
Scammed - akkartik
https://medium.com/matter/f4a5d98a4f51/?attempt=2
======
dredmorbius
A journalistic and literary trope I increasingly despise: creating an
elaborate and evocative metaphorical description of something without naming
what it actually _is_ , often with the side-effect of making a rather mundane
technicality sound all gee-wiz and confusing rather than enlightening the
reader. E.g., Mike's booting up a copy of Windows in a VM:

 _His first step is defensive: the creation of a software shield that will
hide his identity. He boots up a computer containing a version of Windows
that’s cut off from the rest of the machine. It’s a digital Russian doll, a
computer within a computer._

Yeah, OK, we get it. Windows running in VirtualBox or Parallels or VMWare or
whatever. Yeah, it's a security measure. But if a guy's engaged in laboriously
sculpting mother earth with an implement of ancient design comprised of planar
forged ores fastened to the end of a sylvan shaft, just call a fucking spade a
spade and tell us he's digging a hole in dirt.

The language doesn't serve to inform, it conceals. And in this case, the
security isn't necessary to protect the identity of the VM, unlike the
elaborate description of Mike's apartment silo.

~~~
obstacle1
I agree that the author should have named what the Windows installation is,
i.e., a VM. However I disagree that metaphors aren't useful in teaching people
things, especially about technology.

The author knows his audience, and it is not people like you who have deep
technical knowledge. The majority of people reading this probably have trouble
_starting_ their Windows PCs, much less understanding how a 'Virtual Machine'
is any more or less virtual than the machine they're already using. The
russian doll metaphor points towards the concepts of separation and
encapsulation, which can help the non-technical reader understand what's going
on.

This isn't a technical manual and shouldn't be held to the standards of one.
It's entertainment for people who want to know slightly more about technology
-- but not _too_ much or _too_ deeply -- than they did before.

~~~
dredmorbius
You can use the metaphor. _But call the thing what the hell it is, in
straightforward language._

The problem with this trope is that it makes technology (and science) seem
both much more complicated than it is, and, as I've noted, obscures the
reality, both in the specific tools used, how they're used, and what they
accomplish.

Conducting virus and scam investigations from within a fresh VM is hardly news
(a co-worker of mine would do this for filing HR and other corporate reports
over MSIE-only interfaces, noting that by the end of the 15-20 minute session
his VM was already compromised...). And some bright kid reading the story
might actually get some ideas as to how she could better protect herself
and/or get into this online forensics and investigations thing.

And the argument that news reportage has to protect the ignorant from their
own ignorance by not accidentally un-ignoranting them is ... tired.

~~~
obstacle1
>And the argument that news reportage has to protect the ignorant from their
own ignorance by not accidentally un-ignoranting them is ... tired.

I don't think I made that argument.

Keeping content simple isn't about protecting anyone from their ignorance, it
is writing to serve an audience's wants. People who read publications like
Medium generally want bite-size overviews and entertainment. There is a reason
the vast majority of people would rather read Scientific American or The
Economist instead of picking up an IEEE journal.

~~~
dredmorbius
That piece is anything but bite-sized.

SciAm and the Economist are generally worlds ahead of most of the MSM (though
they've been flagging in the past decade or two as well).

------
dollaaron
>The call unsettles him. “I will do anything to ensure that I never have to
hear that woman crying ever again,” he tells me later. I get the feeling that,
in Mike’s mind, other people’s emotions show up as noise: data that has no
apparent purpose, and that his internal software cannot process.

I found this a very unfair judgement made by the author. Giving Mike the
benefit of the doubt, I get the sense that he cares about her, and wants to
stop the root cause of her suffering, not that her crying made him
uncomfortable because he "cannot process" it. The author seems to be trying to
play up the rational side of Mike and his engineer's mind at the expense of
his emotions.

~~~
swdunlop
Yeah. Anyone who knows Mike knows that he isn't some fictional automaton. The
journalist is playing the 90's hollywood hacker card here. All we need now is
Mike roller blading and some bad CGI to make it complete.

~~~
sarreph
And bottles of Club-Mate strewn across the otherwise empty apartment floors.

------
trumbitta2
Still reading it, but so far I don't quite like how the following paragraph
could make it easy to find Mike's home, 25-foot walls, sushi restaurant and so
on:

MIKE LIVES IN Fremont, a trendy district north of Seattle’s downtown that’s
known as a haven for alternative types. Even there, though, he doesn’t quite
fit in.

