Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 359 posts

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

#191

Post by mapgrep »

phreack wrote: post #83
nxthompson2 wrote: post #3

I'm the author of the piece. I think the best clues are that the mystery hiker told people he was from Louisiana, and that he worked in the tech industry in NY. I suspect someone here might recognize him. I'm reachable at nxthompson at protonmail.

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!

It should be good, he's the editor in chief :-)

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

#192

Post by breck »

pavlus wrote: post #181
breck wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$5,000 and 5 months? Why in the world is the DNA matching going so slow? My cousin mailed fifty bucks and some spit in an envelope on Monday and Wednesday I get an email from 23andMe saying "Hey! We think this is your cousin's spit!". And neither of us is missing!

23andMe don't do full sequencing, they just map small parts of DNA which are tied to features they test.

Right but full sequencing doesn't net you much with ancestry. Much more important is SNPs on a broad population.

Also, even if full sequencing were needed, we're not even talking de novo sequencing, full sequencing is routine daily work nowadays.

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

#193

Post by wpietri »

kick wrote: post #7

It's amazing how rude Facebook, reddit, and in this case, greedy companies, can be. If he cared enough about anyone knowing who he was, he'd have told someone. This is just blatant disregard for a man's privacy.

Privacy is for the living. The dead are instead owed respect. If he had wanted particular things to happen after his death he could have written a will. Absent that, I think it's reasonable that the people who found him do what they they think most respectful.

The duty of respect for the dead also doesn't trump the needs of the living. If there are people out there waiting for his return, they should be told. I know somebody who's son disappeared, presumably in shame, after he failed out of college. For years and years it hurt her daily to not know . Eventually he got back in touch. If he had died before doing that, she would have deserved to know that her wait was over.

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

#194

Post by technofiend »

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…

I was incredibly convinced it was the son of a friend due to similar (in my mind) facial features. And even more convinced when I found evidence the friend's son had a vegan restaurant that closed down around the same time this guy disappeared. Then I found the son's github repo with updates from 2020. Actually glad to be wrong.

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

#195

Post by pvaldes »

tdons wrote: post #69

The police poster mentioned "was only able to hike 10 miles a day". Makes me think it's health related, 10 mi / day is absolutely abysmal for a normal thru hiker. Most aim to do that amount by 10 in the morning...

> 10 mi / day is absolutely abysmal for a normal thru hiker

It depends on the weight of what you carry with you.

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

#196

Post by kodah »

samatman wrote: post #161
kodah wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree. I leave latitude in my mind that my conclusions are wrong and that this happened in other ways. Either way, it's not good. I wish it hadn't happened and as much as I'd like to say it didn't bother me much here I am posting on HN about it.

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

#197

Post by jpsalm »

gabereiser wrote: post #190
jpsalm wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of a stretch but the crossover between jaded dev/tech people and EVE Online players is high: Mostly Harmless is an old, now defunct, EVE corp. Might be someone who ran in that that might recognize him. https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/cd7ku3/disbanded_allia...

Mostly Harmless is also a difficulty level... I wouldn't dig too deeply into the name so much as the choice.

Yea it's a bit of a stretch. I haven't played EVE in ten years though and it was the first thing that popped into my mind.

Looks like this was back in 2011 or so: http://www.verite.space/maps/influence/20110115.png (NW corner)

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

#198

Post by warrenmiller »

jpsalm wrote: post #186
jennyyang wrote: post #63

Here is a link to his notebook that they found on him: https://www.colliersheriff.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=94010

Kind of a stretch but the crossover between jaded dev/tech people and EVE Online players is high: Mostly Harmless is an old, now defunct, EVE corp. Might be someone who ran in that that might recognize him. https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/cd7ku3/disbanded_allia...

It's the description of Earth in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That's where that's from

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

#199

Post by TranquilAvocado »

bastawhiz wrote: post #38
jariel wrote: post #34

Young men don't die for 'no reason'. It's odd that they couldn't find some cause of death, I assumed that in 2020 we'd be able to make a rough estimate. If there's no obvious foul play then statistically the obvious one would be suicide, but that should narrow only to a few specific things. How many ways are there for one to 'just die' while lying in a tent.

I'm not sure the article said...is it known how long he was dead for before the body was discovered? After enough time has passed, it becomes impossible to reliably determine whether certain factors played a role in the death. Underlying health issues and infection can be hidden by decomposition.

I don't think it was in the article, but I read somewhere that they believe, based upon the little external decomposition, that the body was found perhaps a day after he passed.

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

#200

Post by kortilla »

znpy wrote: post #185
kbos87 wrote: post #169

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.

Uh, we don't know for sure he didn't ever commit a crime, your logic is flawed.

The point is there is no evidence of a crime. There is no reason for the public to dig into this person’s life with such fervor.
Post reply on HN