EEVblog #1099- BattBump - Dumbest Kickstarter Ever!

[Bud]

The good folks on this forum have been focusing on the kickstarter/technology aspect of this campaign as we are wont to do, but what if the real scam here is the initial coin offering? They only need a flashy kickstarter as a prop, the real deal  will be the BattBump tokens
....
Initial Coin Offerings are where the heavy weight scammers  are toiling now.

Well it appears you even do not need a technology kickstarter for a token ICO. Check out this link and see how successfull that one was. Being honest pays out! 

https://uetoken.com/

[wilfred]

[...] Dave himself said he tried to raise money to buy a mansion as a joke. [...]

Apples and oranges.
Making a joke about raising money is quite a different thing than actually asking for money.

https://pozible.com/project/35309
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/crowd-funded-projects/fairfax-mansion-sydney-hackerspace/#lastPost

Not apples and oranges. Apples and apples. They only difference I can see is the allegiance of the audience someone with a powerful Internet or social media presence commands. And bringing it to bear against such a powerless individual is just bullying in my eyes. The only encouraging thing I can take from this is how few of the established forum members joined in. Reading between the lines that says a lot for the forum here.

I leave it to you to come to your own conclusions. I've made it perfectly clear where I stand.

[erkko]

previously linked backup of original seems to be removed, new one:

[Halcyon]

Good one erkko

 

[elgonzo]

[...] Dave himself said he tried to raise money to buy a mansion as a joke. [...]

Apples and oranges.
Making a joke about raising money is quite a different thing than actually asking for money.

https://pozible.com/project/35309
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/crowd-funded-projects/fairfax-mansion-sydney-hackerspace/#lastPost

Not apples and oranges. Apples and apples. They only difference I can see is the allegiance of the audience someone with a powerful Internet or social media presence commands. And bringing it to bear against such a powerless individual is just bullying in my eyes. The only encouraging thing I can take from this is how few of the established forum members joined in. Reading between the lines that says a lot for the forum here.

I leave it to you to come to your own conclusions. I've made it perfectly clear where I stand.

I stand corrected. I miread your comment as Dave making a joke about trying to raise money for a house (like he was making jokes about renting/buying the Altium building).  Didn't know he actually did it. Thanks for the link + clarification.

[Fungus]

Not apples and oranges. Apples and apples.

a) Turning a mansion into a hackerspace doesn't break any laws of physics.

b) Dave might have done it if he raised that much money.

[EEVblog]

[...] Dave himself said he tried to raise money to buy a mansion as a joke. [...]

Apples and oranges.
Making a joke about raising money is quite a different thing than actually asking for money.

https://pozible.com/project/35309
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/crowd-funded-projects/fairfax-mansion-sydney-hackerspace/#lastPost

Not apples and oranges. Apples and apples.

Wilfred, BattBump was not a joke, you are just continually shit stirring, let it go. You have a long history of antagonising me at every opportunity, stop it.

[EEVblog]

I stand corrected. I miread your comment as Dave making a joke about trying to raise money for a house (like he was making jokes about renting/buying the Altium building).  Didn't know he actually did it. Thanks for the link + clarification.

For those interested, the CEO of Pozzible cleared my joke campaign.

[Fungus]

For those interested, the CEO of Pozzible cleared my joke campaign.

Would you have really done it if you got the money? 

[elgonzo]

[...] Dave himself said he tried to raise money to buy a mansion as a joke. [...]

Apples and oranges.
Making a joke about raising money is quite a different thing than actually asking for money.

https://pozible.com/project/35309
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/crowd-funded-projects/fairfax-mansion-sydney-hackerspace/#lastPost

Not apples and oranges. Apples and apples.

Wilfred, BattBump was not a joke, you are just continually shit stirring, let it go. You have a long history of antagonising me at every opportunity, stop it.

You can't really blame Wilfred for correcting my misinterpretation of his comment...

[julianhigginson]

I think that the joy some people in this thread are having gathering info and rebroadcasting and making it more searchable, when the person in question is trying to hide, is actually pretty sick.

I'm feeling very disappointed in eevblog and some of the forum members right now.

[julianhigginson]

Yes the Kickstarter was fucking stupid.

Keeping on dragging up the person's name (and you can bet there's more than one person behind it, but let's just vigilante one of them, eh?) for the purposes of ruining their online reputation forever is far worse

[Brumby]

... for the purposes of ruining their online reputation forever is far worse

That is a rather severe accusation - and completely unwarranted, IMHO.

There may be some record of the person's name - but to say it is specifically and solely intended as a defamatory action is really reaching beyond the reasonable.