Take his apartment: it isn’t one. From the street, a glass door opens onto a
concrete retail space with 25-foot high walls. The windows are covered by
blinds. Ceiling-mounted halogen tubes cast a low glow that leaves the corners
dark. Delicious smells from a neighbouring sushi restaurant occasionaly fill
the space, but Mike’s own kitchen is rarely used; obscure electronic
components and dismembered gadgets crowd the counters. The floor is covered in
random detritus: a single white sock, a piece of fuzzy green string.

~~~
swdunlop
I thought the same thing. The journalist is very careful to respect the
scammer, "Mr. Smith" but is very eager to dump where Mike lives, what mule
fingered him, and the only thing protecting either would be the fact that Mr.
Smith would be more exposed if he tried to retaliate directly.

~~~
rdl
I think they're worried about being sued for accusing Mr. Smith and Jennifer
of crimes which they haven't been convicted of, whereas Mike Davis just admits
to crimes directly (for a good cause, but it certainly seems like he's exposed
to some legal risk here, in the US and especially India, although I suspect no
prosecutor in the US would go after him, and no jury would convict, because
he's doing it for a good reason.)

~~~
mcv
> I suspect no prosecutor in the US would go after him, and no jury would
> convict, because he's doing it for a good reason.

I wish I could trust the US justice system that much.

------
ColinWright
Submitted 12 days ago[0] with a few up-votes and no discussion, then submitted
6 hours ago[1] with no up-votes and no discussion. Now submitted again with
/?attempt=2 on the end of the URL to avoid the minimal dup-detection that HN
does.

This submission gets traction. Maybe everything should be submitted again and
again until it gets traction. Then again, maybe there's nothing wrong with
lots of re-submissions of the same stories over and over, and I'm just grumpy
and need more sleep.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7659277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7659277)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7725858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7725858)

 _Edit: And yes, I 've made this point before. Perhaps people are tired of me
saying the same thing repeatedly. Well, I'm tired of seeing the same stories
repeatedly. I guess I'll just have to take a break for a while. Feel free to
vote me up or down as you will._

~~~
dang
The criterion is simple: a small number of reposts is ok when an article is
solid and hasn't had significant attention on HN. Good stories should have
more than one crack at the bat, or sheer randomness would prevent many from
ever getting seen. If you pay close enough attention to HN that those two
previous submissions counted as already having seen the story, you're way
beyond the 99th percentile!

That's why we leave the dupe detector so porous. HN's goal isn't to build a
database of unique urls—it's to have the most interesting front page possible.

This system is easy to abuse, so we ask people not to abuse it. For example,
don't delete things and then repost them. But I don't see abusive reposting as
a huge problem on HN right now. We catch most of it, and alert users catch
nearly all the rest.

Edit: I should mention that we're going to be releasing a new approach to
/newest that addresses the tendency of good stories to lose their chance at
the front page too quickly. Exactly when we release it depends on how much
code I get to write in the next month or two.

~~~
tripzilch
It seems like you guys (dang and .. I forgot the other one's name) added a
feature to tag "meta" comments so they appear all the way down the bottom of a
comment thread?

Because that's clever. I really like that solution, because "meta" comments
usually do not deserve the downvotes they can get to move them away from the
top part of the discussion.

I'm generally quite impressed by the new and improved job you are doing at
moderating HN. I don't pay close enough attention to tell if it's improved the
quality of discussion so far (it probably did, definitely did not get worse).
I can say, however, the changes you made and especially the openness about
most things, really improved the atmosphere and general feeling of "fairness"
of this place. And that counts for a lot! Well done :)

BTW did that whole /pending experiment go anywhere? That page is always empty
to me. I'm still not very sold on the idea, but just wondering.

~~~
dang
Thanks! To answer your questions: yes, we flag some subthreads as off-topic
(especially when they become weird local optima that would otherwise sit at
the top), and no, we haven't turned pending comments on. We decided to try
other experiments instead (such as changes to downvoting, which we've posted
about quite a bit) and reserve pending comments as a last resort.

------
politician
I hate this article. It's about some _fine_ reporter who opens with some tear-
jerker piece about pay-day loan scams, then transitions to "Mike" who, in so
many deliberately picked words, is a loner hacker character with no
credibility just in case this article doesn't pan out, and then...

"Mike casts his hands over the keyboard, and makes like God."

Seriously. That happens in the post.

Unfortunately, as I page down, I noticed that author mentions "lead
generation." Which most of us can relate to, so I read, nay, struggle onwards.
(this is parody)

Mike turns into a criminal phishing character in pursuit of an elusive quarry.
The article tapers off into a stalemate.

