Ars Technica was able to confirm the theft of 46,703 BTC, as individual units of Bitcoin are known, worth about $228,845 in US currency based on current exchange rates. More than 43,000 of the stolen BTC belonged to a Bitcoin trading platform known as Bitcoinica, the company's CEO and lead developer, Zhou Tong, told Ars. Another 3,094 BTC were lifted from the virtual purse of Marek Palatinus, a freelance programmer from the Czech Republic. He said in an interview that a separate Bitcoin user he's been in contact with lost 50 BTC to the same attackers. And Gavin Andresen, the lead Bitcoin programmer, told Ars he lost all 5 BTC he had stored in one online account.

There is almost no good reason to do this except that its the coolest thing ever.

This app was hacked together with python, php, google fusion tables, javascript, html/css, and a humble batch script. Here's how we did it:

1. We dug around in the Plow Tracker code and stumbled into the data feed of GPS plow locations. We pulled these dots.

2. In order to figure out which streets had been cleared, we needed to turn these dots into plow paths. Lukas Kabrt's MatchGPX2OSM did the trick. It takes a series of GPS locations and snaps them to the street grid in order to calculate the most likely path taken by the vehicle. The street grid itself was provided by the thousands of unsung heroes at OpenStreetMap.

3. We then wrote a script to import this data into Google Fusion Tables, so we could display it using Derek Eder's searchable map template. Finally, we styled the template and flipped the switch.

We'll post the code on Github later. It will be embarrassing.

Racing against the upcoming storm, these guys hacked a useful snowplow tracker. It's not perfect, but it's "done".

the way my next home will be built!

The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we've sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

Following an experiment first validated by Radiohead with the release of In Rainbows in 2007, Louis CK shows that everyone (except the middleman) can win.

Yep