[Bobboau]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/02/fbi-shuts-down-silk-road-website/2909023/

if you didn't see this coming a million miles away you are an idiot.

[haloboy100]

Or I've just never head of this "silk road" until now.
Good to see that with the government shut down they can still catch baddies. I guess? Not really sure where I'm going with that.

[yuezhi]

I guess that makes two idiots, myself included

[Lorric]

And me.

So. Has anyone here actually heard of the Silk Road?

[Bobboau]

y'all seriously knew nothing of this? the tor site where you can buy anything illegal from weed to hookers to hit-men?

...you've heard of bitcoins right?

[Herra Tohtori]

Never heard of it before seeing the news about it having been taken down.

[S-99]

Unfortunately, this will be used to demonize bitcoin. Then again, before bitcoin, cold hard cash was demonized the same way. Everyone shifts their sights.

But, keep in mind, as many bad people that use the tor network are just as many good, and gray area people. Most governments use and rely upon the tor network anyhow. The tor network will not just disappear luckily. However, thesilkroad, cool it's gone, but what i've found reading reviews of hitman services (creepy to read), is that more will pop up as simple as an add popping up in a newspaper. People won't take long to find alternatives, especially when easily found on the hidden wiki. So, does the hidden wiki get taken down next?

[Bobboau]

probably, or its left up so gubbamint can find were everyone went just as easily.

[StarSlayer]

I assumed trade between Venice and Beijing had been disrupted.

[Beskargam]

So for someone who has never heard of this before (I just read the npr article on it though) anybody wanna explain the background on this? Also how do you hidden interwebs

[The E]

Silk Road was a website only accessible via TOR that acted as a marketplace for goods of questionable legality in exchange for Bitcoins.

[Dragon]

Good riddance. I wonder, what are they going to do to those thousands buyers and sellers they identified? Are they just gonna put them on NSA's watchlist, or will there be bigger consequences?

[TwentyPercentCooler]

I'm only surprised it took this long. I messed around with TOR as a way to get around various school/work firewalls; it was actually pretty difficult not to give in to my curiosity and load up Silk Road just to see what was on there. The dark web gives me the creeps.

[Beskargam]

Yar, I got that part. Did some research on Wikipedia, got my question answered. Who lays attention in class

[Bobboau]

yeah, don't go there, you click on the wrong link and you have the party van pulling up to your front door.

[Lorric]

y'all seriously knew nothing of this? the tor site where you can buy anything illegal from weed to hookers to hit-men?

...you've heard of bitcoins right?

Why would I know? I don't want any of those things.

Why do you know?

[Luis Dias]

y'all seriously knew nothing of this? the tor site where you can buy anything illegal from weed to hookers to hit-men?

...you've heard of bitcoins right?

You really assume a lot of stuff about us don't you?

Why would I have the need of any of that stuff in the first place for me to "have to know" any of this?

[StarSlayer]

  Feds best not **** with my ****.

[haloboy100]

y'all seriously knew nothing of this? the tor site where you can buy anything illegal from weed to hookers to hit-men?

...you've heard of bitcoins right?

Why would I know? I don't want any of those things.

Why do you know?

Thank you; my questions exactly.
Although I think I heard of bitcoins on the Team Fortress 2 Warehouse site, but I'm assuming it's just a cheap version of paypal for people who are paranoid about paypal (I.E. everyone I know on steam)

Also, never heard of TOR until now, either. I guess it's just a really big VPN with random access nodes? If so, I wonder if the american Netflix has blocked their IPs yet...

[Mongoose]

I'd never heard of this before the story broke myself, and I consider myself at least reasonably informed, so meh.  And all I know of Bitcoins is that they're something of a running joke.