This week a Forbes "contributor" finally gave Ripple's XRP token a look and was shocked to find unbacked pump and dump monopoly money is exactly that with the entire Ripple labs business model hinging on the pump (archived). The same outlet had up through this month been treating Ripple and their XRP token as serious business (archived) despite the Ripple network being dismissed by actual cryptocurrency authorities in 2013 for its severe and inherent defects. Sorry for your loss, but what else were those six years good for anyways?
Category Archives: Domains
Oxford University Suspends "Donor Relationship" With Huawei
Oxford University is refusing to allow new research grants and incoming donations from Chinese alt-Cisco Huawei (archived). The US, UK and other five eyes states object to Huawei's existing for ambiguously declared national security reasons rooted in:
- Huawei equipment handling internet traffic while they would prefer Cisco equipment under their control do the same, and every piece of Huawei kit deployed denies a Cisco machine the opportunity to be racked.
- The Five Eyes are concerned the Chinese goverment may have the same level of control over Huawei kit they have over Cisco.
Oxford however is keeping the donations Huawei made while spending the grants have already taken from Huawei.
DNA Pioneer James Watson Stripped Of Chancellor Emeritus Title Over Afropessimism
James Watson, notable for the discovery of DNA's double helix structure, has been stripped of his Chancellor Emeritus title at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory after repeating the Afropessimist position that saw him pushed from the Chancellor position in 2007 (archived). The 1962 Nobel prize winner was involved in running the laboratory specializing in Genetics research until his forced departure. His replacements are ostacizing him specifically for being:
"gloomy about the prospect of Africa”
As the 2007 incident played out Watson attempted to clarify that his beliefs are informed by the available information on the problem. This latest attack on the 90 year old Watson follows the airing of a PBS documentary where Watson stated he regrets his views hadn't changed at all requiring:
"new knowledge, which says that your nurture is much more important than nature. But I haven’t seen any knowledge. And there’s a difference on the average between blacks and whites on IQ tests. I would say the difference is … it’s genetic.”
Lone University Employed 'Sokal Squared' Author Faces Sanctions As Apparently Academic Journal Editors Are 'Uninformed Human Research Subjects' And Not Human Spam Filters
Peter Boghossian is facing sanctions at Portland State University for his participation in an investigation into the intellectual bankruptcy of contemporary 'academic journals' purporting to publish in the 'social sciences' (archived). The University's institutional review board has determined Boghossian is guilty 'research misconduct' under the guise that academic journal editors being presented candidate papers are 'uninformed human research subjects' when their purported job involves functioning as a sort of meat powered spam filter. The board futher is alleging Boghossian engaged in academic fraud dismissing the core discovery of the investigation, that there are in fact very few checks against the publication of academic fraud in 'prestige journals' by parties less inclined to disclose their deceptions.
SSL Certificate Reseller Leaks Private Keys
The CEO of SSL certificate reseller Trustico emailed the private keys for more than 23,000 keypairs to an employee of their "root authority" as part of a request to have the certificates mass revoked (archived). The identity of the mysterious "CEO" of Trustico has eluded reports though a fellow identifying himself at this time as "product manager Zane Lucas" (WOT:nonperson) has apparently been responsding to press inquiries. At other times in press releases related to Trustico have mentioned a "Zane Lucas, director" (archived). How Trustico acquired customer private keys appears to be related to their now unreachable website having offered an online "private key generator" which it directed customers too.
Island Occupied By US Forces Experiences Major Blackout
Puerto Rico, an unincorporated Caribbean island occupied by United States forces and administered by a puppet Pro-United States government, is experiencing a power outage affecting nearly the entire population of 3.4 million after a power plant fire triggered the near complete failure of the electricity distribution grid on the island. Sorry for your loss.
Most Serene Republic Begins Advertising Public Blockchain Seed Nodes
In preparation for potential improvements to the Bitcoin reference client, citizens of Bitcoin's Most Serene Republic have begun establishing high availability Bitcoin nodes located in datacenters and hosted on dedicated hardware to serve as publicly advertised seed nodes from which Bitcoin users may sync their blockchains and more peers. The improvements to the foundation's reference implementation which spurred this move are the removal of all Domain Name System code from the client to allow an entirely statically built bitcoind as well as the removal of the legacy IRC initial peer discovery mechanism to reduce the attack surface bitcoind presents. Continue reading
France Demands Google Extend "Right to be Forgotten" to Global Domains
The French data protection authority, led by Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, has threatened Google with various penalties including a fine of up to 300,000 Euros unless it extends the removal of search engine results to its global domains. A European court ruling last year decreed that any individual may petition a search engine to manually remove search results pertaining to themselves, under the guise of privacy. Proponents of the ruling have argued that people should not have to be associated with their past, or suffer unpleasant reminders of deeds they've commited or impressions they've made, apparently unconcerned about the fabrication of history to suit personal preferences such outlooks necessarily entail. Continue reading
OKCoin Ver Dispute Escalates
The dispute between OKCoin and Roger Ver over which contract governs an agreement they made regarding the bitcoin.com domain name continues to escalate with Ver's friend and former CTO of OKCoin Changpeng Zhao publicly stating (archive) that he had a gentleman's agreement with Ver which he expected OKCoin to honour after he left the company.
In addition to siding with Ver's version of events, Zhao claims OKCoin has been engaged in an assortment of deceptive conduct regarding the operation of its exchange, specifically: Continue reading
Six Months In, OKCoin Relinquish Control Of Bitcoin.com
Despite a rumoured five year contract between blockchain.info and the owner of bitcoin.com which would see blockchain.info manage the desirable domain name, management of the site was switched to OKCoin in December of last year. At that time OKCoin hoped to build a site which would raise more awareness (archive) about Bitcoin. Six months later, OKCoin has announced it will no longer be managing bitcoin.com due to contractual conflicts with Roger Ver. OKCoin allege Ver responded to the decision to part ways with threats of publicly announcing OKCoin engage in fraud and potential lawsuits. Continue reading