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Where would you spend 6.3 billion in crypto without anyone noticing?..In today's digital world most countries are watching purchases over 10k

Juan said:

Where would you spend 6.3 billion in crypto without anyone noticing?

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They say it was North Korea so they'll probably just use it to buy things they need....oil, food, etc from nations and entities who don't care where the money comes from and since it is BTC...it can be spent anywhere with no blowback.

dishstaller said:

They say it was North Korea so they'll probably just use it to buy things they need....oil, food, etc from nations and entities who don't care where the money comes from and since it is BTC...it can be spent anywhere with no blowback.

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North Korea can't pay for oil with BTC. The money has to be laundered and cashed out first. Analytics firms can trace it on the public blockchain, and exchanges (including Binance) have frozen money traced back to prior hacks when it showed up. Much of it may still gets through eventually. It's just slow and lossy, not "spend anywhere."

Juan said:

Someone using AI would be able to see the purchase...plus if you were to buy a couple billion barrels of oil or any other commodity..someone would notice..or if you bought your own country

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It can be traced, the rest of this is pretty much your usual nonsense though.

telstar_1 said:

How does it have such billions simply "on hand" to replace stolen billions?

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Binance has had an insurance fund since 2018, funded by 10% of trading fees. It's around $1.2B, and Binance says it'll cover the rest from company money. As the world's largest exchange, it makes a lot in fees. On top of that, the ~$3B in frozen stablecoins can be reissued by Tether/Circle, so the actual hole is smaller than the headline.

harshness said:

You "print" it, of course. That's part of the magic of cryptocurrency.

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Nobody can print bitcoin, Binance included. Supply is fixed by the protocol. The only thing in this story that can be frozen and reissued is stablecoins, because they have a company behind them.

dishstaller said:

They say it was North Korea so they'll probably just use it to buy things they need....oil, food, etc from nations and entities who don't care where the money comes from and since it is BTC...it can be spent anywhere with no blowback.

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HA! That short/fat Dictator will buy more arms. He does not care about the people.

meStevo said:

North Korea can't pay for oil with BTC. The money has to be laundered and cashed out first. Analytics firms can trace it on the public blockchain, and exchanges (including Binance) have frozen money traced back to prior hacks when it showed up. Much of it may still gets through eventually. It's just slow and lossy, not "spend anywhere."

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Yeah, I read the same thing in multiple articles. However, when some type of hack takes place and a company's computer system is hit with ransomware, the culprits always demand BTC and those stories always say they want BTC because it is untraceable so the hackers are therefore never caught. It is contradictory crap like this that causes people not to believe any "official" statements when something like this takes place.

dishstaller said:

Yeah, I read the same thing in multiple articles. However, when some type of hack takes place and a company's computer system is hit with ransomware, the culprits always demand BTC and those stories always say they want BTC because it is untraceable so the hackers are therefore never caught. It is contradictory crap like this that causes people not to believe any "official" statements when something like this takes place.

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Bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous; every transaction is public forever. Ransomware gangs ask for BTC mostly because it's easy for a victim to buy and can't be reversed, not because it can't be followed. The privacy-focused ones demand Monero instead.

The reason hackers often aren't caught is where they are, not the coin. If the wallet traces back to a group in Russia or North Korea, everyone can see the money and still can't arrest anyone. Traceable and catchable are two different things, and the media mashes them together.

meStevo said:

The reason hackers often aren't caught is where they are, not the coin. If the wallet traces back to a group in Russia or North Korea, everyone can see the money and still can't arrest anyone. Traceable and catchable are two different things, and the media mashes them together.

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Then doesn't that mean that NK can spend the BTC as it wants to or is there a way to flag the BTC, kinda like blacklisting an IMEI when it comes to cell phones.

Operations returning to normal today as withdrawals are opening back up for Binance users.

dishstaller said:

Then doesn't that mean that NK can spend the BTC as it wants to or is there a way to flag the BTC, kinda like blacklisting an IMEI when it comes to cell phones.

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Pretty good analogy actually. Bitcoin itself can't blacklist a coin since nobody runs the network. But the exchanges and cash-out points can, and do. Treasury publishes sanctioned wallet addresses (North Korea's included), and exchanges run every deposit through tracing tools. Coins traced back to a flagged wallet get refused or frozen.

So it's like a blacklisted phone: it still powers on, but no carrier will activate it. And just like those phones, the coins get shipped off to someone who doesn't check, in this case shady brokers who'll swap it for cash at a steep discount. NK can't walk up and buy oil with BTC, but after enough laundering, most of it does eventually turn into usable money.

Extending the analogy, if Bitcoin is an IMEI blacklist then stablecoins are like Apple's Activation Lock. The issuer controls it at the source, so once it's locked it's a brick everywhere. That's why the stablecoins in this hack got frozen within hours and the bitcoin didn't.

