121–130 of 264 posts
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I simply don't answer calls from unknown numbers. I feel like it's my right as a grown-up.
Agreed. If they really want to get ahold of me they'll leave a voicemail. But I feel like I have to answer when my son is at school/camp.
If someone really wants to get a hold of you, they can knock on your door.
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> The point of institutionalizing corruption is to reduce competition from competing corruption entities. Which is bad but not as bad as an endemically corrupt society. Do you even read what you write? If you institutionalize corruption to reduce competition between different corrupt factions, you end up with a not endemically corrupt society? Here's what it actually means: if you institutionalize corruption, you end…
A society that pretends it is not corrupt is better than one that has given up on that pretense. No matter how bad you think things are it can always get worse. I am not looking forward to the coming free for all.
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Say what?! It sounds extremely obvious and infinitely practical. How often are you (or your parents) legitimately asked for money via email / internet? I mean, my answer is: never. My parents' answer is: never. My parents-in-law answer is: never.
The scam is usually a phone call from a loved one in jail or the hospital. It immediately creates a sense of panic and fully explains the random phone number. The voice doesn't have to sound like you either.
"You're my daughter? Then tell me the name of your twelth pet centipede."
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> ...but in relative terms what Trump is doing is still less corrupt than what happens in many poor countries. In relative terms? So what you're saying is that Trump and his family grifting Americans for a couple billion dollars so far in his second term is better than, say, Hun Sen and his family grifting Cambodians for somewhere between $500 million and $4 billion over ~40 years because the US economy is so much bi…
I would measure by relative destruction of wealth since corruption is an inefficient destructive process that can quite often yield very little left to steal.
It is all but impossible to calculate how much wealth has been "destroyed" and, more importantly, how much wealth has been transferred from the middle class to the upper class by way of institutionalized corruption that many people, you included, won't even acknowledge as a form of corruption.
Meanwhile, members of Congress are laughing all the way to the bank.
Here's an amazing study from Microsoft which I recall from back in the day (PDF): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... Edit: Recalled -> Recall
> By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor. There's less need to identify the most gullible when AI drops the incremental cost of responding closer to zero.
Criminals are bad, evil, jail etc etc. I agree. But while the core problem that creates this environment is not solved, nothing will fix it. Not even if you bomb the hell out of it. Ethics, morals and whatever people call only exists if economy is stable. If you let this sort of opportunistic environment exist there will be people to work in it
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It's been used for defense for a long time. AI is why spam filters started actually working in the 2000s.
That was mostly Bayesian probability filters, followed by SPF and more recently DKIM.. Maybe you could consider the Bayesian filter databases being trained as ML, but I feel it's a far way from our typical AI/LLM surge
The main fuel is the internet , followed by mobile phones and social media. AI definitely makes the scams more believable, a Nigerian Prince can now easily forge documents. But at the same time AI is a double edged sword, it can be used for both offence and defense.
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The point of institutionalizing corruption is to reduce competition from competing corruption entities. Which is bad but not as bad as an endemically corrupt society. I think it can be true that we have in effect far more corruption in the west than what is readily recognized at the same time that it’s true that we have less corruption than most other countries.
> The point of institutionalizing corruption is to reduce competition from competing corruption entities. Which is bad but not as bad as an endemically corrupt society. Do you even read what you write? If you institutionalize corruption to reduce competition between different corrupt factions, you end up with a not endemically corrupt society? Here's what it actually means: if you institutionalize corruption, you end…
Both options are endemically corrupt but removing most kinds of corruption is an improvement.
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If you find actual proof - even a friend of a friend saying they once heard it from a real scammer - I'd love to see it.
I used to bait 419 scammers. Weirdly enough I actually befriended a couple of them. That was about 20 years ago. They were full on and shameless but when exposed they became more human and even sympathetic and I dropped my guard and told them what I was doing. One of them said, and I'll never forget, "Thank you for being reasonable".