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Allegations of past and present Internet crime haunt Airbnb co-founder

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Re: Allegations of past and present Internet crime haunt Airbnb co-founder

#3

Aaron Greenspan, hater extraordinaire.

I am not sure that this comment adds anything to the discussion. You can argue that Blecharczyk is reformed, that AirBnB is not currently spamming people, or even that the only reason he is bringing this up now is to generate interest in his anti-Money Transmission Act crusade. Insulting him does not explain why he might be wrong.

Disclosure: I knew Greenspan in college, but I wasn't important enough to be included in his book Authoritas. Sigh.

Re: Allegations of past and present Internet crime haunt Airbnb co-founder

#4
>Greenspan says, using their dorm room as a base, Blecharczyk designed custom hardware and coded his own software to send out millions of spam emails per week

At millions per week, that would make him just slightly less effective than a 12 year old Chinese skiddie. Given that there are 604800 seconds in a week, even 100M emails is just over 150/s. Not much of an ROI for "custom hardware and software".

Re: Allegations of past and present Internet crime haunt Airbnb co-founder

#5
post #3

Aaron Greenspan, hater extraordinaire.

I am not sure that this comment adds anything to the discussion. You can argue that Blecharczyk is reformed, that AirBnB is not currently spamming people, or even that the only reason he is bringing this up now is to generate interest in his anti-Money Transmission Act crusade. Insulting him does not explain why he might be wrong. Disclosure: I knew Greenspan in college, but I wasn't important enough to be included i…

I doubt the personal ethics of founders sway investors much (if at all), but perhaps the world would be a better place if they did.

Either way, setting up a custom hardware/software stack to spam/peddle pornography as an 18 year old freshman is a pretty impressive feat of ingenuity, but it reflects poor judgement - by an 18 year old (whodathunkit!) Who knows what guy is like now. He might be a saint. Probably not though.

Re: Allegations of past and present Internet crime haunt Airbnb co-founder

#6

>Greenspan says, using their dorm room as a base, Blecharczyk designed custom hardware and coded his own software to send out millions of spam emails per week At millions per week , that would make him just slightly less effective than a 12 year old Chinese skiddie. Given that there are 604800 seconds in a week, even 100M emails is just over 150/s. Not much of an ROI for "custom hardware and software".

When I read custom hardware within the same line as 18 year old I assumed it should be read as "assembled his own PC".

Re: Allegations of past and present Internet crime haunt Airbnb co-founder

#7
If asked to name the top three people I'd be most unlikely to work with, I'd only be able to name one: Aaron Greenspan. I am so tired of the constant stream of whining (on his blog, HN, twitter, quora, etc) about how everyone is against him and everything is not fair. And now he's bad-mouthing more people, all as part of his overall theme of whining about how Facecash is a brilliant idea that obviously can't get any traction because of the big bad unfair regulators who don't get what he's trying to do.

Aaron, please, please, for everyone's sake, find something more constructive to do with your obviously impressive intelligence. This is just sad.

Re: Allegations of past and present Internet crime haunt Airbnb co-founder

#9
Does anyone know what year this was in?

I was pretty active in the spam world in high school circa 2002-03. Of course we all had nicknames so I wouldn't know. Learned much and glad to have moved on from days of Dark Mailer and fighting "antis" :)

That aside, the bigger news is that Aaron Greenspan continues to a bitter man and a constant dick. Grow a pair and build some shit of your own instead of peddling gossip to valley blogs. Seriously.

Re: Allegations of past and present Internet crime haunt Airbnb co-founder

#10

>Greenspan says, using their dorm room as a base, Blecharczyk designed custom hardware and coded his own software to send out millions of spam emails per week At millions per week , that would make him just slightly less effective than a 12 year old Chinese skiddie. Given that there are 604800 seconds in a week, even 100M emails is just over 150/s. Not much of an ROI for "custom hardware and software".

When I read custom hardware within the same line as 18 year old I assumed it should be read as "assembled his own PC".

The same guy saying that, however, is now co-founder of FaceCash. You'd think he would know better.
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