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The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

npr.org

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Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#151

Post by rasz »

macintux wrote: post #108
jtbayly wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you hang up and pick back up too quickly, yeah. But the call doesn't just stay connected until the cake hangs up. Either party can end it by hanging up, right?

Landline calls, at least when I was younger, were not disconnected until the caller hung up. I assume there’s a technical reason involving channels instead of packets but I never researched it.

Technical reason was mechanical exchanges (Strowger etc) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUOh9fCSgqw

implementing logic/timers with cogs is impractical.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#152

Post by ZeikJT »

jimmaswell wrote: post #36
fencepost wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can definitely go faster, here's the api: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLMediaEl...

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#153

Post by K0balt »

jimminy wrote: post #50
jansan wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long time (maybe twenty years) ago I read about a fascinating scam. The scammers were announcing a totally cool sex toy (maybe early VR, don't remember), but they never intended to deliver. Through clever marketing they managed to find enough potential customers who were asked to prepay a certain amount to finance production of the product (comparable to crowdfunding). When delivery day arrived, the scammers sent out…

I don't know if that was a real scam. It was a bit of a throw away joke from the movie, 'Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels'. The guys need to raise money to repay a debt, and one of them presents this idea, which gets tossed out because it's gonna take too long for them to receive the checks.

It's much, much older than the movie reference. Embarrassing check scams are an old, tried and true scam. They were more popular backnin the days of physical chain letters.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#154

Post by hyperman1 »

ravenstine wrote: post #33
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…

In the linux 2.2 days, my home linux had a kernel crash. Every attempt to open a tty caused a stack trace in dmesg.ssh telnet xterm, you name it. Amazingly, the system worked perfectly apart from that. I could troubleshoot the problem, save my work and shut down

The point being: Windows would just BSOD in that kind of situation. Not that continuing to run with corrupt kernel data structures is a good idea, but there is something grandiose about the OS stubbornly refusing to die when it's raining kernel crashes.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#155

Post by siffland »

localhost wrote: post #88
munificent wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teach them how do respond and how to handle these scammers. Concretely, the way to respond is this: If you ever get a call that claims to be from business X, tell them "OK, I'll call you back." Then get off the phone, look up the number for X yourself , and call them. If it was really X calling you, you'll get back to where you need to be. If it was a scam, X will tell you they don't know what you're talking about.…

Many years ago, I had a police detective call me about an active investigation. He wanted to come over to visually verify that I had something in my possession. I was suspicious, and he totally understood. He said, "go look up the phone number for and ask to speak with detective so and so, badge number ZZZ".

Awesome. Always ask for a call back number. My dad was in his late 70s and fell for stuff like this. I beat the notion into his head, if in doubt ask for a call back number. If they they refuse to give it, it is a scam....period.

7 years was not enough for ruining peoples lives.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#156

Post by chillwaves »

localhost wrote: post #88
munificent wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teach them how do respond and how to handle these scammers. Concretely, the way to respond is this: If you ever get a call that claims to be from business X, tell them "OK, I'll call you back." Then get off the phone, look up the number for X yourself , and call them. If it was really X calling you, you'll get back to where you need to be. If it was a scam, X will tell you they don't know what you're talking about.…

Many years ago, I had a police detective call me about an active investigation. He wanted to come over to visually verify that I had something in my possession. I was suspicious, and he totally understood. He said, "go look up the phone number for and ask to speak with detective so and so, badge number ZZZ".

Here is a scam example of your anecdote that happened to a family member of mine, who was taken in for hours by "Police" in China (she speaks Mandarin).

They even spoofed the number of an actual police station and said, "Google the number on your caller ID to see we are legit". Obviously, call them back yourself.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#157

Post by rhizome »

megaremote wrote: post #102
rhizome wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mom only ever uses Thunderbird and Firefox, I've been considering converting her to Linux, which would make all of this impossible. She already knows the IRS isn't going to call her on the phone, much less arrest her.

Or, get her an ipad.

Been there, touch screens are too weird. Many older folks have been able to pick up internetting and sliding your finger on your pocket TV Library, but it's not 100%. Heck, I don't even know that I'll never lose the plot of the details and someday just have "a computer, the second least expensive one."

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#158

Post by dredmorbius »

eitland wrote: post #115
Topgamer7 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like youtube content too, however I watch it at 2X speed.

Today I learned the Youtube app has a speed setting :-)

mpv and mps-youtube allow finely gradated speed config up to 8x speed.

(2x is generally my max, unless speed-seeking.)

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#159

Post by OhneHerren »

liability wrote: post #144
OhneHerren wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is improved by using Rubberband rather than the internal playback speed setting on mpv, which keeps pitch the same?

Good question. By default mpv will automatically insert the 'scaletempo' filter to adjust pitch when speeding up or slowing down audio, and it does a reasonable job at modest speed changes. And it's fast; very little CPU load. However at more dramatic speed changes it starts to sound choppy with parts of words getting cut out which limits how fast it can go while maintaining comprehensibility. Scaletempo sounds chopp…

Ah thank you. Some good info here: https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/4418

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#160

Post by y_tho »

lkschubert8 wrote: post #23
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…

That's my issue with RadioLab. It is just constant interjection.

I was not bothered by the interjections in the Planet Money story, but I am by the ones in RadioLab. I think it´s because in PM it sounds like friendly banter, but in RL every interruption is like it´s made to be thought of as a [pause for dramatic effect] revelation.
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