Dan Luu
patreon
"Caisson", the company
🕑 Added 2019-05-03 04:00:00 +0000 UTCTIL there's a company named Caisson. The above-the-fold pitch on their website reads:
The Caisson Doublecheck API (beta) instantly and securely scans any United States-issued driver’s license and returns the data in a machine-readable JSON format, and verifies that the license data matches the embedded data, and checks that the faces are the same person.
A hiring page pitch says that this is on the blockchain.
I really like this name because a caisson is also the name for a cart that carries artillery ammunition. These are known for being dangerous because, if the caisson is hit by enemy artillery fire, it's somewhat likely to explode, damaging or destroying the nearby artillery battery as well as killing nearby artillerymen.
This seems like an appropriate name, given what the company pitch is.
Perhaps the company is named after the the civil/geo engineering term for a watertight structure kept dry by air pressure, but this doesn't really make sense because, in engineering terms a caisson is a structure that you build so that people can work inside it (without being in water), and they're not building something you work inside.
Perhaps the company is just named after the French word that both of these terms are derived from, which I believe means something like a box or a chest. Seems appropriate, but I like "my" version better.
