In the past few days, the cosmic Internet celebrity Musk has once again made headlines in major media because of a "god operation", and this time, along with him, there is another ordinary student who is only 19 years old and has just entered the first year of college.
In fact, the whole thing is not complicated, simply put, a Musk fan made a "bastard meal", through the self-developed aircraft tracking technology to monitor Musk's flights at all times, and finally annoyed Musk and was blacklisted by the Buddha. However, due to the fact that the whole process was negotiated by Musk himself, and the "negotiation" process was extremely dramatic, there were even many companies that recently issued job invitations to this freshman, making this matter recently become the talk of the majority of netizens after dinner.
Among them, the most enjoyable part is that Musk, the richest man in the world, once wanted to buy this freshman with $5,000, but he was decisively rejected by the other party and bargained for $50,000. And everyone's focus is on, "Musk, please show the dignity of your richest man in the world!" You're someone with a net worth of more than $240 billion, and you're going to spend $5,000 to buy out the technology that people have spent so long on? ”
So, what's going on?
| Musk flying in the sky, the little fan chased after the ground
Jack Sweeney, 19, is a freshman at the University of Central Florida. The University of Central Florida is a well-known space fund university in the United States that has trained engineers for the American Space Center in the past, and Jack Sweeney is also an avid space enthusiast. In his Twitter profile, it was written that his hobbies were anything about space, Tesla, spaceflight, and of course programming.
Therefore, for Jack Sweeney, Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, is also a completely "god-like existence", and he is also a true musk fan. But this little fan is not just talking, but a real activist.
After a lot of data collection and programming, Jack Sweeney first opened a Twitter account called "ElonJet" in June 2020, which is dedicated to posting the itinerary of Musk's private jet, including details such as flight route, take-off and landing time, take-off and landing location, flight altitude and so on.
Since the account was opened, ElonJet has posted more than 800 pieces of information about Musk's private jet itinerary and has more than 300,000 followers.
Screenshot from Elon Musk's Jet Twitter account
At the end of November last year, the account first caught musk's own attention, and he personally contacted the student through Twitter and asked him in detail how he was able to obtain the voyage data that should have been hidden and automatically analyzed.
Jack Sweeney was so excited about the idol sending himself a message that he quickly explained his "secret" to Musk in detail. While the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) hid information about most flights, Sweeney found a huge loophole. He used real-time data from the aircraft's ADS-B transponders to determine the plane's position in the air, and then cross-used and validated it with another anonymous version of the FAA Flight Plan website to determine the intended destination of each aircraft.
Sweeney says the entire process of parsing is like solving a logic puzzle: by using the altitude of the plane plus the time it takes to receive the data to determine when the plane will take off or land, then cross-referencing latitude and longitude and airport data to determine where the plane is leaving or flying, and finally writing a program to automatically implement tracking and posting positioning on Twitter. Most importantly, the data he uses is completely public and legal, and can be used to track most of the planes.
Musk was also surprised after learning about the entire operation, saying that the control of the entire aviation system was too primitive, and asked how to prevent risks, because he did not want his plane to be hit by a crazy person one day.
The conversation between Musk and Sweeney, pictured by NYpost
| "$5,000, shut it down." "No, 50,000." ”
As for ElonJet's continued release of his private jet itinerary, Musk apparently also believes that it poses uncontrollable risks to himself. So he proposed that Jack Sweeney turn off the account and stop posting the flight itinerary, for which he offered $5,000.
But for this offer, Sweeney was clearly not satisfied. He thinks the time and effort he's put into developing the tracking program over the past year is far more than $5,000 worth. So he rejected Musk's $5,000 offer and returned $50,000, saying that he could use the money to go to college and buy himself a Tesla.
Musk said he was thinking about it at the time, but later changed his mind that he was reluctant to pay anything because he felt that such a "bargain" transaction felt wrong. In response, Sweeney replied that if Musk does not want to pay, he will delete the account, but hopes to exchange it for an internship at Tesla.
After he sent the message, Musk did not reply to him.
However, on Monday, Jack Sweeney discovered that Musk had blocked all accounts associated with him, including ElonJet and himself. And also in response to comments from other netizens, he said that these social accounts that track his personal life are becoming a security risk. In recent days, netizens have also joined the blocking team and began to call for resistance to such "illegitimate" tracking and endangering Musk's personal safety.
Sweeney was also surprised by the results of being blocked by idols. In an interview with Business Insider, he said he felt it might have annoyed Musk by making his conversations with Musk directly public, but that he would not close the account and would continue to make Musk's flight itinerary public.
He said that although Musk hid the flight information last time after telling Musk the secret behind his tracking technology, he was still able to crack it, but it only took a little time.
"Musk, he can target me, so why can't I target him too?" Jack Sweeney responded with some treason when he was blocked.
In addition to getting a lot of attention because of this matter, Jack Sweeney, who is still a freshman, has also gained a lot of job opportunities because of this incident. For example, the CEO of stratos, a private jet company, has thrown him an olive branch, and he is now working at UberJets to help it build a platform to track charter flights to help customers find cheaper seats.
| in addition to Musk, Bill Gates, Bezos and others are also being tracked
Although he did not get the $50,000 from Musk this time, the college student is planning to start with more tech giants to expand his potential profit base.
Jack Sweeney has developed more than a dozen private jet auto-tracking accounts of the same type as ElonJets, including tech giants Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, entrepreneur Mark Cuban and rapper Drake.
A Twitter account developed by Sweeney that tracks Bill Gates planes
In addition, he created a website called Ground Control to host a web version of the tracking robot when Twitter closes his account. He also intends to provide customized aircraft tracking services for more tech giants, entrepreneurs, and celebrity super fans.
"They're either very outstanding people or they're just very interesting," he said of the people he tracked. "Lately I've been tracking people on my list whose fans want to follow."
In fact, using the private aviation data of key people for profit has long been a market practice, and companies including data service platform Nasdaq Data Link are trying to collect such data to provide analysis of the company's business activities and clues to mergers and acquisitions.
"Flight tracking companies make millions of dollars a year, and I only need a fraction of what they make." Jack Sweeney said.
While interest-driven flight tracking may present Jack Sweeney with potential revenue opportunities, his move is undoubtedly also a legal and ethical red line.
Although these data are currently obtained through open and legal channels, when it comes to buying and selling, there is a risk of illegal peddling data privacy. On the other hand, as a type of person with extreme behavior and crazy style among fans, bastard meals are often condemned by social morality because they often endanger the privacy and safety of celebrities.
A few days ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook also suffered from the "bastard meal". A crazy female fan of Cook has been stalking and harassing him since October 2020, opening more than a dozen companies in the United States under Cook's name, and claiming that Cook is her husband and has twins with her. Recently, after the female fan tried to drive into Cook's home last month, Cook finally couldn't bear to apply to the California court for a restraining order to keep himself and his family safe.
Image taken from The National
The story of Sweeney's successful "star chasing" through its own technological innovation to break the dimensional wall is interesting, but the act of mining and disclosing the personal privacy of celebrities is also debatable. From Bill Gates to Jobs, from Zuckerberg to Musk, generation after generation of tech giants have become idols for more and more young people, and the rice circle culture seems to have begun to spread to the tech world.
From the current operation of the big guys who block and sue without a word, it can also be seen that the technology big guys are obviously not gentle stars, and the "porcelain" of the world's richest man is also not easy to touch.
Reference Articles:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-31/elon-musk-jet-tracking-teen-refuses-5-000-payout-targets-more-billionaire-jets