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(credit: Trader Tim)

About a week ago, colleagues were sending me copies of a Medium post ricocheting all over the Internet: a crucial Bitcoin developer, Mike Hearn, was calling it quits. The announcement unsurprisingly spawned media speculation and opinion pieces with headlines like, "RIP Bitcoin, it’s time to move on." Bitcoin’s trading price in US dollars fell by about 10 percent in about 24 hours.

But take it from an admitted Bitcoin skeptic—the cryptocurrency isn’t anywhere close to being dead. At least, it's not dying anytime soon.

Hearn is certainly much more knowledgeable about Bitcoin than I am, and he outlines a compelling case for why Bitcoin is in crisis. I hadn’t known, for example, that the blockchain is controlled by a majority of miners based in China where outbound international traffic has high latency. I didn’t realize there’s a huge drag on completing Bitcoin-based transactions. And after reading Hearn’s previous piece arguing in favor of the Bitcoin XT fork, I didn’t realize so many people hated the idea. Users wanted the term banned entirely from a prominent Bitcoin forum.

(credit: Steven Guzzardi)

A federal appeals court has upheld the evidence that lead to the conviction of a Florida man who was sentenced last year to 10 years in prison for accessing a Tor-enabled child porn site, PedoBook.

Lawyers representing Joshua Welch argued on appeal that because prosecutors did not adequately provide him notification of a warrant that enabled investigators to deploy a "network investigative technique," (NIT) that the subsequent evidence should be tossed. Last week, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the United States District Court of Nebraska's previous ruling in US v. Welch, finding that Welch could not show that he was "prejudiced by the violation or that the investigators recklessly disregarded proper procedure."

The NIT, as Ars has reported previously, is a type of malware designed to unmask Tor users by using a Flash-based exploit. When deployed, it reveals a Tor users' true IP, which through a subpoena can be used to identify a particular person. (This particular Tor vulnerability that allowed the NIT to operate was fixed in 2013.)

Razer added to its wearable collection at CES not with a smartwatch but with "a watch that's smart." That's how the company bills its new Nabu Watch, a G-Shock-esque device that doesn't have any bling but is big enough to catch everyone's eyes. It's a full chronograph timepiece with a digital display in addition to a secondary ticker screen for smartphone notifications. On top of that, it tracks daily activity as well.

The Nabu Watch is Razer's way of getting into the smartwatch world while still staying true to its customer base by making devices that are "by gamers, for gamers." The watch certainly embraces the same aesthetic of Razer's other products—jet black with bright lime green detailing. At $149, though, the Nabu Watch might be best suited for the Razer-obsessed. It's lackluster for everyone else.

Design: An acquired taste

Razer channels Casio's ostentatious yet iconic G-Shock line of watches with its Nabu Watch. I like big watches in general, but this one looks hilarious on my small wrist. It's bulky with a number of raised, oblong accents that make it look like something a post-apocalyptic video game character would wear.