Friday 24 April 2015

Robot buys drugs with Bitcoins, gets arrested

Turns out that this is an old-ish story, but I only came across it today. The headline alone cracks me up, but the details of the story are just as fantastic.
A group of Swiss artists set up a computer to buy things on the "Darknet" (image what your grandmother thinks the internet is, and you get the idea). It was given an allowance of 100 euros worth of bitcoins, to purchase items at an online market. The items were intended to be part of a future art exhibition, and it seemed to be going swimmingly, until the robot decided to score some ecstasy. At this point the police swooped, confiscating the drugs, a Hungarian passport, a baseball cap with a hidden camera, and other sundry items that the robot had acquired. Eventually most of the items were returned, along with the robot/laptop, and no one was charged as the artists did not intend to use the drugs(!).
Lots of places to find this story btw (just search for variations on the headline) or read one version here.

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