3 ms·

But why? Money? You said "thousands" of "users", even if you sell those owned computers/phones at let's say $1 you don't make that much as a company. Fame/str

by gbin 11y ago

But why? Money? You said "thousands" of "users", even if you sell those owned computers/phones at let's say $1 you don't make that much as a company. Fame/street creds? Look how I got those lusers ? Or you don't even care? you could optimise the deadliness of an atomic weapon and you would feel the same: code done ! Awesome !

maehwasu 11y ago
You can make way more than $1/user if the users are in good geos and each user can install lots of apps. In general, it's best to assume the market knows something you don't, rather than the other way around.
ufmace 11y ago
You know, I think that optimizing the deadliness of atomic weapons is a lot more defensible than this. The nukes have arguably prevented large-scale industrial war since WWII. I'm having a tough time coming up with a defense for building malware, though.
- Rudism 11y ago
  There really is no defense. It's just a money grab. When I was working there I dealt with it through compartmentalization and rationalization ("if I wasn't doing this someone else would, so I might as well earn that paycheck anyway"). Others there probably just didn't care. The culture was very money-centric... everyone's compensation included a bonus component that was directly tied to how much revenue your products generated, and there would be big celebrations whenever new milestones were met.
Rudism 11y ago
The point was never to sell access to compromised computers or anything quite as nefarious as that. The point with all of these schemes is to get users to install applications on their computer (or phone) that we were getting paid for on a per-install basis. A user who ran through our installer and installed all of the offers might net you $3. Multiply that by thousands a day, hundreds of thousands a month. On the mobile side, as I mentioned in the article, finding desktop users who we could actually make money off of on mobile offers was much harder, which is why I suspect the practice hasn't caught on and become much more widespread in the industry.

by gbin 11y ago

maehwasu 11y ago

You can make way more than $1/user if the users are in good geos and each user can install lots of apps. In general, it's best to assume the market knows something you don't, rather than the other way around.

ufmace 11y ago

You know, I think that optimizing the deadliness of atomic weapons is a lot more defensible than this. The nukes have arguably prevented large-scale industrial war since WWII. I'm having a tough time coming up with a defense for building malware, though.

Rudism 11y ago
There really is no defense. It's just a money grab. When I was working there I dealt with it through compartmentalization and rationalization ("if I wasn't doing this someone else would, so I might as well earn that paycheck anyway"). Others there probably just didn't care. The culture was very money-centric... everyone's compensation included a bonus component that was directly tied to how much revenue your products generated, and there would be big celebrations whenever new milestones were met.

Rudism 11y ago

The point was never to sell access to compromised computers or anything quite as nefarious as that. The point with all of these schemes is to get users to install applications on their computer (or phone) that we were getting paid for on a per-install basis. A user who ran through our installer and installed all of the offers might net you $3. Multiply that by thousands a day, hundreds of thousands a month. On the mobile side, as I mentioned in the article, finding desktop users who we could actually make money off of on mobile offers was much harder, which is why I suspect the practice hasn't caught on and become much more widespread in the industry.