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Comment by newguysofly | Hacker News Reader

Pretty sure I found him in like ten seconds. I just searched NAMUS for people matching his characteristics, and I found a Joseph Wayne McCartan from Louisiana. MH claimed to be from there. They also look strikingly similar. Further, JWC was suspected to have been a cancer survivor. This could explain the large abdominal scar—and, if the cancer recurred, the wasting. Check this reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/MostlyHarmlessHiker/comments/jnixu7...

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I know you're only trying to help, but they look nothing alike. And going missing on a shrimp boat leaving Texas, to then hike from up north seems too odd for Occam's Razor.

Two points: One, I don't know who you're looking at! They look very, very similar to me. Keep in mind, you have to age your mental image of JWM about ten years. Second, it's absolutely clear that MH wanted to "go missing" / be untraceable. If I were to accomplish that, the best way to do so would be to fake some sort of accident... like a mishap at sea (so that people believe you to be dead). Hence, shrimping boat.

Quite an odd thing to say. While it can be easy to think that someone looks alike due to the "overall appearance" of their faces, closer inspection usually sets things apart. Their completely different chins are one example.

Secondly, his DNA didn't match the missing person's database, which you are getting your "match" from.

There's no reason to be defensive. You've done nothing wrong. Wrong starts only if it is impossible for one to accept that one's theory might not be correct. That can ultimately end in throwing off the real investigation, if one were aggressive enough.

You comment was good without the last paragraph. It’s needlessly condescending and sees a defensiveness that isn’t really there.

There is an online "face verification" service from one of the major tech cloud providers. They have a demo:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...

It I put in the two reddit images, and it says they don't match, but its not very confident. I've tried with some older family photos, on with kids growing up and those matched well, (even though 4 years difference). I does seem to work pretty well in general.

Verification result: The two faces belong to different people. Confidence is 0.09848.

I was incredibly convinced it was the son of a friend due to similar (in my mind) facial features. And even more convinced when I found evidence the friend's son had a vegan restaurant that closed down around the same time this guy disappeared. Then I found the son's github repo with updates from 2020. Actually glad to be wrong.

The Louisiana missing persons repository says that his DNA records are available [1]. So they (theoretically) would have found a match of his DNA when searching the missing persons database.

[1] http://identifyla.lsu.edu/profile.php?id=494

I took a look at the picture of JWC, and I can't quite see the resemblance, but maybe I'm missing something. Is there any mention of JWC working in tech?

Edit: From the missing persons website:

> Last seen on shrimping boat in the Texas area in the Gulf of Mexico.

Seems somewhat unlikely that's him.

Maybe someone more savvy than me with this could age him ten years to get to get a better comparison... As for working in tech, yeah you'd think there'd be some record. But then again, tech is a great place to work if you want to be anonymous. E.g. could have been a contractor.

Fair enough. Quite hard to age him plus the beard.

Reoccurring cancer could also be an explanation for taking the step of getting rid of your digital lifelines and walking down the Appalachian Trail.

The slightly odd thing is that that looks like the author of Screeps.

I'm sure it's not though ;-)

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