[FRIAM] DOGEQuest

Fri Mar 28 13:14:15 EDT 2025

On 3/27/25 10:14 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> There used to be this thing called the White Pages.  Somehow life went 
> on.
>
But how is a smart-ass to show off by ripping a printed phonebook in 
half with bare hands?

    https://www.artofmanliness.com/living/games-tricks/how-to-tear-a-phone-book-in-half/

If your comment is relevant to "doxing":

As a PI in the late 70s I reluctantly (ashamedly?) paid for a reverse 
index copy of the White Pages every year which allowed anyone to 
trivially look up a name/address by phone number and/or trivially find 
the name/phone-number at a given address.   I don't remember the 
(significant) cost but it did reflect the effort required (access to the 
original data in digital form and then access to a mainframe to do the 
sorting/formatting) followed by traditional typeset/print.  The 
copy-cost was order $100s which was non-trivial to someone whose hourly 
rate was a whopping $10/hr.

The highest ROI was often finding addresses with no phone-number 
affiliated... this could mean several things, but as likely as not might 
mean someone hiding from "the law" as was so easy in those days.   In 
following builders whose long-game was to build a lot of credit and then 
skip town, it was not uncommon for them to hand off some of their 
ill-gotten non-movable assets to another builder in the same "syndicate" 
which might even include their home... sometimes a rental, sometimes 
sold at a discount, etc.   So when a known debt-skip individual left 
town, if the person taking over their home (rent or own) had a modest 
chance of being yet another of the same ilk to show up on the creditor's 
skip-trace searches any time now.   Being ready for this was like cash 
in the bank for me.   Most of these folks had a number of aliases, so 
the person they were looking for would never show up on any registries 
or indices...  but the haystack could be reduced significantly by 
looking at these negative spaces.

I was very shy about TV-PI stunts like looking up a neighbor's 
name/number and calling them or showing up at their door pretending to 
be or know things I didn't/wasn't, though I do think I did toy with it a 
little on acutely difficult cases.

I ached for digital access to some of this data.   I had a partner in a 
small business who ran a time-share business for small businesses using 
a CP/M machine with each client holding their own (tiny by today's 
standards) hard-disk.   We would move the computer from business to 
business in half-day blocks and (gently) hook up their private drive 
(obviating risks of vibration/shock when moving hard drives around).   I 
vaguely remember that we toyed with NorthStar but they never delivered a 
hard-drive solution in our timeframe (I left Uni in 1980).  The state of 
the art included creating a custom BIOS... He was a Computer Engineering 
grad student and had enough cash to front the gear.  My role was mostly 
being tech savvy enough to deliver the machine and set it up with their 
own hard-drive and get them booted into the applications (Peachtree, 
Visicalc, WordStar, custom Basic apps for mail lists, labels, etc).    I 
had a lot of business contacts (mostly lawyers, related) as well.   We 
had a daisywheel printer we also delivered with the computer and even 
modded a used IBM Selectric but by the time I left, we had not gotten it 
reliable enough to replace the daisy-wheel.

All of this is pretty much trivial in today's technology including 
consumer-OCR.

BTW, I wasn't complaining about the .onion address, just entertained to 
discover there was such a thing and curious about what the implications 
of it might be.  And offering a little context to any other Philistines 
(beyond myself) who were unaware of any of this.

The world definitely "moves on" (quote from Stephen King's Gunslinger 
character in Dark Tower franchise).

A few years ago I was under the illusion that i could "keep up" but it 
is evident to me now that I can at best clutch at the trailing, 
tattering edges of the world as it "moves on".

My "bar friends" (GPT, etc) help a little but as gets pointed out 
regularly hear, I am probably often being badly mislead as they seem 
only to be capable of stochastic parroting of (sophisticated) rumours 
about things.

Oh, the benefits of a finite lifespan! (you Xer's and younger may not 
enjoy that benefit?)

