Snippings

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Abouammo worked as a media partnerships manager for the Middle East and North Africa region at Twitter from 2014 to 2015. A top official in the Saudi government approached Abouammo, who accepted bribes amounting to $320,000, including a luxury watch and hundreds of thousands of dollars deposited into a Lebanese bank account opened in the name of a relative.

In exchange, Abouammo provided his handlers the identifying information of an account known as Mujtahidd, the handle of a pseudonymous activist critical of Riyadh, and protected information on other accounts.

From Ex-Twitter Employee Found Guilty of Spying for Saudi Arabia:

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Stablecoin issuers like Tether and Circle now hold $80bn worth of short-term US government debt, highlighting the expanding role of digital asset players in traditional financial markets.

From Stablecoin issuers hold $80bn of short-dated US government debt | Financial Times:

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Perhaps the most effective way to hurt smart contract Ponzis is by attacking their reputation.

From Moneyness: How to stop Forsage, Meta Force and other smart contract pyramid schemes:

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Indian gang ran fake police station out of hotel for eight months
They extorted money from hundreds of people just 500 metres from a real station

From Indian gang ran fake police station out of hotel for eight months.

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I wrote this in 2007.

We need to build general-purpose identity solutions that can cope with these kinds of one-the-fly, transient and even pseudonymous identities as well as persistent identities.  That’s why I think the right digital identity models are those in which the industrial age one-to-one mapping between the person and an identity is understood as a niche and not as the paradigm.  As was well-put on Ideal Government recently, multiple identities are part of the solution, not part of the problem of information age identity.  As Sam Smith says, “one account and one account only for individuals mandates total transparency from the citizen. It requires complete faith in government. It discourages any transparency on the part of that Government. That’s not very balanced, is it?”

From Age vs. identities – Consult Hyperion.

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An Indian gang operated a fake police station from a hotel for eight months where they dressed up as officers and are believed to have extorted money from hundreds of people, an official has said.

From Indian gang ran fake police station out of hotel for eight months | India | The Guardian.

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A former builder who faked his CV to land a series of top NHS jobs has finally been forced to pay the full price for his ‘staggering lies’.

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Jon Andrewes, 69, was ordered to pay nearly nearly £100,000 after he lied to get a top NHS job

Jon Andrewes, 69, spent a decade working as chairman of two NHS trusts and chief executive of a hospice after pretending to have a PhD, an MBA and a history of senior management roles.

From Fake CV builder who landed top NHS jobs including roles as trust chairman ordered to repay £100,000 | Daily Mail Online.

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It’s a commendable choice, but one that made a ton of cash for Riot — earlier this month, the mining outfit revealed that the state of Texas paid the company “$9.5 million in power credits as a result of curtailment activity, to be credited against its power invoices.”

From Texas Paid Crypto Mining Company Millions to Not Mine Crypto.

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During 2021, 23.1 million consumers either used no notes or coins, or used them only about once a month. That was up sharply on the 13.7 million consumers the previous year who did not use cash. That number has grown rapidly: in 2018 it was 5.4 million people; in 2016 it was 2.9 million. At the same time, 1.1 million consumers used mainly cash for day-to-day shopping, according to the 2021 data.

From UK cashless society a step closer as more than 23m people abandon coins | Contactless payments | The Guardian.

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Iran has begun to use cryptocurrency to settle cross-border trades. Iran’s Trade minister Alireza Peyman Pak tweeted that “the first official import order was successfully placed with cryptocurrency worth ten million dollars. By the end of September, the use of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts will be widespread in foreign trade with target countries.”