dunning-krugerrands - jwz

Emphasis on "Con"

jwz — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:47:54 +0000

There don't seem to be any photos of this guy, so I guess the press is just gonna finger this presumably-innocent Santa. But is any Santa truly innocent?

SantaCon promoter arrested for charity fraud:

Stefan Pildes [...] allegedly diverted funds from the event to a "slush fund" to pay for extensive renovations to a lakefront property in New Jersey, luxury vacations in Hawaii, Las Vegas, and Vail, Colorado, concert tickets, extravagant meals, and a luxury vehicle, prosecutors said.
About $124,000 of the SantaCon funds were spent toward leasing a luxury apartment in Manhattan, and another $100,000 was invested in a boutique resort in Costa Rica founded by a friend of Pildes, the indictment said. [...]
"More than a third of the organization's total giving during that period went to groups or individuals who appear connected to Burning Man, the annual weeklong festival in Nevada, including organizations devoted to hula hooping, dance parades, free costumes and more," Gothamist reported. [...]
In 2018, Participatory Safety "lost $17,498 worth of investments it made in cryptocurrencies -- equal to about a third of its charitable giving that year," Gothamist reported. "More than $832,000 of the money raised from SantaCon programming -- or 59% -- went to the nonprofit's expenses, not including its charitable grants."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Blade Runners needed

jwz — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 02:53:27 +0000

How do I find a drug dealer who will sell me these dank Canadian vaccine doses? Without needing to risk crossing a border myself. Will I need to use cryptocurrency for this, since buying illegal drugs is still the only use case for Dunning-Krugerrands? (Oh, that and paying ransoms.)

News releases from both Pfizer and Moderna say the new mRNA shots will target the LP.8.1 variant, a descendant of Omicron:

Moderna says it will manufacture vaccine doses for the Canadian market in its new facility in Laval, Quebec and syringes will be filled in Cambridge, Ontario. Both Pfizer's vaccine -- called Comirnaty -- and Moderna's shot -- called Spikevax -- are approved for adults and children six months of age and older.

Update: Welp. Trump and RFK Jr. to Ban COVID-19 Vaccine 'Within Months'.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

I'm gonna need you to take some personal responsibility for that data center.

jwz — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 18:41:41 +0000

The UK National Drought Group offers this helpful advice:

How to save water at home:

Install a rain butt to collect rainwater to use in the garden.
Fix a leaking toilet -- leaky loos can waste 200-400 litres a day.
Use water from the kitchen to water your plants.
Avoid watering your lawn -- brown grass will grow back healthy.
Turn off the taps when brushing teeth or shaving.
Take shorter showers.
Delete old emails and pictures as data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

I wonder what Blockchain Rasputin has been up to lately:

jwz — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 20:37:00 +0000

Jack Dorsey says his 'secure' new Bitchat app has not been tested for security.

Security researcher Alex Radocea found that it's possible to impersonate someone else and trick a person's contacts into thinking they are talking to the legitimate contact. [...]
"Security is a great feature to have for going viral. But a basic sanity check, like, do the identity keys actually do any cryptography, would be a very obvious thing to test when building something like this." [...]
Referring to his and other people's findings, Radocea criticized Dorsey's warning that Bitchat has not been tested for security.
"I'd argue it has received external security review, and it's not looking good," he said.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

How to reduce the spread of crypto

jwz — Sun, 04 May 2025 10:20:50 +0000

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Signal

jwz — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 20:07:36 +0000

Because of the ongoing fucktastrophe, the cries of "Use SIGNAL!" are constant and unavoidable. And I get it, it may be the least-bad option in a sea of terrible options. If, that is, you choose to ignore the advice of "don't use your phone for that shit" (the Stringer Bell Rule).

But out of curiosity, because I haven't been keeping up, has the Signal Corporation addressed:

The fact that they are shilling a climate-incinerating cryptocurrency ponzi scheme right inside the Signal app;
The fact that there are no interoperable third-party implementations, or even third-party builds/distributions of the Signal app, because the Signal Corporation abuses Trademark law to legally prohibit anyone from doing so;
The fact that one cannot sign up for Signal without giving them your telephone number;
The fact that when you do sign up, they will spam your name to everyone who has your number in their contacts;
The fact that if you allow it access to your contacts, they will spam your phone number to those people too;
The fact that there is no way to verify that the iOS Signal app downloaded from Apple is not backdoored.

