What's going on with Epik and Rob Monster?

[MapleDots]

I'm catching the tail end of this, seems to be some kind of controversy...

https://domaingang.com/domain-news/rob-monster-off-twitter-after-christchurch-massacre-controversy/

Must be something odd to evoke this type of a response from one of our members.

 

[NameLlama]

I doubt many Christians take it seriously

 

[Rob Monster]

I doubt many Christians take it seriously

I think a lot more do than you probably realize. I think those who deeply investigate matters will just find more validation that the Biblical history is substantiated by the archaeological record.

For example, you can go to Borsippa, Iraq and walk on the site of the Tower of Babel, in Borsippa. You can perhaps pick up a brick that Nimrod used to build the Tower of Babel.



The footprint of the structure covered as much as 100 square miles, with the achieved height perhaps multiple miles high. We are talking 6 Burj Khalifa's! Some 600,000 men spent 43 years building it.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2279-babel-tower-of

If you want to go down that rabbit hole, it is a worthy one. There is an excellent teaching here:

Anyway, regardless of what you believe happened to that tower, it was there and suffice it to say that the Babylonian Freemasons had serious engineering and material sciences skills.

 

[Tia Wood]

“Babylonian Freemasons had serious engineering and material sciences skills.”

Science. It Matters Until It Doesn’t™

 

[Rob Monster]

Science. It Matters Until It Doesn’t™

Science. It matters until it is determined to be nonsense. (fixed it for you)

In all seriousness, I am a fan of science.

Alexander Fleming gave humanity disease mitigation through penicillin. It was a breakthrough that saved lives and remains a cost-effective remedy for bacterial infection.

Charles Darwin gave humanity the theory of evolution that made people think that they evolved from nothing and are only a better version of a monkey thanks to being better at killing than getting killed.

I would argue that Fleming did humanity a service.

I would argue that Darwin did humanity a disservice. In fact, there are many who believe that Darwin disavowed his own theory before he died. You can look that up on your own.

While Fleming used science to extend and improve lives, Darwin introduced a myth that made life disposable. After all, killing the weak ones will make the future ones stronger per the Darwinian world view.

While there is observable "survival of the fittest", I am 100% certain that humans did not evolve from monkeys. I am also sure that the earth is not a meaningless speck in a vast expanding universe.

All that said, I remain a fan of science, and also of scientists who have integrity. Unfortunately, many scientists lack integrity, which is why they willingly cooperate in defending nonsense.

 

[Tia Wood]

You forgot the trademark sign.

 

[Rob Monster]

You forgot the trademark sign.

FWIW, my version was in the public domain.

 

[NameLlama]

Sounds like you probably don't understand anything about evolution. Or are you messing with us, as frank-germany seemed to say
Evolution occurs in bacteria too.. That's why antibiotics can stop being effective..

But I would like to sound one note of warning. Penicillin is to all intents and purposes non-poisonous so there is no need to worry about giving an overdose and poisoning the patient. There may be a danger, though, in underdosage. It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them,and the same thing has occasionally happened in the body.The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops. Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.
Alexander Fleming
Nobel Lecture 1945
https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/fleming-lecture.pdf

In a 1945 interview with The New York Times, Alexander Fleming, who won a Nobel Prize that year for his discovery of pencillin, warned that misuse of the drug could result in selection for resistant bacteria. True to this prediction, resistance began to emerge within 10 years of the widescale introduction of penicillin. Indeed, although antibiotics have transformed the medical response to bacterial illness and rendered easily treatable many formerly deadly infections, the mishandling and misprescription of these drugs have transformed the bacterial population such that many antibiotics have partially or entirely lost their efficacy. The problem is severe enough that many experts believe the value of existing antibiotic therapies over the next 100 years is now uncertain. However, some also believe that with a proper response to the current trend in antibiotic resistance, these drugs might once again serve their original function.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2702430/

 

[Rob Monster]

Rob, what are your thoughts on transgender people? And do you believe there are more than two genders?

Dear Tia,

You sure bring the softball questions.

I will be candid:

Biologically and anatomically, there are males and females. They can be easily identified through genetic testing, in the unlikely event that the identifying sex organs don't make it obvious.

