
I thought I was designing for SpaceX, it may have been for the Silk Road - JunkDNA
https://words.motel.is/i-thought-i-was-designing-for-spacex-i-was-actually-designing-for-the-silk-road-4b4b64834868#.9gelegsu1
======
stiva
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.

~~~
nebulous1
Ha. I was going to write a very similar comment. It's a really interesting
situation, but the story as told is incomplete and lacking in really obvious
parts, such throwing out "30 FBI agents kicking down the door" but not giving
anything concrete. Was he there at the time? Was he even still living there?
If so, it seems to go directly against his lawyer's "[you will] never hear
from the FBI".

~~~
gandutraveler
Agree. Would have been a great story on NewYorker or Wired like this one
[https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-
road-1/](https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/)

------
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?

~~~
stephenhuey
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.

~~~
gthtjtkt
> 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?

~~~
stephenhuey
A little confusing, I know, and it doesn't help that the HN title is currently
different from the blog post title. I find it plausible that the author was
wondering what the project was really for, because it wasn't an official
SpaceX project. It wasn't even contracted by SpaceX, but rather intended to be
completed and then pitched to SpaceX and hopefully sold to SpaceX. But the
author wouldn't have had any interaction with SpaceX and therefore is
wondering to this day whether there was a real chance that SpaceX would have
ever used this code.

Edit: That being said, I'm a little surprised the author thinks this code
would've been used for anything related to Silk Road.

------
ufmace
I'm not doubting the story, but it doesn't seem to fit together much the way
that it's told here. Exactly who was he really working for, and what was his
"friend"s relationship to them?

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.

~~~
griffinmb
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/threads?id=blakeeb)

~~~
emodendroket
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7277371](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7277371)

Prophetic.

~~~
dmix
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.

~~~
emodendroket
I admit I haven't kept up with the whole Silk Road 2.0 story, but I don't see
DPR as sympathetic considering the only reason he didn't have a hitman kill
people was that he was too bumbling to hire a real one.

~~~
EdHominem
I don't see the potential victim as very sympathetic because they were trying
to blackmail someone who they knew had no legal recourse.

You can make _anyone_ want to kill you (and attempt it) by threatening them
appropriately.

~~~
emodendroket
Well, personally, I don't consider that a justification for homicide, but to
each his own.

~~~
EdHominem
Wait until it happens to you. There are many crimes that don't actually hurt
anyone which would still ruin your life if you were caught committing them.
Blackmail pulls someone from the innocent-citizen category and puts them into
just-another-gangster category in a way that smoking some pot does not.

But also, there's a big difference between giving someone an absolute 100%
pass and simply being able to empathize.

~~~
emodendroket
But he wasn't just smoking pot (and it's hard to imagine anyone really caring
about unsubstantiated allegations of some guy smoking pot), he was running a
massive drug dealing enterprise.

~~~
EdHominem
Right, which existed to let people buy things they wanted, like pot. He didn't
sell near schools, or fight turf wars, etc.

Our silly laws, and the greed of the blackmailer, created this situation. The
person attempting to pull the trigger is nearly blameless.

~~~
emodendroket
> 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

~~~
EdHominem
If the laws were even slightly focused on harm reduction instead of stocking
private prisons then maybe they wouldn't be ridiculous. And obviously the
blackmailer, turning someone in for something that isn't an actual harm to
society, is more of a harm than the "criminal" is.

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...

~~~
emodendroket
It's not that "law enforcement is good" or even "drug laws are good" but
"hiring people to commit murder on your behalf is morally wrong."

> 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."

~~~
EdHominem
> "hiring people to commit murder on your behalf is morally wrong."

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.

~~~
emodendroket
> Killing someone for the "right" reasons, either by yourself or by proxy, is
> morally right.

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.

~~~
EdHominem
> through which you are enriching yourself

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.

~~~
emodendroket
I simply do not agree with you.

~~~
EdHominem
No, you refuse to put yourself in the shoes of someone breaking an unjust law
and being persecuted for it. You may never agree with a drug dealer killing an
informant, but the concept of killing your blackmailer is much broader.

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.

~~~
emodendroket
Hard to see a guy who made himself rich in the process as a martyr.

~~~
EdHominem
Your empathy is contingent on someone's wallet?

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.

~~~
emodendroket
> Your empathy is contingent on someone's wallet?

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.

~~~
EdHominem
> If you're making yourself rich you can't turn around and plead that your act
> was selfless public service.

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.

------
minus7
If you take a look at the code on Github you quickly realize it's complete
bullshit, a bit of hardcoded data [1] and one file of backend code that looks
like it was copied from somewhere [2].

[1]
[https://github.com/tdrach/Sciview/blob/master/public/javascr...](https://github.com/tdrach/Sciview/blob/master/public/javascripts/services/Sources.js)

[2]
[https://github.com/tdrach/Sciview/blob/master/routes/api/v1/...](https://github.com/tdrach/Sciview/blob/master/routes/api/v1/journey.js)

~~~
TrevorJ
He doesn't claim it was a finished product

~~~
wongarsu
But he talks about an ongoing business relationship. He probably spend a lot
of time that isn't obvious in the code (requirements, interface design,
software design etc.), but we can only see code that anyone could have coded
within one hour. That's substantially less than what I would have expected
from the article.