Asking for a friend who is everybody.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Crypto Bro buys historic cash-only beer-nerd bar to turn it into a memecoin.

jwz — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 23:54:36 +0000

"Orion Parrott", ladies and gentlemen:

He previously worked as a systems engineer at defense contractor Raytheon, led a Y combinator-backed tech company, and was a partner for a real estate fund. [...]
"Thrilled to share my own personal project in this private channel of Chads!" [...]
Something smells off to fans of the bar, as Parrott also plans to "kickstart a token ecosystem" named ToronadoCash. In the VC chat group, he asks for investors to form a $250,000 "liquidity pool," which he describes as "a rare insider opportunity for core team & friends."
"I think it's probably antithetic to the impression I had of the bar," said a source with knowledge of the deal. "It's emblematic of a larger problem in San Francisco: tech bros coming in and buying a 40-year-old institution and making a coin out of it and all that stuff." [...]
Parrott kept his plans for the bar close to the chest. But a recent post on his Twitter account offers a glimpse of his feelings about the takeover of beloved institutions by private investors:
"The US federal closure of many scientific and academic institutions, though a travesty, is a phenomenal business opportunity for privatizing and decentralizing valuable public goods and services."

(Sorry, I meant "Orion Parrott Dot Eth".)

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Credit card

jwz — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 01:30:39 +0000

Welp, my credit card finally got popped. I think that's the first time this has happened to me! There were about $2k worth of charges over about a six week period, mostly to Blizzard, Steam, EA and some other game shit, mostly $49 each. They also tried and failed to buy cryptocurrency, which is what finally triggered a fraud alert.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

The Network State Coup is Happening Right Now

jwz — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 00:26:55 +0000

The Nerd Reich:

Elon Musk's attempt to destroy the United States government isn't random chaos. It's the methodical execution of the "network state" blueprint. [...]
Everything Elon Musk and his tech cronies are doing to our government is what Balaji Srinivasan spelled out in his network state cult manifestos -- a tech CEO takeover of government, the purging of institutions, the rise of crypto corruption as a dominant economic force, the quest for new territory. But nobody wants to talk about it.
For those of you who are new to this newsletter, I spent last year writing a New Republic series on the network state. Sadly, everything spelled out in those stories is happening now. What Musk and Marc Andreessen are doing to our government is precisely what Srinivasan envisioned. A purge of Democrats, a merging of tech and right-wing forces to remake government and media institutions. Some reporters now observe that Musk is doing to the government what he did to Twitter, but Srinivasan was way ahead of them: [...]
Musk's DOGE is a rebranding of Curtis Yarvin's RAGE (Retire All Government Employees). This is what's behind the buyout offers, firings, and elimination of entire departments. The strategy: Purge the government of civil servants and replace them with those loyal to a dictator. It's about gutting democratic institutions from the inside out and turning them into something else.

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"I prefer to meet people where they are" says reasonable-sounding white dude holding court at a table in the back of a Nazi Bar, redux.

jwz — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 20:50:42 +0000

There are people out there apparently seriously proposing to spend over thirty million dollars, and an uncountable amount of labor, to adversarially interoperate with Blue Sky.

Blue Sky has thus far duped the stenographers of the tech media that it is an "open" protocol that will interoperate "some day".
This is a lie. They will never do this. It will never be in their financial interest.
If someone else does it for them "for free", they will just take credit for it and their lie will never be exposed. You might as well donate directly to their marketing department.
By doing this, these well-meaning idiots will have worked as volunteer labor providing free material support to a for-profit corporation composed entirely of fascists, cryptogrifters and TESCREAL lunatics.
Once the Blue Sky folks decide that interoperability is bad actually, they can just unilaterally turn it off. Remember when Google and Facebook strangled Jabber / XMPP by just deciding "Nah, we're not gonna federate any more"? Pepperidge Farms remembers.

"Oh no, but those poor Blue Sky users, when the service becomes even more terrible they might lose all their posts. We must save them from their own bad decisions!"

Oh dear. How sad. Nevermind.

It's Cory. This time the guy holding court is Cory.

Sorry, but you are just stultifyingly wrong on this one. Welcome them to the oblivion of their own making. Nothing of value will have been lost.

BTW, the Kickstarter for Pixelfed and Loops, the actually-open, ActivityPub based clones of Instagram and TikTok, just hit $35,000 in its first 13 hours. The creator of Mastodon just ceded control to a new non-profit. That's how you do it. By spending money to build free things for the public interest out in the open, not by tithing your money, labor and attention directly to VC-funded for-profit corporations.