86 points?

~~~
neumann
hear hear. I hated it too. It felt like he wanted to recreate a William Gibson
short story. The description of the method maded it sound like voodoo, Mike
was turned into a character trope, and the story ended in nothing.

Give me a wired article to read. They have some amazing investigative
journalism that is far more thrilling.

------
jtheory
I've been curious about how to track down scammers -- just a few days ago I
got a quite convincing call supposedly from Bank of America; they appreciate
my reliable payments and would like to lower my interest rate... they'd just
need to verify a few bits of info, then pass me off to an account manager to
handle the rate change.

First, do I have the card with me? Can I confirm the expiration date, so they
know this is the current card?

Next, they just needed the card number, starting after the (here he listed the
first 4 digits accurately). This was when I belatedly realized this was of
course a scam attempt -- the initial digits of a credit card number just
identify the bank, so he could pretend to be confirming that _he_ was legit
while at the same time collecting my entire credit card number.

What if I hadn't known that? I know perfectly well I shouldn't trust an
incoming caller's identity as a general rule... but he called in the middle of
my workday, I was wrapped up in other things, and just thought "eh, I can take
a minute and accept a lower rate" without even paying enough attention to
realize he hadn't even addressed me by name. Embarrassing, really....

Once the game was up it didn't last much longer -- though I played it safe and
pretended I didn't realize it was a scam.

But what can I do now?

The incoming number was reported as 703 237 2680; but I have no other info on
who the caller was beyond that, and I believe caller-ID is fairly easily
spoofed.

I wish I'd had a honeypot credit card to give him; that would have been at
least somewhat useful, though tricky to really use. From what I understand,
stolen CCs are tested first (via a small purchase from any online service),
then good ones are sold.

A honeypot cc (generated by someone with the power to investigate its data)
could be used to attempt to track down the people testing it, and whoever buys
it, but the former use could be useless (if the scammer can cover their
tracks), and the latter only gets the downstream bad guy, not the original
scammer.

And... the honeypot cc would need to pass the test to be sold, which would
cost money. A chargeback (to that initial test) would of course be possible,
but the whole testing process is already brutal for whatever merchant they're
using for that.

I'm curious about other ideas on the most useful action I can take in response
to this kind of thing.

~~~
e40
_The incoming number was reported as_

This will do you no good. They are using a hijacked PBX. There is no way
possible they are going to make it that easy to find them.

Here's my story:

I kept getting calls from "credit card services" and every damn time I asked
to be removed they would just hang up on me. So, after about the 20th time, I
decided to play dumb. I strung them along for 10 minutes. Here's how I did
that: the first person you talk with asks if you have more than $3000 in CC
debt. The second person basically asks the same thing, but in a little more
depth. The third guy is the smooth talker. He asks you to find your statement
so he can verify information from it. I played dumb and said I needed to find
it. He said "I'll wait" in a very patient voice. I kept him on the like for 10
minutes (while I worked). Then, I just hung up. He called back immediately and
said we accidentally got disconnected. I told him "you wouldn't take me off
your list, so fuck you."

His revenge was next. The phone rang and someone was yelling at me. He was
redirecting all complaints to my phone number. I had to unplug my phone.

I called AT&T (who I had service with) and after about 30 minutes of run
around, they said they couldn't do anything. I'd have to contact the fraud
department, or some such. I did try, but it was a lot of paperwork and it
looked very bureaucratic.

So, I decided to google for "credit card services" (not exactly that, but
that's what I started with). I found a TX state lawsuit against a company with
this name from the early 2000's. The lawyer that prosecuted them was listed
and had a phone number. So, I called it. An elderly gentleman picked up the
phone and I told him my story. His first words, "so, they're back at it?" He
told me to be very careful, and basically tried to dissuade me from doing
anything.

It amazed me that they seem to operate with impunity.

~~~
nostromo
Phones need a "report spam" just like email.

Phone companies or device manufacturers should use those reports to trace bad
actors.

~~~
dredmorbius
Note that _email_ doesn't have a "report spam" functionality designed into it
(in the form of RFCs), though email _providers_ often offer their own version
to their users (most are far more opaque when it comes to reporting spam
_against_ their own systems). Reasons for this are diverse, but effectively,
if you're a large email service provider, your users' satisfaction is a
concern, spam is a large part of that, and the ability to leverage reports
from many users to identify spam (and non-spam) sources is very useful.

