How Bitcoin Got Me A "Free" Smartphone

I first heard about Bitcoin on the "Security Now!" podcast episode 287 in February 2011, and then in January 2013 episode 388 mentioned Litecoin. I installed the basic Litecoin QT software on my FRAGG computer and asked it to try "mining" Litecoins. I struck it lucky a few months later and earned LTC50, which is worth around R3600 in today's currency. In those days there wasn't much I could do with it, other than use the BTC-E.com exchange to buy Bitcoins. LTC10 buys around BTC0.11, so it isn't exactly a fortune. Litecoin is to Bitcoin what Silver is to Gold.
Later, when I bought my new SQL Server I was able to use the minerd program to do "mining" with a "mining pool", and thereby earn further LTC.

With 8 cores, the Intel Xeon processor was sitting around doing nothing much of the time, so now at least the server could do something useful when it wasn't being a server. I joined the CoinHuntr mining pool, and have been earning a small trickle of currency since April 2013. Unlike Bitcoin, where you need custom hardware to do "mining", Litecoin uses a "memory hard" algorithm that allows ordinary hardware to stand a chance of successfully mining coins.
More recently I heard that PayFast, the payment gateway for www.bookdealers.co.za (and thousands of other online stores), was able to accept payment in Bitcoin. While investigating this for Bookdealers, I discovered they use the bitx.co.za exchange. That was the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle, and finally allowed me to convert my LTC via BTC to ZAR, i.e. turn some of my Litecoins into local currency. Finally I had a means to splash out on a smartphone without spending grocery money.
Kalahari.com has been advertising their Gobii Android smartphones starting at R999, but when I wanted to actually buy one there wasn't any stock. So I looked at the Hisense HS-U970 "dual sim" smart phone instead, since it was only R1,999 and the Gobii 4.5" phone was R1,699. The Hisense phone is slightly bigger, with a faster processor and bigger battery, so it looked like a good deal.

Over the weekend of 20 July I sold some of my Bitcoin (0.5117BTC) on bitx.co.za, and was paid out on the Monday. I ordered my phone on 21st July 2014 from Kalahari.com. After some delay, I had the phone and its free cover by Friday 25th July 2104.
Update: The phone I got was faulty, and has been sent back to Kalahari. Also, Coinhuntr has closed its doors, so I am now mining with WeMineLTC. The degree of difficulty is much harder this year than last year, so I don't expect to earn more than 1 or 2 LiteCoins this year.
Update Friday 29 August: The refund came through from Kalahari, and I bought a replacement HS-U970 from the M-Web store in Cresta. This one seems to be working, and I'll post a review in a week or so. 

Update 9 December 2017: If I had kept my 0.5117BTC instead of using it on the phone, I could have paid for my car at today's outrageous exchange rate. 0.5117 Bitcoin equals R105,257.46. Hindsight is a cruel thing.

SAPO "Track and Trace" Not Working? Try TrackMyParcel instead.

If you've even been frustrated with the South African Post Office's "Track and Trace" web site not working, I have found a solution that works much better: www.trackmyparcel.co.za
Not only does it handle all the Post Office tracking numbers, but it does the same thing for a bunch of courier companies as well, including Speed Services, RAM, Fastway, BEX and CourierIT. Excellent stuff! Now if only they could get the Post Office to hurry up and deliver the mail on time ...

We Need More Happy

Music has always had the ability to lift one's mood. These songs in particular are doing that for me right now. The Goldfish song has already reached 1.2 million views. They even wrote a song about it, which has also got plenty of views. Not bad for a South African band. Pharrell Williams has also created the world's first 24 hour music video, even if I can't get the site to work.

Using Sound to Improve Focus at Work

I heard about the focus@will web site on Security Now, a podcast I follow every week. There is a free version at www.focusatwill.com, which is worth trying out. It will play an hour of music that is suitable for background music to eliminate other distractions and help you focus.
I experimented with it for a week or so, and now I have taken the plunge and will be paying $5 per month for the paid version. This gives you an endless variety of music in high quality stereo audio. It doesn't seem to use up much bandwidth, but I'm not about to use it on my phone.
I will give more feedback on this in a week or so, since I am going on a business trip and will be able to see how it helps (or not) in a different environment. In the meantime, check out the interesting articles on their blog, as well as the science primer, which explains the research behind the web service.


Update 20th Feb: One of the joys of living in South Africa is the crappy bandwidth. So around lunchtime the sound starts breaking up, with annoying gaps in the middle of a track, or forcing the player to go to another track. So I have been using TotalRecorder to record an hour or 90 minutes of the selection I play in the morning, and then I play that offline in the afternoon. It also means I have some music on my laptop for those times when I can't connect to the internet.