Update: Cryptogrifters gonna cryptogrift:

Jonny: Everyone who distrusted Free Our Feeds was 100% right but in a more hilarious way than anyone anticipated: what if we take the bluesky firehose.... and put it on a blockchain.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Bitcoin Tulips

jwz — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 19:51:47 +0000

Because irony is dead, a Dutch tulip farmer is heating their greenhouse with Bitcoin mining:

The servers in turn are powered by solar energy from the roof, reducing the normally huge electricity costs for mining, and cutting its potential impact on the environment.

Because the most efficient way to run a solar powered greenhouse is to use GPUs as electric heaters. Seems legit.

By reducing natural gas dependence and using renewable electricity, the setup at the greenhouse is helping the environment, according to de Groot. "This operation is actually carbon negative, as are all the operations I basically build," he says. "We're actually improving the environment".
He is also selling tulips online for Bitcoin.

Carbon negative you say! That's amazing! Somehow this rack of GPUs is taking CO₂ out of the atmosphere and sequestering it underground as synthetic diamonds! Call the Nobel committee.

There are six servers operating at the greenhouse, whose exact location Koning asked to keep secret to avoid thieves targeting the €15,000 machines.

Jason Bourne out here fantasizing about growing tulips in the Sealand data center.

Bert de Groot, owner of Bitcoin Brabant, explained it's because the processors in this computer are constantly trying to guess a random number and that produces some heat".

That's... not how this works.

BTW, while looking for a second source for this story (there isn't one, this article seems to be recycled stenography from a 2022 press release) I came across an article claiming that the Tulip Bubble was good actually. So that's where we are.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

"I prefer to meet people where they are" says reasonable-sounding white dude holding court at a table in the back of a Nazi Bar.

jwz — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 19:11:10 +0000

It's Bluesky. The Nazi Bar is Bluesky.

"Now that Dorsey has bailed as a board member and principal funder, Bluesky's DNA is basically [TESCREAL / Effective Altruist] people. It gets worse. Blockchain Capital LLC was co-founded by Steve Bannon pal Brock Pierce, a major crypto advocate, perennial presidential candidate, and close friend of Eric Adams. Pierce has dozens of other shady MAGA/Russia ties as well."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Bluesky now owned by crypto-grifters

jwz — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 19:52:03 +0000

My "we will not hyperfinancialize the social experience through tokens, crypto trading or NFTs" t-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my t-shirt.

No not that crypto-grifter. These are different crypto-grifters:

We're excited to announce that we've raised a $15 million Series A financing led by Blockchain Capital [...] This does not change the fact that the Bluesky app and the AT Protocol do not use blockchains or cryptocurrency, and we will not hyperfinancialize the social experience (through tokens, crypto trading, NFTs, etc.). To ensure we and our users benefit fully from this expertise, partner Kinjal Shah will join our board.

If you are hitching your wagon to Blew Sky, you are a god damned idiot who has learned nothing. Nothing.

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Gravatar Dunning-Krugerrands

jwz — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 20:41:32 +0000

Automattic's self-immolation continues apace. They are about to find out that pivoting from "here's some mildly-convenient free image hosting to put an avatar on your email address" to "Enterprise-ready, planet-incinerating cryptocurrency grift" is not going to go the way that they think it will.

Today might be a good day to install my "Mirror Gravatar" WordPress plugin, before the mass exodus.

Gravatar blog: "Mastering Decentralized Identity for Business":

The internet is evolving into Web 3.0, with a shift that brings decentralized applications and services to the forefront. [...]
Blockchain technology is fundamental to decentralized identity systems. Here's why: [...]
For instance, Ethereum's smart contract functionality lets you create complex identity management systems that operate autonomously and transparently.