God is not the author of confusion (See 1 Corinthians 4:33) and had discrete genders in mind. For example, I believe God's ideal woman is described in Proverbs 31.

As for the gender spectrum, we have free will (Galatians 6:7-8), there is the notion of a "reprobate mind" (see Romans 1:32) and there is a Satan that "sifts us as wheat" (see Luke 22:31).

That being said, we are told to judge nobody (1 Corinthians 4:5) and to love everybody (Matthew 22:39). That is what I try to do. I believe I do it with sincerity.

Where it gets more difficult for me is when society enables or even encourages (pre-pubescent) children to initiate a surgical gender-change. It is happening more often, and I can't see much good coming from it.

 

[Tia Wood]

The point I was trying to make by asking those questions is either science is relevant or it isn’t.

So why chose to ignore science on some things but not others?

How do you know when to trust science and when to not? When it seems to confirm the Bible? Isn’t that just a biased view?

To use science when it aligns with how you want to see the world and fill the rest in with some kind of weird philosophy? Because that isn't science.

I used to do the same thing when I was a believer. But you get so far into the rabbit hole you discover the two actually conflict to a point that you have no choice but to pick a side.

Which side do you chose? None of my business. But if you are going to be intellectually honest, either you have to mostly ignore science and stick to the bible or you have to mostly ignore the bible and stick to science.

It's okay to say you are faith based. I would actually respect that a lot more than to see someone use science sometimes and then sometimes not to explain conspiracy theories.

 

[frank-germany]

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/04/politics/fbi-director-wray-white-supremacy/index.html


FBI director says white supremacy is a 'persistent, pervasive threat' to the US
Updated 1527 GMT (2327 HKT) April 4, 2019
Source: CNN

Tapper fact-checks Trump on white nationalist threat 01:02
Washington (CNN)FBI Director Christopher Wray said Thursday that white supremacy presents a "persistent" and "pervasive" threat to the United States, breaking from President Donald Trump, who has sidestepped questions of whether white nationalists present a growing problem.

"The danger. I think, of white supremacists, violent extremism or another kind of extremism is of course significant," Wray said at a House hearing. "We assess that it is a persistent, pervasive threat. We tackle it both through our joint terrorism task forces on the domestic terrorism side as well as through our civil rights program on the civil side through hate crime enforcement."
Wray also spoke out against hate crimes and was asked by Democrats what the FBI was doing to crack down on hate crimes, which they say have ticked up during Trump's presidency.
"We are determined not to tolerate hate-filled violence in our communities, so we're going to aggressively investigate those cases," Wray said, adding that there has been an increase in "the reporting of hate crimes," but that this doesn't automatically mean more hate crimes were happening. FBI efforts to encourage the public to report hate crimes could be yielding benefits, he said.
These comments aren't exactly in line with what Trump has said about the topic of white nationalism. Trump, who appointed Wray in 2017, has downplayed the danger of white nationalism and even praised some of the Nazi sympathizers who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia.
After the New Zealand mosque massacre last month, where a right-wing extremist killed 50 Muslim worshippers, Trump said he didn't consider white nationalism to be a rising global threat.
"I think it's a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess," Trump said.
Muslim advocacy groups in the US said after the tragedy that they would hold Trump responsible for any increase in Islamophobic attacks. An FBI assessment released last year found that there was a 17% spike in reports of hate crime incidents in 2017, compared to 2016.
Trump and his allies have pushed back on accusations that he is soft on white nationalism and that his rhetoric fuels a dangerous climate for minorities. After the New Zealand attacks, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said, "the President is not a white supremacist."

 

[carob]

HI re Tia's comments to Rob Monster - domain owners may not yet have seen the implications for them of Rob's beliefs:

The point I was trying to make by asking those questions is either science is relevant or it isn’t.

So why chose to ignore science on some things but not others?

How do you know when to trust science and when to not? When it seems to confirm the Bible? Isn’t that just a biased view?

To use science when it aligns with how you want to see the world and fill the rest in with some kind of weird philosophy? Because that isn't science.

Selectively believing in science can lead to some weird decisions:
"I didn't keep database backups because I don't believe in electrons, sorry we lost your data on what domains you own and what you paid and what credit you had."

Also as we know from an employee post on here, Epik do delete domains on moral rather than strictly legal terms and Rob Monster is the one deciding that and Epik's ToS allow that.

