EEVblog #1099- BattBump - Dumbest Kickstarter Ever!

[EEVblog]

im beginning to think its more than a scam kickstarter, but maybe involves identity theft aswell

I doubt it.
They would have to control her website account, LinkedIn account, Vimeo account, her mobile phone, and maybe others.
And then she very co-incidentally seems just the type to run this very campaign. e.g a marketing person with video production experience, and works in the mobile phone space, and doesn't seem to have a technical enough background to adequately vet a project like this.
I'm sure it's her, she has panicked, realised the project isn't going to fly, and is now erasing everything.
She has my name and number, she could have just contacted me and asked nicely to have the video edited, and I probably would have done it. No mess, no fuss.

[maxwell3e10]

Doxing her is not nice anyway.

I mean obviously it is a stupid campaign, from someone with no technical knowledge trying to sell something technical, but still.

She has no expectation of privacy. It's like printing an ad in a newspaper and then demanding that all copies are burned.
And whatever her technical background, she clearly spent more time making a promotional video than understanding the technology.  Unfortunately its not uncommon these days that marketing and hot air takes over, but that is exactly the reason that particularly egregious examples should be publicly shamed.

Dave, I hope you can put the video back up soon!

[Towger]

The Linkedin link x on her website x goes to a page for 'x', also a series producer from Sydney, Australia.

Doxing her is not nice anyway.

There is nothing private about the information. Just links which she published herself to her own self published public information.

[elgonzo]

[...]she clearly spent more time making a promotional video than understanding the technology.[...]

Considering the quality and content of the video (mostly stock footage cut together with a little rudimentary and very shoddy compositing), i doubt she spent more time making that video than she spent on studying the technology. 

[Towger]

i doubt she spent more time making that video than she spent on studying the technology. 

Her LinkedIn profile has her currently studying multiple  production type courses/modules, at what I think was Dave's old alma mater :-)

The Kickstarter may be a class project.

I would like to hear from Kickstarter as to how the campaign got through their 'sanity' filters.  They have the most to answer.

[elgonzo]

The Kickstarter may be a class project.

If that was a media/production class project, the overarching subject must be "Fools and Their Money".
Whoever ends their project with the biggest amount of money will get the best grades

[Discotech]

Well that all escalated very quickly from ousting a KS scam to somebody trying to do the impossible of hiding on the internet, if it was an innocent mistake and lack of knowledge for the KS then why go to such efforts to try and slip out the internet back door that does not exist ? The behaviour suggests somebody with a guilty conscience trying to hide their guilt

[innkeeper]

 
she could have "saved face" to use the Japanese term, by just going with the "its a joke" explanation.

cant wait to see where this goes 

[nctnico]

They just changed the campaign an hour or two after I released my video! 

Confirms that this it legit 

I just gave the kickstarter campaign a quick browse. It clearly states that they are only going to make the app. They are NOT going to develop any phone to phone charging hardware. And ofcourse NFC isn't suitable for charging but it is an easy way to do ad-hoc phone to phone communication.

[trophosphere]

Passing charge between phones would be a cool idea between friends, etc.

I don't know if they have done it yet (or have already done it) but the phone manufacturers could just implement the bidrectional charging specification of USB Type-C PD3.0 so people can can charge their phones from their friends and vice versa. There are chips already made to specifically do this as well.

[PA0PBZ]

I just gave the kickstarter campaign a quick browse. It clearly states that they are only going to make the app. They are NOT going to develop any phone to phone charging hardware.

And I'm going to make the app to control your home fusion reactor, just the app, not the reactor. Please give me your money.

[TechnicalBen]

And you guessed it, she has now removed her photo from her website!
She is trying to vanish from the Internet over this boondoggle. Don't really blame her, it's pretty embarrassing, but hey, it's the Internet, she put herself out there very publicly.

Would you consider removing the video and letting this one go through to the 'keeper? Maybe she's just young and a bit too silly. I don't really want to know too much about her but I do feel for a young person who makes a poor decision and has to live with it.

Yeah, I'm all for pointing out mistakes and error. Even scams. But until I see actual harm, I'd always assume someone is wrong, and politely put em right. If it's a company, I kinda feel different, as it's not usually directed at people... but then again, people run and work for companies.

If we lose the naive and confused along with the scams and attacks, are we any better than the scammers? Try to get those who still can learn and change back on track!

[Richard Crowley]

This doesn't seem categorically different from the nano-pump CPAP crowd or the ultrasonic charging crowd.
But they continue to dupe thousands of suckers and raise millions of dollars.  Better marketing, apparently.