Updated the listings on the first couple of posts - been very few changes over these past couple of months so not as much to update!

Today Dish brought back it's traditional Halloween Dish Scape on 303. It is on 119, TP 20. Clearly this is just a temporary channel and will be removed in November, so I am not including it on the channel list right now.

With the extra hour I had this morning, I updated the listings. Another month has passed, and nothing has moved off 110 to 119 for the national channels. I really thought those handful of transponders on 119 would have been populated with the national channels from 110, but no change.

Can someone who has a Hopper tell me if the 4k channels are still on 110 and if so, what transponder?

zippyfrog said:

With the extra hour I had this morning, I updated the listings. Another month has passed, and nothing has moved off 110 to 119 for the national channels. I really thought those handful of transponders on 119 would have been populated with the national channels from 110, but no change.

Can someone who has a Hopper tell me if the 4k channels are still on 110 and if so, what transponder?

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They appear to be on 110, transponder 8.

Bobby said:

They appear to be on 110, transponder 8.

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Thanks! I do have my listing correct then.

mheisen said:

Over the past few weeks, I have had problems connecting to streaming services (Netflix, HBO et al). When I go to the TV's native Channels, I have no problem. The Dish internet troubleshooter shows I have a good internet connection. I'm wondering whether it's an issue with my internet provider or a problem with the Dish software on the Hopper Plus. Anyone else seeing this?

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I have a DISH Hopper 3 (Software H713) with Hopper Plus (Software P15403). I have not tried streaming services but I primarily watch TVB Jadeworld international package which is only available by streaming and when I have an issue, I usually have to go to a non-streaming satellite channel first before the streaming channels will work again. What software versions do you have and what is the error message if any are showing on your screen? or is that Dish downloading logo just stuck and never finishes?

Almighty1 said:

I have a DISH Hopper 3 (Software H713) with Hopper Plus (Software P15403). I have not tried streaming services but I primarily watch TVB Jadeworld international package which is only available by streaming and when I have an issue, I usually have to go to a non-streaming satellite channel first before the streaming channels will work again. What software versions do you have and what is the error message if any are showing on your screen? or is that Dish downloading logo just stuck and never finishes?

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I'm on H713 on the Hopper and P15403 on the Hopper Plus. It shows internet connection issues and doesn't finish loading the various services. I see the "loading circle going around. Sometimes I get a message saying that the service is having trouble loading my content and to check the internet connection.

mheisen said:

I'm on H713 on the Hopper and P15403 on the Hopper Plus. It shows internet connection issues and doesn't finish loading the various services. I see the "loading circle going around. Sometimes I get a message saying that the service is having trouble loading my content and to check the internet connection.

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Did it ever work correctly before? Hard to say what the problem is. Usually for streaming, it will show the Dish logo with lines sweeping down to show downloading, never seen the circle issue. Did you try a manual reboot, red button reset, power cord unplug/replug to see if it makes a difference.

Almighty1 said:

Did it ever work correctly before? Hard to say what the problem is. Usually for streaming, it will show the Dish logo with lines sweeping down to show downloading, never seen the circle issue. Did you try a manual reboot, red button reset, power cord unplug/replug to see if it makes a difference.

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Might be worth just to ditch the hopper plus. No issues here on h713

mheisen said:

Over the past few weeks, I have had problems connecting to streaming services (Netflix, HBO et al). When I go to the TV's native Channels, I have no problem. The Dish internet troubleshooter shows I have a good internet connection. I'm wondering whether it's an issue with my internet provider or a problem with the Dish software on the Hopper Plus. Anyone else seeing this?

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Buy a roku and dump the hopper plus you'll be better off. If you have a smart tv you don't need either one. No hopper plus here and no issues!!!

slow_poke_pete said:

Might be worth just to ditch the hopper plus. No issues here on h713

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I have a Hopper Plus and no issues either. charlesrshell has both a Hopper 3 with Hopper Plus and one without, he doesn't have the same issue. Before blaming it on the Hopper Plus, he should see if the problem still exists without the Hopper Plus connected as it could be the Internet connection itself or some setting in the router itself. There is someone in another thread who has EHD issues on the Hopper 3 only setup but does not have the EHD issues on the Hopper 3 with Hopper Plus and he has already tried swapping the EHD and it did not make a difference so like the saying, YMMV.

slow_poke_pete said:

Buy a roku and dump the hopper plus you'll be better off. If you have a smart tv you don't need either one. No hopper plus here and no issues!!!

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The Roku costs $$$, Hopper Plus is free. That may not be the only costs as it depends if the TV in question still has available HDMI ports and if not, it will require a HDMI switch and HDMI cable which adds more to the cost.