Telephony was designed in a far more innocent age, and was largely protected
against the abuse which ran rampant in email (and Usenet) on account of the
costs associated with network access and in actually making calls. Now that
this is rapidly approaching email costs (effectively nil at the margin once
you've got the infrastructure set up), this is changing.

One consequence is that voice service is rapidly becoming useless due to
abuse. I've rightgraded from a smartphone to a dumbphone for a number of
reasons, but one feature I particularly miss from my Android device was the
call screening app: deny access to unknown or blocked numbers, and allow
priority access only to specifically whitelisted callers. Why should I allow
myself to be interrupted by any one of the 7 billion people on this planet, or
worse, programmed robots which call me without any regard for what I'm doing?

I'm hoping for features such as this to make it into dumb phones soon.

My other thought is that conventional telephony (both POTS and mobile) is
going the way of the dodo -- VOIP over wireless broadband with only very
occasional fallback to direct connections.

~~~
Symmetry
I wonder if it would actually be legal for a phone company to implement a spam
filtering service the way an email company can. Phones services are a much
more regulated industry than email is.

~~~
dredmorbius
Offering tools to put the subscriber in much greater control over their device
would (and IMO should) be offered.

My frustration is that at present, I cannot do what I want without, take your
pick:

• Using a dumbphone with at best the ability to _block_ (but not whitelist)
specific numbers.

• Using a smartphone, with all of the additional privacy invasion concerns
involved.

• Utilizing a service such as Google Voice, in which all of my phone traffic
is routed through yet _another_ NSA surveillance partner (willing or otherwise
is left unspecified).

• Ditching conventional voice comms for an alternative (which I haven't yet
even identified) that actually does offer the filtering tools I'd like. This
would also have the effect of greatly limiting my general connectivity, though
in the present universe this might not be all bad.

My suspicion is that a high-end and/or technical solution which does this will
emerge. As either option is selective to generally more attractive and upscale
markets, the conventional telephone network (wired and cell) will die: it will
be comprised increasingly of down-market subscribers, less attractive to both
telcos and others who might be interested in reaching them, and cut off from
the NeuPhone network (if it weren't that would itself be a disadvantage of the
NeuPhone, though some bridges might in fact persist).

It's a similar dynamic to how first AM, then FM radio have increasingly become
wastelands as those with means switched first to cassette CD players, then
iPhone adapters, as well as satellite and Internet radio. Or Facebook's
overtaking of an established social networking market by offering a more
attractive network (the in-crowd of Harvard, Ivies, Stanford, and selective
colleges for the first few years of the network). Or of broadcast TV's
increasing fall in light of both deferred-viewing options through DVRs and
increasingly on-demand video content over the Internet -- why accept QVC when
you can watch Netflix, Hulu, Vimeo, or even YouTube, bypassing schedules,
advertising, and hours of crap?

------
BorisMelnik
Really great story. Sounds like a really cool hobby although it would really
suck if "Mike" got busted for recording phone conversations when he was trying
to helpout.

One question I have: lets say "Mike" does get together enough evidence to make
a decent case in court, would the FBI even listen? Is this even legal what he
is doing?

I have done a lot of work in Boca Raton and can confirm the town is filled
with email spammers, lead gen cons, and fly by night SEO companies. Not only
that these lead gen companies constantly steal from one another and pop up /
shut down in the blink of an eye:

[http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Acxiom+hacker+sentenced+to+8+y...](http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Acxiom+hacker+sentenced+to+8+years+in+prison.-a0143341593)

He is right about that Starbucks too tons of shady characters in Mizner Park.

------
roymurdock
"TrustedPayday has gobbled up Mary’s information and is alerting other sites,
with names like clicks.cashadvance.com. Somewhere in the machinery that
processes payday loan applications, decisions are being made. In just a few
minutes, loan offers begin falling into Mary’s inbox. We’ve just watched
Mary’s identity get turned into profit before she’s even taken out a loan."

Is there a way to fight fishing with spam? Perhaps if the loan request market
was saturated with enough fake requests, the price for leads would fall as
leads would become increasingly unreliable and time-wasting for the fishers.

Margins would decrease for the sites who sell the loan request information, as
their info becomes less and less reliable (valuable).

Margins would decrease for the scammers as they invest more time and money in
due diligence and verification of the loan requests.

The irony of the situation would be priceless. Could spam be the way to fight
scams?

~~~
srazzaque
In theory I think this would work.

However, the risk is that Lead Flash cannot be linked to any of the illegal
activity that happens a few points after initial sale of the leads. So they'd
probably have grounds for legal recourse against such activity.

