Meeting Minutes

2018

Met at the Long Island Welcome Center on the Long Island Expressway
Next meeting set for Monday, September 17^th at the Long Island Welcome Center
Price of Bitcoin back down to 6885 USD/BTC on Bitfinex
Discussed Bitcoin mining using approximately 1% of the Earth's electricity consumption
Discussed a story about an Investor suing AT&T over Two-Factor Authentication Security Flaws,
leading to $23 Million Cryptocurrency Theft
Discussed finding direct link for Qubes OS talk from the HOPE XII conference:
Qubes OS: The Operating System That Can Protect You Even If You Get Hacked by Micah Lee
Discussed BizaarBay, a search engine for OpenBazaar
Member worked to do a recovery of a Windows installation
Discussed the pros and cons of two-pronged extension cords
Member brought up go-onion-transport, a Tor Onion transport for IPFS (InterPlaneterary File System)
Fixed permissions issue blocking our mail MTA from accessing the full SSL chain file
Member brought up a new web search engine, YaCy
Member found that the current Bitcoin blockchain size is 180 GB (current)
Current Bitcoin encryption is estimated to be good enough until the 2030 to 2040 time range
Found a Privacy Tools page that looks worth reading via YaCy search

Met at the Long Island Welcome Center on the Long Island Expressway
Price of Bitcoin back up to 8155 USD/BTC on Bitfinex
Found Livestream links to the videos for the HOPE XII conference:
HOPE XII, room: Vaughn
HOPE XII, room: Booth
HOPE XII, room: Ritchie
Especially recommended:
Qubes OS: The Operating System That Can Protect You Even If You Get Hacked by Micah Lee
Did server administration to create LetsEncrypt SSL certificates for web and email
Enabled HTTPS for web server. Tested, then set website to use HTTPS by default.
Mentioned "Graphine" -- something Bitcoin Cash related
Discussed Search Engine Optimization (SEO) some concerning the Lidmug website

Went to meet at Panera Bread in Huntington at the Walt Whitman Mall and found it closed
for a training for new products for Panera Bread employees only
Relocated the meeting for the night to the Long Island Welcome Center on the
Long Island Expressway, just east of exit 51 (Deer Park Avenue)
Next meeting July 30^th at the Long Island Welcome Center
Price of Bitcoin down to ~6200 USD/BTC
Talked about various altcoins, use and infrastructure concerning spinning up a new altcoin
Looked at Bitcoin Gold price, has had large drops and is now ~25 USD/BTG
Discussed mining various altcoins and some bits about mining strategies and hardware

Met at Panera Bread in Huntington at Walt Whitman Mall
Next meeting June 25^th at Panera Bread in Huntington
Price of Bitcoin down to 8400 USD/BTC
Requirements for purchasing Bitcoin in Coinbase seems to have changed recently; by default it now takes a week to buy Bitcoin
Examined buy/sell limits in Coinbase accounts (which seem to vary often)
Helped member retrieve cryptocurrency from an old wallet installation

Met at Panera Bread in Huntington at Walt Whitman Mall
Next meeting May 21^st at Panera Bread in Huntington (May 28^th is Memorial Day holiday)
Price of Bitcoin up to ~9200 USD/BTC (dropped $200 to 9000 USD/BTC as we sat at the table)
Had a look at Twister website (software for peer-to-peer microblogging)
Mentioned Memo, a social network built on Bitcoin Cash
Member mentioned Sandboxie for sandboxing Windows VMs
Heard news that Microsoft disbanded the Windows Development Group, merged with Azure group
Discussed server administration for starting/stopping our Bitcoin node for upgrades
Discussed some issues of travel relating to Passports and Visas
Back in 2003 there were 15 U.S. that issued drivers licenses without photos; today it appears all have photos
New York was the last U.S. state to switch to photos on drivers licenses, 1986
13 U.S. states still allow for no photo on a driver's license, only for reasons of religious beliefs
(New York is not one of the states that allow this.)
Discussed (vaguely) properties of ZCash and Monero cryptocurrencies in terms of anonymity
Discussed (general) differences between SELinux and AppArmor security configuration

Met at Panera Bread in Huntington at Walt Whitman Mall
Next meeting April 30^th at Panera Bread in Huntington
Price of Bitcoin down to ~$8,200 USD/BTC
Discussed new problems found with the Lightning Network after a user lost all of his money due to his node being out-of-sync
The problems arise because the Lightning Network itself is not a blockchain
Discussed methods of purchasing/exchanging lesser known cryptocurrencies
Discussed some details of the traditional fractional reserve banking system
Discussed the latest privacy issues with Facebook especially on Android
Discussed that the NSA worked to "track down" Bitcoin users"
Mentioned that the U.S. has banned Venezuela's 'petro' cryptocurrency
Mentioned that it seems Russia helped Venezuela launch their cryptocurrency
Discussed some of the downsides for privacy with the newly enacted CLOUD act
Mentioned that the Bitcoin blockchain supposedly contains links to child abuse imagry

Met at Panera Bread in Huntington at Walt Whitman Mall
Next meeting March 26^th at Panera Bread in Huntington
Price of Bitcoin down to ~$10,375 USD/BTC
Discussed story of Craig Wright being sued for $10 Billion claiming contracts were post-dated as signed prior to the partner being deceased
Discussed The Prodium Project was a blockchain startup -- ran away with $11, changed their website to show one word, "penis"
After all the mayhem, Facebook is blocking cryptocurrency ICO ads (that's probably a good thing)
Talked about a phone number porting attack used to get control of a target's phone number and steal cryptocurrency
A water utility in Europe got cryptojacked and had their computers used to mine cryptocurrency
In the "oh god why" department: Goatse.cx is becoming a 'meme blockchain'
The FCC came to someone's house in Brooklyn who was running a cryptocurrency miner and had to ask him to turn it off because it was interfering with the 700MHz cellphone band
About half of new cryptocurrencies from 2017 have failed
A smart hacker put up software on Github to generate cryptocurrency addresses, people used it, then $4 Million in cryptocurrency was stolen and the guy quietly disappeared
Discussed that the New York State Enhanced Driver's License has an RFID chip in it

Met at Panera Bread in Huntington at Walt Whitman Mall (first meeting for the year)
Next meeting February 26^th at Panera Bread in Huntington
Price of Bitcoin down to ~$11,200 USD/BTC
Mentioned story on $400M+ stolen from Coincheck exchange
"Cryptocurrency" KodakCoin boosts Kodak's stock price, but later drops 60% in value
NIST is working on a paper Draft NISTIR 8202 "Bitcoin Technology Overview" which r/bitcoin on Reddit got up in arms about
"Long Blockchain" ("Long Island Ice Tea Company", renamed) scraps stock offering for puchase of mining equipment
An amateur astronomer looking for evidence of the Zuma secret spy satellite finds the IMAGE sattelite transmitting again after being lost 12 years ago
Discussed the 2013 test fire of a Saturn V F-1 engine
Wikipedia link on the engine itself
LetsEncrypt is going to start offering wildcard certificates starting February 27^th, 2018
Altice USA (who owns Optimum Online) is being spun off from Alice NV (i.e. Altice in Europe)