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back to article Biz forked out $115k to tout 'Time AI' crypto at Black Hat. Now it sues organizers because hackers heckled it

Crown Sterling, a Newport Beach, California-based biz that calls itself "a leading digital cryptographic firm," is suing UBM, the UK-based owner of the Black Hat USA conference, in America for allegedly violating its sponsorship agreement. The complaint [PDF], filed late last week in a New York district court, blames the …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Yes, music"

    Tom Holt, another fantasist, got there first in Flying Dutch (1991):

    “[W]hen I first invented the computer in seventeen—sixteen ninety-four, the nearest approximation to a letter-free system of abstract notation was written music, and I adapted the principle for my own purposes. Minims, crotchets and quavers each have their own quantitative value in base seven, and as it happens it’s an extremely powerful and flexible system: much better than the binary systems that I used in the first commercial models.” — Professor Montalban who, having discovered the elixir of life, needed to invent the computer and many other things in order to counter its effects.

    14 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "Yes, music"

      Why not just toss the Time Cube at it? Or let amanfrommars present it?

      21 0 Reply
      1. Youngone Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: "Yes, music"

        I would pay money to listen to amanfrommars explain the Time Cube.

        28 0 Reply
        1. J. Cook Silver badge
          Reply Icon
          Go

          Re: "Yes, music"

          As would I.

          5 0 Reply
          1. ds6 Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: "Yes, music"

            Hear hear!

            5 0 Reply
  2. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Toys from pram moment?

    Sounds like it. Sore losers sue critics, real engineers prove their critics wrong. If you talk rot at any science conference, you will get negative reactions. These may vary depending on your seniority, with more senior people drawing a lot more flak than e.g. starting PhD students. Much also depends on the level of arrogance on display. Trot out nonsense while projecting a "listen to me, I am a genius" attitude, and you will be in for a very rough ride.

    56 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Toys from pram moment?

      Probably they hoped for a softer audience at Black Hat than at a scientific conference... but probably they should have presented it at Worldcon....

      W. Crusher: "Captain! Those are quantum-entangled keys!"

      Data: "Captain, play your pipe to feed a disentanglement algorithm while I modify the warp field to move back in time!"

      Q appears: "How little do you mortals understand time. Must you be so constant, Jean-Luc? In Q-universe constants are not constants!".

      In other news: MagicLeap buys Crown Sterling technology to deliver encrypted VR.

      42 0 Reply
      1. fidodogbreath
        Reply Icon

        Re: Toys from pram moment?

        Probably they hoped for a softer audience at Black Hat than at a scientific conference... but probably they should have presented it at Worldcon

        Or Comic-Con.

        15 0 Reply
        1. Steve K
          Reply Icon

          Re: Toys from pram moment?

          .. as Clown Sterling?

          5 0 Reply
          1. Androgynous Cupboard Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: Toys from pram moment?

            Clown Sterling? Is that what they're calling our currency these days?

            5 0 Reply
    2. fidodogbreath
      Reply Icon

      Re: Toys from pram moment?

      All they had to do was demonstrate that they could use their technology to break 2048-bit RSA, as they claimed. By which I mean, unknown (to them) encrypted data sets provided by outside parties with no connection to their company. Prove it or STFU.

      30 0 Reply
      1. Tomato42
        Reply Icon

        Re: Toys from pram moment?

        They could even go the route of researchers behind ROBOT and provide a signature using a key they clearly don't control: the one used for www.google.com should be good enough; of a message that they clearly do – that I leave to their imagination.

        0 0 Reply
    3. Michael Wojcik Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Toys from pram moment?

      Hey, they're going to prove their critics wrong. They're just having some problems getting the demo system running, as it uses a novel quantum processor technology based on the EmDrive and is powered by an ECAT.

      0 0 Reply
  3. GrumpenKraut
    Facepalm

    Junk "science"

    It is worth reading the article just to get a taste for what this kind of nonsense looks like when about primes. You can get tons of truly terrible and deeply deluded articles form http://vixra.org/ (intentionally no an active link).

