Daily Tech News 6 August 2022

Top Story

• Right to jail, right away: How a crypto developer faked an ecosystem. (CoinDesk)
  
  Using eleven different names, one programmer built a multi-layered financial platform on top of the Solana blockchain. At its peak the Saber stablecoin exchange and the services built on top of it had a "total value locked" - TVL - around $7.5 billion, but that involved a lot of double counting.
  
  And no-one knows how much because one of those services - Cashio - got hacked and the whole thing imploded.

  Seven Saber ecosystem users told CoinDesk they felt abandoned by the Macalinao brothers. Some lost money in CASH tokens (the erstwhile stablecoin went to zero). Others say their crypto is stuck in derivative tokens issued by Sunny. One pseudonymous user, Brad_Garlic_Bread, said he lost around $300,000 across Sunny and Saber - "there's a lot of people worse off than me."
  

  The community assumes Ian is running the show "but no one knows for sure," Brad_Garlic_Bread said.

  He's still trying to get Ian's attention. On July 16, Brad asked if Ian "can pretend to be Surya [one of the fake identities] for like a day" to help Sunny Aggregator's investors recover locked tokens. Ian was answering questions in the Saber Discord; he skipped Brad's.

  Other SUNNY token-holders asked Ian for clues about the yield aggregator's future. Saber is moving to Aptos - will Sunny do the same? They asked what became of Sunny's lead developer.

  There is a time to ask questions, and there is a time to file lawsuits and press criminal charges. If these idiots can't work out what time it is, I have little sympathy for them.
  
  More generally, though: If someone offers you an investment opportunity in a "stablecoin", it's a scam. If they promise 17% returns per month, as some of these ventures have done, then it's your own fault if you fall for it.

Tech News

• More people who deserve what they got: Audiophiles are in an uproar after it turned out their precious vinyl was pressed from high-quality digital recordings rather than lower-fidelity analog master tapes. (Washington Post)
  
  They just forgot to mention that part. And their best customers are - unfortunately for them - crazy:

  "One of the reasons they want to excoriate MoFi is for lying," says Howarth. "The other part that bothers them is that they've been listening to digital all along and they're highly invested in believing that any digital step will destroy their experience. And they're wrong."

  If someone charges you thousands - or tens of thousands - of dollars for a hi-fi system that is audibly worse than a $500 shelf system, then it's your own fault if you fall for it.
  
  
  
• Did the NSA and NIST deliberately sabotage cryptography standards? (Cr.yp.to)
  
  The post is rather rambling, but the upshot is they are not responding to FOIA requests and the author has filed suit to uncover what is going on with current efforts to establish quantum cryptography standards.
  
  
  
• That's no moon. That's a kielbasa. (Vice)
  
  Actually in this case it was Proxima Centauri, or rather, not Proxima Centauri but a slice of chorizo.
  
  
  
• Speaking of moons South Korea launched a lunar orbiter yesterday. (Nature)
  
  Using a SpaceX rocket and launching from Florida, but why keep a cow in the kitchen when you can get... I don't know where I'm going with that analogy.
  
  The Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter will take a very leisurely trip the the Moon, arriving in orbit in December.