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Using TypeScript to obtain one of the rarest license plates

jack.bio

191–200 of 212 posts

Re: Using TypeScript to obtain one of the rarest license plates

#191
post #43

I swear I read some case a couple years back where a kid was facing serious prison time for automating requests to w publicly available government website. "Unauthorized access of a computer." I think the author may have just admitted to what the government considers a serious federal crime, as stupid as it is to consider it a crime.

OP here - I did some pretty heavy research on this topic to make sure I'd be okay publishing this / automating anything at all. From what I looked into (and mind you, I'm a 23 year old security researcher & not a lawyer) there are a few recent landmark court cases (Van Buren vs. United States, hiQ Labs vs. LinkedIn) that protect webscraping of a public-facing page without bypass of any technological barriers. Furthermore, Florida has the Computer Abuse and Data Recovery Act that defines any malicious behavior as overuse of resources or an intent to defraud or cause harm, both of which I was very conscious about not violating. I appreciate the concern regardless!

Re: Using TypeScript to obtain one of the rarest license plates

#192

I did something similar with CA a few months back - https://blog.jonlu.ca/posts/ca-plate-checker Next steps would be to make it LLM assisted and to generate common number/letter replacement combos

Great minds think alike! Tough you weren't able to find anything cool with it, but glad I wasn't the only one thinking to automate it :)

Re: Using TypeScript to obtain one of the rarest license plates

#193
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you don't need to be convicted to be forced into labor under the 13th. Pretrial detainees can be forced to do "housekeeping chores" and not violate the constitution.

This shows that the government (all branches) has always ignored the Constitution. It clearly says in the 13th that it requires the person to be "duly convicted".

There was a lawsuit, and the US Supreme Court interpreted the 13th amendment and carved out an exception, because of course they did.

Re: Using TypeScript to obtain one of the rarest license plates

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you're in AZ? In CA, the absurd yearly cost is enough to keep me from bothering with anything more than the basic olates.

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-education-and-safety/ed... No price difference for the yellow on black plate when you want personalized.

Yeah, but the plate itself was $100/year last time I looked, which is outrageous. (It looks like it's $50/year now. I swear that's lower than it used to be)

Re: Using TypeScript to obtain one of the rarest license plates

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with your "slave labor is ok if the slave committed a crime" position, and find it morally indefensible.

Stepping aside the fact that I think most everyone here is playing fast-and-loose with the “slave” terminology here… Why do you feel prisoners doing low wage labor to be wrong? Practically everyone in human history since the dawn of time has had to go out and produce something of value. Why, all of a sudden, should a murderer or rapist get to sit on their ass and consume what we all produce? I find nothing questionab…

You're instantly jumping to the worst of the worst types of prisoners: murderers and rapists. Prisons also include people who commit non-violent crimes like drug possession, burglary, cybercrime, etc. Why should those people be forced to work the same "humble jobs" in prison?

I do find that questionable.

Re: Using TypeScript to obtain one of the rarest license plates

#196

Hey, would you please consider adding an RSS feed to your blog? I remember liking your post about Waffle house and now also this one, so I tried to add it to my RSS reader. But unfortunately no feed is available.

It's now available! https://jack.bio/feed :-)

Re: Using TypeScript to obtain one of the rarest license plates

#197

This has nothing to do with TypeScript

Generally speaking, if someone specifies "TypeScript," I expect the type system to be the interesting part of the writeup. Otherwise, it could say "JavaScript." (It could say "React," but still, the interesting part is that you built a scraper/visualizer, not that it used React.)

[deleted]

Re: Using TypeScript to obtain one of the rarest license plates

#198
post #43

I swear I read some case a couple years back where a kid was facing serious prison time for automating requests to w publicly available government website. "Unauthorized access of a computer." I think the author may have just admitted to what the government considers a serious federal crime, as stupid as it is to consider it a crime.

Just because you can hit a backend without a rate limit, doesn't mean you should . In my experience, government IT is very humorless about this sort of thing. Far better to blend in with normal traffic than to stand out as a bad actor.

"Your honor, the defendant took steps to hide their activities, showing that they knew it was wrong"

Re: Using TypeScript to obtain one of the rarest license plates

#199
post #58
post #2

One thing that stopped me from seeking the vanity plate - I learned that at least in Texas all plates are made by minimally paid prisoners. So any desire to finance that system beyond what's absolute possible minimum (i.e. regular plates) evaporated.

> One thing that stopped me from seeking the vanity plate I'm sure it differs between countries but in the UK vanity plates have become reasonably contentious. As a gross generalisation they're fine if the car is worth hundreds of thousands or the plate itself is worth hundreds of thousands. The UK plate "F1" last sold for just under £1m (about US$1.3m) over 10 years ago and it's rumoured that there are offers for te…

> It comes down to a classic British issue of "class", which is inherently difficult to explain.

The Frost Report sketch explains it quite well:

https://youtu.be/9XmB59Ax4cE

Re: Using TypeScript to obtain one of the rarest license plates

#200
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called pay-to-stay. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay-to-stay_%28imprisonment%29 for more. This happened in Oregon to my kind of brother in law. (Married to half sister of my half siblings - what do you call that?) He's Native American, so the local police thought that they could target him with a BS charge. They lost. The private jail that he'd been kept in, now that they weren't getting paid by the state,…

And that's Oregon ... there are worse places, too.

Oregon has a huge political tension. Portland is solidly blue. The rest of the state is solidly red. In the 1920s, Oregon was one of the centers of Klan activity. Today it is a stronghold for the Proud Boys.

The Grand Ronde reservation is in rural Oregon, mostly in Polk County. This is where the event that I referenced took place. It is very strongly conservative, with a long racist history.

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