I thought I was designing for SpaceX, it may have been for the Silk Road
words.motel.is
words.motel.is
I sent the following email (below) shortly before receiving the previous one (above).
Normally I wouldn't waste my time on such nonsense but it was an interesting story so I really wanted to understand it. It's a great story.
He also didn't mention that it wasn't the original Silk Road, which is pretty significant information.
> 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?
There's also a lot of open-source solutions for things like this (PiWik, AWStats) so, as you said, the author probably was involved in the outsourcing a different project for someone in L.A. But then why would they try to disguise the sample as rocket sensor data?
I also don't think you can go this long with living and working with someone, notice the major purchases/parties (with outstanding invoices from SpaceX), and not get a hint about what's going on. If there were so many parties, what did they think when none of the coworkers from SpaceX showed up to one? Or his roommate's Linkedin profile shows something else other than SpaceX?
Seems more likely that this was his intention (or, as you say, he genuinely thought he might be able to flog it to his ex-employer) rather than getting design work for part of the back end for the Silk Road. If he wanted an analytics package for his trading platform, surely he'd have just told the blog post author he was subcontracting an analytics package for a very boring company under NDA's trading platform rather than trying to disguise his design brief as curiosity-inducing stuff like metrics for rocket launches?
> I do find the author's story very plausible.
Aren't these statements completely contradictory?
On the one hand, you say it was a SpaceX project. But later, you say that the author is correct (meaning it was a Silk Road project).
So... which is it?
Edit: That being said, I'm a little surprised the author thinks this code would've been used for anything related to Silk Road.
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.
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
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.
You can make anyone want to kill you (and attempt it) by threatening them appropriately.
But also, there's a big difference between giving someone an absolute 100% pass and simply being able to empathize.
Our silly laws, and the greed of the blackmailer, created this situation. The person attempting to pull the trigger is nearly blameless.
lmao. OK dude
Your whole argument is "law enforcement is good", with as much proof as you'd supply for the existence of Santa. That's a stupidly naive view to have. Yes, kidnapping is bad and stopping kidnappers is good. But very little of what law enforcement does is in our best interests, as individuals or as a society.
Clearly the rightness of evading law enforcement and shooting blackmailers depends on the rightness of the law the enforcers are enforcing. With bad law backing them up...
> Clearly the rightness of evading law enforcement and shooting blackmailers depends on the rightness of the law the enforcers are enforcing. With bad law backing them up...
That's not exactly clear, no. In fact it's less than clear, to me, that hiring a hitman is anywhere near the same moral level as "evading law enforcement."
No, unjustifiably murdering people is wrong. Killing someone for the "right" reasons, either by yourself or by proxy, is morally right.
> > Clearly the rightness of evading law enforcement and shooting blackmailers depends on the rightness of the law the enforcers are enforcing.
> That's not exactly clear, no.
Sure it is. You never taken a history class, or watched current events on TV, if you think all laws are equal and that all rulers have a right to be obeyed. Without recognizing a bad law you can't recognize good law.
> In fact it's less than clear, to me, that hiring a hitman is anywhere near the same moral level as "evading law enforcement."
Soldiers are hit men. Sending them some places results in war crimes, sending them other places prevents war crimes. Overall, I'd rather have and use soldiers than not.
For a meaningful comparison with "law enforcement", first specify which legal system and which laws.
Avoiding the consequences for running your large criminal enterprise, through which you are enriching yourself, doesn't strike me as a good case for justifiable homicide.
Red Herring.
> Avoiding the consequences
The invented consequences, yes. But the consequences of the crime itself (ie hitting someone while drunk driving) have to be bad in and of themselves for the concept of crime to be distinct from angering the king.
> doesn't strike me as a good case for justifiable homicide.
Being threatened with having your life ruined for actions that don't hurt anyone actually seems like the only reasonable justification for killing someone. Especially in the case of a blackmailer where they aren't attempting to right any (theoretical) wrongs.
The fact is that our law. (You and me. We paid for it.) Doesn't help us, and was used to hurt (blackmail) someone. You might not think the hit was "Fair" or in proportion but it was a consequence of our useless law - making someone defend themselves. As long as we have bad law we'll have its unintended consequences.
Silk Road was the best public-safety advancement in drugs in the last millennium. It was impossible for someone to stumble into unaware, it wasn't near a school, church, rehab clinic, etc. And our useless laws treated it like he was shoving crack cocaine into a toddler's mouth, and denied him the protection of the police.
And useless isn't just a term of dislike, it's that our drug laws don't increase safety for anyone, dealers, users, or bystanders.
Not a martyr, that's a silly religious concept. He's just not served by the law and neither are we. He was denied protection despite not hurting people, and yet we are no safer because of the actions of law enforcement.
