EXHIBIT M

Ayyadurai v. Floor64, Inc. et al Doc. 1 Att. 14

Dockets.Justia.com

Document title: Another Story Of A 'Fake' Brilliant Inventor? Is 'Scorpion Walter O'Brien' A Real Computer Security Genius? | Techdirt

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READ POSTS EARLY, JOIN THE INSIDER CHAT £ MOREAnother Story Of A 'Fake' Brilliant Inventor? Is 'Scorpion

Walter O'Brien' A Real Computer Security Genius? : : IIISIDER SHOPfrom the more-of-this-crap? dept

There's apparently a new TV show on CBS called Scorpion that has received mixed -to-decent

reviews, It supposedly is about some computer security geniuses/outcasts who help "solve complex,

global problems." However, Annalee Newitz's description of the stupidest, most batshit insane

hacker scene ever from the first episode, suggests that the show is not worth watching, In the

past few years, it had been kind of nice to see Hollywood actually seem to have some clue about

accurately portraying hacking in some situations, but that's all apparently been tossed out the

window with Scorpion, Even if you dont read Newitz's story (or view the video clip), just know it

involves an ethernet cable hanging from a flying plane with a car racing beneath it to download

some backup software needed by the airport so planes can land. Yeah,

LfiiiilUikiiiii*

!Qverhype

by Mike Mas nick

Thu, Sep 25th 2014

9:16am

4Filed Under: IB

b A?cybersec urity,

exaggeration,

hacking,

hoLLywood,scorpion, shtva

ayyadurai, waiter

o'brien

$5.49WITH CARD

Coffee-mate Creamer

A big part of the show's marketing is the claim that the story is partially based on the life of one

of the show's executive producers, Walter O'Brien. CBS News has an article talking up these

claims of O'Brien's amazing feats, helping out its parent company CBS, who broadcasts the show.

But,,, for such a "genius," many of O'Brien's claims are coming under scrutiny and they're not

holding up well, Having just gone through the whole Shiva Ayyadurai i inventor of email crap,

it's beginning to sound like a similar case of someone pumping up their own past for publicity

purposes.

(j&tphs)VaW until Dec. 13

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The claims about O'Brien are both odd and oddly specific, Here's CBS's reporting :

5.3 The FCC Suggests Some Wishy Washy,Highly Unlikely Solutions To The

Poorly-Secured Internet Of Things

5.2 1 If You're Worried About What President

Trump Can Do To The Press, Blame

President Obama

Waiter O'Brien has the fourth highest IQ_ in the world.

Elsewhere, he claims that he was "diagnosed as a child prodigy with an IQof 197," First off,

there are significant questions about IQ as a particularly useful measurement of anything.

Furthermore, the idea that there's some definitive list of those with the highest IQs seems equally

questionable, A quick Google search will show you a whole bunch of "top 10 lists" of IQs — all of

them different, and none of them Including anyone named Walter O'Brien. Judge Tosses Charges Against

Backpage Execs, Tells Kamala Harris

To Take It Up With Congress

5.2

O'Brien's story started unraveling when he made the somewhat unwise decision to do a Reddit

AMA, Redditors are pretty good at sniffing out completely bogus claims, and it didn't take them

Long here, Also, Asher Langton has been doing a bang up job debunking basically every claim

that O'Brien makes.New To Techdirt?

Explore some core concepts:

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Cannot Open Up New Business Model

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Among other things, O'Brien's story claims that he began Scorpion Computer Services in the mid-

1980s and that "Scorpion has mitigated risk for 7 years on $1.9 trillion of investments and has

invented and applied Artificial Intelligence engines to protect United States war fighters in

Afghanistan," It's not even entirely clear what that means, It goes on:

Since 1 988, Scorpion's team of world class experts partner with clients on a global

basis, across Industries, to add real measurable value in mission-critical initiatives

from planning, to execution, to running the business. Scorpion's senior management

has a collective knowledge of more than 4 13 technologies, 210 years in IT, and 1,360

projects. Scorpion himself has created over 177 unique technology indentions

including ScenGen and WinLocX and is one of the worlds leading experts in the

application of computer science and artificial intelligence to solve complex industry

challenges."

How Being More Open, Human And

Awesome Can Save Anyone Worried About

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Again with the odd, and oddly specific claims. They have knowledge of 413 technologies? Do they

have a list somewhere? Does it include the coffee machine in the lunch room? Did they send

someone out to get the new iFtione 6 to make it 414? Either way, there are, , , just a few problems

with these claims. As Langton points out, the "headquarters" of Scorpion Computer Services Inc.

does not appear to be a particularly large or impressive company, Its headquarters is actually. , , a

UPS store address That report notes that it has one employee, and revenue of $66k, It's possible

that the report is inaccurate, but for such a big and successful company, you'd expect to see. . , at

9

Document title: Another Story Of A 'Fake' Brilliant Inventor? Is 'Scorpion Walter O'Brien' A Real Computer Security Genius? | Techdirt

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Techdirt Dealsapplication of computer science and artificial intelligence to solve complex industry

challenges."

