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I thought I was designing for SpaceX, it may have been for the Silk Road

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Re: I thought I was designing for SpaceX, it may have been for the Silk Road

#101

Post by EdHominem »

emodendroket wrote: post #98
EdHominem wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the potential victim as very sympathetic because they were trying to blackmail someone who they knew had no legal recourse. You can make anyone want to kill you (and attempt it) by threatening them appropriately.

Well, personally, I don't consider that a justification for homicide, but to each his own.

Wait until it happens to you. There are many crimes that don't actually hurt anyone which would still ruin your life if you were caught committing them. Blackmail pulls someone from the innocent-citizen category and puts them into just-another-gangster category in a way that smoking some pot does not.

But also, there's a big difference between giving someone an absolute 100% pass and simply being able to empathize.

Re: I thought I was designing for SpaceX, it may have been for the Silk Road

#102

Post by dpiers »

dmix wrote: post #45
emodendroket wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7277371 Prophetic.

Defcon was always much more hateable than DPR. There's probably a reason no-one came to his defense the way they did with Ross. And buying a Tesla with Bitcoin? He was begging to get caught. And he complains about greed. He should have watched Breaking Bad and learned the basic lesson of not buying a flashy car when you're trying to keep a low profile.

Funnily enough, I watched the Breaking Bad series finale with him at his house. I also confronted him about his spending 9 months before he was arrested, but he lied to me and I bought it because his story made more sense than "my friend is running the Silk Road".

In the time since he was arrested, I've moved from coding to fraud investigations, and my time with him is a constant reminder to trust my observations over anything I am told.

I disagree that he was more hateable than Ulbricht. He never tried to have people tortured/murdered.

Re: I thought I was designing for SpaceX, it may have been for the Silk Road

#103

Post by clay_to_n »

giarc wrote: post #64
csomar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I actually like it this way. Journalist tries to make it intriguing and longer . But that doesn't change the events or make them more interesting. I guess I just like simple and straightforward.

Except for the fact that he was working on data sets of oil pressure and speed sensors, but somehow that was for silk road.... maybe I didn't follow it, but I don't understand what he was doing.

Sounds like he was told that's where the data was coming from, but his tool could have been used to visualize totally different data. I don't see anything in the design he posted that would limit it's usefulness to sensor data.

Re: I thought I was designing for SpaceX, it may have been for the Silk Road

#104

Post by dmix »

dpiers wrote: post #102
dmix wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defcon was always much more hateable than DPR. There's probably a reason no-one came to his defense the way they did with Ross. And buying a Tesla with Bitcoin? He was begging to get caught. And he complains about greed. He should have watched Breaking Bad and learned the basic lesson of not buying a flashy car when you're trying to keep a low profile.

Funnily enough, I watched the Breaking Bad series finale with him at his house. I also confronted him about his spending 9 months before he was arrested, but he lied to me and I bought it because his story made more sense than "my friend is running the Silk Road". In the time since he was arrested, I've moved from coding to fraud investigations, and my time with him is a constant reminder to trust my observations ove…

> He never tried to have people tortured/murdered.

Good point. He really screwed himself with that stuff anonymous hitman stuff.

Re: I thought I was designing for SpaceX, it may have been for the Silk Road

#105

Post by clay_to_n »

joshstrange wrote: post #63

I honestly have no clue how this is voted so high on HN right now, I assume it's just the title people are voting on. It makes no sense, jumps around and no flow. I had to re-read parts multiple times and I still have no clue what is going on.

As bad as the writing style is, I still found the story interesting. The bits of info about working with his friend are juicy, even if the title is overblown and there's not much meat to the post.

Re: I thought I was designing for SpaceX, it may have been for the Silk Road

#106

Post by krick »

CoryG89 wrote: post #19
sbierwagen wrote: post #16

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

> Why did the silk road want a data visualization app? 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.

You want to believe it, because it would be a more exciting story. But if I wanted you to make me an analytic app for the Silk Road, I would tell you I want an analytic app for a marketplace. Which will be selling toys or whatever. Amazon 2.0. Not a fucking spaceship.

It wouldn't be very plausible even if this guy was a programmer, asked to make some generic analytics engine for a spaceship (because things rarely are truly completely generic). But this guy is a designer. You do not hire a designer, because drawing a picture for UI is some secret knowledge available only to them, but because it requires spending your time thinking about this specific problem and picking pretty colors. So if I wanted to make some app without telling designers about the real purpose of the app, I wouldn't really need a designer at all. I would hire a programmer and ask him to make me another Salesforce, with exactly the same GUI.

Re: I thought I was designing for SpaceX, it may have been for the Silk Road

#107

Post by ukyrgf »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #96
ukyrgf wrote: post #82

> This makes for an awkward cupcake ceremony where you’re not sure whether to smile or to laugh. "I don't know whether to smile or laugh" isn't a very powerful expression.

What does it mean?

A common idiom is "not know whether to laugh or cry", which usually means a situation is extremely bad. I don't really know how that applies to having a birthday party a week after you announce you're quitting, though.

Re: I thought I was designing for SpaceX, it may have been for the Silk Road

#108

Post by jordache »

Wtf? Why would spacex utilize a freelancer front end Dev / designer to develop a one off crappy custom soln for data analysis? When much more robust, performant, established solutions exist?

Also space x is not a green start up, why would they still lack the ability to visualize and analyze data?

The author obviously failed to ask himself this obvious questions.

Re: I thought I was designing for SpaceX, it may have been for the Silk Road

#109

Post by emodendroket »

EdHominem wrote: post #101
emodendroket wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, personally, I don't consider that a justification for homicide, but to each his own.

Wait until it happens to you. There are many crimes that don't actually hurt anyone which would still ruin your life if you were caught committing them. Blackmail pulls someone from the innocent-citizen category and puts them into just-another-gangster category in a way that smoking some pot does not. But also, there's a big difference between giving someone an absolute 100% pass and simply being able to empathize.

But he wasn't just smoking pot (and it's hard to imagine anyone really caring about unsubstantiated allegations of some guy smoking pot), he was running a massive drug dealing enterprise.

Re: I thought I was designing for SpaceX, it may have been for the Silk Road

#110

Post by jordache »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #33

This story is completely unintelligible. I have no idea what this story is about, where does it say he was designing for Silk Road? Did he say he was talking with DPR or something?

horrible story.. i guess anyone can write on medium and the nice layout makes it somewhat legitimate looking. It could have very well been a rant on IRC
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