Sign up
Search
Advanced search settings

Search only in certain items:

Search results
All (5000)
Content
People
Apps
Books
Orbs
Movies
Music
Podcasts
Shows
Tabletop Games
Tech
TV
Video Games
YouTube Channels
Videos
40x40

BookblogbyCari (345 KP) rated The Dark Net in Books

Jan 26, 2019  
The Dark Net
The Dark Net
Jamie Bartlett | 2016 | Biography
7
7.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Eye-opening!
For those who don’t know, the dark net is hidden seedier internet just below the regular surface internet. In this work of non-fiction, Bartlett explores the dark net’s various elusive and somewhat criminal goings-on; often going out of his way in the name of research.


The book kicks off with a dramatic introduction, talking about the Assassination Market. The assassination market is basically an online list of names and dates. Participants bet on what date an individual on the list will die. If a bet is correctly “guessed”, the winner walks away with all the winnings. Unfortunately, this was the shortest chapter and had the least amount of research made evident.


The drama continues in the following chapter which is about trolling, however this chapter read like a history book, and didn’t live up to the precedent set in the introduction. Shortly afterward though, Bartlett goes on to talk about one-man political parties, who set up several accounts on several sites to get their propaganda trending.


Later on Bartlett journeys into the strange real world community of Calafou. Here he meets cypherpunks and explains the crypto-currency Bitcoin to the reader. This unfortunately was another rather drab chapter.


The shortest chapter following the introduction was entitled “Three clicks”, which was named so when the author tried to find out how long it would take him to find child porn using free software known as “The Onion Router” and the “Hidden Wiki”. (Of course the author reported it to the police.)

There’s also a chapter on pro-anorexia and pro-self-harm sites.


And when I said the author often went out of his way in the name of research, I wasn’t kidding! The author went on the online “Silk Road” to purchase a very small amount of marijuana! And later still Bartlett is in the actual bedroom of a webcam star as she performs a rude show with 3 other women!

 
Reading a book on the dark net is the closest I’m ever going to get to actually using the dark net, so I wanted a lot from this book. I learned that the dark net would be pretty easy to navigate if I really wanted to use it. That said there was nothing in the book that would entice me to do anything that might involve covering my tracks.


So although there were a couple of chapters that were unnecessarily long, the other chapters definitely made up for it! Aside from the lack of detail on the Assassination Market, the remainder of the book appears well researched, with a lot of face to face and online meetings between the author and the people in the know.
  
40x40

Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2460 KP) rated Happily Ever After in Books

Jun 29, 2023 (Updated Jun 29, 2023)  
Happily Ever After
Happily Ever After
James Riley | 2023 | Children
5
7.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Rushed Ending Keeps Me from Being Perfectly Happy with This Book
Lena and Shefin are living in the Blessed City. Everyone is happy and eagerly waiting for the fairy queen ball to take place that day. Something in the back on Lena’s mind is saying that things aren’t right, but she does her best to ignore them since to go against the fairy queens means punishment. But on her way to school that morning, she discovers a book lying on the road that seems to be for her. What could it possibly mean? And where in Jin? Could he be the key to uncovering what is really going on?

I was anxious to see how this book would end since I’ve enjoyed the previous books so much. It started strongly, with great actions and twists, plus dual points of view to help build tension. It was fun to spend time with the characters again, and the meta comments on writing and books were making me laugh, although they weren’t a prevalent as in the earlier books. Then we reached the ending. It was way too rushed, with some twists that left me completely unsatisfied. We do get a final chapter, but it wasn’t enough to make me feel better with the ending, especially since it changes what I thought I remember about a character. (Maybe I need to reread book two.) Fans will still want to read it, but it’s not as good as it could have been.