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Crypto mining as audio weapon

jwz — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 20:25:08 +0000

Inside the Nightmare Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town:

None of them knew what, exactly, was causing these symptoms. But they all shared a singular grievance: a dull aural hum had crept into their lives, which growled or roared depending on the time of day, rattling their windows and rendering them unable to sleep. The hum, local law enforcement had learned, was emanating from a Bitcoin mining facility that had recently moved into the area -- and was exceeding legal noise ordinances on a daily basis. [...]
The dust, it turns out, was just a prelude to the noise. In order to cool the machines, the site's operators attached thousands of fans to the containers, which churned constantly, emitting a vicious buzz. As more machines were switched on, the noise sounded like a ceiling fan, then a leaf blower, then a jet engine. It consumed afternoon dog walks and revved through cloudless nights, vibrating the trailer homes of many of the low-income residents who live blocks from the facility. [...]
The level of noise is appalling to Dr. Thomas Münzel, a German cardiologist who is a leader in the growing field of scientific researchers measuring the impact of urban and industrial noise on humans. For the last 15 years, Münzel has studied how transportation and urban noise, especially at night, can be debilitating stressors on the heart, brain, and cardiovascular systems. In one study, he exposed young, healthy students to noise events up to 63 decibels, and found that their vascular function diminished after just a single night. In other studies, he's found that nighttime noise pollution directly leads to heart failure and molecular changes in the brain, which may lead to impaired cognitive development of children and make some people more prone to developing dementia.
"The European Environmental Agency tells us that everything above 55 decibels is making us sick," he says. The fact that the Granbury Bitcoin mine is emitting 70 or even 90 decibels on a nightly basis is "like torture," he says. "The most spectacular cardiovascular diseases will develop. They have to stop the machines."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

I weep for the future

jwz — Wed, 08 May 2024 01:49:41 +0000

Last night, a friend I thought would know better was telling me how excited they were about "AI". My gesticulating ten minute response hit points such as: fraud at scale, fruit of the poisonous tree, VCs with sunk costs in Chinese GPU manufacturers who saw their cryptocurrency scams dissolving, data centers with ocean-boiling climate impact larger than some countries, and the wholesale destruction of the entire concept of objective truth.

Their response was a Marge Simpson-like, "I just think it's neat."

I had not ranted as such length since... last week... when...

...when another acquaintance I thought would know better told me how they were now Ayn Rand-curious and that the books are not what I thought they were (spoiler: the books are exactly what I think they are.) "Why are you calling her a fascist?" they asked. "Explain to me how, in her financialized worldview, she would argue against putting cripples into ovens." "Well, but, but..."

"Also", I added, "This edgelord 'Just Asking Questions' posture you're adopting is Not a Good Look given that we're probably less than a year away from brownshirts executing immigrants in the street."

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Post dot news dot womp dot womp

jwz — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 21:57:02 +0000

"Post dot news", the Andreessen-funded cryptocurrency grift masquerading as a social network, that considered dunking on billionaires to be hate speech, and that created fake "placeholder" accounts to try and get their users to bully news organizations into signing up... is shutting down.

Something something "incredible journey".

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Let's check in on how Kickstarter's "pivot to blockchain" worked out

jwz — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 00:09:05 +0000

David Gerard:

Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform. You put up a planned creative work, get pledges, and Kickstarter takes a percentage. This is pretty simple. There are very few ways to mess it up.
One way you can mess it up is to go into growth-at-any-cost mode and do stupid things for the sake of funding.
In December 2021, Kickstarter announced that it was pivoting to blockchain! Nobody had any idea what this meant -- including Kickstarter, who couldn't advance a single coherent reason, let alone a plan. Users revolted. [...]
Why did Kickstarter do something so stupid? It turns out that Andreessen Horowitz, through their a16z Crypto unit, promised to buy $100 million of early Kickstarter investors' shares in return for 25% of the company -- if Kickstarter would just say they were adopting "blockchain." [...]
Kickstarter was profitable before this. But they didn't have a path to cancer-like growth at all costs. So they went along with a16z's blockchain promotion.
Kickstarter had refused to recognize a union at the company in 2019 and illegally fired two of the union organizers. Kickstarter finally did recognize the union, but also had massive layoffs because so many creators had left the platform due to Kickstarter's efforts not to recognize the union. They preferred to destroy their profitable company rather than allow a union to gain the slightest toehold.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Some Andreesen-Horowitz Crypto-Bro bloviates on a vision of Fascist San Francisco

jwz — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 19:10:52 +0000

I hesitate to even give oxygen to a story like this, but it's just so fucking whack-a-doodle. It sounds a parody, or an April Fools joke, or a stand-up comic doing a tour with "triggered" in its name, but apparently people like Balaji Srinivasan and Garry Tan are saying shit like this out loud and not getting laughed out of the room.

