ἰχθύς, wine lover. “Sunny with a chance of Drizzle.”
Sydney, Australia
Joined March 2015
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Drew Starkey retweeted
Snow Ghost is one of my favourite pieces in my Northern Exposure series which is why it ended up with a double page spread in my Intrepid book.
Seeing these guys is very rare as sadly they are on the edge of extinction. Seeing them in near blizzard condition's was a real treat.
One of only three pieces out of 29 still available in Northern Exposure.
Drew Starkey retweeted
"The 'Great Seat' is of gold, its pavement of silver": the dedication of the second court at Medinet Habu, in Breasted's translation (1906).
Added today: 125 inscriptions, mostly visitors' texts on the Colossi, plus Medinet Habu, Ramesseum and Deir el-Bahari.
ALT J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt IV (Chicago 1906), p. 6, §§6–7: the dedication of the second court at Medinet Habu, 'The "Great Seat" is of gold, its pavement of silver, its doors of gold and black granite'. Public domain.
Crypto is effectively dead because what was its the north star - open source code - functioned within human limitations.
That is no longer the case.
Satoshi never envisaged what he thought would set money free would eventually become its achilles heel.
Later today, we are officially ending all remaining support for the Iron Fish network.
A few days ago, we observed abnormal activity involving wIRON and the ChainPort bridge. After working with ChainPort and reviewing their logs, we discovered that the cause was an inflation bug in the Iron Fish blockchain itself.
We traced the bug to a commit from early 2019 in the Merkle tree implementation. The developer at the time implemented a standard Merkle tree. However, because of nuances in how a note’s nullifier is calculated (the mechanism that lets a normal user spend their funds), the attacker was able to spend the same note more than once.
The attacker then compounded the exploit, aggregated their notes, and exited through the ChainPort bridge. This code path was within the scope of both our external and internal audits, but the bug wasn’t caught during review.
For closure, we’ve committed the patch for the exploit, with a detailed postmortem included in the PR, before shutting down and archiving the ironfish repo.
The meta-analysis here is that software that can’t be upgraded immediately (most of crypto), is in an extremely precarious position. The ability to find and exploit vulnerabilities in technically complex code is becoming commoditized. Safety guardrails on US frontier models make it difficult for companies to use them to patch security vulnerabilities, while abliterated open-source models are approaching frontier capabilities.
We wish everyone all the best, and we hope crypto finds a path through this.
Thank you all.
Drew Starkey retweeted
The Binance hacker might have just pulled off one of the smartest moves I’ve seen in crypto.
First, Tether froze $1.5 billion in USDT.
Then Circle froze another $800 million in USDC.
At that point, it looked like the hacker’s money was trapped.
But apparently, he had already planned for that.
Instead of holding the stolen USDT in a wallet, he allegedly deposited it into Aave and used it as collateral to borrow ETH.
Then he walked away.
That’s where the story gets crazy.
Tether can freeze the USDT sitting in the wallet.
But it can’t freeze the ETH he already borrowed.
So now Aave is left holding frozen collateral, while the hacker is sitting on liquid ETH.
And unless the protocol can recover it somehow, he may not even need to pay the loan back.
Two companies froze billions of dollars in seconds.
But someone who understood how to use DeFi may have found a way around both of them.
Pretty insane when you think about it.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The described Aave deposit used only ~60M USDT as collateral to borrow 19,762 WETH before freezes hit the main wallet, not the bulk of funds; Aave states the overcollateralized position is subject to normal liquidation with no material protocol risk.
governance.aave.com/t/binance-hot-…
x.com/binance/status…
drk.vc/news/binance-1…
Drew Starkey retweeted
This is not just a crypto hack.
It's a warning for the entire web.
Banks, governments, hospitals, payment apps..
We've just witnessed firsthand that all of it runs on code that can be exploited.
Security is about to become the most important industry in the world.
AI has killed crypto.
Binance's initial investigation suggests that the security incident may involve a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions. We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak. We will share a detailed technical post-mortem once the investigation is complete and the facts are fully verified.
The estimated total impact sits at around $6.3B. We have worked with blockchain partners to freeze affected assets, with ~$3 billion frozen on-chain so far.
Binance will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and the company’s funds. User funds are safe. We will also publish an updated Proof of Reserves once the remediation is complete.
As an immediate precaution, Binance has:
- temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while security checks are completed;
- revoked the affected address authorisation;
- engaged law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover funds.
Our teams are working around the clock to resolve this issue safely and thoroughly. We are working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of these criminals and bring them to justice.
Please rely only on official Binance channels for updates. Please feel free to contact Binance Customer Support if you have any further questions.
binance.com/en/support/annou…
Drew Starkey retweeted
BREAKING: Department of Infrastructure officials have just confirmed what many suspected: the $6 million federal grant to Marrickville Golf Club in Anthony Albanese’s electorate was not for fixing sewerage issues.
Albanese repeatedly told Parliament and the ABC that the money was to stop raw sewage flowing into the Cooks River during floods.
Officials at Senate estimates were clear: “It does not include sewerage works.”
The actual project, according to departmental briefs, FOI documents and council minutes:
$4.5m went to the clubhouse redevelopment (bar, toilets, pro shop, alfresco dining, dog station)
$1m stormwater harvesting.
$0.5m landscaping/native plantings
The septic/sewage connection was handled separately by a $269,500 NSW Government grant in 2025.
This is the same club where Albanese held an undisclosed honorary membership dating back years, something he says he didn’t know about and never used, despite being caught on camera at the club hundreds of times.
People have been forced to stand down over far less.
Barry O’Farrell resigned as NSW Premier in 2014 after ICAC evidence showed he received a bottle of Penfolds Grange (valued at around $3,000) that he failed to declare and initially denied receiving.
One bottle. One denial. Career over.
Here we have a Prime Minister whose department has contradicted his public statements about a $6 million grant to a club in his own seat, after an undeclared membership was revealed, and he remains in office.
If a bottle of Grange ended a Premier, what standard are we applying now?
I made a cool thing. The subject is a personal hobby of mine but the learning and achieving in doing it was thoroughly satisfying.
Antiquarian finds primary sources and lists them. That it is. It has no position.
It is a of fun. Check it out. Antiquarian.io 🤙
How to read Antiquarian, in pictures:
1. What it is
2. The map and the time slider
3. What to look for: is a name in the stone, or not?
4. Where every source lives
The short tour opens after sign-up and replays any time from the ☰ menu.
antiquarian.io
ALT Tutorial card 1: An evidence atlas of ancient sites. Antiquarian brings together what the stones, marks and texts record at ancient sites, with a source for every statement.
ALT Tutorial card 2: How to use it. Start on the map, tap a marker to open a site, and drag the time slider to see the landscape at other dates.
ALT Tutorial card 3: What to look for. A king is credited only where evidence in the fabric names him; otherwise it reads Unattributed in the fabric.
ALT Tutorial card 4: Where to find the sources. Source chips name the source and page; the ? beside the year shows where that date's map comes from.
Drew Starkey retweeted
Australian rugby league player Cameron Munster speaks up for Australian culture and nationhood.
“We have a lot of big cultures around the game: Samoa, Tonga, Kiwis, PNG, Lebanon.
But we don’t probably don't get spoken about enough - the Aussies - when it comes to culture.
We’re very proud to wear the green and gold.”
Don’t care what anyone says - Daylight Savings rocks. Sunlight at 6:30pm and a bit of warm is paradise.
