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I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

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Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#331

Post by davchana »

harshreality wrote: post #316
tomschlick wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect that postage scam to only work in the same geographic area. If you put a return as California but dropped it in the box in NY I dont know if they would return it, would they? If so I would imagine they have anti-fraud measures against doing this in mass.

A postmark is applied where the post office receives the letter. If the return address isn't in the post office's service area and there's no postmark, it's fraudulent. I'd be shocked if the automated systems don't check for that before applying a postmark.

Not refuting anything you said, but I personally have dropped letters while traveling on a weekend, just because, so like dropping a letter in Oregon on Saturday evenings, obviously with proper postage, and my return address as in different state 800 miles away. One reason is If the delivery address is in same direction, i.e. if I am travelling towards letter's destination halfway, I like to see it as quick delivery and help to Post, like I am covering half distance for them.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#332

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

dotnet00 wrote: post #328
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/court-finds-...

A whole 6 years after the information was made public by a whistleblower who's still treated as a criminal. Surely you can see how little that means for constitutional enforcement? All they have to do is mark everything as secret, aggressively pursue whistleblowers, and if they happen to get caught, just have the secret court admit guilt without consequences and let the public assume all is well again. Rinse and repe…

I don't want to go down a rabbit hole about Snowden- we are already far from the original topic.

You show some clear misgivings and biases that tell me it's not worth my time discussing.

Let's agree to disagree. :)

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#333

Post by simfree »

kortilla wrote: post #270
bikingbismuth wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in dire need of an Cat 5 cable a few years ago and went to Walmart to get one. Until this point I had always made my own cables, so when I saw the price ($40ish) I was floored. Unfortunately, I had to buy it anyway. As I was checking out I had that cable and a small bag of beef jerky. The cashier wasn’t paying attention and didn’t engage with me at all. She scanned the beef jerky and moved the cable across the…

You just stole it. I don’t see how this is even a grey area. Can you walk me through the thinking of “the cashier touched it, so now it’s mine?”

If an employee of the store quotes you a different price than the label on the shelf or item, you owe the store zero responsibility.

Retail stores change pricing on products and fail to update pricing on the shelf all the time. Home Depot, Walmart, etc have interactions like what OP described occur every day.

The responsibility rests with the corporation to train and reward employee behavior.

If the company has chosen to staff their store with someone that doesn't give a fuck (underpaid, poorly treated, mismanaged, improperly trained, not well rested, etc), then that is a gamble they chose to take, and the last thing I am going to do is rock their boat when they built and arranged it this way.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#334

Post by UncleSlacky »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #26
Bootvis wrote: post #2

Fun story but the fact that he totally lost touch with his childhood friend over something so silly makes me sad.

It makes me even more sad that we haven't remedied that sort of thing everywhere by giving children rights, including free association with others. In other words, parents cannot govern friends and romantic partners.

Reminder that the US is the only country not to have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._ratification_of_the_Conve...

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#335

Post by UncleSlacky »

buserror wrote: post #121

I had the french secret service come and interrogate me in ~88 (bad cop/good cop) because I had doctored a RS232 cable to be NULL modem, to be able to connect to the X25 "transpac" network using a terminal. I was 'drafted' in the army back then, basically unpaid slave labour, and I was risking 40+ days in prison for sabotage. I 'escaped' due to a coupe of forward thinking officers who didn't think that was a way to h…

This podcast might interest you (about how French hackers were forced/drafted to work for the government in the 80s & 90s):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0012flt

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#336

Post by UncleSlacky »

smolder wrote: post #309
14 wrote: post #36

It’s sad that people on positions of authority are always paranoid someone is lying. I was recently pulled over and I was sure I hadn’t done anything and it was on a very busy highway through town and I was literally at a side road so turned off and immediately pulled over. It took seconds. The officer as he approached me put his thumb on the back of my car. From my reading they do that to leave their fingerprints if…

Unfortunately police in the US are often idiot bullies given a badge. In general you're best off if you never interact with them, including asking for help.

Relevant video ("Never talk to the police"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#337

Post by xjlin0 »

torpid wrote: post #27

My FBI file was for hacking into my school district's AS/400 that handled my school's attendance and grading system. Somehow using a public IP address with no access restrictions allowed a clear telnet path in from home. Compounding username and passwords that were all the same for every employee. I didn't change a thing, just LOLed and told someone. Bad mistake. This was the late 90s. Oh well, 2 week suspension and…

> they didn't disable the shell, just added a login script to a menu for pine, etc.

Very fancy, everyone was using elm and you got pine.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#338

Post by Ichthypresbyter »

emteycz wrote: post #298
errcorrectcode wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If bicycle helmets were essential for causal-speed, safe path, everyday bicycling, the Dutch would use them. Interesting fact: in the US, riders without helmets receive more average buffer space from road vehicles than those with. If you're downhill mountain biking, wear a proper helmet. If you're racing in Manhattan, wear an equally suitable helmet. If you're leisurely riding on a wide, empty side road in a resident…

Those Dutch who don't wear helmets do it because they're idiots, it's as simple as that. Any fall - even if you're standing with your legs on the ground - on a bike can break your skull. You try to avoid a dog or a ball and pull the front brake instead of both - boom broken skull. It's just plain dumb.

Most Dutch bikes don't have front brakes to pull.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#339

Post by PickledHotdog »

alar44 wrote: post #315
blfr wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even being in the tech capital of the world, the school administration's views on technology and information access were so backwards. Our school basically didn't allow accessing any websites that weren't on some allowlist. That sounds very big tech to me, exactly the model towards which Facebook et al. are moving.

Sounds like normal best practice for a secure environment full of shitheads to me. The hell does this have to do with Facebook? What website am I on?

I think they're alluding to the "walled garden" analogy that gets bandied about in reference to "big tech"

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#340

Post by harshreality »

davchana wrote: post #331
harshreality wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A postmark is applied where the post office receives the letter. If the return address isn't in the post office's service area and there's no postmark, it's fraudulent. I'd be shocked if the automated systems don't check for that before applying a postmark.

Not refuting anything you said, but I personally have dropped letters while traveling on a weekend, just because, so like dropping a letter in Oregon on Saturday evenings, obviously with proper postage, and my return address as in different state 800 miles away. One reason is If the delivery address is in same direction, i.e. if I am travelling towards letter's destination halfway, I like to see it as quick delivery…

You're right, it's not necessarily fraudulent, and there are cases like yours, or when someone's on vacation and uses their real home address as the return address.

But there's no way to allow those while preventing abuse, so I can't imagine what good options they have other than to reject and trash those pieces of mail (since they have no way to return them). I guess they probably allow them and eat the losses due to abuse?

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