 ($30,000) into fake Bitcoin investments, Canberra, Australia-based couple Nick and Josie Yeomans received a WhatsApp message telling them that…

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Engineer nabbed smuggling US military-grade chips to China faces 219 years in prison

Jul04
by on July 4, 2019 at 7:24 am
Posted In: Around the Web, world


An electrical engineer is facing up to 219 years in federal prison after being found guilty of exporting military-grade semiconductor chips to China. Yi-Chi Shih — the 64-year-old engineer in question, and also a part-time Los Angeles resident — was found guilty of conspiring to export sensitive semiconductor chips with military applications to China without the required export license, according to the Department of Justice (DoJ). “The jury also found Shih guilty of mail fraud, wire fraud, subscribing to a false tax return, making false statements to a government agency, and conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information,”…

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