Anyways, as long as we create this class of people (criminals whose crimes don't hurt anyone) and deny them protection, they will protect themselves. That's not further criminality, it's humanity. You would defend yourself, and so do they. We can stick our heads in the sand and say "It's wrong, they're criminal" or we can stop with the ridiculous laws.
No, that's a really imbecilic interpretation of what I said. If you're making yourself rich you can't turn around and plead that your act was selfless public service. Ulbricht was no different than any other violent drug lord and you won't convince me otherwise by repeating arguments about how drug laws should be reformed -- that's not a notion I disagree with but I think it has zero bearing on this case.
If the public willingly partook of his services, by definition they were a public service. Stores profit from me and yet I also profit from them.
But you're trying to twist out some strange moralistic meaning, as if he should run his business as a non-profit despite how you and I both expect to profit from our work. And even if he could just give his products away, you'd condemn him for that as well. Nobody needs to be selflessly service the public just to deserve protection (or the right to protect themselves).
> you won't convince me otherwise by repeating arguments about how drug laws should be reformed
I'm not arguing that they should, but mainly because I think that's obvious. I'm arguing that because these are our laws, we created this situation. That as long as we have these laws, we create this exact scenario.
> I think it has zero bearing on this case.
Well, other than being 100% the cause of this case. Because you can't blackmail someone for something legal, and this is the very model of a consensual. Nobody was forced to shop Silk Road.
If we don't need to justify the law then we could just as well make abortion illegal and apply the same logic to escaped abortionists.
The law on its own is a worthless artifact, not justification.
> Ulbricht was no different than any other violent drug lord and
Wrong, considering his attempted violence was defensive in nature. But also, boring blame centric thinking.
Drug lords are no different than spice merchants; protecting their wares until they get to market. If you want safer streets, protect the merchants.
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.
Good point. He really screwed himself with that stuff anonymous hitman stuff.
An argument can be made for SR's value to humanity. But he was a megalomaniacal asshole with shitty opsec, and he got what he deserved. Running a large "enterprise" doesn't give you the right to play dice with people's lives.
I'm unsure if ironic is the right word but it's bizarre to see yourself "progressing humanity" while working on something completely opposite..
I'm very ambivalent about sites like the Silk Road, but I'm sure some people view them as progressing humanity.
If you see it as a platform that enables "evil" activities, like illegal gun purchases, then it might be regressing humanity.
Alternatively you can view Silk-Road-like websites as disrupting existing illegal markets by moving them from the street to the internet. This enables these services to be offered with less violence, more competition, better "regulation" (banning frauds, community checking quality etc.), etc. With the primary market apparently being drugs, it seems likely that these online platforms save more lives than they cost.
Then again, more readily available drugs likely decrease humanities overall productivity. Depending on what "progressing humanity" means to you, that's bad.
It's a complicated subject, but as far as startups go it has some very compelling arguments why it is progressing humanity (even though the counter arguments are surely not without merrit).
Demand and supply people. The answer is very simple. No matter what amount of wishful thinking you may undertake, if you don't satisfy that simple principle of demand and supply, it just won't matter.
I was contacted by Blake (as a SpaceX employee) when he worked for SpaceX saying how much he appreciated my work (related to reddit.com/r/spacex).
[1] https://github.com/tdrach/Sciview/blob/master/public/javascr...
[2] https://github.com/tdrach/Sciview/blob/master/routes/api/v1/...
No wonder he was going 70+ days without being paid.
Walk past the car and photograph the driver. They really love that.
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.
First, they went to my mother's old employer that she had left 8 years prior. The message got passed to me and I called them.
They mispronounced words, tried to intimidate me and at one point said, "We aren't the Federal Bureau of Information" when I pointed out holes in their questions.
I'm sure if I was a high priority this would had been different.
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.
I'd say that unless you're a TV spy complete with a complicated plan, sidekicks and knowledge of how the script ends, the right answer here is "skip the high school psych-outs and talk to a lawyer yesterday".
The point of it is, I suppose, to react in a strange way, and let them know that you know. Most people would do one of the things you listed in Step 3 - not take pictures of the person taking pictures of them.
Not that this will help, or anything.
I assume you're being sarcastic, but they might actually "love that" if their objective at that point of the investigation is to alarm you and see what you do. It's an acknowledgment that they have indeed alarmed you.
A lone FBI agent wont be happy, but he wont break cover be reacting. He will just drive away.
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.
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.
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.
I'm not saying the whole story isn't BS, but at least it didn't claim what you assume it claimed.
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.
He skimped hard on the details.
"I don't know whether to smile or laugh" isn't a very powerful expression.
Like you said, birthday cake celebration of an outgoing employee is neither.
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.
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.