11–20 of 134 posts
The Silk Road reference--is he saying he was working for Chinese interests? Where was the sensor data coming from? I understand it's probably a painful story to tell, but a lot of little details are missing here, and they'd probably help both the author's friends and new readers like me understand what happened.
He's talking about the Silk Road marketplace - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)
All I can really say is maybe you should be extra skeptical when somebody talks about working for a "big name" company, like SpaceX, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc. If you're never reading or writing emails from a company.com email address, going to company's actual public website, going for interviews or meetings at an actual company office, then maybe you should look really closely at who you're really working for.
The lawyer was correct. If you have reason to suspect the FBI is watching you, they already have what they need. The men-in-black routine is meant to alter your behavior, to cause you to do something rare like empty an account or contact a distant friend. This was federal investigation 101. Walk past the car and photograph the driver. They really love that.
I would love to hear more about this. Both you and the lawyer in the story recognize it as true, but is this something you're taught ... or learn officially ... or learn unofficially?
FBI agents follow the trial lawyers credo "never ask a question you don't already know the answer to". They dont ask for a meeting until they know enough to dominate the conversation. Thats why they watch nearly everyone they ever deal with.
Actual footage of a low-level FBI agent engaged in semi-covert activities. Note the suit, haircut and body language (Ex-soldier, doesn't know a thing about the tech he is standing amongst). He stands in the middle of the action because he thinks that makes him part of the process, but all he can really do to help is close the cage door. This is a very junior agent out doing unimportant grunt work. He doesn't even have a partner with him.
I'm not doubting the story, but it doesn't seem to fit together much the way that it's told here. Exactly who was he really working for, and what was his "friend"s relationship to them? All I can really say is maybe you should be extra skeptical when somebody talks about working for a "big name" company, like SpaceX, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc. If you're never reading or writing emails from a company.com email ad…
Blake had been working for SpaceX, and left to work on Silk Road. This is his HN account: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=blakeeb
The "live demo" in the linked github doesn't seem to be very "live", in that it seems to be totally static. The post talks about "drawing correlations" but all it does it make a graph. http://sciview.herokuapp.com/#/data-sets/0
The lawyer was correct. If you have reason to suspect the FBI is watching you, they already have what they need. The men-in-black routine is meant to alter your behavior, to cause you to do something rare like empty an account or contact a distant friend. This was federal investigation 101. Walk past the car and photograph the driver. They really love that.
Why did the silk road want a data visualization app? The "live demo" in the linked github doesn't seem to be very "live", in that it seems to be totally static. The post talks about "drawing correlations" but all it does it make a graph. http://sciview.herokuapp.com/#/data-sets/0
Telemetry, analytics, data visualization, and things like AB testing would probably work just as well for a dark web market as they would for Amazon. It's all about the money.
As for why they felt they needed to create their own specific tool for this specifically, I'm not sure.
Why did the silk road want a data visualization app? The "live demo" in the linked github doesn't seem to be very "live", in that it seems to be totally static. The post talks about "drawing correlations" but all it does it make a graph. http://sciview.herokuapp.com/#/data-sets/0