Personally, I think she did not think too far when starting the campaign.  Young people do not seem to really understand the power of the internet, nor of the dangers in putting oneself out there like this.  As a result, because of how it could reflect upon the production company she was with, they told her to make it go away - and she has panicked.

The problem is - once stuff has been put up on the internet, completely erasing it from existence is really difficult.


I would like such a message to be heard loud and long, so that those who are complacent and feel the internet is "not so bad" a place, take heed and start to appreciate the risks and dangers.  There are things far worse than embarrassment out there ... and you can start with social media.

[Halcyon]

Yes the Kickstarter was fucking stupid.

Keeping on dragging up the person's name (and you can bet there's more than one person behind it, but let's just vigilante one of them, eh?) for the purposes of ruining their online reputation forever is far worse

I certainly respect your perspective, however to call it "sick" is a bit much.

It seems quite clear that the person who put their name and photo to the Kickstarter campaign was being deliberately deceitful. She was after one thing - MONEY and she was going to go to as little effort as possible to get it. Personally, I think at best her moral values come into question. At worst, she is getting awfully close to "obtaining benefit by deception" or in other words, fraud.

The entire campaign centred around something that doesn't really exist and wasn't going to exist even if the campaign was funded. For $30,000, she was going to release a poxy shell of an application that did not perform the intended function (which was to wirelessly transmit power from one user to another). I think she thought that the wider internet community was too stupid and would just part with their money.

She was found out (by Dave), went into hiding and refused to answer or address the audience, which she created by drawing attention to herself. She could have quite easily just come out and said "I didn't do my homework, I was wrong" and everyone would have chopped it up to another failed crowd funding project.

None of what actually happened sound like the actions of a person who had no malicious intent.

EDIT: Corrected an inaccuracy.

[Brumby]

There is also the possibility that someone with specific intent to defraud used her as a front man and her basic flaw was naivety.  Then, when the storm hit, so did reality.

If that was the case, then Dave did her a favour by calling it out.  She avoided the ugliness that would have ensued, had the campaign achieved its target and real money came into play.

[EEVblog]

Personally, I think she did not think too far when starting the campaign.  Young people do not seem to really understand the power of the internet, nor of the dangers in putting oneself out there like this.  As a result, because of how it could reflect upon the production company she was with, they told her to make it go away - and she has panicked.

I have some extra information I won't mention that I think indicates that this wasn't the case, I'm fairly confident the campaign owner closed it of their own accord.
Also, the fact that the campaign was changed about an hour or even less after I did my video (along with the owners personal website), and that the campaign was gone only mear hours after that , it's almost impossible for a large organisation to see this and act that swiftly. I'm pretty confident the campaign owner(s?) did it all off their own bat.

[EEVblog]

She was found out (by Dave)

Actually, turns out I wasn't the first. Unknown to me at the time, both Reddit and that other crypto blogger had already started to publicly investigate this campaign, and the owner already knew about this as she had been contacted by the blogger and a German journalist previously questioning the campaign. As when you include a crypto aspect in your tech product, you have a whole other community apart from tech journalists who are going to investigate.

[Halcyon]

She was found out (by Dave)

Actually, turns out I wasn't the first. Unknown to me at the time, both Reddit and that other crypto blogger had already started to publicly investigate this campaign, and the owner already knew about this as she had been contacted by the blogger and a German journalist previously questioning the campaign. As when you include a crypto aspect in your tech product, you have a whole other community apart from tech journalists who are going to investigate.

I stand corrected. Although shit seemed to have "got real" for her once your video came out. I've never seen anyone back-pedal that fast before!

[Brumby]

Personally, I think she did not think too far when starting the campaign.  Young people do not seem to really understand the power of the internet, nor of the dangers in putting oneself out there like this.  As a result, because of how it could reflect upon the production company she was with, they told her to make it go away - and she has panicked.

I have some extra information I won't mention that I think indicates that this wasn't the case, I'm fairly confident the campaign owner closed it of their own accord.

Intriguing - but destined to remain a mystery to we mortals.

Also, the fact that the campaign was changed about an hour or even less after I did my video (along with the owners personal website), and that the campaign was gone only mear hours after that , it's almost impossible for a large organisation to see this and act that swiftly. I'm pretty confident the campaign owner(s?) did it all off their own bat.

Considering that yours was not the first critical assessment, the time window is wider and there may have been some earlier trigger for an organisational response.

But it really doesn't matter in the end.  The campaign is gone, which is the main thing.

[richfiles]

I personally find the people defending this likely fraudster to be borderline sickening. 

