Three business bits

First bit :

Person #1 You were right about that guy I got into business with btw xD
mircea_popescu :p

Person #1 As usual lol.
mircea_popescu How's it go ?

Person #1 He was fine to start with them he just started making increasingly bad decisions, I heard a few days ago he commited suicide :(
mircea_popescu No ?!

Person #1 Yup. So now I'm back to wondering how I make some money again haha.
mircea_popescu Lol. Well, keep an eye on -assets, opportunities pop up now and again.

Second bit :

Person #2 Thoughts?
mircea_popescu What, already ? Gotta be patient.

Person #2 Sorry, figured you just go through it quickly and give me your thoughts. No rush.

(after a little)

mircea_popescu So it's an insanely expensive escrow website with no trust and some coinbase association. Someone could make something more offensive to me, but I'm not immediately sure how.

Person #2 Insanely expensive?
mircea_popescu Yes.

Person #2 Why
mircea_popescu Because who the hell heard of 1% for escrow.

Person #2 1% is to much?
mircea_popescu You get to charge 1 to 10 bitcents or something. In no case do you get a %.

Person #2 Most escrows charge a percentage.
mircea_popescu For what ? Whether you're escrowing 1000 BTC or 1, you do the same job.

Person #2 http://www.random-derpage.com/
mircea_popescu I don't care about random websites I never heard of, never will use and that do no business.

Person #2 I have never heard of an escrow service charging a flat rate. Can you show me an example pls.
mircea_popescu What's that change ?

Person #2 It doesnt, I'm glad to hear your feedback.
mircea_popescu You get a % when you do something substantial that influences the size of the deal. Do you pay 1% of all your income as an Internet bill to your ISP ?

Person #2 No lol.
mircea_popescu Why not ?

Person #2 In anycase any other suggestions
mircea_popescu Not really, this is too braindamaged to be improved.

Person #2 Sorry to hear that. You're the first person to give me such feedback.

Third bit :

Person #3 This kickstarter project, looks somewhat scammy, but in their presentation they detect amount of fat(?) in different types of cheese.
mircea_popescu Ah, yes. It's impossible to tell without a unit wtf it actually does. But, cheese is uniform.

Person #3 Yeah, but that's kind of their selling point. They do know their IR sucks. I just checked, I know a bunch of them indirectly. They look real.
mircea_popescu I imagine they've made some sort of doohickey. Just how useful it actually is...

Person #3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRa_IH-NJRQ sorry for youtube, but they kinda demo it. Well... you can make a basic classifier, say between cheese and veggies, and then subclassifiers. Based on the people in team, they're fucking with really bad SNR ratios, which is expected. I think i know a good market for them. And they know it too : silkroad buyers
mircea_popescu Maybe. You'd do much better with an actual gas column design tho. And proper laser rather than whatever low power IR diode.

Person #3 Yah, but the costs. Think about it, kids buying some MDMA or w.e, from unknown source. And i think they know. Their sales pitch mentions pills.
mircea_popescu Ya you're right, it does have that market. Experience shows that market is tiny.

Person #3 Based on past SR volume?
mircea_popescu Based on many things, such as hm. Did you ever read my discussion of the SR kid ?

Person #3 Nope, trilema?
mircea_popescu Sec. http://trilema.com/2013/what-the-drug-trade-is-how-the-drug-trade-works-and-why-silk-road-didnt-work-and-didnt-matter/ Prolly towards the end the stuff that actually interests in this discussion.

Person #3 10x. But actually it's not only SR, think of all the Viagra sales from weird online markets.
mircea_popescu Yes but, to quote,

"This is why two years later the famous marketplace was struggling to move one kilogram of cocaine, and this is why it took them three weeks to make the sale, and this is why it actually had to be the owner buying it on his own account : because SR makes no economic sense whatsoever. To be perfectly clear : the average highway toilet is capable of selling out a kilogram in about half a day. SR was a worse drug marketplace than the average highway toilet."

This is important.

Person #3 Yep, but online pharma is bigger, I think in 10e9 range.
mircea_popescu I have my doubts. The problem here is this : the sort of people who buy drugs online and the sort of people who are geeks and love gadgets share very few elements. It's like you have a market composed of all the blue wasps. Now it's true that the sky is blue, and it's fucking immense, and also that wasps are some of the more numerous taxa in nature. Nevertheless, you'll die of hunger selling to blue wasps.

Person #3 Well, still curious about the pharma volumes, will try to research it. No obvious earnings for me though, I just know the guys who know these guys :)
mircea_popescu More research never hurt.

The life and times.