shockeychap

Yes it will.

You're correct that some of the scams yield hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like I said, I knew someone to whom that happened. However, most scammers look for smaller payouts in quantity. Think of ransomware that make it look like your computer is full of viruses just so they can "sell" the uninstaller for a few hundred bucks. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of these incidents for every one incident involving a large $100K+ payout.

It makes sense, given that people are willing to act a lot more independently (without consulting others) when only a small amount is on the line, they often won't admit to these missteps out of embarrassment, AND, perhaps most importantly, it won't raise the ire of federal law enforcement enough to be concerned about things like extradition and prosecution.

I'm sorry to hear that. It was almost the exact same thing with my uncle. When I first started asking questions, he tried to assure me it was legit because he had heard his grandson talking in the background. My guess is that they had somebody sobbing hysterically while talking so as to make it hard to recognize that the voice is "off". When you're stressed, it's easy to miss that kind of thing, and they exploit it.

> You might have telco experience, but you have no clue whatsoever about the economics of these scams.

Please watch your tone and choice of words. That sentence is more focused on defaming the OP than addressing the merit of what they said.

Furthermore, saying "it makes no difference to the scammers if they're paying 10c per minute or calling for free" shows an equally clear failure to understand the economics of these scams. The vast majority of calls made by a scammer will yield nothing. They have to make numerous calls to find the one sucker who can be convinced to turn over their financial information or mail cash or do whatever needs to be done. I don't know the exact per-minute cost at which most scams become cost prohibitive, but I'm pretty sure you'd be shocked at how little it is. If it takes 2,000 calls to find one victim, and you're paying 10 cents per call, you'll spend $200 per victim. Will you make that much back, and will it be enough to offset all of the other costs involved in trolling? It depends. But it definitely makes it less appetizing than when the calls are free.

My uncle almost drove two states away to give a stranger $10,000 because he was duped into believing his grandson had gotten into an accident and killed a pregnant woman. The only thing that stopped it was that he first needed to borrow the money, which led to my involvement. We made some calls and were quickly able to confirm that the grandson in question was at home and nowhere near the "accident" in question.

My parents have had to cancel their main debit card twice in the past year because they've given out the number to someone they thought was with their bank.

My neighbor (in her 80s) almost gave her SSN to somebody who claimed to be with Social Security.

I knew a guy who lost his entire retirement to scammers and had to give up his dream of retiring to Florida.

I'm sad to say it, but it's more dangerous than ever to be old or naive. In the old days, the scammers had to come to you. The internet has made it trivial to carry out scam operations from the other side of the world, and everyone who COULD do something (especially the FCC and telcos) seems to be indifferent and apathetic.

I won't argue that the existing system isn't broken. But elimination of life imprisonment and capped sentences of 25 years for all crimes is just absurd.

What about Dennis Rader? He murdered numerous people throughout the 70s and 80s. The details of the Otero family are the kind of thing they don't even write about in fiction. Should he be allowed freedom before he dies? Should he be free today because of how old his crimes were?

What about Jeffrey Dahmer? (I realize he's dead, but that was at the hand of another inmate, and he'd still be alive and well if not for that.) He would be walking free today as a 62 year old if there was a 25 year maximum.

Furthermore, who's going to assume responsibility when people like this are released and then kill again to satisfy the urge within them?

Like I said, I won't argue that what he have needs correction, and I agree with the focus on rehabilitation, but there ARE other things that matter - such as appropriate punishment and protection of society - that still need to be factored in.

I had originally heard it during the congressional testimony, but given that it's over three hours long, I don't know exactly where.

The gist of what was said, is that a lawmaker cited something about FTX.US being "98% solvent" and asked John for confirmation of this. John stated that he couldn't give any figures at the moment, but there was generally truth to the statement that U.S. customers would be hurt less than others.

Here's an article that touches on it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-13/ftx-s-us-...

This looks like a potentially huge revelation. The wallet analysis looks sound, and, if correct, the implications of US customer funds being comingled in this manner could set the stage for an even worse scenario for US customers than that of FTX. Even SBF in all his criminality knew not to play AS fast and loose with US customer funds as he did with international, and John Ray has indicated that US customers will fare much better overall than others.

> child prostitute, child who has been trafficked, Using person-first language helps to not define people by just one of their characteristics.

I'm sorry, but I'm aghast (is that term okay, or is it too close to "ghost", which suggests "death", which might be triggering for somebody who knows somebody who died?) that somebody was able to type this out - a suggestion of a "more sensitive" term for a child involved in prostitution, ostensibly to "not define people by just one of their characteristics" - and wasn't immediately shocked into deleting it right away.

> "Yellow" is often used disparagingly against people of Asian descent.

Has anyone ever (let alone "often") heard the word "yellow" used in this manner?

