The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist • Hacker News Board

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#31

Post by II2II » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

homonculus1 wrote: post #8

>WARNER: Joe Healy is sitting in this conference room with Felipe, the IT guy in his buttoned-up shirt. >HEALY: He's a physically little guy... >WARNER: He's 5-foot-4. >HEALY: ...And not overly muscular. Man, Planet Money's constant interruptions and hacked-apart quotations are just as jarring to read as they are to listen to. It's entirely possible to transition your narrative structure between accessible exposition…

Perhaps it works for radio, but I agree that it is jarring to read.

It also left me wanting for more. Why did the family member refer Fernandez? What is the psychology behind operating a scam as a business? What motivated Emilio to be a "really good boss" when he was proactively hurting so many other people? I realize that this is a human interest story that isn't intended to address such questions, yet the frequent interruptions seemed to encourage such mental wanderings.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#32

Post by smacktoward » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 7:46 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #17

One of the things I like about Plant money is that they have transcripts for all their podcasts. I used to listen when I was a driver, but now I don't I can just read the transcript in a few minutes instead of spending 20 minutes or so listening.

NPR does that for all their programming -- it's a godsend. From the disclaimer that appears on the bottom of their online transcriptions, it looks like they use this company to generate them: https://www.verb8tm.com/

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#33

Post by ravenstine » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #2

The radio version: https://www.npr.org/2019/08/07/749135286/episode-931-the-it-... The climax of this story involves the belief that “Linux servers don’t just crash”.

If he was familiar with those servers, he probably had a sense of how likely it would be that they would just "crash" out of the blue. I've seen Linux servers crash, but that's because they were setup by a dumbass and were doing all sorts of insane shit that kept filling up the disk and memory. If a server isn't doing anything stupid, it's pretty unlikely it's going to simply crash. He was working for criminals, and I think they said one guy was wanted for murder, so I can see why he'd be super suspicious.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#34

Post by rdtsc » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 7:48 PM UTC

klenwell wrote: post #10

The victims didn't come forward because they felt so ashamed about falling for the con. This is such an interesting essential part of scams. I guess it's a part of human nature. I remember tracking down a phone scam that caught my grandmother once (based out of Montreal) and I eventually got to a point where I discovered that my grandmother had provided a verbal consent over the phone that had kept it just this side…

> This is such an interesting essential part of scams. I guess it's a part of human nature.

Absolutely. It happened to my relatives too.

The way I found out was I was there visiting and they got a call which I picked it up. It came from what sounded like an Indian person. You see, they wanted to "refund the money" and just needed the bank account details.

Aha! I thought, I'll play dumb and pretended to mistype their remote desktop installer's web address and diverted the conversation to random stuff. Eventually they realized I was wasting their time and called me some exotic slang names, I hand't heard before. I am always up for cultural enrichment, so that was fun. Then they started playing this really high pitched sound into earpiece, I guess to "punish" me and trying to hurt my hearing.

However, it became less fun later when the relatives told me they had already lost close to $10k with them. They had contacted the bank and the police and apparently the bank refunded them some part of it. But otherwise they hadn't told anyone as they were terribly ashamed. They were professionals, already retired, with advanced degrees, and they felt like they should not have been the ones easily fooled, but they were.

So make sure you talk to your older family members, and tell them ahead of time to not be embarrassed if it already happened. Teach them how do respond and how to handle these scammers.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#35

Post by ALittleLight » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 7:52 PM UTC

klenwell wrote: post #10

The victims didn't come forward because they felt so ashamed about falling for the con. This is such an interesting essential part of scams. I guess it's a part of human nature. I remember tracking down a phone scam that caught my grandmother once (based out of Montreal) and I eventually got to a point where I discovered that my grandmother had provided a verbal consent over the phone that had kept it just this side…

In college I worked at a computer repair center for students. When I was new, and before I knew how to talk around this, some people would describe to me what they were doing when they contracted the malware they were there about - at times being perfectly explicit and specific about what videos, exactly to the title, they were watching when they got malware.

I think the layman expected there was some character of a pathologist to my job. Like I would understand or diagnose that they had porno ransomware X on their system and the only solution was to do computer thing Y.