Again with the odd, and oddly specific claims. They have knowledge of 413 technologies? Do they

have a list somewhere? Does it include the coffee machine in the lunch room? Did they send

someone out to get the new iFtione 6 to make it 414? Either way, there are, , , just a few problems

v/ith these claims. As Langton points out, the "headquarters" of Scorpion Computer Services Inc.

does not appear to be a particularly large or impressive company, Its headquarters is actually.,, a

UPS store address That report notes that it has one employee, and revenue of S66k, It's possible

that the report is inaccurate, but for such a big and successful company you'd expect to see. . , at

least a bit more historical evidence of its existence. But there is none.

& C02

And then there's this page (and here's the web archive version in case O'Brien figures out how to

delete the old page), v/hich apparently used to be the site for Walter's Scorpion computer Services,

that, urn, looks like it was built on GeoCities -- complete with the animated fire torches next to

the dreadfully designed logo.

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time for the touches and pitchforks, I think.

Dark Helmet: Touches and pitchforks is my

new favorite typo win

Jeffrey Nonken: hah.

Well, mobile interface. That's my excuse.

Vidiot: WaRo article on copy right fight gets it

wrong, of course... ASCAP and MPAA seen as

the Office's only constituents. How about us

citizens instead?

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Mike Masrick: well, they do quote new head of

the ALA too. and he's goodFor a big, massively successful company... you'd expect, urn, something a bit more professional,

Walter's own Linkedin profile notes that he actually worked at Capital Group for a while, with

redditors claiming he was just a QA guy there, though his profile says he was a 'technology

executive." Many other claims on the company's website read like self- promotion a I gibberish. "We

saved $43 billion in opportunity risks over a five-year period," "We invented an efficiency engine

that performs 250 human years of work every 1.5 hrswith over 9WE improvement over human

error." By the way, the "see how" link on that last one doesn't actually show you "how" it just takes

you to a page about how the company is a value added reseller 'Tor proven IT products," The entire

website looks like gibberish from someone trying to sound like a real tech company, It reminds me

of Jukt Wicronics.

I ?

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Langton also turned up that O'Brien appears to have another "company" called Strike Farce, using

the same UPS Store address, and with very, very, very, very similar website design and bullshitteiy.

That site has a really bizarre "what others say" page, listing out random referrals for O'Brien,

which are generally just the standard empty "personal reference letters" people without much

experience tend to ask some former colleagues for when looking for a new job. The first one is

from Steven Messino (with the date conveniently stripped off) which looks like the generic job

reference letter:

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Document title: Another Story Of A &#39;Fake&#39; Brilliant Inventor? Is &#39;Scorpion Walter O&#39;Brien&#39; A Real Computer Security Genius? | Techdirt

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Note that O'Brien claims that Messino is the co-founder of Sun. That's... not true. Anyone who

knows anything about the history of Sun knows it was co-foundled by Andy Bechtolsheim, Bill Joy,

Scott McNealy and Vinod KhosLa in 1982. Messino's own Linked In page shows he joined Sun in

1988. Six years after it was founded. Also, Sun had its IPO in 1986. So it's not like this was a small

company when Messino joined... as a "regional sales manager."

(14)

03:25 More Prosecutors Refuse lb Accept Guilty Pleas

Based On Faulty $2 Field Drug Tests (1 1 )

SundayBasically everywhere you look, O'Brien's claims are either massively exaggerated to downright

ridiculous. 12:00 Funniest/MiBt Insightful Comments Of The Week

At Tech dirt (5)

There are also some odd personal claims about "Homeland Security" coming to find him as a 13-

year old boy for hacking into NASA, Except, when he was 13, there was no Homeland Security -

agency established after the September 11, 2001 attacks, O'Brien also claims this:

Saturday

12:00 This Week In Tech tilt HIistory: SOFA, Chirm, Dajazl

ft The Hypocrisy Of Copyright 12)

More &Scorpion was bom and raised in Ireland, and at 1 6, ranked first in national high

speed computer problem solving competitions. At 13, he competed in the World

Olympics in Informatics and has ranked as high as the sixth fastest programmer in

the world.r>

Sixth fastest programmer in the world? Really? Some folks on Reddit noted that it doesn't appear

Ireland competed in the "International Olympiad in Informatics" in 1993, though someone else

found a report from the University of Sussex, which O'Brien attended, noting that O'Brien had come

in 6th in a different contest, but in the Olympiad itself, he came in 90th, I mean that's great for

an 18 year old, but it hardly makes him into some programming genius.

Sprint

ilimiFr dom

¦ mm*.

And we wont even touch the claims that his programming helped catch the Boston Marathon

bombers, because... well.,, really?/line

Switch nowFrankly, the parallels with Ayyadurai and the email story are there, It certainly appears that, like

Ayyadurai, O'Brien was a bright kid who did some impressive programming as a teenager, but then

didn't appear to amount to all that much noteworthy beyond that. Try searching for any news

references or evidence of O'Brien doing anything other than in the last few months in the publicity

leading up to this new TV show. However, he is trying to reinvent himself and rewrite his history as

some sort of genius programmer responsible for all sorts of amazing things, very little of which

seems directly supportable. Of course, CBS doesn't really care, so long as they have a fun TV show

that people watch, but at the very least, they shouldn't continue to spread the exaggerated myths

about O'Brien that appear to have little basis in fact,

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