I have a LG 3D OLED Smart TV and I still need either of them because it does not have Android TV built in. Add a Hopper Plus and see if you actually have issues or not as until you actually tried it, it means nothing.

If the OP has a router and a managed switch, that could be the problem.
I have a Hopper 3 and 5 Joey 4s. I recently updated my Router, Switch and access points with Ubiquiti UniFi gear. I had an issue where the switch interpreted the communication between the hopper internet connection and one of the Joeys as a data loop. I had to change some settings in the switch to re-enable that port. Your router could possibly be doing the same thing blocking the connection.

If your router has a malware connection setting, try disabling it temporarily, and see if the internet comes back. Contact your ISP and see if there is a block happening at the router or switch level, or via the ISP's threat protection.

jsmit86 said:

If the OP has a router and a managed switch, that could be the problem.
I have a Hopper 3 and 5 Joey 4s. I recently updated my Router, Switch and access points with Ubiquiti UniFi gear. I had an issue where the switch interpreted the communication between the hopper internet connection and one of the Joeys as a data loop. I had to change some settings in the switch to re-enable that port. Your router could possibly be doing the same thing blocking the connection.

If your router has a malware connection setting, try disabling it temporarily, and see if the internet comes back. Contact your ISP and see if there is a block happening at the router or switch level, or via the ISP's threat protection.

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Can you share what settings you had to change?

Required Inbound & Outbound Network Ports
The standard ports designated for DISH Hopper configurations include:

• • TCP Port 80 – HTTP communication
  • TCP Port 443 – HTTPS secure communication
  • TCP Port 5678 – Neighbor Discovery / Device Sync
  • UDP Port 80 – Alternative streaming/network data
  • UDP Port 443 – Alternative secure media streams
  • UDP Port 5678 – Remote pairing and network discovery

Critical Network & Security Considerations

• • UPnP (Universal Plug and Play): Enabling UPnP on your router is the easiest way to allow the Hopper to automatically handle its own port maps.
  Internal Communication (MoCA & Local LAN): The Hopper Plus and Joeys communicate internally over your local home network using router's default internal traffic policies. Local firewall software or strict internal VLAN isolation can block the Hopper 3 from seeing the Hopper Plus or Joey extensions.
  
  The other thing is that these are streaming channels which was why I asked if they have worked correctly even without the Hopper Plus as checking the post history of the OP, it appears that the Hopper Plus was added around 1/2 a year ago and from looking at my own Internet settings portion, all the Hopper 3 does is really measure signal strenth for WiFi and probably just check ping times to show it is connected or not to the internet, it does not check the actual speed or latency. Since the OP has a Hopper Plus, OP can always install the Speedtest app for diagnostics and then take a photo of the results and post it here. Before 2017, I used tȯhave 6Mbps/768Kbps ADSL and even though the Hopper 1 and Hopper 3 also showed internet connectivity is okay, everytime my Ring Doorbell is uploading, it would knock the entire internet connection off-line as the upload pipe would be 100% filled by the Ring Door bell uploading the video because the ACKnowledgement packets would not have priority being sent back in time which was fixed with QoS traffic shaping but that still does not mean streaming will work as it requires at least 25Mbps minimum or more if there are other devices on the same connection sharing the bandwidth.
  
  
  ​

Playin' the Loser Again - Jimmy Buffett

Turn That Heartbeat Over Again - Steely Dan

Heartbeat City - The Cars

You Belong To The City - Glenn Frey

long_time_Dish said:

You Belong To The City - Glenn Frey

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Fool for The City - Foghat

Why not do a CTO directly through the manufacture? Get exactly what you want. Plus It's quite common to find 10%% (or higher) discount codes for Dell and HP.

Backlit keyboards are pretty much standard, and in the constant effort to try to make devices and thin and dainty as possible ethernet ports are becoming rarer, if not a normal ethernet port, you may be able to find a laptop with drop-jaw style one.

Dell and HP are usually heavily discounted during Black Friday sales. I picked up a Dell from Best Buy for 50 percent off. I ordered it online and picked it up locally at the store. Black Friday deals are just a couple of weeks away.

This meets your 15" touchscreen requirement and budget when marked down.

Can't really help with an exact set of suggestions. I can say that if you have a set budget. And $600 these days wont get you much. One thing I can say is check out Dell Refurbished.
I've suggested and even configured, ordered a few for friends who were a bit iffy in deciding what they needed and wanted.
Refurbished doesn't mean that they came back defective and were repaired. Companies and organizations who order quantities of the same computers often cancel or modify their requirements.
Dell builds usually on demand. Their direct refurbished line will be brand new, unused. Perhaps not exactly the "today" specifications of the latest-greatest. And you can get a nice pc for quite a bit less with full warranty.
Just a suggestion.
"I use the laptop to mainly surf the web and keep up with my finances, money and bills. I would like to have at least a 15" screen and having a touchscreen is a plus".