I'm happy she was exposed... Not because she deserves exposure, but because the tech-illiterate masses don't deserve to be scammed, nor does the next batch of 'em deserved to be scammed. It's ALWAYS important to report on these frauds, to make people aware that they exist. There's too little to prevent this from happening, without diligent reporting.

This wouldn't have ever been a big deal if she hadn't attacked Dave's video reporting on this. Once she attacked journalism, she became FAIR GAME for reporting on her, her attacks, and her fraud!

[Koen]

It's not about defending her. It's about the few morons who published intimate details of her life here earlier.

[wilfred]

I personally find the people defending this likely fraudster to be borderline sickening. 

I'm happy she was exposed... Not because she deserves exposure, but because the tech-illiterate masses don't deserve to be scammed, nor does the next batch of 'em deserved to be scammed. It's ALWAYS important to report on these frauds, to make people aware that they exist. There's too little to prevent this from happening, without diligent reporting.

This wouldn't have ever been a big deal if she hadn't attacked Dave's video reporting on this. Once she attacked journalism, she became FAIR GAME for reporting on her, her attacks, and her fraud!

Can I infer from your use of the word likely that you too don't actually know she was attempting anything more than a prank , joke or a test of her own to see how easily it was to set up a scam on a crowdfunding site?

Because if you don't know for certain what her motives were then you should tread more cautiously.

And as for putting the blame back onto her for "attacking" the video, well I think that has an undertone of victim blaming. Given that you've shown nothing to justify how you can be so certain. It is a similar mentality to that which women often experience, she shouldn't have provoked him, she shouldn't have worn such revealing clothing, or gone out alone at night and so on. just ask women you know and they all will tell you.

It shouldn't have escaped your notice how often these forum threads have a women at the sharp end of it. Far more often than you would expect given the number of women in engineering or at the top of business. Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, Purdue University's Donna Riley, uBeam's Meredith Perry and now this one. I'm not saying they are all equally undeserving of criticism but it is starting to become a trend of women getting particularly harsh treatment beyond objective critisism. There was another thread about some YT creator who wore skimpy clothing whose name escapes me at present. It went right over the top too.

I am not a complete fool expecting a Utopian haven here. I said it before it is a testament to this forum how the regular stalwarts stay out of the fray.
I'm not even saying this was not a scam attempt. All I am saying is this woman was sufficiently powerless that she could have been afforded the benefit of the doubt and the whole affair allowed to fade to black.

[EEVblog]

Wilfred, do not bring gender into this, it has absolutely nothing to do with it. I will not let this thread get hijacked in that way.

[julianhigginson]

Wilfred, do not bring gender into this, it has absolutely nothing to do with it. I will not let this thread get hijacked in that way.

OK, So it's just a massive unfortunate coincidence that all the dumb/fraudulent tech companies being attacked across the interwebz are headed by women, and the women figureheads are the ones singled out for sustained negative attention in these various different threads?

[julianhigginson]

and really... yeah it *could* be a scam, but really it sounds to me just like the countless people I've heard from over the years who have a *killer idea* for a new groundbreaking product (I can just hear their voices now... "it's like uber, but for phone charge!")

You wouldn't believe the number of people that come to me as a technical consultant with awesome new world breaking ideas that are patently just not possible, at least with current tech, and I have to spend my time talking them through why I'm not going to quote on building their new awesome free energy telepathic plant watering IoT grasshopper robot that you charge once a week by putting in your ear during a phonecall....

The difference here is, the MVP was an app, so they didn't look at the tech details. Chances are they had assumed that QI charging on phones went both ways, just like NFC and had no thought to check it might not be true (or even more likely they probably mixed NFC and wireless charging up, and thought they were the same thing)  so they did their lean startup thing and hacked together a big flashy video and launched as fast as possible with the idea that the market would validate or reject...  and if it was rejected they could just let it die like all the other dumb ideas that float through kickstarter and fall out the other end... if it was a hit then they would build it up and see where it would go.

Instead a bunch of people on the internet have attacked, far beyond the point where the response is proportional or fair.. Something they were not expecting.


What I really want to know here, is how the HELL did kickstarter let this through the gates? it's so patently stupid that if it was given just the faintest sniff of technical oversight by kickstarter,  it should have not been allowed to launch.

That's the real story... how come, after so much real obvious fraud in the history of crowdfunding, could something with so little basis in reality even get through the gates?? What is kickstarter doing? how are they allowing this? how are they going to make sure this doesn't happen again?

That's the kind of journalism I'd rather see, instead of something that causes a great big inetrnet doxxing pile-on, on someone who may not be the only person involved in the stupid kickstarter (which may or may not have been deliberate fraud)  to the point where her name is going to be mud for the rest of her life.