OTOH, the baterizer and solar roadways schemes are in a slightly different category IMHO.
They are very roughly based on a real, functional scientific/engineering principle, but are simply not economical and/or practical.

[StillTrying]

I wonder if the tech/gadget TV programs that they produce do reports on KS gadgets.

[admiralk]

PPS
Sounded like it was intended as a spoof for a TV piece.

And here is the demo from the inventor of the gadget:

[EEVblog]

You guessed it, latest video flagged for Privacy:

[ataradov]

And here is the demo from the inventor of the gadget

"Published on Feb 21, 2016". I see this is a long play con.

[innkeeper]

BattBump power theft protection....I am going to develop an app to protect you against theft of power by BattBump hackers.

[EEVblog]

Damn, the Youtube blurring tool is completely buggy and doesn't work properly. No option but to do the video myself and re-upload. Probably both videos. Then the Privacy complaints automatically go away.
BTW, now with two Privacy claims, I run the risk of getting two strikes on my account if I fight this and some faceless person at Youtube decides in her favour (quite likely)

[EEVblog]

Well that all escalated very quickly from ousting a KS scam to somebody trying to do the impossible of hiding on the internet, if it was an innocent mistake and lack of knowledge for the KS then why go to such efforts to try and slip out the internet back door that does not exist ? The behaviour suggests somebody with a guilty conscience trying to hide their guilt

She could have just phoned or emailed me and said she's embarrassed by it all and can I please edit the video to remove her name. I probably would have done it, no fuss, no Streisand effect.

[EEVblog]

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/06/27/battbump-update-the-project-backs-down-on-its-claims-then-cancels-and-vanishes/

She replied to a tech enquiry here:

Torsten Kleinz, a journalist at c’t and Die Zeit, wrote to BattBump, and got a response:

I am a journalist from Germany and stumbled across your Kickstarter campaign. This campaign has an apparent flaw: There is no way to transfer energy between mobile phones per NFC. Even if a smartphone could harvest the NFC energy — and none in the market can — you had to hold the two phones against each other for hours to get even one percent more battery life. So — what is this campaign really about?

Their answer:

Thanks for showing interest in our campaign. We are developing the software for all current flagship devices to transfer energy between devices. It isn’t a question of whether a device can “harvest the NFC energy” NFC is the conduit and not the storage capability. Our software speeds up the process, and the time required is relative to how much of your battery charge you are willing to give away. Thanks for your question and we hope to have your continued support.

Also, she replied here:

Cat Clark emailed a response to my initial query of Monday evening, around 04:00 UTC today:

We are looking to organize a partnership with a collaborator who will help us utilize the technology for wireless charging in the app when it it ready. We will not be developing the technology ourselves. We have researched similar patents like Sony’s and feel this kind of partnership or collaborator would be the way forward. This project is to fund the mobile application of BattBump, the next stage within the product roadmap will be further research and development of the technology to perform the battery charge transfer. Also, Genson Glier is a Blockchain technology advisor to BattBump. We are always open to new partnerships and further support for our project.

[ThomasDK]

https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/products/power-management/wireless-charger-ics/stwlc33.html

...So while it won't be practical with NFC, Qi can already do it.

[EEVblog]

https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/products/power-management/wireless-charger-ics/stwlc33.html
...So while it won't be practical with NFC, Qi can already do it.

Not using the tech in existing phones.

[EEVblog]

she could have "saved face" to use the Japanese term, by just going with the "its a joke" explanation.

Yep, she could have easily done that and everyone would have had a laugh and that would have been that.
Now she has admitted it was real, and her full name is still plastered all over the Kickstarter bio page, and everyone is following along the soap opera of her trying to erase herself from the Internet.
Good luck getting her name removed from KS.

[wraper]

Damn, the Youtube blurring tool is completely buggy and doesn't work properly. No option but to do the video myself and re-upload. Probably both videos. Then the Privacy complaints automatically go away.
BTW, now with two Privacy claims, I run the risk of getting two strikes on my account if I fight this and some faceless person at Youtube decides in her favour (quite likely)

It seems that you won't get a strike for privacy complain.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2802032?hl=en

Sometimes content is removed for reasons other than Community Guidelines violations, such as the safety of the person who posted a video, a first-party privacy complaint, court order, or other non-malicious issue. In these cases, the uploader won't receive a strike and the account won't be penalized.