As far as Asus, HP goes. And others you may consider. I'd think $600 (new) would get you a laptop. A quality, long lasting one? Not so sure. Now. If you could get a $1000 lappy for $600. Good deal, don't you think?
Surf the web doesn't need a killer Nvidia graphics chip. Nor a pinnacle, top of the line Intel, AMD processor.
12-16 gigs of memory will get you by just fine.
I'm personally an Asus fan. Brands aside. The one thing is the batteries. We discussed that here someplace else.
I repair these critters. Batteries. Cheap laptops have cheap batteries. Asus suggests that you don't keep the charger plugged in all of the time to make them last. Like you see on phones where 85% vs full charge is suggested to preserve battery life.

EarDemon said:

Why not do a CTO directly through the manufacture?

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Because there are fewer economies of scale with custom products. Savings come from giant contracts with major retailers.

RAM and GPUs make buying a computer now financial suicide. In 2023, I bought two 16GB RAM modules for my lone Windows machine. The cost was under $100. Now that equivalent RAM goes for $260.

One can opt for an on-CPU GPU, but you can't opt out of RAM. While Microsoft goes on and on about Windows 11 eventually being happy with 8GB of RAM, we know how that always ends.

Never realized that Tesla is losing to BYD at manufacturing too, which IMO is Tesla's biggest accomplishment and area of innovation. Nice writeup about the state of play and how we got here though. I have no faith that we're moving any productive direction though sadly, most changes and efforts feel reactionary rather than rooted in making use of the time being bought by tariffs, with few exceptions.

GM said its next-generation vehicle architecture will provide 40 times more computing power and 30 percent less wiring than before and will expand from the 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ to its high-volume SUVs, trucks, crossovers, and fourth-generation EVs, which will be powered by lithium manganese-rich (LMR) prismatic batteries

Despite the politicization and perceived consumer pivot away from EVs in America, GM needs to remain globally competitive, so it's doubling down on its fourth generation EVs, with energy-dense, cheaper-to-manufacture LMR batteries, more efficient motors, and state-of-the-art centralized computing architecture. With a stated goal of cutting the traditional four- to five-year concept-to-production time in half, GM is clearly challenging the concept of "China speed," which in the Chinese automotive industry can be as quick as 18 months from design to start of production. In the AI space, GM is smartly collapsing all of its marque-specific apps under the familiar OnStar brand, while providing more features—both on the phone and in the car—than it ever has before.

Let's tell it like it is. GM's EV efforts are coming from SAIC. The brain trust is almost entirely in China, and GM is hanging off of SAIC's shirt tails.

It is a lot like asserting that the Corvette was designed by Chevrolet when most of it came from the Cadillac CTS-V.

meStevo said:

tomwellborn3rd (@wellborn.net)

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bsky.app

Never realized that Tesla is losing to BYD at manufacturing too, which IMO is Tesla's biggest accomplishment and area of innovation. Nice writeup about the state of play and how we got here though. I have no faith that we're moving any productive direction though sadly, most changes and efforts feel reactionary rather than rooted in making use of the time being bought by tariffs, with few exceptions.

So: how are the cars so cheap, and what is being cut to get there? The best public accounting comes from the Rhodium Group, which compared BYD, Geely, and Leapmotor against Tesla's Chinese operation, a fair comparison because it removes labor costs and shipping from the equation entirely. Their estimate is that BYD builds a car for about $4,700 less than Tesla builds a Model 3 in Shanghai, roughly 15 percent of the Model 3's price. The breakdown is the interesting part. Direct government grants account for about $292 per vehicle, which is 5 percent of the gap. The biggest single factor is vertical integration: BYD makes about 80 percent of its top-tier components in-house, against 37 percent for Tesla, and that eliminates roughly $2,369 per vehicle in supplier markups. Lower overhead, meaning cheaper engineering talent and administrative cost spread across enormous volume, accounts for another $1,719. And BYD pays its suppliers on 155-day terms, against Tesla's 60, which is worth about $214 per car in float. When people say the Chinese advantage is subsidies, the per-vehicle number says otherwise. When people say it is slave wages, the Tesla Shanghai comparison says otherwise too. The advantage is mostly that BYD decided, twenty years ago, to make its own batteries, its own motors, its own power electronics, and its own semiconductors, and Western automakers decided the opposite.​

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That's how Ford did it- vertical integration. He even set up a rubber plantation in S. America

View: https://youtu.be/z1-G2Qn9F1Q

View: https://x.com/itskyleconner/status/2116861127883702684?a=dBYY7Yu2XtKD-LA0vzo&s=20