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Yesterday a video teaser from blockchain technology company Blockstream created waves of excitement among enthusiasts of both cryptocurrencies and space. Most participants speculated that Blockstream was about to implement the idea, promoted by Bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik (among others), of a satellite system that streams the Bitcoin blockchain to the whole planet from space. The speculations were, indeed, correct.

Today, the company is announcing Blockstream Satellite, a new service that broadcasts real-time Bitcoin blockchain data from satellites in space to almost everyone on the planet. Blockstream Satellite covers across two-thirds of the Earths land mass and, according to the company, additional coverage areas will soon come online to reach almost every person on the planet by the end of the year.

Bitcoin is a powerful and transformative internet native digital money that has blazed a trail of disruption, with its full potential yet to unfold. Because its permissionless, Bitcoin enables anyone to freely create new financial applications and other innovations that use the blockchain that havent been possible before, said Blockstream co-founder and CEO Adam Back.

Todays launch of Blockstream Satellite gives even more people on the planet the choice to participate in Bitcoin. With more users accessing the Bitcoin blockchain with the free broadcast from Blockstream Satellite, we expect the global reach to drive more adoption and use cases for Bitcoin, while strengthening the overall robustness of the network.

The Blockstream Satellite network currently consists of three geosynchronous satellites at various positions over Earth that cover four continents: Africa, Europe, South America and North America. Blockstream is leasing bandwidth on existing, commercial, geosynchronous satellites: Galaxy 18 (covering North America), Eutelsat 113 (covering South America) and two transponders on the Telstar 11N satellite (one covering Africa and one covering Europe).

Ground stations, called teleports, uplink the public Bitcoin blockchain data to the satellites in the network, which then broadcast the data to large areas across the globe. Additional satellites and teleports are being added to achieve worldwide coverage by the end of the year.

The Blockstream service is expected to be especially useful to people in remote regions of developing world with poor internet connectivity.

"When I first heard of Blockstream Satellite, I immediately recognized its great potential to bring Bitcoin to regions of the world where internet access is either unavailable or expensive, said Tim Akinbo, who runs the only bitcoin node in West Africa. Not to mention providing redundant access when internet access is temporarily unavailable."

Blockstream Satellite uses GNU Radio, an open-source software development platform for Software-Defined Radio (SDR), expected to reduce costs and streamline development by eliminating the need for specialized hardware. Blockstream Satellite utilizes the Fast Internet Bitcoin Relay Engine (FIBRE), an open-source protocol backed by several years of history operating and studying the Bitcoin Relay Network. Together, these open-source technologies power the Blockstream Satellite network enabling Blockstream to provide this free service reliably and cost effectively, noted the Blockstream press release.

Anyone can receive the signal with a small satellite dish (similar to a consumer satellite TV dish) and a USB SDR (software-defined radio) interface, notes the Blockstream Satellite FAQ. The total equipment cost for a user is only about $100. The software is free. The software interface is the open-source GNU Radio software, which is the receiver. GNU Radio will send data to the FIBRE protocol, which is the Bitcoin process and is where the blocks reside.

Read more:
Blockstream Satellite: Broadcasting Bitcoin from Space - Bitcoin Magazine

Target and Aldi are making moves to shore up their grocery delivery business.

Target said Monday that it would buy delivery logistics company Grand Junction to help it offer same-day delivery service to in-store shoppers. Software made by the San Francisco-based company connects retailers with about 700 delivery companies around the country that pick up items from stores or distribution centers and take them to customers.

Expanding delivery and making it faster have been key areas for retailers trying to attract convenience-seeking shoppers. Target and Walmart have adjusted their shipping programs as they try to lure online shoppers away from Amazon.

Target's move is aimed not at online shoppers, but at making buying an easier decision for in-store shoppers. The company has been working with Grand Junction to test same-day delivery at a New York store. Shoppers there can ask to have heavy bags, a sofa or anything else delivered that day for a fee, that's calculated based on time and location.

Target plans to expand the service to other New York locations this year, and then bring it to other major cities next year. The company said it eventually plans to use the software to offer faster deliveries for online orders.

The Target announcement comes one day after the German grocery chain Aldi Inc said is is partnering with Instacart Inc. to deliver groceries in three U.S. cities, a move that comes amid intense competition and disruption in the industry.

Aldi will launch a pilot starting the end of this month in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas with the potential of expanding to more cities in the future.

The German retailer does not offer customers an option to shop on its own website now and the partnership is a way to test online grocery demand

"Grocery shopping online is a relatively small part of the business but it is continuing to grow," Aldi's Vice President of Corporate Buying, Scott Patton, told Reuters.

The Food Marketing Institute estimates online grocery spending during 2016-2025 will grow from 4.3 percent of the total U.S. food and beverage sales to as much as 20 percent, or more than $100 billion. Last year, online grocery sales were about $20.5 billion.