------
sandworm101
The lawyer was correct. If you have reason to suspect the FBI is watching you,
they already have what they need. The men-in-black routine is meant to alter
your behavior, to cause you to do something rare like empty an account or
contact a distant friend. This was federal investigation 101.

Walk past the car and photograph the driver. They really love that.

~~~
downandout
_Walk past the car and photograph the driver. They really love that._

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.

~~~
sandworm101
I can actually do them a favour. That agent doesnt like sitting there all day.
He was assinged to intimidate. Mission acomplished. By photographing him you
acknowledge the message and he can be assigned to sonething else. Moving the
nonverbal conversation along might actually trigger them to make a formal,
polite, approach.

A lone FBI agent wont be happy, but he wont break cover be reacting. He will
just drive away.

------
sbierwagen
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](http://sciview.herokuapp.com/#/data-sets/0)

~~~
CoryG89
> 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.

~~~
krick
You want to believe it, because it would be a more exciting story. But if I
wanted you to make me an analytic app for the Silk Road, I would tell you I
want an analytic app for a _marketplace_. Which will be selling toys or
whatever. Amazon 2.0. Not a fucking spaceship.

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.

~~~
jordache
space x also wouldn't hire some random green designer to develop a solution to
analyze space ship data. They will use well vetted commercial solutions. LOL
this author is BSing for sure..

~~~
krick
SpaceX didn't hire anyone. Did you read it at all? It was some guy (Blake
Benthall aka "Defcon"), who previously worked at SpaceX, who allegedly hired
this guy Thomas to make UI for some project of his own that he (Defcon)
intended to sell to SpaceX later.

I'm not saying the whole story isn't BS, but at least it didn't claim what you
assume it claimed.

~~~
jordache
I'm saying from the author's perspective, wouldn't he question why spacex need
such paltry solution to visualize data from billion dollar projects? Either
author is too dim to realize this obvious conflict, or he is just lying, and a
poor lie at that.. Don't even say spacex. Just claim some CRUD start up
instead

------
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.

------
pfarnsworth
This story is completely unintelligible. I have no idea what this story is
about, where does it say he was designing for Silk Road? Did he say he was
talking with DPR or something?

~~~
johansch
It's a weird-ass story the writer likely concocted to save his ass.

~~~
degenerate
This. If he is ever charged he will point back at this article as "proof" of
accidentally complicity.

~~~
Zikes
Trying to give an account of one's potential involvement in illegal activities
without first consulting a lawyer is a far, far worse idea than just saying
nothing at all.

~~~
johansch
In general: That's why we all love watching stupid criminals on TV.

------
hrayr
This is a nice ShowHN with a cover story. I'm not questioning the validity,
just finding this amusing.

~~~
wongarsu
The story is good, the app really isn't worth mentioning. It's little more
than a slighlty nicer version of a paper prototype of the basic UI.

------
joshstrange
I honestly have no clue how this is voted so high on HN right now, I assume
it's just the title people are voting on. It makes no sense, jumps around and
no flow. I had to re-read parts multiple times and I still have no clue what
is going on.

~~~
clay_to_n
As bad as the writing style is, I still found the story interesting. The bits
of info about working with his friend are juicy, even if the title is
overblown and there's not much meat to the post.

------
welder
He hints at the end that 30 FBI agents kicked down his door, then says nothing
more. Way to leave us hanging!

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
Wait for the next season of... Mr. Robot!

------
ukyrgf
> This makes for an awkward cupcake ceremony where you’re not sure whether to
> smile or to laugh.

"I don't know whether to smile or laugh" isn't a very powerful expression.

~~~
nommm-nommm
What does it mean?

~~~
ukyrgf
A common idiom is "not know whether to laugh or cry", which usually means a
situation is extremely bad. I don't really know how that applies to having a
birthday party a week after you announce you're quitting, though.

~~~
nommm-nommm
"Not know whether to laugh or cry" usually means (to me) a situation is both
funny and sad. Like you wouldn't say "my entire family was killed in an
automobile crash, I don't know whether to laugh or cry," there's no humorous
component.

Like you said, birthday cake celebration of an outgoing employee is neither.

------
jordache
Wtf? Why would spacex utilize a freelancer front end Dev / designer to develop
a one off crappy custom soln for data analysis? When much more robust,
performant, established solutions exist?

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.

------
pzh
On the plus side, the OP had plausible deniability. I wonder whether he
could've been considered an accomplice or liable in any way, or not knowing
who he was working for completely exonerated him.

------
themodelplumber
The Silk Road reference--is he saying he was working for Chinese interests?
Where was the sensor data coming from?

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.

~~~
phpnode
He's talking about the Silk Road marketplace -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_\(marketplace\))

~~~
themodelplumber
Thanks, so it sounds like the SpaceX pitch was just the client wanting to
build up a really cool cover story while he worked on(?) Silk Road in secret.
Right?

~~~
phpnode
Presumably yes, and the datapoints being visualised would have presumably been
transactions. The admin in question would have been Blake Benthall, not Ross
Ulbricht who'd already been caught by then.

------
jpeg_hero
Do a FOIA request and get your FBI file. Could be interesting confirmation

------
jnpatel
The author's title seems misleading, since in the post's comments Thomas
acknowledges how he's not sure if his design was being actually used for Silk
Road or if his leaseholder really was freelancing for SpaceX.

------
shitgoose
so, who do you have on your resume, SpaceX or Silk Road?

~~~
yeukhon
I wonder if SpaceX will recruit him after the publicity.