    Btw. I do not think that everybody can post to arxiv.org, at least it didn't use to be the case. Cannot find anything pertinent at https://arxiv.org/help/submit, though.

    3 0 Reply
    1. Joe W Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Boffin

      Re: Junk "science"

      The paper is distributed through preprint server ArXiv, which accepts submissions, without peer review, from anyone who chooses to register.

      Ah, so it is not a paper, which has to be peer reviewed (oh, and accepted to go into review before that), then accepted and finally published. Otherwise it counts as "other publication", like the sci-fi "novel" you wrote when you were 14 and that was a cheap knock-off of Star Wars (but which has, in fact, not been published, like the stuff on ArXiv).

      10 0 Reply
      1. GrumpenKraut
        Reply Icon

        Re: Junk "science"

        Technically you are correct. But if you compare good arxiv "preprints" with published versions you'll find that many have only very minor changes. Some are changed into a worse form (two-column layout tends to screw things up). Bad preprints appear nowhere else or (unchanged) in one of those crap-journals.

        These observation are from math and compsci articles.

        6 0 Reply
        1. doublelayer Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: Junk "science"

          "Technically you are correct. But if you compare good arxiv "preprints" with published versions you'll find that many have only very minor changes."

          In general, Wikipedia provides a useful, comprehensive, well-researched, and balanced summary of pretty much every topic. It's a great start for gaining some basic knowledge about something. And if I want to, I can go in and mess it all up. So can a lot of other people, so there's always some chance that the page you see there has been recently vandalized to contain incorrect information. Similarly, Arxiv is a great resource, given it allows members of the public to access papers without having to pay a journal that isn't actually doing the important part, and for that I'm quite grateful. Still, Arxiv can be polluted by useless documents, too. I haven't read the "paper" produced by these people, and I don't intend to, but just because they've posted it on a mostly reputable site doesn't mean that its contents are of any use to anyone.

          18 2 Reply
          1. GrumpenKraut
            Reply Icon

            Re: Junk "science"

            Maybe I need to clarify: I do not say "on arxiv" ==> "good". The paper is a fine example for "sadly, there are some crap preprints on arxiv".

            I consider it my responsibility as a researcher to be able to tell good articles form bad ones.

            In the other direction, if you want an example of a reputable journal spiraling into barking madness, lookup "Chaos and Fractals" from Elsevier. I also have seen enough "why the heck was this accepted" articles in top-tier journals to not blindly assume "good journal" ==> "good article".

            8 0 Reply
            1. GrumpenKraut
              Reply Icon

              Re: Junk "science"

              Correction: "Chaos and Fractals" should have been "Chaos, Solitons & Fractals", here is the Wikipedia paragraph on it.

              1 0 Reply
          2. Cederic Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: Junk "science"

            Wikipedia has been proven to be flawed, skewed and intentionally biased on almost anything political, or that people pushing political agendas feel will support them.

            Its quality is sadly falling year by year. Use it only to learn terms and find references, then conduct your own research to find the truth.

            8 10 Reply
            1. Danny Boyd
              Reply Icon

              Re: Junk "science"

              @Cederic:

              Please ping me when you find truth in politics. I need to see that.

              15 0 Reply
      2. DCFusor
        Reply Icon
        Facepalm

        Re: Junk "science"

        Peer review is often utterly fake nowadays. People have gotten pets, relatives etc as reviewers. It was already bad enough when it was presumably legit scientists, but all in the academic same "club" patting each other on the back...

        And then there's this, just one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ras_VYgA77Q

        (Defcon testing peer review)

        Junk science is all over, and the old attempts to cure it don't work. Fraud abounds. Plenty of people get quite a few papers in before being discovered as total frauds.

        At this point, the old "appeal to authority" is revealed as the BS it always was.

        https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fake+science+journals

        4 0 Reply
    2. Joe W Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Junk "science"

      Stopped reading with the first spelling mistake "deviser" - but thanks anyway.