Here is the original post:
Target, Aldi make moves for grocery delivery - Chattanooga Times Free Press

White nationalists, neo-Nazis, and members of the alt-right with body armor and combat weapons on Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

When U.S. District Judge Glen E. Conrad rejected Charlottesville, Virginias attempt to relocate Saturdays white nationalist rally, he wrote that merely moving [the] demonstration to another park will not avoid a clash of ideologies between demonstrators and counter-protesters. He also acknowledged that a change in the location of the demonstration would not eliminate the need for members of the Citys law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical services personnel to appear at Emancipation Park. Instead, it would necessitate having personnel present at two locations in the City.

As it turned out, the nightmare that unfolded on Saturday in this small college town involved a great deal more than an ideological clash and demanded far more police protection than was available. Dozens of white nationalists showed up toting semi-automatic weapons, as did some counter-protesters, making it all but impossible for police to intervene when violence erupted. In short order, peaceful protesters were forced to hide as armed rioters attacked one another with clubs, smoke bombs, and pepper spray.

Complaints abound that law enforcement officers looked on from the sidelines as the brutality quickly escalated into a crisis. The tragedy culminated in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer when a white supremacist rammed his car into a group of peaceful protesters.

Seen in isolation, Conrads order was grounded in solid First Amendment doctrine: Charlottesville could not, he ruled, relocate the racist demonstrators based on the content of [their] speech. This is textbook law, but one is left to wonder whether it takes into account armed white supremacists invading a city with promises of confrontation. Conrads decision seems to have been issued in a vacuum, one in which Second Amendment open-carry rights either swallowed First Amendment doctrine altogether or were simply wished away, for after-the-fact analysis. The judge failed to answer the central question: When demonstrators plan to carry guns and cause fights, does the government have a compelling interest in regulating their expressive conduct more carefully than itd be able to otherwise? This is not any one judges fault. It is a failure of our First Amendment jurisprudence to reckon with our Second Amendment reality.

Charlottesville proves that this issue is hardly theoretical anymore. In his order, Conrad chose to exclude from his First Amendment analysis the very strong possibility that demonstrators would carry weapons. (The city police warned the court that hundreds of protesters would bring firearms and that militia members would be in attendance.) But, ironically, by protecting the free speech rights of the white supremacists, Conrad may have ultimately suppressed speech by ensuring an armed confrontation between the neo-Nazis and the counter-protesters would break out and that police would be powerless to stop it until blood was spilled. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe later claimed that the militia members had better equipment than our State Policeand that their weapons prevented law enforcement from imposing order and protecting peaceful protesters. While we dont yet know the full details of what happened or how, the governors statement suggested that the presence of large quantities of lethal guns had in fact effectively silenced the many people whod assembled to peacefully express their opposition to racism.

This conflict between the right to bear arms and the right to free speech is nothing new, but the sudden surge in white nationalist activism has made it painfully obvious that, in the public square, the right to bear arms tends to trump the right to free speech. Confederate sympathizers are bringing weapons of war to their demonstrationsjust last month, in fact, Ku Klux Klansmen carried guns to a protest in an adjacent Charlottesville park. Forty-five states, including Virginia, allow some form of open carry. So long as armed demonstrators comply with their permits and do not openly threaten anyone, their protests are perfectly legal.

Rallies with guns cannot be treated, for First Amendment purposes, in the same fashion as rallies with no guns.

But of course, the presence of a gun itself dramatically heightens the odds that somebody is going to get shot. And, as Saturday proved, the presence of many guns, particularly the sort that can kill many people in very little time, may dissuade law enforcement from stepping in when a protest gets out of hand. The result is an alarming form of censorship: Nonviolent demonstrators lose their right to assemble and express their ideas because the police are too apprehensive to shield them from violence. The right to bear arms overrides the right to free speech. And when protesters dress like militia members and the police are confused about who is with whom, chaos is inevitable.

This problem is especially acute in public areas like Charlottesvilles Emancipation Park and the surrounding streets and walkways. The Supreme Court recently reminded us that parks and sidewalks occupy a special position in terms of First Amendment protection because of their historic role as sites for discussion and debate. These traditional public fora have, according to the court, immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions.

So the government doesnt get to bar neo-Nazis from marching in a park just because theyre neo-Nazis. But what about neo-Nazis who are toting around assault weapons? As the world saw on Saturday, armed agitators can quickly turn a public forum into a public brawl and hijack peaceful assembly. Current First Amendment doctrine praises the open debate that is supposed to occur in our streets and parks. But it is poorly equipped to help courts apply the law when bullets may accompany the free exchange of ideas.