So Rob Monster could delete any and all domains at Epik at any time.

Just imagine, Rob Monster wakes up one day, sees a bright light and a voice says "The Rapture is today". So Rob decides it is time to delete all domains to cleanse the world for the Second Coming and deletes all domains at Epik.

Once you hit the delete button on a domain it can't be restored, it will drop. Unless I guess maybe there is some divine intervention.

 

[Tia Wood]

That’s a bit extreme and I don’t think he’s that stupid or blind.

There are many faith based people running businesses responsibley just fine.

Do I think Rob is a bad person? No.

Do I think he is a white supremist? No. Not yet at least. I am afraid he might head there though with enough conspiracy theories.

Do I think he’s in over his head? Absolutely.

WatchMask “engineers” couldn’t take 5 minutes to ensure it wasn’t pulling from amazon and Cloudflare services? It took me two seconds to figure that out.

Meanwhile he’s encouraging gab and namepros users to use it while supposed to be Cloudflare free.

Namepros users probably don’t care too much about that but I guarantee you the client base Epik seems to be attracting does and they’ll want to be 1000% confident you’re on top of your game and they are not going to be forgiving about that.

Then shows a misunderstanding about what IPFS is. It’s not a file format. It’s an Internet protocol.

So we have alt right being hosted (multiple sites growing and being targeted as the client base, not just gab)

Mixed in with technologies that don’t seem to be quite ready yet.

From a technical standpoint, I really admire the effort and I understand what is trying to be accomplished.

From a business standpoint, mixed in with the CEO being very vocal about devisive, controversial topics, I am just very confused as to how this is a smart business move.

UNLESS you are okay targeting a specific client base and okay with alienating the rest?

Because in that case: just admit it. I think that’s what irks people the most.

Had you just come out and said something like that then I wouldn’t be in this thread still.

 

[Tia Wood]

From a technical standpoint, I really admire the effort and I understand what is trying to be accomplished.

Wanted to clarify this a bit more:

From a technical standpoint, I really admire the effort and I understand what is trying to be accomplished with privacy and anonymity. These are services that the internet needs as a whole for everyone.

But you can't tell me that if you were to host Antifa or any extreme left leaning group like that, that your crowd is going to be okay with that and that right there is the problem. And because of your public posts on personal opinions that you've plastered all over the place, you've made it all that much harder.

You've also made it harder for the "free speech" defense because people can clearly see by what you've posted how you align with things.

It just doesn't look good but I wish you the best. I hope you do accomplish what you are trying to do with privacy and anonymity services. But I also hope you learn from this experience and consider a better, more careful approach in the future.

Best of luck.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

That’s a bit extreme and I don’t think he’s that stupid or blind.

There are many faith based people running businesses responsibley just fine.

Do I think Rob is a bad person? No.

Do I think he is a white supremist? No. Not yet at least. I am afraid he might head there though with enough conspiracy theories.

Do I think he’s in over his head? Absolutely.

WatchMask “engineers” couldn’t take 5 minutes to ensure it wasn’t pulling from amazon and Cloudflare services? It took me two seconds to figure that out.

Meanwhile he’s encouraging gab and namepros users to use it while supposed to be Cloudflare free.

Namepros users probably don’t care too much about that but I guarantee you the client base Epik seems to be attracting does and they’ll want to be 1000% confident you’re on top of your game and they are not going to be forgiving about that.

Then shows a misunderstanding about what IPFS is. It’s not a file format. It’s an Internet protocol.

So we have alt right being hosted (multiple sites growing and being targeted as the client base, not just gab)

Mixed in with technologies that don’t seem to be quite ready yet.

From a technical standpoint, I really admire the effort and I understand what is trying to be accomplished.

From a business standpoint, mixed in with the CEO being very vocal about devisive, controversial topics, I am just very confused as to how this is a smart business move.

UNLESS you are okay targeting a specific client base and okay with alienating the rest?

Because in that case: just admit it. I think that’s what irks people the most.

Had you just come out and said something like that then I wouldn’t be in this thread still.