      4 0 Reply
      1. GrumpenKraut
        Reply Icon
        Trollface

        Re: Junk "science"

        > Stopped reading with the first spelling mistake "deviser"

        Oh, you are so negative! May I suggest the fine article titled "Three Principles of Akkie Management": http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=35542

        Authentic scirp.org quality, you'll be not disappointed.

        4 0 Reply
      2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Junk "science"

        You mean "their lack of any deviser but themselves"? It could be a typo for "divisor", sure; but the authors could also mean that prime numbers created themselves, as some sort of class of numerical auto-ontological demiurges.

        That would make as much sense as anything else in the paper.

        Hell, just the abstract is painful. Sure, I'll be reading a number-theory paper from a couple of authors who aren't familiar with the term "composite". Very plausible.

        But, really, this paper is a gift that keeps on giving. Guys, did you know that "the last digit of any prime number can only be 1, 3, 7 or 9"?!! (Except for 2, I guess, though the authors may not be aware that 2 is a prime number.) And this is (according to the paper) somehow a property of primes, and not of base-10 representation! And many other things which are astonishing, assuming you are a competent student of mathematics at no more than the introduction-to-algebra level, and have never before given these matters much thought!

        3 0 Reply
    3. NLCSGRV
      Reply Icon

      Re: Junk "science"

      It certainly reads like prime BS.

      1 0 Reply
  4. GrumpenKraut
    Mushroom

    Exploding BS-meters, part 1729

    From https://timeai.io/

    "TIME AI™ is a dynamic non-factor based quantum encryption utilizing multidimensional encryption technology including time, music’s infinite variability, artificial intelligence, and most notably mathematical constants to generate entangled key pairs."

    12 0 Reply
    1. Pete4000uk
      Reply Icon

      Re: Exploding BS-meters, part 1729

      BINGO!

      Where do I collect my £5?

      13 0 Reply
      1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Exploding BS-meters, part 1729

        Darn, I only have 'blockchain' left on my card.

        19 0 Reply
        1. GrumpenKraut
          Reply Icon
          Devil

          Re: Exploding BS-meters, part 1729

          Come on! Paradigm shift, synergy, etc. etc.

          Excuse me while I shoot myself.

          13 0 Reply
          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Exploding BS-meters, part 1729

            Only if you promise to be very humane. And take a whole lot of BS merchants with you.

            4 0 Reply
            1. GrumpenKraut
              Reply Icon
              Angel

              Re: Exploding BS-meters, part 1729

              > And take a whole lot of BS merchants with you.

              And I'll make them pay for it! As in "death as a service" (DaaS).

              3 0 Reply
      2. GrumpenKraut
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        Re: Exploding BS-meters, part 1729

        > Where do I collect my £5?

        You get 0.5, which is the fractal value of 5.

        P.S.: that guy actually really honestly, no, I am not making this up, uses "fractal value" for value divided by ten. May god have mercy with his soul.

        20 0 Reply
    2. IceC0ld
      Reply Icon

      Re: Exploding BS-meters, part 1729

      T - ime

      I - n

      T - his

      S - etup

      U - nusually

      P - recocious

      4 0 Reply
  5. alain williams Silver badge

    Crown Sterling wants is $115k back

    It was, presumably, hoping for more than $115k in profit from sales.

    If Crown Sterling's product is the nonsense that their detractors say it is - will Crown Sterling give those who bought it their money back ?

    I thought not.

    9 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      BTW: why the company is called Crown Sterling?

      To make it sound as something that makes noble metals eggs? Or maybe they pivoted from making AI teapots, using proprietary teabags and dried water?

      3 0 Reply
      1. rg287
        Reply Icon

        Re: BTW: why the company is called Crown Sterling?

        To be honest, I thought "Crown Sterling" put it in a very similar category to other young organisations trying to make themselves sound established, grand and reliable - respected investment broker Stratton Oakmont comes to mind...