I don't know why, but this one made me chuckle:

would_you_mind { // Code here } actually_i_do_mind (Exception £e) { // Politely move on cheerio('Message'); }

Ten minutes in, and I continue to be astonished at the kid-glove treatment he continues to get, even as the scale and brazenness of the fraud is known.

They lent money - customer money - to Alameda using THEIR OWN TOKEN as collateral.

They used messaging systems with auto-delete to communicate management decisions about expenses and money transfers.

They didn't have proper tracking of their own bank accounts and funds.

They used an auditor who was the "first-ever CPA firm to officially open its Metaverse headquarters in the metaverse platform Decentraland".

Bernie Madoff wasn't this brazen, and he was described openly as a fraud and a criminal. Yet even now, in this interview, BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, he's politely asked a question - like how customer funds got lent to Alameda - he gives an answer that is obviously meant to confuse and deflect, and no follow-up is made.

SMDH.

It's fair to observe that meanings of words change in practice, and the dictionary is there to document what words "do" mean, not what they "should" mean. However, a dictionary also plays a part in legitimizing new definitions, particularly in the early stages of when a word is being used in new ways. Look up the word "peruse" and you'll find two definitions that are effective opposites. I personally think that a word's meaning serves a purpose of concisely conveying ideas, and when you dilute meanings so that you can shoehorn a term into any space you want, you wind up destroying pieces of language and communication in the process. I don't think that "gaslighting" has been misused long enough to justify having a new definition that effectively cements the new meaning and throws away the ideas it used to convey. My hope is that the use of "gaslighting" to accuse anybody with whom you disagree of malicious intent (which is how it's come to mean any kind of deception) will eventually fade away as people find other terms to try to re-appropriate.

"The act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one's own advantage."

This is a very sloppy definition based on how the term "gaslighting" has been recently (ab)used, but it's not the right meaning. Gaslighting refers to the very specific mechanism of deceiving someone into believing that their perception or beliefs are wrong, and thus convincing them that they shouldn't trust their own judgment.

It does NOT refer simply to any notion of misleading or deception, though that's how it's been used in recent years.

This is not a link to a video describing a specific bug in the product. It's just a link to a search of "onewheel injuries" in YouTube, which presents a variety of videos detailing all manner of injuries that come from operator error and the inherent dangers of OneWheel operation. Try searching for "mountain bike injuries" and see what you get.

Is there anything else? (I'm sincerely interested. The CPSC article clearly infers a situation in which it suddenly stops. Is this confirmed?)

A "true believer" isn't able to carry out their work without a marketplace. Nobody lost money in crypto on the scale we're seeing 5 years ago.

The largely unregulated, uninsured, and opaque marketplace of crypto, facilitated by people like SBF, has been the conduit for the true believers.

If somebody says "I know you're a sucker and I'm going to take your money", (as SBF did in Levine interview) they just told you everything you need to know. You can rest assured that their other dealings are dirty, as is now coming to light for SBF.

I'm not sure why "good faith" is being brought into question, and I certainly haven't challenged the good faith of those who disagree with me. So I'm not going to address that aspect of the conversation.

I'm not arguing on the basis of what Levine thought of the conversation.

At the very least, it's apparent that SBF sees crypto as being heavily based on speculation that's disconnected from any actual value proposition, but he's choosing to exploit and profit from those systems. And it's now apparent that he also was engaging in speculation with user funds himself via Alameda.

A wild-eyed crypto believer might lose anywhere from a few thousand to a few million of their own money in poorly placed speculation.

A sophisticated market-maker will facilitate the loss of billions (about $10 billion in this case) from numerous people.

Which is more dangerous? A HODL who loses their savings on some speculative crypto purchase, or the next Bernie Madoff?

In this case, jail.

He openly talked about how the whole thing was a Ponzi scheme.

https://youtu.be/KZYqL79GDXU?t=1277

I don't disagree with any of this. The mechanisms that ensure that only one person at a time can consume the content in question provide appropriate friction to mirror most of the limitations of physical media.

I'm not a fan of the walled gardens of streaming and the you-own-nothing credo that goes with it. I'm just saying that we need to be fair to all sides with the solution.

If you're talking about loaning a physical copy of a movie to a friend, sure. We have to make arrangements to get the "thing" from one location to another.

Surely you can understand that freely "loaning" digital copies - with none of the friction involved in physical media transport - would de-incentivize purchasing by others.

If you want that, fine. But that will jack up the price of movies, since a lot fewer of them will be sold.

The only problem with this is that with physical media, there's an intrinsic amount of "friction" that prevents gaming the system. It's not convenient to, for example, have five people buy and share one set of DVDs. The hassle of moving the disc around (which gets dramatically worse with distance) incentivizes people to buy their own copy. But digital buying and selling would make it rather easy for one person to "sell" their movie to a friend for next-to-nothing and then "buy" it back when they want to use it. And we can be a thousand miles away with no problem.