Just for the record, I don't know who you are nor do I really care, but I do know Rob Monster and he's a friend and a brother in Christ. Also, I have a good friend David Donna Price who is transgender, and as a lawyer, a family ????, and a retired Navy Captain, he/she is a spokesperson for the LGBTQ community Worldwide. At the gym where we worked out he/she was known as "Liberal Dave". I first met Dave at his Naval Retirement ceremony about 12 years ago, and learned about his family and his life while working out together. Dave actually convinced me to vote for Obama his first term, but I wasn't about to be fooled by Dave the second time around. I think it was about 5-7 years ago Dave decided on his gender change, and he wasn't at all discreet about it. He wanted to tell the world. I don't have a huge problem with that, but his wonderful and loving wife of 30+ years and his three great children did have some difficulty. The way he went about the change was very insensitive, and he expected all his family and friends to accept his change as routine. I miss our conversations about Atlanta Braves baseball and how his kids were doing in sports and in college, and while I know this is something he had to do, most everyone I know has difficulty accepting his change.

Moving on to the White Supremacy issue...I'm a white male 71 years young who actually voted for Hillary Clinton in the last election, but with regrets. I watch both CNN and Fox News, and one evening while listening to and watching Don Lemon of CNN refer to me as a racist just because I'm a Caucasian male was the biggest and most humiliating insult ever to come my way. That happened 60-90 days ago, and I think I'll never get over it.

Finally, I'm 1/4 Jewish and very proud of it...Jesus was a Jew That said however, when I learned Hitlers Germany would have incinerated me at Auschwitz because my DNA was tainted just 25%, that put the world in better perspective. To the extent that another member here from Germany has the audacity to consider Rob Monster a White Supremacist or a racist is as hypocritical as it gets.

That's all I got....back to loving life

 

[Rob Monster]

WatchMask “engineers” couldn’t take 5 minutes to ensure it wasn’t pulling from amazon and Cloudflare services? It took me two seconds to figure that out.

Tia, just to be clear, WatchMask.com is a tiny low budget prospect. Someone contacted me out of the blue to tell me that he had experience coding SOCKS5 proxies that bypassed the Great Firewall of China. We agreed on a little pilot project called WatchMask.com. This is not one of our core engineers.

In the meantime, he did make some more optimization on WatchMask.com which you are welcome to check out anytime and critique. It might be worthy of its own thread, but you are doing people a disservice by judging a tiny skunkworks project that is still in development as being representative of Epik. It is not.

On the other hand, BitMitigate, developed by Nicholas Lim, has successfully mitigated one of the largest DDoS operations that industry watchers have seen in a long time. It just so happened to coincide with the events in New Zealand last month. BitMitigate is impressive tech. Anyone who has seen it, knows it.

You could be making money today if, instead of virtue-signaling on NamePros, you were charging your clients $399 per year for a service that you can set up on BitMitigate.com fore free in about 10 minutes. I think that is going to be a much better ROI on your time.

Hope that clarifies.

 

[Rob Monster]

Wanted to clarify this a bit more:

From a technical standpoint, I really admire the effort and I understand what is trying to be accomplished with privacy and anonymity. These are services that the internet needs as a whole for everyone.

But you can't tell me that if you were to host Antifa or any extreme left leaning group like that, that your crowd is going to be okay with that and that right there is the problem.

Epik.com absolutely welcomes all legal voices. I actually wish that ANTIFA and more DNC campaigns would build on Epik. We actually have quite a few of those. I can guarantee you that they would get great service. Even the SPLC, who I don't like or respect personally, is welcome to have Epik use their registrar.

It is not a secret that I have defended against Legitscript. That post was published here way back in August 2017. The logic was similar -- a defense of due process:

https://epik.com/blog/why-i-stood-up-to-legitscript.html

Now, on a personal note, I don't take drugs other than an occasional antibiotic if I need to kick some infection in a hurry rather than relying on immune support supplements. I can't recall the last time I had to take a painkiller of any kind including NSAID. I sometimes take a baby aspirin before a long flight.

We also have some adult and porn domains on Epik. We don't go looking for them but they show up. Do I think porn is really evil? Yes, I do. It is never free as there are spiritual costs. However, if the law protects it, then the registrant should be allowed to use their domain. And yes I pray for and witness to such folks.

Last but not least, as we are accredited by ICANN, we have to follow rules regardless of anyone's personal bias or preferences. We try hard to stay in compliance there. This is something that Joseph Peterson has done exceptionally during his tenure.