The seminal case protecting the rights of white nationalists to march in the streets is National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the government could not bar neo-Nazis from marching through a Jewish neighborhood in Illinois.* Most civil libertarians (us included) believe the court got the Skokie case right. But its increasingly clear that Skokie cant always help courts figure out how to deal with a post-Heller, poststand your ground white nationalist protest. Whatever the courts were attempting to protect in the Skokie case wasnt protected in Charlottesville. The marchers in Skokie didnt promise to bring guns and armed militias to protect themselves.

Moreover, the threat posed by Nazis marching in Illinois, while symbolic and terrifying, especially in a town of Holocaust survivors, was not the threat that we are coming to your town with the power to kill you. Second Amendment enthusiasts will tell you that they dont intend to deliver any message of this sort when they parade with semi-automatic weapons. Their message is merely that guns are outstanding. But one of the lessons of Charlottesville 2017 is that sometimes, when 500 people promise to come to a protest with guns to hurt people they want to see extinguished, they plan to do just that.

Join Dahlia Lithwick and her stable of standout guests for a discussion about the high court and the countrys most important cases.

Its become amply clear that open carry in Charlottesville led to little discussion and lots of fighting. Indeed, open carry seemed to guarantee that fewer people could speak and that the police had no choice but to wait until there was actual bleeding to call off the rally. If bringing guns to a speech event pushes the line for incitement past the point where people have gone mad, its time to have another look at the intersection of speech and open carry.

Top Comment

I own guns. I hate gun nuts and the gun lobby. Look at those idiots in the photo. Dressed for battle with ammo vests and fingers next to the trigger. That's not brandishing? More...

Rallies with guns cannot be treated, for First Amendment purposes, in the same fashion as rallies with no guns. When the police are literally too afraid of armed protesters to stop a melee, First Amendment values are diminished; discussion is supplanted by disorder and even death, and conversations about time, place, and manner seem antiquated and trite. In his analysis, Conrad treated todays white nationalists like the neo-Nazis who planned to march through Skokie.* That was a mistake. Ideas may not be able to hurt us, but assault weapons surely can. Thats why the white supremacists who marched through Charlottesville this weekend carried guns instead of Pokmon cards.Its perfectly reasonable for courts to consider the speech-suppressing potential of guns when evaluating a citys efforts to keep the peace. And it will be perfectly lethal if they fail to take the Second Amendment reality into account, as they reflect upon the values we seek to protect with the First.

*Correction, Aug. 14, 2017: This post originally misstated that Klansmen marched in Skokie, Illinois. The marchers were neo-Nazis. (Return.)

Original post:
The Guns Won - Slate Magazine

WSYM-TV

State faces lawsuit over guns in foster homes WSYM-TV (WXYZ) - A federal lawsuit brought on by two Michigan families and the national Second Amendment Foundation alleges the state of Michigan is violating Second Amendment rights by targeting gun owners who foster children. The dispute centers around ...

More here:
State faces lawsuit over guns in foster homes - WSYM-TV

European

Italy simply cannot do what an independent country should be able to always do: defend its territory from illegal invasion.

Posted on 8/14/17 | 11:04 AM CEST

Italy is very corrupted country and human smuggling is even more important to mafia than smuggling drugs. Now Italy wants to collect money from human smuggling and then send the economic immigrants to other countries. It would be foolish for other countries to accept this corruption and abusing of them.

Posted on 8/14/17 | 11:32 AM CEST

@European/Finnish guy

Taken together what you are saying is that however you look at it Italy is indeed shafted!

Posted on 8/14/17 | 11:36 AM CEST

Ive noticed a pattern in Southern European member states and that is no matter how many millions we provide them they still think they lack solidarity. It is quite outrageous they should show more grattitude , Europe is not some dumpster that you can throw your garbage into. The same reason the inflow of migrants is unsustainable for Italy is why it is unsustainable for Europe. So the solution cannot be to just spread out the malaise but to reform Europs asylum policies to one that is based on a regional and first safe country concept. Where money spent on refugees actually reaches the victims of war and persecution and not opportunistic men looking for a better life. Italy should do like Greece and keep migrants offshore so they cannot reach the rest of Europe illegally. Then process and settle them in third countries in their region of origin.

Posted on 8/14/17 | 11:53 AM CEST

European

Bearing in mind your derogatory remarks about Britain wanting to be an independent country again and your passionate defence of all things European I can only assume your account has been hacked

Posted on 8/14/17 | 12:33 PM CEST

@tony

Aint no accounts here bud..

Posted on 8/14/17 | 1:18 PM CEST

other Tony

So youre not paying politico 300$ a month for an account here?