~~~
roymurdock
Perhaps you are right. It seems like the environment is murky enough that a
sufficiently motivated individual (or organization) with Mike's drive and
skill set could set up a fake identity dumping program while avoiding
detection, just as scammers can mask their activities.

There would be the inevitable question of incentives: Who benefits from this
service and who pays for the service? Mike tracks these guys down
(unsuccessfully) in his free time, as a hobby. His only reward is the feeling
of justice he gets from cornering a scammer and making him squirm.

There is no data to support this in the article, but it seems as if the
majority of the scamming targets lower-income, misinformed, and vulnerable
people. So it would make sense that the taxpayers would pay to rectify this
situation and rid the general public of this predatory nuisance. The failure
here is with the government - they have the resources and the incentive to fix
this situation. Seems kind of ass-backwards that our legal system would
protect a company such as Lead Flash. But hey, capitalism isn't perfect is it?

------
coldcode
It was worth reading. These type of scammers piss me off too. I wish we could
generate thousands of fake leads a day and make their lives miserable. Since
law enforcement only cares about national security, and only barely ordinary
people being ripped off, there has to be a technological solution.

------
yes-that-mike
.. wow.. isn't this whole thread disturbing to read..

frankly i regret ever talking to danny, while hes a nice guy and all; it was
my goal to highlight the issues with lead generation.. i didnt know it was his
intention to make me a part of the story until the fact checker called me
_sigh_

i'm not a "vigilante" nor am i "errant", yes.. its my hobby to make it harder
on people who would try to swindle me out of money.. yes i get paid to do this
for my customers and yes i was doing it for "free" in the case of the victim
we stumbled on..

if we would like to talk questionable ethics.. when i presented danny with
everything i had, he continued to push me to go further.. at one point
offering to pay some of my expenses (tough i declined, voip numbers are
cheap).. no matter what info i had, danny would follow up months later asking
for more.. asking if i had followed up here and or there..

lastly i'm pretty saddened that my privacy was less important then those of
the criminals i was looking for :/

they even missed a really funny point about fact that the scammer was using my
name "mike davis" as his alias; because they wanted to protect his fake name..

anyway.. thanks for the positive comments from the folks who apparently know
me..

[https://soundcloud.com/user228267080/call-
recording](https://soundcloud.com/user228267080/call-recording)

[https://soundcloud.com/user228267080/92512-3-37-18-pm](https://soundcloud.com/user228267080/92512-3-37-18-pm)

[https://soundcloud.com/user228267080/82012-11-32-48-am](https://soundcloud.com/user228267080/82012-11-32-48-am)
<-fun!

------
wazoox
The article doesn't really seem to question the mere existence of payday loan,
which is the sort of actual usury I thought existed only in the most
undeveloped nations and in medieval times. Crazy stuff, really.

------
nickstinemates
I have honestly never heard of a bedroom-cum-office.

Can someone explain?

~~~
solutionyogi
It means the person using the given room as both bedroom and office.

The usage of word 'cum' is very common in India. When I first arrived in US, I
used to get lot of weird looks from people, I have finally stopped using it.

See: [http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26488/how-does-
on...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26488/how-does-one-use-the-
latin-word-cum-in-a-sentence)

~~~
georgemcbay
As a 40 year old who has always lived in the US, the use of -cum- in this
manner was never widely used in speech during my lifetime, but it did used to
be pretty common in writing.

Not so much anymore, though.

~~~
mindcrime
As another 40 year old who has always lived in the US, that exactly jibes with
my experience as well. As far as I can tell, the expression is common in
written English, but almost unheard of in spoken English.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm trying to think of other examples of
"things that are sometimes (or often) written, but almost never spoken".

~~~
Intermernet
The word "Regards".

------
rdl
I wish the FBI weren't so picky about irrelevant factors in hiring -- it would
make it a lot easier for them to get top-quality talent in technical areas
like computer security (for internal use and for computer crime
investigations).

It's really a two-class system, where people who are full agents (the
badge/gun/etc. thing) exist pretty separately from support. There are
certainly reasons to want people involved in investigations to be full agents
when possible, but it does make hiring a lot more difficult.

~~~
GabrielF00
When I was looking for jobs as a new CS grad a friend who works at the FBI
sent me a job description for their computer scientist role. IIRC the starting
salary was $45-50k. By comparison I was getting offers from big tech companies
for $90k not including signing bonus and stock options.

------
gcb0
My bank fraud dpt calls me, and want me to confirm information. I ask them to
confirm, they sound puzzled. I school then. The Indian guy doesn't care. I ask
for the case n and call the number on the back of the card. I usually gets the
same Indian guy...