        1 0 Reply
  6. Mike 125

    quick, hide.

    https://www.crownsterling.io

    Enjoy the Matrix visuals- classic.

    Then go down and follow 'Meet the Team'

    'Page not found'

    That'll be 'Team not found'.

    13 0 Reply
    1. Chris G
      Reply Icon

      Re: quick, hide.

      The Time AI video is fascinating, I have bookmarked it in the Sci-fi and fantasy folder on my browser.

      4 0 Reply
    2. Steve K
      Reply Icon

      Re: quick, hide.

      That’s not the Matrix, that’s the Lowenbrau logo with a chrome finish.....

      (As someone observed on an ArsTechnica thread)

      10 0 Reply
      1. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Happy

        Re: quick, hide.

        Bloody hell!

        You're correct.

        And they thought no one would notice?

        // saved money on whalesong, I guess....

        1 0 Reply
    3. Commswonk
      Reply Icon

      Re: quick, hide.

      Then go down and follow 'Meet the Team'

      The link to the Management Team seems to work... unfortunately. I discovered that one Joseph J Hopkins is a thought leader, and as I had just had lunch seeing that nearly cost me a keyboard.

      How simply ghastly. If for a moment I had an inkling I might be a "thought leader" then the last thing I would do would be to tell everyone about it.

      25 0 Reply
      1. Stork Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: quick, hide.

        I haven't looked, do they also have a vision director?

        6 0 Reply
        1. mics39
          Reply Icon
          Happy

          Re: quick, hide.

          But I’m available as chief aromatherapist.

          11 0 Reply
          1. J. Cook Silver badge
            Reply Icon
            Coat

            Re: quick, hide.

            And if you load me up on beans and cabbage, I will be a superior gas producer.

            Mine's the one with the gas mask.

            5 0 Reply
    4. Grooke
      Reply Icon

      Re: quick, hide.

      Also from the site:

      "This video content is available for general informational and promotional purposes only. It is not intended to be, nor shall it be taken as, a technical exposition, description, or warranty with respect to the features or capabilities of TIME AI."

      7 0 Reply
      1. Wayland
        Reply Icon

        Re: quick, hide.

        Translation: "This video is purely bullshit"

        12 0 Reply
    5. fidodogbreath
      Reply Icon
      Holmes

      Re: quick, hide.

      'Page not found'

      Obviously the quantum entanglement between there and the real team page became disentangled. Duh.

      0 0 Reply
  7. Harry Stottle

    Look into my eyes

    not around my eyes, into my eyes... 3,2,1, you're under...

    I predict that video will attract a cult following among geeks who collect the finer examples of fermented snake oil.

    Have you noticed there is a common feel to most of the popular snake oil presentations. They are obviously aimed at anyone EXCEPT the very people they really need to persuade, should what they're peddling have any chance of being anything more than fantasy. They're peppered with scientific jargon but in a naive and pseudo-scientific way; slick and PR glossy, with no sign of ironic awareness of the enormous gaffs or gaps they inevitably expose.

    Their ideal target is the kind of consumer who NEEDS something they desire to be true, but cannot find any academic support for their desired truth. There are hundreds of examples in homeopathy and quack medicine generally. More dangerously, this approach also appeals to authoritarians (leaders and followers); for example, the myriad politicians who insist on "secure" back-doors to encryption.

    The difficulty for those of us less easily hypnotised is that proving this kind of negative (your argument is bullshit) is MUCH more difficult than the presentation itself and much harder to follow and understand; as illustrated by Mark C's excellent demolition paper (my favourite line from which is: Thus, this method is simply the following: “skip the even numbers")

    18 0 Reply
    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Look into my eyes

      "They are obviously aimed at anyone EXCEPT the very people they really need to persuade"

      Not really. They're aimed at management who'll have made their minds up before anyonewho'd go WTF! gets anywhere near it.

      5 0 Reply

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