In reality, of course, regardless of the malware, I would just help the person back up all the data and configurations we could. Use a virus scanner on the backups, and reinstall their OS. How they got the malware was completely irrelevant, and I actually preferred not knowing. With a bit of experience I learned to preempt any detailed explanations by just stating my plan early and being clear that it didn't matter how they found the malware.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#36

Post by jimmaswell » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

fencepost wrote: post #29

giarc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increase playback speed. You'd be surprised how your hearing can adjust. Just work your way up in small increments. Just be prepared that if you ever go back to 1x speed, it sounds really weird.

Up to 1.4 is not a big deal, somewhere around 1.5 or starts to get a little strange. Since I generally have technical or industry related podcasts going while doing other things too high a speed becomes a hindrance.

I never needed an adjustment period that I recall to be able to skip right to 2x. That's how I watch any video like Linus Tech Tips or others where it's mainly just talking these days. YT doesn't go any faster but I wouldn't be surprised if I could push it even more.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#37

Post by avgDev » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

klenwell wrote: post #10

The victims didn't come forward because they felt so ashamed about falling for the con. This is such an interesting essential part of scams. I guess it's a part of human nature. I remember tracking down a phone scam that caught my grandmother once (based out of Montreal) and I eventually got to a point where I discovered that my grandmother had provided a verbal consent over the phone that had kept it just this side…

Ha!

I feel the same way but I encountered so many con artists.

My favorite con artists was actually a dentist and I fell for part of the "con". I guess you could argue if its a con but I feel like it was.

I went in for a simple fillings in two teeth, he starts drilling, then tells me I need inlays $800 a piece x 2. Being young and stupid I said, ok. I was so broke at the time, I needed to borrow money to pay. When I came back another customer was fighting with billing. 2nd con that dentist office did was sending bills for bs charges. I got two, but did research and asked for a detailed bill, which never came. A year or two later I start getting pain, and my new dentist is surprised I have inlays in back teeth and has to drill them out because they were done incorrectly.

So, yeah....don't pick a dentist based on google reviews and talk about treatment plan before drilling.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#38

Post by gumby » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 8:05 PM UTC

giarc wrote: post #25

gumby wrote: post #17

One of the things I like about Plant money is that they have transcripts for all their podcasts. I used to listen when I was a driver, but now I don't I can just read the transcript in a few minutes instead of spending 20 minutes or so listening.

Increase playback speed. You'd be surprised how your hearing can adjust. Just work your way up in small increments. Just be prepared that if you ever go back to 1x speed, it sounds really weird.

I did that when I was listening, but really I just have a problem with listening to people droning on.

It's just so much faster, more visceral, and more random access to read that I've basically just completely abandoned the linear presentation modes (audio and video).

Podcasts also tend to have a lot of side chitchat, breaks etc which don't add anything for me. I know some people really like that; I've hear it makes the conversation seem a lot more personal and connecting. Great, just not for me.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#39

Post by liability » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 8:05 PM UTC

fencepost wrote: post #29

giarc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increase playback speed. You'd be surprised how your hearing can adjust. Just work your way up in small increments. Just be prepared that if you ever go back to 1x speed, it sounds really weird.

Up to 1.4 is not a big deal, somewhere around 1.5 or starts to get a little strange. Since I generally have technical or industry related podcasts going while doing other things too high a speed becomes a hindrance.

Try out rubberband. I find that with rubberband and mpv I can get close to 3x and still understand many (but not all) speakers. It depends on their particular accent/annunciation/cadence though. Some accents, like RP, are very clear to me at 1x but degrade more rapidly (for me) than others at high speeds.

https://breakfastquay.com/rubberband/

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#40

Post by i_am_nomad » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 8:09 PM UTC

crag wrote: post #30

pavel_lishin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being downvoted, but I hear where you're coming from. Phone scammers make my blood boil like little else does.

I don't know why he was downloaded. I mean, come too Florida and talk to some 80 year old guy who has nothing, due to being scammed or ID theft. Frankly, be better if you just killed the guy. Now this guy has to decide between food and meds because his SSI doesn't cover it all. And his savings are gone.

I’m with you on that. Lethal injection is too good for the perpetrators - I say, Death of the Boats.