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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

#41

Post by gthtjtkt »

Edit: Turns out the headline is completely made up. This was in the comment section:

> So was “Sciview” actually some sort of analytics app for Silk Road, with the “sensors” representing some other Silk Road metrics? Or was BB truly freelancing for SpaceX while administering Silk Road?

> AUTHOR: Excellent question, I don’t know.

So he has no idea if he was just a subcontractor or if he was doing work for Silk Road. If I had to bet on this, I'd guess the friend subcontracted a project to him for easy cash (or because he was in over his head) and the Silk Road stuff was completely unrelated.

What would Silk Road do with such an application anyway?

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

#42

Post by csomar »

stiva wrote: post #34

This really is an interesting story, but I wish he'd taken it to a journalist instead of writing it himself. The narrative is choppy and has a lot of holes in it. I would have loved to see this done as a feature from someone with a lot of experience writing about technology. That might also have given some extra credibility and context to things.

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.

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

#44

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

I think this is a great story to tell buddies when grabbing a drink, but not really good for posting online which will last forever.

Maybe if the project was actually functional and high quality, but it's just a half baked project that doesn't even work.

Furthermore, there's no proof that what he worked on was actually silk road. Even looking at the screenshots it says nothing about silkroad, looks actually like a spacex project.

Like others said, I think his main motivation is to post it for the record, so if one day he disappears, people know where to track him down.

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

#45

Post by dmix »

emodendroket wrote: post #29
griffinmb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was working for "Defcon" or Blake Benthall (his roommate in the story). Defcon was running Silk Road 2.0 after the second "Dread Pirate Roberts" left. 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

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.

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

#46

Post by untog »

wheelerwj wrote: post #37
stiva wrote: post #34

This really is an interesting story, but I wish he'd taken it to a journalist instead of writing it himself. The narrative is choppy and has a lot of holes in it. I would have loved to see this done as a feature from someone with a lot of experience writing about technology. That might also have given some extra credibility and context to things.

what gave you that impression? I sent the following email (below) shortly before receiving the previous one (above).

I assume you mean about the credibility? We don't know those e-mails are real. A journalist handling the story would contact the relevant parties to confirm the account given.

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

#47

Post by busterarm »

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.

Because it's virtually all SaaS these days. Can't exactly use some hosted service when you're running an illegal business over Tor.

And it takes less time and is safer to write the software yourself than to do a full code audit of any self-hosted solution. Plus that would usually involve business contracts, etc.

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

#48

Post by dopamean »

sandworm101 wrote: post #14
jawns wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Exact procedures are of of course classified, but talk to enough people under investigation, read enough warrant affidavits, and you learn the patterns. They haven't changed much over the decades. They still dress in 1950ish black suits with sunglasses, at least when they want people to recognze them. This is a culture no different than any other corporation. They all dress to look like the boss/oldest man in the roo…

> FBI agents follow the trial lawyers credo "never ask a question you don't already know the answer to"

When I was 18 I got a visit from the FBI that was related to some trouble I had gotten into when I was 15. They asked me a question about something I definitely never did and then later in the conversation circled back to my denial and told me they had proof that I did it. It was a really scary and bizarre moment. It was at that moment that I realized they were asking questions not to get the answers but to see what I said. I asked them to leave (they had showed up to my house) and to come back the next day when I could have a lawyer present. They did.

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

#49

Post by [deleted] »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #41

Edit: Turns out the headline is completely made up. This was in the comment section: > So was “Sciview” actually some sort of analytics app for Silk Road, with the “sensors” representing some other Silk Road metrics? Or was BB truly freelancing for SpaceX while administering Silk Road? > AUTHOR: Excellent question, I don’t know. So he has no idea if he was just a subcontractor or if he was doing work for Silk Road. I…

[deleted]

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

#50

Post by ryanx435 »

untog wrote: post #46
wheelerwj wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what gave you that impression? I sent the following email (below) shortly before receiving the previous one (above).

I assume you mean about the credibility? We don't know those e-mails are real. A journalist handling the story would contact the relevant parties to confirm the account given.

naw they'd just cite an anonymous source and publish anyways
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