In other, words my personal preferences have no bearing on what domains we'll host. All are welcome.

 

[Rob Monster]

The point I was trying to make by asking those questions is either science is relevant or it isn’t.

So why chose to ignore science on some things but not others?

I saw this one and slept on it. I woke up with some clarity.

God does not miss much. He knows all, sees all, and is in all.

On the other hand:

God hardens hearts at will, e.g. as he did with Pharaoh (see Exodus 9:12). I believe he did that because he would show his might, first with 10 plagues, then parting the waters, feeding 600,000 households in the desert for 40 years with fresh manna 6 days a week and some occasional quail. Etc. God's pretty cool in other words.

God's send delusions. You can read in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 how this is supposed to go down during the end-times apostasy, which I believe is already very much in progress. Evolution is a delusion. Outer space travel is a delusion. If there is ever an alien invasion, that will be demons from the pit, not "aliens".

In other words, Elon Musk did not send a Tesla into outer space. That is more reinforcement of the delusion. Yes, StarMan is just another PsyOp.

So, yes, I like science. I choose to not accept delusions, even though I fully know that God allows them.

Whether you accept it or not, life is a test. You get nominally 70 or 80 years with a sound mind, during which your #1 task is to figure out the identity of the Creator, and to figure out what he wants. It is a pass-fail test.

 

[Tia Wood]

you are doing people a disservice by judging a tiny skunkworks project that is still in development as being representative of Epik. It is not.

And for those of you who think CloudFlare is all that, investigate further and you will discover their origins as Project Honeypot. They catalog all the IPs of lots of controversial sites.

So, indicated action:

1. Use Anonymize.com VPN - it's free and great with no BS.

2. Use BitMitigate.com instead of CloudFlare.

3. For watching videos, try out WatchMask.com.

Epik runs all of these and we log nothing and have no tracking code.

Epik runs all of these and we log nothing and have no tracking code.

.....Um. How is that my fault? You can also try not promoting websites you know isn't ready?

You could be making money today if, instead of virtue-signaling on NamePros, you were charging your clients $399 per year for a service that you can set up on BitMitigate.com fore free in about 10 minutes. I think that is going to be a much better ROI on your time.

.....I am speechless.

Now, on a personal note, I don't take drugs

.....You might want to start. Dear Lord....

 

[Tia Wood]

God's send delusions

God is not the author of confusion

So which is it?

 

[Rob Monster]

So which is it?

Tia - I don't think it can be any more obvious. God tells you what he is going to do before He does it. He prophesies the future, documents it, and then fulfills it. He even has a sense of humor too.

As for the delusion, already in progress and culminating fully soon, here it is:

And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12

There is no confusion here. This is the God of all creation fulfilling prophecy, right on the money, as usual.

He did it the first time when Jesus showed up. The classic proof text is called "The Coming Prince" by Sir Robert Anderson.

 

[Tia Wood]

So God lies to people then condemns them for trusting him because we’re supposed to always trust in him because he’s not supposed to be the author of confusion then damns us to hell all eternity for that?

Sounds like a good deal, man.

So for the science bits, the parts you do believe in, how do you know god isn’t sending you delusions?

 

[NameLlama]

This bitmitigate guy is really great, don'tcha think
https://twitter.com/LimTheNick/status/919996167626166272

 

[Mister Funsky]

To me, being curious about the world is more fun than keeping up with the Kardashians or contemplating a busted NCAA basketball bracket!

There have been many more cerebral, true, thought provoking and pertinent posts made by Rob in this thread but this is one of my favorites! Humans have a remarkable ability to waste time on the mundane and as a result fail to improve/increase their knowledge.

 

[Rob Monster]

This bitmitigate guy is really great, don'tcha think

Looks like an old Tweet where he was brutally honest about something. I don't believe he is a misogynist if that is what you are trying to imply here.

As context, Nick is 21 years old. He has sold 3 tech companies. He started coding at age 5, left his family home at 14, raised himself, bought a home. He is diligent, doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs. He thinks big.

Give him time. I think you will find Nick emerge as a force for good with a maturity beyond his years. Those who have met him know what I mean.

 

[NameLlama]

This guy is pretty funny though