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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

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?

deleted 10y ago
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bduerst 10y ago
Not sure, but Silk Road obviously couldn't rely on traditional third party web analytics, even though they still needed to identify and fight spammers/fraud. 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?
- stephenhuey 10y ago
  He had worked for SpaceX in the past. The blog post author omitted many details, probably because 2 years ago this story was so heavily documented by every major publication you can think of (BBC, NY Times, IB Times, Wired, Ars Technica) that he felt his audience would know the details.
stephenhuey 10y ago
Don't recall if I ever met the author of this blog post personally, but his boss/roommate mentioned this particular application to me several times over several months. I was thousands of miles away from SF but it came up repeatedly in casual conversations and after leaving SpaceX he seemed to genuinely believe he had a shot of selling this product to SpaceX as an internal tool. He always juggled lots of projects and besides this SpaceX idea, I remember him telling me 2 weeks before the arrest about another unrelated project he was trying to get a team together for so he could apply to Y Combinator. Never once did I hear anything hinting at involvement with the Silk Road, but he always talked about a million ideas at once. Anyone who knew him for long knew that he traveled a lot for years and years (back in 2010 he was the first person I knew who jumped on Jet Blue's special offer of a month of unlimited travel for only $600), so the author would've realized that was routine if he knew him for long. I do find the author's story very plausible.
- notahacker 10y ago
  Lots of plausibly lucrative subprojects also make a good cover story and/or attempt at money laundering for someone running a drug trading platform. 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?
- gthtjtkt 10y ago
  > his boss/roommate mentioned this particular application to me several times over several months. . . it came up repeatedly in casual conversations and after leaving SpaceX he seemed to genuinely believe he had a shot of selling this product to SpaceX > 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?

deleted 10y ago

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bduerst 10y ago

Not sure, but Silk Road obviously couldn't rely on traditional third party web analytics, even though they still needed to identify and fight spammers/fraud. 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?

stephenhuey 10y ago
He had worked for SpaceX in the past. The blog post author omitted many details, probably because 2 years ago this story was so heavily documented by every major publication you can think of (BBC, NY Times, IB Times, Wired, Ars Technica) that he felt his audience would know the details.

stephenhuey 10y ago

Don't recall if I ever met the author of this blog post personally, but his boss/roommate mentioned this particular application to me several times over several months. I was thousands of miles away from SF but it came up repeatedly in casual conversations and after leaving SpaceX he seemed to genuinely believe he had a shot of selling this product to SpaceX as an internal tool. He always juggled lots of projects and besides this SpaceX idea, I remember him telling me 2 weeks before the arrest about another unrelated project he was trying to get a team together for so he could apply to Y Combinator. Never once did I hear anything hinting at involvement with the Silk Road, but he always talked about a million ideas at once. Anyone who knew him for long knew that he traveled a lot for years and years (back in 2010 he was the first person I knew who jumped on Jet Blue's special offer of a month of unlimited travel for only $600), so the author would've realized that was routine if he knew him for long. I do find the author's story very plausible.

notahacker 10y ago
Lots of plausibly lucrative subprojects also make a good cover story and/or attempt at money laundering for someone running a drug trading platform. 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?
gthtjtkt 10y ago
> his boss/roommate mentioned this particular application to me several times over several months. . . it came up repeatedly in casual conversations and after leaving SpaceX he seemed to genuinely believe he had a shot of selling this product to SpaceX > 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?