William Franceschine

The latest major technology site to be the victim of hacking is the leading tech blog TechCrunch.com. Other recent hackings of prominent sites include the Twitter.com homepage and Baidu.com, both being replaced with a message by a group calling itself the ‘Iranian Cyber Army’ claiming responsibility. The Tech Crunch attack appears to be a disgruntled reader.

As of right now, 1:26am EST on January 27th, 2009 – this is what is appearing on the TechCrunch.com homepage:

Link to full-size image

The text at the top reads:

So Arrington, how much did all the media coverage yesterday brought you in trough the welcome.html ad you
forced
people to? What a fucking retarded move was that you twat. You should be thanking me and sucking on my fucking ballsack for not deleting everyone on the box and publishing the mysql, if that’s what you want O.K., I can do that. Also, you fucking
dickwads from sites like Yahoo!, BBC and plenty more, where the FUCK do you see adult content on
http://dupedb.com/
???????? I mean honestly, are you fucktards also in just for the money?!?!?!?!

Then it repeats the exact same thing, then you see the Tech Crunch homepage below. We’ll see how long it stays up, I suspect not long.

My first strategy video in more than four years as a professional poker player. These Rush Poker games are amazing and I think I found a pretty awesome strategy to beat them. I’ll let the video speak for itself. You can post any comments or questions here or directly on YouTube. If it gets enough interest I may make some more.

If you don’t have a Full Tilt Poker account yet, make sure you get rakeback when you set one up! I suggest RakeAid.com or Buildaroll.com – both pay out your rakeback weekly and offer the highest allowable percentage, 27%.

Got this in an email from The White House so I assume it is legit. Last report I read said 7,000 already buried in a mass grave and thousands more still missing. Do what to can to help if you are in a position to do so:

Haven’t been blogging much lately but have been updating my Facebook status fairly regularly. Feel free to add me there if you give a shit what I’ve been up to If I don’t know you add a note that you are a blog reader or I may not accept you (get a lot of poker spammers trying to add me).

facebook.com/franceschine

So ya, Facebook is now the #2 site in the World behind Google, according to Alexa. Some people have been referring to it as ‘the other internet’ – I read that 25% of all pageviews in the USA are now on Facebook.com. Pretty insane growth. I’ve had an account since 2004 and in that time have probably used the website once a week or less – usually just replying to messages or friend requests. But in the last few months I’ve gotten hooked. A few of the major reasons:

-A ton of people I do not communicate with online (or regularly) are on Facebook now, and use it a lot – primarily older family members
-Status updates were an awesome feature for them to add – I much prefer using them to Twitter, though I haven’t played with Twitter much yet
-iPhone+Facebook=The nuts. The iPhone app is far better than using Facebook.com, i can take and upload a photo as a status update in less than a minute – and read messages, check status updates etc all with a super sleek user interface + no ads anywhere-and very fast.

In other news I’ve been in Thailand now for nearly six months straight without leaving the country. My longest run, by far, ever. I got an ED (education) visa for attending a Thai language school. I was told I could go to the school or not go and either way I’d be able to keep renewing my visa every three months without the need to leave the country – as every other visa requires you to leave the country every three months and return – this is very awesome. So after two months of attending my school I realized I wasn’t learning anything and the school sucks – so I stopped going. The school said I could keep renewing the visa for 10 years – and when I went to renew it last time they did not check my Thai, so I figured I’d have no issues.

Then this week I read on ThaiVisa.com that they are now cracking down and testing people from their second renewal (the one I have coming up). The questions people are reporting being asked were fairly basic and I think I’ll be able to pass the first test if I go to class a few times in the next month and ask some questions – but this is concerning. If they aren’t stupid (and you can never give the Thai’s credit for not being stupid) they will increase the difficulty of testing from the 2nd to 3rd to 15th renewal etc. Which means I’m going to now have to start going to classes again regularly – at my god awful school.

My other option is to look into another type of Visa – the investment visa pops out at me as a good possibility, though I read I need the US Embassy to certify I have a clean criminal record to qualify for this…yawn…

Other than my visa issues life is good. After my great European debacle earlier this year things have smoothed out nicely. Life gets a bit boring at times in Thailand but I never have any problems. Life is good.

Can’t promise I’ll blog again for awhile so again if you want add me on Facebook and you can catch my regular status updates – if anybody knows how to have those updates automatically post as Wordpress blog posts let me know, I’ll set that up…

Ciao

I just found out today that Andreas Oscarsson, the owner and founder of PokerListings, RakeBrain and numerous other sites, was murdered in Sweden in August, in what was evidently a professional hit. I never had any interactions with Andreas but it is easy to see what most probably happened here. A business deal gone bad. He burned the wrong person and they felt the only recourse was to take his life as revenge. I hope this tragic event will put fear in the hearts of others in the industry to operate their businesses in an ethical manner. If they do, hopefully nothing like this will ever have to happen again.

