Free Talk Live

Did the Seasteading Institute just get a technological boost? Gizmag reports that the FLOATEC Project has invented a new floating house/city technology targeted for the Netherlands and Italy, but perhaps this gives the Free State Project the competition needed to accelerate the pace toward 20,000? The article doesn't mention either the Seasteading Institute or the FSP, but it appears to be another useful way for the freedom-loving Seasteading Institute to realize their vision.

A flood of top-end properties are hitting the market as businessmen seek to leave France before stiff tax hikes hit, real estate agents and financial advisors say. "It's nearly a general panic. Some 400 to 500 residences worth more than one million euros ($1.3 million) have come onto the Paris market

Bugeon said he was seeing start-up entrepreneurs looking to move their headquarters out of France and taking their families with them.

This week, Blueseed, the planned startup community on a ship, received seed funding from leading venture capitalists. Backers include Floodgate Fund, Correlation Ventures, and Xu Xiaoping and Wang Qiang of Chinese investment fund ZhenFund.

Arizona lawmakers on Tuesday passed one of the toughest pieces of immigration-enforcement legislation in the country, which would make it a violation of state law to be in the U.S. without proper documentation. It would also grant police the power to stop and verify the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being illegal.

PGP Founder's new startup, from http://www.buzzfeed.com/tommywilhelm/why-is-the-government-afraid-of-thi...

ayPal has increased the cost of chargebacks from $10 to $20. For refunds, PayPal will refund the 2.99% but will KEEP the 30 cent transaction fee. This is a mandatory non negotiable change in your policy, effective August 2010.

American Express rates for PayPal Website Payments Pro and Virtual Terminal Merchants will jump from a variable between 2.2% to 2.9% to an astronomical 3.5%. This is a mandatory non negotiable change in your policy, effective October 2010.

A driver of a white Prius with a giant, red plastic flag affixed to its side is rolling through the hilly streets of San Francisco, undelivering mail from mailboxes. The driver is not a thief. He and the car are part of a startup called Outbox that is attempting to pick up where the embattled United States Postal Service leaves off -- by digitizing physical mail. The driver, dubbed an "unpostman," visits Outbox subscribers' homes three times a week.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Monday key parts of an Arizona law that sought to deter illegal immigration, but let stand a controversial provision that lets police check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws. In a decision sure to ripple across the political landscape in a presidential election year, the court's 5-3 ruling upheld the authority of the federal government to set immigration policy and laws. "The national government has significant power to regulate immigration," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

I maintain that a government ban on bitcoin would be about as effective as alcohol prohibition was in the 1920s. Government prohibition doesn’t even do a good job of keeping drugs out of prisons. The demand for an item, in this case digital cash with user-defined levels of privacy, does not simply evaporate in the face of a jurisdictional ban. One could even make the case that it becomes stronger because an official recognition that Bitcoin is not only a “renegade” currency but a “so-effective-it-had-to-be-banned” currency would imbue the cryptographic money with larger than life qualities.