Topic: [ANN] Pink: Escort startup Series A share sale - page 7. (Read 3820 times)

I read the first line and thought this must just be a joke then again it is the oldest profession in the world, how it would work with bitcoin however is another matter.

Haha! I like you, you should stick around. Very interesting point though, with so much focusing on anonymity, could it be too much?

Will you invite more advisors to your team?

Good enough for me.  Literally finished watching the episode and saw this on the ANN page and had to at least ask.  Thanks!  Will be watching this project to see where it goes 

Well you can come up with these made-for-TV dramatic ideas for any service. What about an AirBnB killer that only goes after places he's already stayed?

Pink is a terrible service for a would-be killer to use. Clients undergo screening through our system, plus additional screening providers may require. There would be a record of each use, at least for a while (we will delete old records). If a provider does not check in after a date, we alert their emergency contacts, and there will be a record in our system of a missing checkin.

And if the attacker is going to follow up with people after a date, then there's no point in using Pink anyways.

Last time I installed an .APK it was like 2 clicks. Anyone who runs Android should have no problem with it.

Which one are you guys most hoping for? I went to Blockchain Life 2017 and learned so much.

First post ever on the ol' bitcointalk forums here.  Long time lurker though looking for something innovative.  Have been binge-watching Criminal Minds on Netflix recently and have come across something that correlates to this on Season 9, Ep. 12.  Basically an escort service with the option to pay in bitcoin was part of the episode.  I see you ha e outlined  your security roadmap/plan of attack rather well. The use of ram based servers and Tor gates, while not new, is an extremely effective, yet cumbersome form of data storage/processing.  Basically what my entire point of posting this is what if something were to happen?  What if, after all the background checks for a particular escort or client came back clean, something were to develop such as a serial killer using only YOUR service to facilitate his acts of violence. How would they be stopped?  How could they even be tracked?  Saw the episode and immediately thought of this coin.  Don't take this as FUDing as I feel like this is a reasonable question to ask
  One that I don't think has been discussed yet as its more of a "worst case" scenario type thing.  Thanks in advance and I look forward to hearing more updates on this peoject.!

They aren't used because they are a pain in the ass. The trade off is not worth it for most enterprises. But if your threat model includes attackers physically raiding your datacenter then it makes sense.

We're looking a few upcoming conferences but nothing solid yet.

That's actually pretty impressive. I didn't know RAM based servers were even a thing.

I wouldn't worry too much about what the trolls/kids think.

They have a pretty interesting blog post about their booth at BlockCon 2017, did you guys go?

We've got some videos from providers in support of our product. Check them out here:

https://vimeo.com/238137997

https://vimeo.com/238114413

https://vimeo.com/238113796

Clearly you have zero idea of any work that's involved in being an escort. Your ignorance is overwhelming.

At this point, approximately 10. I won't be more precise due to opsec concerns. We're mostly transparent, but about the actual people involved, every bit of obscurity helps maintain operational security.

How many people work on this project part time or full time?

Or VP of Product, Sarah Stevens, did an interview with the International Business Times: http://www.ibtimes.com/beyond-bitcoin-blockchain-tokens-sex-industry-2601252

Sarah wrote a new article that explains some issues in escorting. Why is it hard work, and how can Pink help?

Read to find out: Challenges in the Business of Pleasure: https://medium.com/@PinkApp/challenges-in-the-business-of-pleasure-d22e9ec03b75

Differential backups every few minutes or less. Basically stream the database log to encrypted backup. This is not hard. It is not something we invented. It is a very common approach for RDBMS.

If the server is breached or otherwise fails (random failures are scary - why is it random?) then we have to restart and restore. This is intentional. It provides the best security guarantees. Drop by our Slack and chat if you're not convinced. RDBMS data is small and restores quickly. Bigger data (photos) can be streamed from encrypted storage and does not delay restore.

Hosting via physical servers, not in Pink's name. This makes imaging them a very difficult task. Unlike VPSes which are easily imaged, including RAM.

Who claims things are flawless? I am not claiming our plan is flawless. I am saying it is vastly superior design and hard to improve without having a nation-state willing to back you legally. If you have particular criticisms, I want to hear them, please!

It is very common in ICOs to have a distribution heavily weighted to early and/or big players. Pink talked to people well before the domain was even registered. We have news articles in some huge mainstream tech and business sites coming out soon, plus some independent journalists. Sign up on https://seriesa.pinkapp.io to get updates - we have an update message coming out in the next 16 hours.

Tor will work fine. Aggressive prefetch and caching (encrypted to user access token) means few requests need to go all the way to the database. Plus we have some tricks up our sleeves to reduce latency. It is a challenge, but one we have figured out and feel very comfortable with.