Dear Mr. Franceschine:

Thank you for writing to me regarding Internet gambling. I appreciate you taking the time to contact me on this important topic, and I welcome the opportunity to respond.

There is no doubt that the Internet and related technologies have had a remarkable effect on the U.S. economy in recent years. The flow of commerce on the Internet has enhanced American industry’s ability to distribute goods economically and efficiently. The continuing development of this technology in California has provided hundreds of thousands of new, well-paying jobs, and I am committed to strengthening online commerce and preserving and expanding this vital job base.

While the advent of the Internet has its benefits, I believe the same cannot be said for Internet-based gambling. Internet gambling has become too easily accessible to minors, subject to fraud and criminal misuse, and too easily used as a tool to evade state gambling laws.

I understand your thoughts on internet gambling, and as you may be aware, I have supported legislation aimed at curbing Internet gambling during my tenure in the Senate. For example, I supported the SAFE Port Act, passed into law as Public Law 109-347, which included the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.

Please know that I have read your letter with interest and value your thoughts. While we do not necessarily agree on this particular topic, be assured that I will certainly keep your thoughts in mind should this issue come before me during the 111th Congress.

Again, thank you for your letter. I hope you will continue to keep me informed on issues of importance to you. If you should have any additional comments or questions, please feel free to contact my Washington, D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841. Best regards.

Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

I bought 5% of the EPT San Remo winner and was only paid 10k of my winnings. Evidently he sold off more than 100% of himself in the tournament and owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to people in my same situation. I’ve been told by a Dutch attorney I can sue him, but the attorney did not want to take up the case. If anybody has any knowledge of the Dutch legal system and would like to assist me in getting my money through the courts, please get in touch.

You can read more about the staking mess here: Constant Rijkenberg

I was pretty much MIA from April to July and while personally things did not go well, my investments didn’t seem to notice and I’ve woken up to a nice heaping pile of cash. I have now more than quadrupled my investment in the stock market and my online businesses have been piling up money with me previously ignoring them completely.

I feel extremely fortunate to have gone through two personal crises in the last 18 months and both times came out squeaky clean financially at the end of both of them.

I still think stocks are cheap and people with liquid assets should get in before it is too late. Here are my holdings;

BAC (Bank of America)
AXP (American Express)
MGM (MGM Mirage)
GE (General Electric)

The graph on them since I picked them up in March is just disgusting, especially Bank of America which I bought at less than $4.00 – it is now over $15.00 per share. GoBama.

Been awhile since I’ve made a poker post – been awhile since I’ve played seriously but I’ve started to again. I’ve got lots of free time now and need something productive to do so I’ve decided to grind. I always thought if all else failed I could just grind 2/4 NL online and make an easy $150 an hour. WRONG!

$0.50/$1.00 NL I am having a hard time with. Nearly every player is at a level where they have read a poker book and played 50,000 hands it seems. There is the occasional donk but they are few and far between. Now it’s all about how to beat competent players and find and exploit their weaknesses.

Stacking people just doesn’t exist now unless its a cooler. AK hardly ever flops an A and goes broke to a set. They are smart and can read hands well – at micro stakes!

If I can keep making $40/hour+ I’ll keep playing just to have something to do but man wtf at how hard the games got! The US needs to regulate and legalize poker, we need those fish and we need them badly.

I’ve been working long and hard for nearly the last year on an amazing website. ThePlayr.com. I’m finished hiding who I am and what I own so here it is:

www.theplayr.com
www.rakeaid.com
www.psmoey.com
poker.wikia.com
www.buildaroll.com

These are all my sites and will all be branded under ThePlayr.com. This site is going to blow every other poker site out of the water as it will be totally free (no more paying for training videos) and offer the best rakeback and bonus rates available.

ThePlayr Poker Wiki alone I think can be the best resource in poker. Mason Malmuth is adamant that the good old posts not be put together in stickies. So we’ll just put them all together on the Wiki. If he wanted I’d probably turn the Wiki over to 2+2 control as he’d be able to recruit more helpers than I, however since they wont even return my emails I don’t think that will happen soon.

Welcome to the new Degen with a new site and doing things the right way. I know a week of being cool isn’t going to prove anything to anybody but you will see. I am here to stay and I’m in line. Prepare to be blown away by ThePlayr.com.ThePlayr T Shirt