~~~
dredmorbius
Don't school the guy on the line. Write the CEO.

Seriously.

It'll get passed on to the appropriate dept., but that's one of the jobs of
the office of the CEO. Point out the problem with their procedures.

And if they don't fix it, move to a bank with a clue (or a credit union).

True story: as the housing bubble was building to its inevitable bust, I
started hearing home loan ads from my financial institution on the radio (they
generally don't advertise a whole lot). I wrote off a concerned but stern
letter asking what the hell they were doing pitching for more housing loans in
what was obviously a massively overheated market. No idea if my contact had
any impact, but the ads stopped very shortly afterward. The crash not much
longer thence.

------
joshdance
This makes me sad for the people who get scammed. Wonder why we can't do more
to help them.

------
krrishd
I just find it quite interesting that writing like this that is so
journalistic and written by more than one individual is finding success on
Medium. Not necessarily in a positive or negative way though, I've yet to see
this become a common phenomenon.

------
keithpeter
UK: payday loans

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26539569](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26539569)

[http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/Credit/oft1481.pdf](http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/Credit/oft1481.pdf)
[pdf, March 2013]

[https://www.getsafeonline.org/protecting-yourself/payday-
loa...](https://www.getsafeonline.org/protecting-yourself/payday-loans/)

Action is mainly around regulation and caps on APR. Scam searches topping out
around 2010.

Hope 'Mike' gets to stay private!

------
wisienkas
Would be fun to feed those scammers with their own card info and see if they
would recognize it ?

Of course you'd have to track them down first.

------
prawn
Who's really doing anything effective about spamming, scamming, phishing, etc?
Any successful government efforts? I report spam and so on with little effect.
The web is a mess.

~~~
Intermernet
It seems most efforts are being taken by the private companies who are
affected by it. In the phishing and spamming arena you have Google doing a
fairly sterling job of eliminating spam from most people's inboxes, and many
banks and insurance companies have online crime investigation departments that
try to crack down on phishing etc.

It _is_ good to see the occasional prosecution for spam/scam/phishing but I
don't think we see enough of them. How are you going to prosecute someone who
you can trace to an IP in Eastern Europe, but which may just be a Tor exit
node.

I think that higher reporting rates would be a good first step, and I'd
implore anyone who has been targeted by these pricks to report it to the local
authorities. The more details that can be collated, the easier it will become
to follow the money.

~~~
prawn
I imagine a lot of people don't bother reporting because nothing happens. Spam
filtering won't stop spammers. They need to be hit in the pocket. Here in
Australia, I report Australian companies spamming me to the ACMA but can't
imagine they ever do anything about it.

I get spam from Chinese businesses posting galleries of their products on
Picasa (Google property) and then using share buttons to spam people. I mark
it as spam in Gmail (Google property) every time, but still every Picasa email
makes it through despite that consistent mix of Picasa template and Chinese
characters.

------
jongraehl
This piece helped me understand that a popular medium.com piece of non-fiction
probably isn't "non-". Reddit with pretensions.

------
amagumori
this is the worst writing style ever!!!

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junto
I stopped reading when I read this:

> His first step is defensive: the creation of a software shield that will
> hide his identity. He boots up a computer containing a version of Windows
> that’s cut off from the rest of the machine. It’s a digital Russian doll, a
> computer within a computer. His sleuthing may attract attention, but any
> hacker who penetrates the inner realm would probably never know there was a
> larger doll wrapped around it. And when it’s all done, Mike will delete the
> hidden computer and any unwanted software that may have slipped into it.

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thefreeman
Seems like a fair (if a bit dramatic) description of a virtual machine for a
non technical reader.

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cr3ative
A 24 minute read is not "medium" length.

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mikeash
It's "short," then? I assume you can't possibly mean "long," since I can't
imagine applying that to anything that takes less than a full day to read.

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hayksaakian
Warning: Meta

Note the url:
[https://medium.com/matter/f4a5d98a4f51/?attempt=2](https://medium.com/matter/f4a5d98a4f51/?attempt=2)

seems like someone's gaming HN

~~~
adambenayoun
Someone tried to make it clear to everyone that it is the second attempt. At
least we're dealing with someone who wants to be honest about the fact he
attempted to repost it twice.

