Emojis would be far more appropriate for AI startups

Everyone I’ve talked to about the Super Bowl ads has mentioned that one and said that it is creepy af. The backlash is mostly word of mouth in my experience.

> Even if your house technically runs on propane, and you have propane, electricity might still run the propane, so your house is going to get cold. Unless you run the woodstove. Which you will

Corollary: don’t buy a house in a place where it snows without two fully independent sources of heat. You want backups. There’s a reason why woodstoves are so popular in New England. A millivolt gas log stove on a thermostat can also be a good alternative.

If you have the wherewithal, small claims is a secondary appeals process: https://www.keenesentinel.com/state_news/how-owner-of-teatot...

> because they’re wearing bazooka-powered jetpacks and you’re still riding around on a fixie bike

Sure, maybe it takes me a little while to ride across town on my bike, but I can reliably get there and I understand every aspect of the road to my destination. The bazooka-powered jetpack might get me there in seconds, but it also might fly me across state lines, or to Antarctica, or the moon first, belching out clouds of toxic gas along the way.

Like the cab drivers in London who have to know the city inside and out? https://wheelchairtravel.org/london-black-cab-driver-knowled...

Periodic reminder that "identity theft" is the financial system gaslighting you into thinking their poor decisions are your fault.

We don't even need the term "identity theft". We already have a perfectly good word for than: "fraud".

I wouldn't say it has nothing to do with the article. A real estate agent selling your land on behalf of someone that isn't you is roughly analogous to a bank giving credit in your name to someone who isn't you. Either way, someone who isn't you got scammed by someone else who also isn't you, but somehow this is your problem.

That's why I downvoted and flagged it -- along with your content-free response.

A motivated attacker need only don a green safety vest and hard hat, then roll up with a white pickup truck, place some orange safety cones and take down the sign with a chainsaw.

The point is that nearly all of the people doing this don't even live in the country where the land is being sold from. A simple sign would probably be quite effective

True, but you can still do a confused deputy attack. The fraudster hires a property manager, informs them that they would like to remove the sign because they wish the list the property for sale. Either that or they con a realtor they're working with into doing it. The unknowing realtor, eager for the commission, knows a guy who can take it down.

There's always something that can happen in any scenario. Social engineering, hiring locals, deeper forms of identity theft, or worse. The possibilities never hit 0, they just become a lot less profitable (and a lot riskier) a scam to try to run.

Yes, locks aren’t there to prevent the determined thief. They are for the 99% of other opportunists that will move on to an easier target immediately when they see your lock is harder to defeat

For those like me who didn't know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confused_deputy_problem

The idea is just to avoid being the softest target. The scammers attempting this fraud don't want to do all the work you describe. They'll just move on to the next vacant property.

Who's paying for it? Are they working for free?

No, but paying someone $300 is cheap when you hope to get a check for several hundred thousand in a few months. (even if the scam is only to get the earnest money that is still a $300 investment for the final thousand or two you make - with very little work)

That's a lot of work plus money transfer paper trail for something like this.

Presumably the money trail leeds to the Caymon islands or other country where they won't assist investigation.

The realtor might pay for it or even do it themselves. It would take 5 minutes with a reciprocating saw. Or the scammer tells the realtor "never mind that" and the realtor tells the buyer.

I'm sure you could put an ad up on craigslist or fiverr or whatever, one asking for someone to take photos of the property to see if there is a sign, and another to remove it. There's plenty of people willing to do anything for money.

Note that in the article, the author says how the scammers do everything to avoid having to show up in person. That's because they are in a different country and try to commit the scam without setting foot in the US.

As a bonus, multiplication and division can feel like operating a Stargate ;)

This was explored a bit in Daniel Suarez’s Daemon/Freedom (tm) series. By a series of small steps, people in a crowd acting on orders from, essentially, an agent assemble a weapon, murder someone, then dispose of the weapon with almost none of them aware of it.

The recent show Mrs. Davis also has a similar concept in which an AI would send random workers with messages to the protagonists, unbeknownst to the workers.

I'd say abstracting it away from ai, Stephen King explored this type of scenario in 'Needful Things'. I bet there is a rich history in literature of exactly this type of thing as it basically boils down to exploration of will vs determinism.