April 2014 – RadCasts

April 24, 2014

TLDR - #23 – A Bitcoin Story for People Who Don’t Care About Bitcoin

When Wired reporter Andy Greenberg read Newsweek's cover story claiming to have found mysterious Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, he was disappointed. Not so much that the mystery had been solved, but that the answer to the search was not all that interesting. But then, as the Newsweek started getting picked apart, he got a tip about another possible Bitcoin creator: a very ill, very brilliant cryptographer named Hal Finney.

Andy Greenberg is the author of This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information.

Donate to Hal Finney's care here.

April 18, 2014

TLDR - #22 – What Happens When You Tell The Whole Internet Your Password

Earlier this week, a commenter named Y. Woodman Brown posted his online passwords in the Washington Post comments section to show just how little his online security mattered to him. It was quickly picked up by the press as an example of online security hubris. Naturally, we had to find him. Alex talks to Y. Woodman Brown and the person who hijacked his Twitter account after the passwords were posted.

April 10, 2014

TLDR - #21 – There Is No Such Thing As Silence

Continuing our expose into the very hush-hush world of Silence, we look at an app that promises to deliver you four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. PJ talks to Larry Larson, who helped design the 4'33" app.

April 3, 2014

TLDR - #20 – Silence

Update: Vulfpeck received an email from Spotify asking the band to remove "Sleepify" from Spotify. See our update here.

A band called Vulfpeck has asked fans to stream an entire album of silence on Spotify while they sleep, so the band can use the royalties to tour without charging for their shows. So far, the scheme has worked. We talk to Vulfpeck's Jack Stratton about hustling as a musician on the internet.