In the News...
Bitcoin and passwords, declared dead, but alive, and Philly homicides
This story in the NYT is just so, modern. It’s about Bitcoin owners who can’t remember their passwords, including a San Francisco programmer, Stefan Thomas, who can’t access his $2,000,000 worth of Bitcoin because he lost the paper he wrote his password on. He’s tried several of his most commonly used passwords with no luck. He’s got two tries left. If he fails then the Bitcoin is lost forever.
Apparently, about 20% of Bitcoin owners have forgotten or lost their passwords. There are companies now that attempt to help owners retrieve their passwords.
Jeanne Pouchain, a Frenchwoman from the Loire Region, has been declared dead, though no death certificate has been issued. Pouchain’s troubles started when a former employee sued Pouchain’s cleaning company, eventually claiming that Pouchain was dead. Subsequently, a series of court proceedings, judicial errors, and bureaucratic nonsense seem to have morphed into Pouchain’s present dilemma of being very much alive, but unable to “prove” it in court. For the last three years, she’s been afraid to leave her house. You can read an AP story here and a Gaurdian story here.
About her attorney’s bid to overturn the judgement, Pouchain’s calls it her “ last chance to recover my life,” she said. The former employee claims that Pouchain pretended to be dead to get out of paying up. Pouchain says her “husband’s grandmother is 102 … she has lived through many things, including the war, but she says she’s never suffered anything as hard as I’ve been through.”
It sounds a bit over the top to say that this is worse than the war, but then I think of dealing with bureaucracies and I have some sympathy for Pouchain. And let’s not forget that the Nazi war machine was many things, including bureaucratic.
In 2020, there were almost 500 homicides in the city of Philadelphia. Unfortunately, 2021 may prove just as deadly. One victim, Milan Loncar, a 25 year old Temple Grad who was walking his dog in Breweytown around 7pm on January 13. Davis Josephus, 20, was arrested after the shooting. He’d recently been released from prison after paying reduced bail. According to Action News, Josephus had paid a a total of $3,200 in reduced bail for carjacking an Uber driver and assaulting and threatening a corrections officer while in custody instead of $32,000.
The reduced bail program in Philadelphia is courtesy of D.A. “Let ‘em go” Larry Krasner. When he ran for DA, Krasner promised to fundamentally transform the criminal justice system in Philadelphia. He has kept that promise. He’s done that partly by sending some gun cases to the diversionary Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD) program. Krasner also ordered his ADAs to ask for cash bail less often and plea bargain more.
Zamar Lee, 7, was shot and killed in West Philly. The alleged shooter had been arrested on a felony gun charge, but Krasner’s office reduced the charges to a misdemeanor which was then pled out to nothing. The shooter was released and a few months later was involved in the shooting death of Zamar.
There must be a middle ground between letting career criminal carjackers out of jail for $1200 and throwing an 18 year old with a bag of weed into jail for 20 years. Sadly, Philly hasn’t found that middle ground yet and so as of yesterday there were 17 homicides. That’s a lot of lives destroyed.