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A nameless hiker and the case the internet can’t crack

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Re: A nameless hiker and the case the internet can’t crack

#161

Post by samatman »

kodah wrote: post #65
dheera wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm slightly less concerned about being anonymous from the government and far more concerned about being anonymous from businesses . How is it that every time I move, they still figure out where I live and continue to send me junk mail? I'm extremely concerned about the ease of arbitrary businesses finding out where some person lives. I want this to be unethical to the point that whoever leaked my address without my…

You're getting downvoted and I'm not sure why, but I'd like a moment to share my story and why I believe in what you believe: My mom called me the other week and told me that a recruiter was looking for me. She gave me their name and number, but I was stumped. How the hell did: 1. They know that was my mother 2. How did they know her number 3. How did they know she would be able to reach me? I've subsequently determi…

That's a distinct possibility, but the odds that you've sent mail to your mother's house is high.

Doesn't have to be in your name, either. Your billing address, her shipping address? That can be packaged and sold to a third party.

It doesn't take much information to infer relationships, and we constantly leak information which is aggregated and sold. Facebook and friends are playing on easy mode, the markets for this kind of data predate social media and the professionals are very, very good at it.

Re: A nameless hiker and the case the internet can’t crack

#162

Post by dr_orpheus »

newguysofly wrote: post #147

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/Mo…

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

Re: A nameless hiker and the case the internet can’t crack

#163

Post by sebmellen »

hated wrote: post #98
gabereiser wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clues here are: he’s from Louisiana, worked in NY in tech, liked screeps. Coder from the looks of his notes. Mid 30s to late 40s.

Those first two are claims not facts.

Perhaps his suspected Louisiana ancestry is Cajun/Acadian, and he is actually from Quebec?

Re: A nameless hiker and the case the internet can’t crack

#165

Post by gabereiser »

hated wrote: post #98
gabereiser wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clues here are: he’s from Louisiana, worked in NY in tech, liked screeps. Coder from the looks of his notes. Mid 30s to late 40s.

Those first two are claims not facts.

correct, it's from his own words. Nothing listed was fact.

Re: A nameless hiker and the case the internet can’t crack

#166

Post by microtherion »

pixl97 wrote: post #13
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #2

Seems like a case of hasn't cracked yet, not can't crack.

DNA is our best bet, but as we see it's the missing part of the story. With this said, it makes for a decent fictional writing prompt. It's 2045, the cold case on Mostly Harmless has been reopened after 24 years. Advances in DNA matching technology beyond what we imagined possible in 2020 have occurred. Detective Williams submits the preserved DNA to the US National DNA Registry (DNAR). Within minutes an exceptionall…

> It makes for a decent fictional writing prompt.

Or maybe make it a prompt for GPT3. People impute all kinds of smarts to it, let's see whether it can deduct MH's identity.

Re: A nameless hiker and the case the internet can’t crack

#167

Post by acomjean »

newguysofly wrote: post #147

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/Mo…

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.

Re: A nameless hiker and the case the internet can’t crack

#168

Post by 0x1F8B »

eganist wrote: post #150
phreack wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wanted to thank you for writing an engaging long form article that doesn't meander telling parallel stories jumbled together. I could draw a straight timeline from the first paragraph to the last and that's oddly something I don't see too often in this format anymore!

Perhaps some unexpected context: at least some authors of long-form pieces write with the objective of selling the rights to their works in mind. The more it feels like a screenplay, the more likely it is to attract a buyer who feels it has potential as one. I don't have numbers from you, just that bit of context and some supporting quotes off the record. Qualification: I tech-consult producers and writers on screenp…

You probably know this but others might not: there are literally agencies that develop ideas through a tight lifecycle of inception, moderate form to long form market testing in publications like Wired and investment and film/podcast/TV development sourcing based on feedback from those market tests and brand sponsorship and alignment for the launch of the final product.

Here is one agency in particular: https://www.epicdigital.com/

Re: A nameless hiker and the case the internet can’t crack

#169

Post by kbos87 »

Not even a passing mention of the privacy questions at stake here. I don’t fault the police for seeking answers, but every self-nominated amateur sleuth isn’t due an answer about the identity of someone who in all likelihood wanted to live privately and never committed a crime.

Re: A nameless hiker and the case the internet can’t crack

#170

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

pulse7 wrote: post #133
Componica wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at https://imgur.com/a/eTphrRF The code that he writes is a blend of languages. The arrow operators -> is indicative of C/C++ but C/C++ doesn't use nil or function. It's like he thinks in C/C++ first which puts him at about my age mid-40s. Anyone younger than 40 would be using dots '.' due to Java/Javascript/Python instead of '->'. Does anyone else get that vibe?

On the 3. page of the scanned notebook [1] he mentions Java. [1] https://www.colliersheriff.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=94010

Somewhat amusing to see the police highlighting "trust no one" as a note on p2p networking.
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