The Download: cybercriminals’ Pacific paradise, and the carbon offset crash

Tokelau, a string of three remoted atolls strung out throughout the Pacific, is so distant that it was the final place on Earth to be linked to the phone—solely in 1997. Simply three years later, the islands obtained a fax with an unlikely enterprise proposal that may change every thing.

It was from an early web entrepreneur from Amsterdam, named Joost Zuurbier. He wished to handle Tokelau’s country-code top-level area, or ccTLD—the brief string of characters that’s tacked onto the tip of a URL—in alternate for cash.

Within the succeeding years, tiny Tokelau turned an unlikely web big—however not in the way in which it could have hoped. Till just lately, its .tk area had extra customers than every other nation’s: a staggering 25 million—however the overwhelming majority had been spammers, phishers, and cybercriminals.

Now the territory is desperately attempting to scrub up .tk. Its worldwide standing, and even its sovereignty, could rely on it. Read the full story.

—Jacob Judah

The rising indicators of bother for world carbon markets

There are rising indicators of bother for the multibillion-dollar world carbon market, as investigative tales and research proceed to erode the credibility of the enterprise world’s go-to device for cleansing up local weather emissions.

The promise of offsets is that corporations or people can steadiness out their greenhouse-gas air pollution by paying different events to forestall emissions or take away carbon dioxide from the air. However the proof is mounting that, slightly than producing much-needed local weather progress, these schemes are principally an enormous waste of cash. Read the full story.