There are ways to correct this, such as imposing reasonable floors on the sale price, or not permitting the sale of a title for something like 30 days after a transaction.

I'm just saying that these things would need to be factored into any proper solution, ideally via legislation.

What is the source for this claim? I haven't heard anything to this effect and nothing I've seem from Apple signals anything along these lines.

I'm not an expert, but I understand chess well enough to know that if a person at that level is going to cheat, they can't just play their own game and then let the computer tell them what moves will save them. They have to use the computer throughout the whole game and slyly use a combination of their moves along with computer-suggested moves. Early moves that are off the mainline but suggested by a computer would provide an interesting and safe avenue for a cheater to get his opponent off their game.

So yes, IF he was cheating, he likely would have started cheating on move 1.

Encryption and use of signed certificates has certainly been a big help against web fraud. No, it's not perfect, and can't prevent certain kinds of phishing, but it has definitely raised the bar for would-be scammers. It makes it nearly impossible to spoof "amazon.com" in the browser, and it prevents passive snooping on open WiFi.

You can't make it impossible, but you can make it very difficult.

My elderly uncle almost gave $10,000 to a scammer who had convinced him that his nephew was sitting in a jail and needed this money to be paid for his bail. Luckily, he reached out to me for help and I was able to confirm that his nephew was at home, not in jail.

I honestly can't imagine some of the scams that are coming, particularly to the tech-vulnerable, if we don't do SOMETHING to make real-time deepfake video harder than it now is.

Throwing up materials that randomly fall into the shape of a crude shelter can certainly happen. But without a LOT of evolutionary mechanisms already in place, that crude shelter will just fall apart, and it certainly won't turn itself into something more sophisticated.

What is necessary for life to arise from a random stew of disorganized chemicals is far more than just a good arrangement of a few molecules that exhibit some characteristics of life. Since all life dies as part of the never-ending march toward entropy, you also need to be capable of some form of reproduction and able to carry out reproduction at a faster rate than death. What is the minimum complexity involved in such a thing? I'd argue that it's probably more complicated than any house in existence.

In fairness, should they? It was your vehicle, insured by the carrier of your choice, with the coverage and cost tradeoffs of your choice. I would certainly expect Lyft to pay enough to make it worthwhile after all costs, including fuel and insurance. But should they be on the hook for the actual repair costs? If so, for how much? Should they repair a brand new Mercedes the same as a 20 year old Honda?

I get some of the drawbacks to gig-based work, but I think you have to realize that it does enable options that wouldn't exist in traditional employment scenarios, and SOME of the risk does remain with the contractor. No, I'm not saying Lyft has no responsibility in any situation, but getting into a garden-variety accident while on the road definitely sounds like a situation that's within the envelope of known risks when you decide to do this kind of thing on a gig basis.

Wholeheartedly agree, but with an important caveat - Google is no longer fighting for the best interest of it's users, it's fighting for the best interests of it's advertisers. How useful the results are is now secondary to "how much can this search be monetized". The former was important in the early days when Google needed to be competitive on search.

It is common for companies to randomize all data containing PII. It's not common for them to obfuscate one data point and leave all the others alone.

This is a fair observation, but every time this comes up, I have to wonder, what advantage does Bitcoin offer over gold?

- Gold has no dependency on electricity, computers, or any energy source. Bitcoin ceases to exist without these things.

- Gold has a lot of practical uses and applications as a material. Bitcoin has none.

- Gold is a naturally occurring element. Bitcoin is not.

The only advantage I've ever been able to see is that Bitcoin ownership can be transferred electronically compared to gold that must be moved. However, being able to be moved electronically also means that it can be stolen electronically. A bad actor in North Korea has the potential to steal a person's wallet credentials and transfer Bitcoin out of their possession. They can't do this with physical gold.

Gold is not a perfect store of value - it doesn't serve a fundamental need like food or a blanket - but it has served it's purpose over the millennia and I don't see how Bitcoin is improving on it.

"But passivity also created risk. If there was a problem with the code, someone could exploit it directly, without needing to bypass any human safeguards. And limiting blockchain interactions to cut costs entailed a trade-off: When a smart contract—a script that executes automatically when certain criteria are met—has fewer steps, it can leave more room for security vulnerabilities."

So much of this reminds me of Chesterton's Fence, where "innovative" solutions are deployed by people who never put forth the time and effort to fully understand how the existing system came to be the way that it was - and the problems that it had to deal with and solve along the way.

I'm not trying to sing the praises of finance and banking; there's much there that is broken. (I'm also not a fan of crypto or NFTs.) But I am saying that many of the "old" ways came about in response to a litany of problems that are neither obvious nor intuitive, and you need to understand why it works the way it does before putting out a new solution.