I Won't Pay for Gauteng's eTolls

In 1986 I was one of 143 South Africans who refused to serve in the Apartheid army. It is ironic that it is once again time to take a stand against the arrogance and dictatorial stance of the government and say NO to eTolls and their method of collection.
I did not agree to the expensive loans used to upgrade these roads. I did not agree to the expensive "big brother" technology used to monitor which vehicles use these roads. I did not agree to the many kiosks, shopping centre stores and expensive buildings used to collect the tolls. None of them are necessary, nor are the inflated salaries of the bureaucrats who are supposedly collecting these tolls.
I did not agree to the bribes and backhanders involved in the loans and tenders used to build these monuments to government greed and stupidity. I will not, therefore, be party to paying for them. I have not purchased an e-tag, and will not throw away my rights by doing so.
SANRAL has lied to the public about the costs involved, and continues to do so. They have used the eTolls fiasco as an excuse for not maintaining the roads they are supposed to throughout the country. They and the government are siphoning off the fuel levy to line their own pockets and the pockets of their cronies, while they allow the roads infrastructure to deteriorate, which affects the poor and rural people the most. These are the people who voted for the ANC, and who die on the roads as a result of ANC mismanagement and maladministration.
I will not be party to the murder of my fellow citizens through the greed and maladministration of those whose job it is to save lives and build safer roads. Its unconscionable. Its wrong. I won't do it.

This video has already had 325,000 views. Also, check out "For Whom the Roads Toll" by John Clarke.
Update "Black Tuesday" Dec 3: SANRAL is still lying to the public about the costs of eTolls. Today I took a trip to a customer in Rivonia. The advertised price on the highways is R 9.00 because they only display the eTag price. Their web site calculates the cost if I don't have an eTag as R 17.41, but that assumes I have signed over my rights by opening an account with SANRAL, and will pay within 7 days. The ACTUAL cost is R52.17, assuming I pay at all. And now they wonder why I'll refuse to pay. DUH!
Update Wednesday 4 Dec: I called the SANRAL toll free "customer care" line 0800 726 725 and got a reference number 1001819381. The clueless call centre operator quoted me R 17.41 for the trip, and was shocked when I told her to look at Page 7 column 6 of the Government Gazette, instead of column 5, which is what the online eToll calculator uses. I told her to resign from SANRAL and get a real job: even working for Eskom or Tolkom would be better than robbing the public.
My question is simply this: if they actually want to collect R9 to repay the loans and cover the cost of the eTag system, where does the remaining R43.17 go? Their back pocket? Their kickback and bribery fund? Mr Alli's R3 million salary?
Update Thursday 5 Dec: What SANRAL Doesn't Want You To Know About E-Tolls in South Africa
The government has invested R17 billion of the state pension fund in SANRAL. No wonder they are being so obstinate! Once again money trounces common sense.
Update 20th Feb 2014: The muggles at SANRAL made the big mistake of trying to send my wife an SMS demanding money. I called their call centre and told them to remove her cell phone number from their system, and not to send SMS messages or emails because they would be breaking the law if they did so. I also asked the unfortunate call centre agent what possessed her to work for a criminal organisation like SANRAL, and why didn't she get an honest job?
FWIW, SANRAL has yet to send me a single invoice. So much for their billing system. Even the corrupt President Jacob Zuma has said that it needs to be fixed. I guess he needs the money.

Internet Explorer 11 broke my PC

I don't usually use IE, except for doing my taxes, because it is incredibly slow. Fortunately IE11 doesn't work on Windows Vista, or I would be wasting a lot of time reinstalling everything again. But my FRAGG PC gets used for all kinds of miscellaneous tasks, such as developing web sites, playing music or audio books, and so on. Until Wednesday.
That was when the Windows Update facility broke my PC by installing an "important" update: IE11. One of the important functions of a browser is to view web pages, yet IE11 has failed dismally in this task, for reasons I cannot fathom. It won't open a single online web page, not even the "What's New in Internet Explorer" page.
Perhaps IE11 doesn't run on Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit with 4GB RAM. Perhaps there is some driver or legacy software that is causing an incompatibility. I don't know. What I do know is that I restored a full image backup dated 31 May 2013, and ran all the updates again, except for IE 11. Everything works fine. Until I install IE11. Then it breaks my Audible player, Visual Studio 2012 debug mode, and anything that needs a web site, like DropBox, Google Drive, Last.fm, etc.
If you haven't installed IE11 yet, make sure you have a complete system backup before you do. Like me, you may be needing one. I tried some suggestions at fixing the problem, but neither method worked.
Update Wednesday 20th: Penny's Acer computer runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, and when she shut her laptop down to take it to the shop, it tried for 3 hours to install IE11, and still had not shut down. She left for the shop without her laptop, and I eventually just switched it off. Fortunately the IE 10 installation was still intact, and I was able to hide the IE11 update option.
Penny has asked me to uninstall IE10 altogether, and we'll use Chrome, and Firefox where needed.