Posted on 8/14/17 | 1:53 PM CEST

@roland Could you please tell us how many millions did you provide to italy? Could you eventually answer? I know about some 60 bns paid by the italian taxpayers to rescue greece and other countries and largely gone to help french and german banks exposed with loans there. Then I know of more money paid by european taxpayers, among which italians, to fund a deal that merkel did with erdogan to stop flows of refugees that didnt involve italy, nothing similar happened for flows from lybia. Could you please point us once and for all which are the generous funds for which we should be grateful?

Posted on 8/14/17 | 2:07 PM CEST

@Filippo

Probably worth remembering that it was BNP-Paribas which triggered the crash 10 years ago when it suspended payments on a couple of its funds because the assets were worth less than their liabilities

Posted on 8/14/17 | 2:14 PM CEST

I suspect the problem was expecting EU to be able to organise a response in the first place. Believing a trading body, with 27 members, all having a different take on this, could come up with a workable solution was never going to work.

Brussels should have said, from the outset, it was not capable of dealing with a huge migrant crisis and stayed out of the disaster.

Countries could then have focused on UN and other agencies to create a workable response.

Problem is EU likes to be the middle man, seen to be vital on the world stage, and will not miss an opportunity to interfere even when it can only make a big mess worse.

It should stick to what it is there for, to enforce trade rules and regulations occasionally, so business do not run amok and try and poison us all with dodgy food and polluting cars.

Posted on 8/14/17 | 2:35 PM CEST

Why does not stop Italy to treat illegal economic migrants as refugees? Asking help from EU for incompetence?

Posted on 8/14/17 | 2:46 PM CEST

Dear Angelino, it works like this: when individuals or even governments act against the will and interests of their people, assisting them would not be called solidarity; it would be complicity. You and your Renziites have taken away Italy from those born there for millennia and given it to illiterate chancers exploiting your weakness and ideological narcissism. Dont even dream about us suffering for your mistakes, or because of the apathy of the Italian electorate in general.

Posted on 8/14/17 | 5:04 PM CEST

@real tony

Good lord, no. I just wonder why they make it so easy to create sock puppet accounts, and masquerade as someone else. Seems like a recipe for vitrolic discourse and divisi

ah ok, I get it now.

Posted on 8/14/17 | 5:27 PM CEST

Hey Italy, arent you aware that Germany is in election campaign ? Wait until the fall, then the German left wing media apparatus will push for everybody welcome 2

burden-sharing mechanism Thats getting ridiculous. Can these politicians explain how this would work ? How will you keep the migrants redistributed to Romania in Romania ? By borders and walls ? Upps in this case youd go against youre own narrative.

Where are migrants taken by Estonia and Czech ? all of them in Germany and Seden, none stayed over there.

Posted on 8/14/17 | 5:34 PM CEST

Talk to Libya yourselves Italy. They need to stand on their own two feet and resolve the problem as they see fit for their country!

Italy is the third biggest country in EU after UK leaves. This position is the position of France when UK was in EU. (germany 1. UK 2. France 3rd.)

Start acting like it!

Posted on 8/14/17 | 6:10 PM CEST

let me explain Italys migration story very clear

1. Italy is ruled by a SOCIALIST government since 2013. since then the italian government supported NGOs & helped them brind in EU as many so called refugees as possible.

2. when Italys SOCIALIST overnment saw that their plan of having a EU wide asylum policy has failed and that the italian people are turning against them they decided to stop all this.

they could have done it since 2014 but they did not want to

Posted on 8/14/17 | 8:11 PM CEST

To Italians, socialist leaders: Guys, you just happen to be on the wrong side of Europe: you are not Poland or Scandinavia. Your are within reach. You are in the first line. Find solutions. Geography is nobodys fault. For decades you have ignored the rule of law and deployed corruption at all levels. Surely migrants can be used by your mafias.

Posted on 8/14/17 | 9:38 PM CEST

Vishnou:

Poland is also on the first line. You probably dont know, but Poland has got borders not only with EU members, but also with Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

Posted on 8/14/17 | 10:32 PM CEST

To assume that Europe is responsible for how the African countries treat their own citizens is ridiculous. How about how the North Korean government treats its citizens? How about how Saudia Arabia denies women their rights? How about how China instituted a one child policy? I could go on and on.

Posted on 8/14/17 | 10:41 PM CEST

Filippo:

Could you remind me who was bombing Libya and is responsible for current state of Libya, for fallen Libya and for current flow of migrants from Africa? Italy is one of the main black characters of that state. You were one of world players that destroyed Libya, Libya that was stopping flow of migrants from central Africa to Europe. Till now, for many years your government was doing NOTHING to stop that flow. EU countries are not responsible for your idiocy. You are responsible for that.

Posted on 8/14/17 | 11:00 PM CEST

Original post:
Italian foreign minister: We've been abandoned by Europe on refugee crisis - POLITICO.eu