“Strangers connecting through Tor could bypass spam and privacy protections on thousands of bitcoin nodes because the software treated them as trusted computers. Bitcoin Core published a formal security advisory on Tuesday, about 13 months after releasing a fix. The code change had been public on GitHub since September 2025, under a title explicitly saying whitelist permissions should not apply to incoming Tor connections. The flaw was one of three developers disclosed Tuesday, all patched in releases issued last October. Another could leave a mining node unable to build blocks until its operator restarted it.” (11/12/26)
“Politics and government have long been muddied by a chicken-or-egg issue. Which came first, people with good morals or the just institutions that nurture good people? Economist and social theorist Deirdre N. McCloskey surprised me, just a bit, by coming down hard on one side of the question last week. ‘It is ethics, good or bad, that guides pretty much all human relationships, from a marriage or a small circle of friends to a sports team, a business, or a nation-state,’ she wrote, adding that ‘well-designed laws, courts, catechisms, extrinsic motives, social approval, and even a few good and decent people are of no avail if too many people do not behave like self-respecting and other-respecting adults.’ While this sure seems true, I note that her fellow economists have been preaching the preeminence of proper incentives and disincentives to channel good outcomes. For a long, long time.” (11/11/26)
“Iran has claimed a strike on Didamar, a small rocky island belonging to Oman at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, according to reports on Tuesday. Iran’s military said that personnel on the island were ‘helping the flow of oil smuggling by the enemy’. An unnamed official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy told Iranian state media that navigational aid systems in the south of the Strait of Hormuz were destroyed. The official added that no vessels that Iran considers unauthorised passed through the route overnight. Oman confirmed that a loud explosion was detected at the base on the island.” (11/11/26)
“Joel Webbon has a six-year plan to usher in the first Christian-nationalist president, and he’s sticking to it. Although some on the far right were shaken by last week’s rout of Republicans at the polls, seeing it as a setback for their own agenda, Webbon told me last week that he sees it as validation. Conveniently enough, the first phase of Webbon’s plan required that Republicans lose the midterms, getting rejected by voters after starting a wildly unpopular war that exacerbated the cost-of-living crisis. … Phase 2: Recruiting James Fishback to run in the 2028 Republican presidential primary. Fishback is a 31-year-old Floridian who ran a racist and anti-Semitic campaign in an unsuccessful GOP primary bid to be Florida’s governor. … Fishback would be too young to meet the minimum presidential age of 35, but that does not matter to Webbon, because victory is not the point.” (11/11/26)
“Hundreds of schools across Italy were evacuated on Wednesday after bomb threats were sent to about 6,300 institutions, becoming the latest in a series of incidents targeting infrastructure across Europe. Schools in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland also received emails Wednesday, although police warned these were likely hoaxes and education facilities were not evacuated. … Last week, a string of hoax bomb threats disrupted dozens of flights and targeted media organizations across the continent. And in the last few weeks, cyberattacks have hit supermarket refrigeration systems in France, Sweden, Belgium and Ireland.” (11/11/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Ross Clark
“This week it seems that another Net Zero domino will fall. The Government is reported to be on the point of announcing that the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate, which lays down targets for the sale of new cars, will be watered down. This follows a consultation launched in August. At present, manufacturers are under an obligation to ensure that a rising percentage of their vehicles are pure electric or else face punitive fines of up to £12,000 for every petrol and diesel vehicle they sell over the limit. … The UK car industry is falling well short of the targets, in spite of offering large incentives on electric vehicles. 26.6% of new cars sold in Britain so far this year have been pure electric. The industry also fell short of the 22% and 28% targets in 2024 and 2025 but largely avoided fines because of get-out clauses which made some allowance for increased hybrid sales.” (11/11/26)
“Every political coalition falls apart eventually, unless you’re running the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan or something. Barack Obama’s 2008 win led Democrats into some dizzy daydreams about a ‘permanent’ majority that Republicans could only temporarily defeat. ‘Obama doesn’t need right-leaning whites anymore,’ Ron Brownstein wrote in 2013, after Democrats won a second presidential election with a minority of white voters but a supermajority of non-whites. For a long time, both parties wondered if Trump had built something sturdier than that. … But neither theory of the electorate worked without voters who believed their vote was protecting their way of life – culture and costs.” (11/11/26)
“The White House has issued a warning to Democrats over their planned probes into the Trump administration, going as far as claiming that such investigations — a standard oversight function of Congress — may amount to ‘blatant criminality.’ White House counsel Will Scharf issued the warning in a letter dated Monday to Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. Garcia most likely would chair the powerful panel in the new Democratic-controlled Congress that is seated in January. Garcia warned Trump officials to ‘lawyer up’ after his party’s stunning victories in last weeks midterm elections. … Garcia said in response to the letter that ‘it appears Donald Trump has something to hide’ and stressed that Congress’s investigative powers do not need the ‘permission of the White House.'” (11/11/26)