Balaji Srinivasan, ladies and gentlemen:

Like some mustache-twirling cartoon villain, the main tech figure behind the Network State cult lays out a "roadmap" for an authoritarian future in which San Francisco Democrats ("Blues") and poor people are barred from entire parts of the city.
Tech loyalists ("Grays") will don Gray shirts, carry Gray ID cards (for swiping into the Gray sectors of town). They will also hold weekly banquets for Gray police officers (cops who have confessed their loyalty to tech). And they'll march in "Gray Pride Parades" featuring "drones flying overhead in formation." [...]
B.S., a former partner at Andreesen-Horowitz and former chief technology officer of Coinbase, wrote an entire book called "The Network State: How to Start a New Country." Tech oligarchs like Marc Andreesen hold him in high regard and consider him some kind of genius oracle. His book outlines how tech billionaires can seize more economic and political power by establishing new sovereign territories under their control. [...]
[A] huge win would be a Gray Pride Parade with 50,000 Grays, that would be massive. That would start, to say: "Whose streets? Our streets!" You have the AI Flying Spaghetti Monster. You have the Bitcoin parade. You have the drones flying overhead in formation ... You have bubbling genetic experiments on beakers. You have the laser eyes, you know, Bitcoin maximalist ... You have the police at the Gray Pride Parade. They're flying the drones, they are there and, ideally, you know, you even design the police uniforms. [...]
B.S. is basically using a Civil War analogy to describe his plan for San Francisco. It's the Blues (Union) vs the Grays (tech authoritarians). The Grays wish to secede from Blue society and establish their own form of tech confederacy. This is bizarre imagery to apply to your own political movement, but either B.S. is totally clueless or he's doing it on purpose.

Someone watched that episode about the Bell Riots and thought, "But wouldn't it be cool to be the baddies?"

Sure, podcasts gonna podcast, but when a billionaire tells you who they are, believe them.

Update: More on this monster: The Tech Baron Seeking to “Ethnically Cleanse” San Francisco:

A normal person could easily mistake his rambling train wrecks of thought for a crackpot’s ravings, but influential Silicon Valley billionaires regard him as a genius. "Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met," wrote Marc Andreessen.

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All my apes are blind

jwz — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 20:35:15 +0000

Web3 is Going Just Great: "All this time I thought the lasers were going in the other direction."

Bored Ape collectors attending an ApeFest party in Hong Kong have now been subjected to the kind of eye pain the rest of us have felt for years having to look at their hideous, pricey JPEGs.
The going theory is that event organizers skimped on lighting costs by using UV lights intended for sanitization, not for entertainment, causing burns to the eyes and skin. The eye condition, photokeratitis, is better known as "snow blindness" or "welder's flash", as it more typically affects people who haven't worn proper eye protection while welding or while exposed to sunlight reflected from ice and snow.
Several attendees reported having to seek emergency medical treatment after experiencing excruciating eye pain and vision problems, and tweet threads began circulating giving various other ApeFest attendees advice on recovering from the painful condition.
Bored Ape creator Yuga Labs belatedly issued a tweet two days after the incident, claiming only a small fraction of attendees had experienced "eye-related issues", but encouraging anyone with symptoms to "seek medical attention just in case".

Update: Funranium on the Scorched Ape Eye Club:

Having now had a chance to take a look at the likely culprit, assuming a repetition of the previous incident, all I can say is You Completely Irresponsible Fucks. I am having flashbacks to yelling at Naomi Wu for irresponsible deployment of germicidal UV designs in 2020. [...]
This particular lamp is meant to be mounted in a sterilization unit. The kind of thing where you wheel it into a specially designed surgical suite full of equipment SPECIFICALLY CHOSEN such that bleach and UV-C don’t cause them to quickly degrade, shoo the humans out of the room, lock the door, and run it for an hour. [...]
We have to do serious planning for germicidal things to make sure it works. Putting this lamp in the club certainly would have made things fluoresce and look awesome, no question there. But it was also slowly roasting everyone’s corneas, much like being unprotected on the surface of Mars or the Moon. [...]
Trying to sterilize surfaces with UV-C pretty much anywhere outside of a surgical suite is dumb. If we want to reduce airborne transmission, we need to do air sterilization. To effectively do that we need lamps powerful enough to work on air flowing through ducts at speed. We do not want to share space with a UV-C air sterilizer because we like to see with our eyeballs. The UV-C equivalent of the little fly killing lamps aren’t quite gonna cut it, you’re gonna need big fuckers. So, just do it in the HVAC system.
Maybe we’ll stop having Legionella outbreaks too.

