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 …

[Raedwald Bretwalda]

When something is this bad, I wonder if it was an attempted hoax that failed to hoax. That is, their plan was to later claim "we presented word salad BS at BlackHat, and nobody noticed, see how uncritical the hacker community is", but the "nobody noticed" proved to be false.

[rg287]

Crown Sterling?

I can't be the only person hearing "Crown Sterling" and thinking "Stratton Oakmont" can I?

[Ima Ballsy]

Re: Crown Sterling?

Naw .... I keep seeing Crown Royal and reaching for a glass ....

[adam payne]

filed late last week in a New York district court, blames the conference organizers for allowing Black Hat attendees to disrupt Crown Sterling's talk about supposedly disruptive cryptographic technology – a presentation Crown Sterling paid $115,000 to present to hackers. The heckling then spilled online.

They were mean so i'm going to lob sue balls. Talk about throw your toys out of the pram.

[Gonzo wizard]

Oops...

Sounds to me like they should have demonstrated the version without the Streisand Effect extension installed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Barbara Streisand called

She's claiming royalties on use of her effect

[heyrick]

Accurate and Infinite Prime Prediction from Novel Quasi-Prime Analytical Methodology

Uh...

Hmm...

Um...

Okay...

Could somebody please explain in itty bitty baby words what the hell that even means?

[Keven E]

Re: Accurate and Infinite Prime Prediction from Novel Quasi-Prime Analytical Methodology

Would anyone choose "quasi-prime rib" when the prime rib is right next to it?

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Accurate and Infinite Prime Prediction from Novel Quasi-Prime Analytical Methodology

"quasi-prime rib" when the prime rib is right next to it?

"prime rib" is Quality EU Pork Prime Rib

"quasi-prime rib" is American Pork Prime Rib that will get dumped on the UK post BREXIT after Trump and Boris "Pork Pie" Johnson have done a deal.

[Stoneshop]

Re: Accurate and Infinite Prime Prediction from Novel Quasi-Prime Analytical Methodology

I had one of those but the wheels came off

[Brian Miller]

Re: Accurate and Infinite Prime Prediction from Novel Quasi-Prime Analytical Methodology

Just relax, turn on, tune in, use those good Raspberry tabs, and start singing it like Jimi Hendrix... then you'll get the answers... wow...

[Peter Galbavy]

Not sure about the Land of the Free (TM) but isn't "truth" a valid defence against defamation, or is that just in the written form (libel) ?

[d3vy]

Suing the organisers of Blackhat... what could possibly go wrong.

[anonymous boring coward]

No-one could possibly anticipate that a bunch of total nerds and geeks would slag off something they believe is phoney. No way!

I know I would NEVER do that... (OK, perhaps sometimes.)

I'm sure Torvalds would agree with me.

[drankinatty]

Laughable -- Sometimes "The Truth Hurts..."

We all remember the dot-coms with the new "algorithm" that was going to change the world. And we've all watched them implode when it turns out the algorithm was not what it was represented to be (or just downright vaporware in some cases) There are many parallels in "AI". Ironically one of the most overused and misunderstood marketing phrases of the day. The suit by Crown Sterling is more a publicity stunt than an actual suit with merit. The bigger question is why would Black Hat allow presentation of such non-peer reviewed methods that with a cursory mathematics review looks more like Swiss-cheese than some new quantum-leap in cryptographic efficiency. (alas, we all know the answer to that one too -- "for the money", integrity of the conference seems to mean very little when UBM has dollars are waived at it...)