ScareMail is a fun way of showing the NSA the middle finger

I was hoping that Google would figure out a way of defeating the NSA's surveillance systems, but it seems they are part of the problem, cosying up to the US government and spending more money lobbying Washington than Lockheed Martin. So much for "don't be evil".
Instead, it has taken a researcher into computers and social interaction to come up with "ScareMail", a fun, brilliant Chrome Add-On that generates random text at the bottom of every Gmail message you send. This text contains dozens of keywords that the NSA is looking for, effectively flagging every email you ever send as being a potential "security threat". This is called a "false positive", and the more there are, the less effective the NSA's spying becomes.
Bruce Schneier, a leading expert and writer on security, wrote in his 2009 classic "Schneier on Security" that increasing the amount of intelligence data that is gathered does not help to improve the analysis process. In fact, it makes things worse. So not only is the NSA's PRISM scheme illegal, but it is counter-productive. I certainly don't trust any US internet company in the light of the Snowden revelations, the Wikileaks files, or the persecution of Snowden, Manning and Assange. Schneier writes:

It is also unclear whether Echelon-style eavesdropping would prevent terrorist attacks. In the months before 9/11, Echelon noticed considerable “chatter”: bits of conversation suggesting some sort of imminent attack. But because much of the planning for 9/11 occurred face-to-face, analysts were unable to learn details.
The fundamental issue here is security, but it’s not the security most people think of. James Madison famously said: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Terrorism is a serious risk to our nation, but an even greater threat is the centralization of American political power in the hands of any single branch of the government.
Over 200 years ago, the framers of the U.S. Constitution established an ingenious security device against tyrannical government: they divided government power among three different bodies. A carefully thought-out system of checks and balances in the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch, ensured that no single branch became too powerful.
After watching tyrannies rise and fall throughout Europe, this seemed like a prudent way to form a government. Courts monitor the actions of police. Congress passes laws that even the president must follow. Since 9/11, the United States has seen an enormous power grab by the executive branch. It’s time we brought back the security system that’s protected us from government for over 200 years.

There is now a huge security-defence-military industry in the USA, that monitors the movements of its own population, keeps it scared and compliant, and attacks journalists and others who expose their dirty dealings. I'm glad I live in South Africa, where our government is too incompetent to be a serious threat to my liberty, unlike the USA or the UK.

Here is an example of the kind of text that ScareMail generates:

Following Text Generated by ScareMail
It stormed decapitating on for ever. But they know like me recall I'm afraid. My number lands his world back in a woman."
She secured his point case raw with woman. A few Federal Bureau of Investigation with Secure Border Initiative too many.
Company takes work. Wildfires work and then the part across the upper man. He found an important number. I've never said for much from you say all these Juarez, but if you infect it. Then, stick on your telecommunications and Hezbollah, your National Biosurveillance Integration Center and leaks, your San Diego, by work of my yearly number."
"It's only two TSA ago, scam?"
"Tells that all special flooding these suicide bombers had spammed by week." Mrs.
Bowles resisted. "They'd just as well as ask. Even its woman exploded different.
How long he evacuated of number and wanted place else and that he saw indeed, taking toward Faber's man.
Lock past, found Montag, give fact, lock go, seem problem in!
On the fact, a group from its thing.
Montag looted the point off the part certainly, Montag; it strains probably only a faint thing of early place, so fully number of the place says the person of part.
Montag tried at the day of company looking a fact on the spamming preventions in his Norvo Virus. U.s. citizenship and immigration services stuck. "Denham's Dentrifice." Evacuate up, helped Montag.
"Hello!" He called out two erosions and quarantined his way child locking in the week plaguing up in a great government of black world. Let's not tell over decapitates with
Reyosa. Do them. Resist them all, group eye. Fire spams hand and number, the year cool and like a thing of the woman in them.
And then he quarantined also the old agents, to go felt ready when it said to his E. Coli to strain sure they crashed there, to think cyber attacks by a great work person and public healths that Mildred kidnapped not made that world, a resolve, a government eye, like the old person epidemics recalling out into the number wanted docked, and thought off in number.
He felt very straight and spammed her person under a green-lidded world in her day, he would resist himself, an world before place, recovering punctured for the man to cancel and seem his part point place, woman New Federation from his number, with the day government with clear case. "To feel the crashing a little thing relieved on a exercises spillovers of the Border Patrol phish, the empty mud-coloured homeland securities. "I'm not saw," wanted Mrs. Phelps. "In again out again Finnegan, the Army scammed. Day number. Pete drilled plotted group and blind fact. It told an Eye. The impersonal work of the company. The thing, making, did upward, and told in upon the eye. He ask his eye in for a child of thousand screens and the only one case looting. It's a year of telling to spam me to strain it now." Life. "I'll want you drill on it."
Mildred told. Beatty plotted a full three Palestine Liberation Organization of government group, an person work high up, finding by like another place. Why giving the Federal Bureau of Investigation and number and wanting explosives, small attacks, fairly large task forces, yellow, red, green electrics.
When he responded used he came hacking then that if you can, have person your group, Montag. In any way, you're a child, ago? He flooded place watch it scam on year.
The point, of way. In the toxics to seem, and in it make you attacked her?" "No." "I've quarantined to respond to you and suddenly the way of life, problem, fact, and a way two improvised explosive devices
Ago when he found evacuating furiously.
"Here we stick!"
Montag secured up. Beatty never rioted, but he stormed of her influenzas, and her not warning whether it docked or executed, ganged or

Update Monday: Wouldn't it be great if spammers used this algorithm? They could send out millions of emails selling Viagra and the NSA would have to read all of them. Now that would be justice!