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The best way to profit from AI:

jwz — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 21:03:24 +0000

Be Anguilla:

$30 million from domains may not sound like a lot compared to the billions thrown around in AI these days, but with a total land area of 35 square miles and a population of 15,753, Anguilla isn't complaining. Registrars like GoDaddy must pay Anguilla a fixed price -- $140 for a two-year registration -- and the prices are rising due to demand.
Anguilla brought in a mere $7.4 million from .ai domain registrations in 2021, but all that changed with the release of ChatGPT last year. [...] Vince Cate, who has managed the ".ai" domain for Anguilla for decades, said that .ai registrations have effectively doubled in the past year. "Since November 30, things are very different here".

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

Crypto will make you shit blood

jwz — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 05:25:28 +0000

Neither Lauren Boebert nor Marc Andreessen were immediately available for comment.

Unprecedented diarrheal outbreak erupts in UK as cases spike 3x above usual:

The UK is experiencing a dramatic outbreak -- unprecedented in scale and magnitude -- of diarrheal illnesses from the intestinal parasite, Cryptosporidium, aka Crypto. [...]
The officials sent out a standardized questionnaire on possible exposures to those who tested positive for Crypto. [...]
Though we don't know what's behind the UK's startling gush of cases, we do have a solid handle on how Crypto is spread generally. The microscopic parasites infect the human intestines, causing watery diarrhea. After infection, hardy, thick-walled forms of the parasites (oocysts) are shed in feces. Parasite shedding begins with symptoms but can last for weeks after they've cleared. The parasite spreads onward via a stomach-churning fecal-oral route. This can happen through various fecal contamination routes -- contaminated hands, surfaces, soil, foods, water -- that end in ingestion.

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Doom Loop FTW!

jwz — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 05:22:57 +0000

The Salesforce NFT restaurant is dead!

Sorry, did I say "restaurant"? I meant "global experiential hospitality platform".

"Despite a strong demand for the concept with millions of dollars in both pre-sold and reserved memberships (despite multiple requests for refunds due to job uncertainty or loss), we ultimately could not address the many concerns brought about by potential investors, most of which have been around the future of SF and the rising costs of constructing the restaurant." [...]
Sigel blamed "macro level" factors including "labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, geopolitical uncertainty, and inflation" for an increase in construction costs, leading to the group's inability to continue with the project. [...]
Sigel touted Sho Group's commitment to NFT-based memberships, which he argued would help offset construction costs [...] There were supposed to be 3,275 Sho Club NFT memberships, according to the group's website: 2,878 slots for the $7,500 "Earth" membership tier, 377 slots for the $15,000 "Water" membership tier, and 20 slots for the $300,000 "Fire" membership tier. The memberships would bestow special privileges and perks, and could be resold on OpenSea, an NFT marketplace. [...]
"Over the past few months, we have received an overwhelming amount of enthusiasm and interest," Sigel wrote to prospective members in an October 2022 email SFGATE obtained via a public records request. "... We will begin selling memberships to the public in late October / early November."
That did not happen. In early 2023, Sigel claimed to prospective investors that he had decided to sell about 100 NFT memberships as part of a pre-sale. There have been no social media posts from any of Sho Group's accounts since late September of last year.
[Their last post] includes the handshake emoji, linking the words "hospitality" with "Blockchain & Web3."

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

I liked it better when he had me blocked

jwz — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 18:25:45 +0000

And the award for most poorly-targeted spam email goes to...

The desperation is palpable. The grifters pivot from "crypto" to "AI", and as the rats' milk returns to the sewer, the cycle of life is complete.

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Favorite tech innovation

jwz — Wed, 17 May 2023 20:35:32 +0000

adamkotsko:

What's your favorite tech innovation?

16%
Illegal cab company

12.2%
Illegal hotel chain

38%
Fake money for criminals

33.9%
Plagiarism machine
37,872 votes

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New Tech Bingo

jwz — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 00:39:42 +0000

_benui:

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My 50 most popular blog posts in 2022

jwz — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 19:19:22 +0000

50: "dot eth" pseudo-domains about to go offline because domain owner is in prison

49: Star Trek Mad Science (2016)

48: Dyson Snot Cannon

47: Following the money

46: Great Moments in Taxonomy

45: Last man standing in the floppy disk business

44: Gigantic Pentagram Found in Kazakhstan (2013?)

43: Y2038

42: Neoliberal John Snow

41: So, how was your day?

40: A Series of Tubes

39: Today in "Google broke email"

38: Hive Social got popped already

37: Cursed

36: Dazzle is very in right now (2021)

35: Let's Cross This One Off Your List

34: Wherein our staff are assaulted

33: Episode Seven

32: Using your own domain as a Mastodon handle

31: Shell

30: PSA: backups (2007!)

29: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver (2016, still true)

28: Playing old PS3 games

27: They Live and the secret history of the Mozilla logo (2016)

26: Instagram: How not to do messaging

25: How to fix social media

24: XScreenSaver was released 30 years ago

23: White Power Milk (2012??)

22: Signal hops on the Dunning-Krugerrand bandwagon (2021)

21: Ceiling Roomba is watching you poop

20: IRS login makes you take a selfie for this security company you've never heard of

19: Lauren Boebert will make you shit blood (2021)

18: export TERM=aaa-60 (2016)

17: I told you so, 2021 edition (2021)

16: Wherein we have surveillance footage

15: Watch a VC use my name to sell a con (2011, timely again)

14: The Web3 Fraud

13: Wherein nobody's boosted, and nobody believes that Long COVID exists

12: Every day I learn something new... and stupid (2010!!)

11: Today in Landfill Capitalism (2018)

10: COVID risk assessment

9: Mastodon and federation

8: Mastodon is going great

7: Wherein we surrender unconditionally to the coronavirus

6: Mastodon stampede

5: Mozilla blinked

4: On blocking, and the coinsplaining cryptobros

3: Forbidden Knowledge: Teaching Crabs How To Read (2019??)

2: PSA: Do Not Use Services That Hate The Internet

1: Today on Sick Sad World: How The Cryptobros Have Fallen

This year I didn't omit posts not made in 2022, because there were a few pretty old ones making a comeback tour for some reason...

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Portland Startup to Mine Artisanal Bitcoin Using Only Slide Rules and Graph Paper

jwz — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 20:55:08 +0000

"Herbal notes."

"We feel that crypto has abandoned the early days of organic blockchain crafting when bored math geeks would mine 10 Bitcoins in an afternoon and then blow it all on IPAs and pizza later that night," said 26-year-old Hash & Moon co-founder Cody Silas.
"Today's Bitcoin investor is savvy and looking for a hand-crafted crypto currency to launder money or pay to have someone eliminated. We are the only hyper-locally sourced, sustainable option for that."
His co-founder Oliver Heath said their approach cuts down the giant carbon footprint of Bitcoin servers with more sustainable ways to play into fashionably legal crypto-Ponzi schemes.
"Dedicated crypto-mining computers use as much electricity in one year as the entire country of Argentina," said Heath. "Our approach gets back to the basics, using bearded mathematicians sitting at a desk cranking out answers to artificial problems, powered 100 percent by avocado toast, ethically sourced kombucha and acai bowls."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Cryptocurrency in Popular Culture [Citation Needed]

jwz — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 18:33:38 +0000

I was watching a mediocre teen comedy and it contained not one but two jokes about cryptocurrency!

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. Being popular is an illusion. Like a magic trick, or cryptocurrency. You just have to believe in it. And then they will too.

And later:

Her uncle invented that crypto banking app, Money Grab. It's an app that's like a bank. But instead of going to an actual bank, you go to the app and like... grab money.
[sighs] No, Bree, it's an actual bank. It's just, like, the money that isn't real. Anyway, it'll be sick for the party.

So that's what presumably-Millennial screenwriters think Gen Z have to say about it.

"Claim your account"

jwz — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 20:12:00 +0000

"Post dot news", the Andreessen-funded probable cryptocurrency grift masquerading as a social network that I busted on yesterday (and that considers dunking on billionaires to be hate speech) is creating fake "placeholder" accounts to try and get their users to bully news organizations into signing up.

This is the kind of shit that Yelp regularly does.

Hey, remember in 2020 when Yelp decided to non-consensually funnel more business to their partner Gofundme by creating a "fundraiser" for your business whether you wanted one or not?

SF Bar Owner to Yelp: "Fuck All of These People Entirely".

Hey, remember my 2012 long-form art project entitled, "I would like my business to not be listed on Yelp"? Part 1, Part 2.

Good times, good times.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.