> *From:*Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *steve smith
> *Sent:* Thursday, March 27, 2025 8:59 AM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] DOGEQuest
>
> Not clear on the construction of your link?  Is it a bit.ly like hash 
> run by the onion?
>
> With a tiny bit of research I now understand that .onion TLD 
> addressses are only accessible through the TOR browser...  Is .onion a 
> twilight-web (vs darkweb)?
>
> original article?
>
>     https://www.404media.co/dogequest-site-claims-to-dox-tesla-owners-across-the-u-s/
>
> I recommend the following to reluctant/ashamed Tesla Owners: 
> https://stealmytesla.com/
>
> <begin Tangent>
>
>     Doxing in general is chilling even when inadvertent or "mild".  
>     In 2020 I was (mildly) shocked to discover that voter-registration
>     data at the address level is publicly available.   Of the 4 houses
>     on our lane, every one had one "independent" and the second
>     registration was split between Donkeys and Elephants.  
>     Unfortunately "independent" in the other (besides myself) cases
>     almost assuredly maps onto rabid-liberatarian crypto-conservative
>     2nd amendment.  Those registered Red/Blue were the women.  And I
>     think any one on the lane looking this info up would come to the
>     same conclusions.  Our bumper stickers are small but definitely
>     not MAGA.  I hate even having to be registered.   There seems to
>     be some ambiguity between "independent" and "unaffiliated"... I
>     think "independent" sometimes means "Indepenent Party", other
>     times it means "unaffilliated"? messy, ambiguous?
>
>     My daughters both finally went EV about 1.5 years ago.
>     YungerDotter opted into TSLA for myriad reasons unrelated to being
>     a Muskophile.   She works in a fairly young/startup techBro
>     company in Denver where their ModelY doesn't stand out in the
>     parking lot at all and they live in a semi-MAGA neighborhood of
>     Denver (Parker) where the neighbors are more likely to give them a
>     thumbs up for their "choice". Her partner is a project manager for
>     a Raytheon division doing satellite tasking.  The Model Y is also
>     not out of place in that parking lot and at least half of his
>     peers are probably rabid proMusk if not proMAGA or DOGE.   So they
>     aren't acutely worried about much vandalism/etc at either end of
>     their commute(s) but it has made them acutely aware of a lot of
>     things they had been able to not think too much about previously. 
>     They are both counter-aligned with DOGE/MAGA/MUSK in virtually
>     every way and this is just one more reminder of the impedance
>     mismatch in their work/home choices. They both plead Golden
>     Handcuffs.  Dotter is considering leaving the (clearly
>     questionable) realm of data-center development to join the
>     Japanese iSpace lunar-robotics company (branch in Denver).   She's
>     struggling with what that spiritual trade-space looks like. Or she
>     could go back to pushing liquor, mortgages, or managing
>     trust-fund-babies' money for them?
>
>     elderDotter went with the bargain Bolt used from Hertz. She fits
>     right in in Portland, on both ends of her commute and everywhere
>     in between.   I suspect the depreciation of her sister's TSLA
>     exceeds the entire purchase price (with incentives) of the Bolt. 
>     If NIH funding (esp for virology and third-world viruses at that)
>     tanks (RKjr) she will be very glad not to have taken on a new
>     silly debt the size of a TSLA.
>
>     FWIW, they *both* manage a roughly 60 mile RT commute 4-5 days a
>     week with Level 1 charging at home only... (couple of bucks per
>     RT)  they need a weekend day to catch up for the slow daily
>     deficit of charge.   Keeping the battery even more mid-range than
>     the defaults is also a good strategy for battery life.   I do wish
>     on each of them a DIY PV/inverter setup strictly for their EV
>     charging for a (near) carbon-neutral commute...   but I'm not
>     living close enough to effect this for them directly.
>
>     <double-tangent>
>
>         My own EV adventure includes my near end-of-life Volt PHEV.  
>         I bought it at 166k (in 2017) with a failing traction battery
>         and put in (non-trivial) a 95k used battery which after about
>         60k miles is now struggling (I'm able to manage it with
>         various techniques which I would not wish on anyone else) but
>         no longer can get the EV-only trips I used to...  I pretty
>         much have to burn .1-.3 gallons of petrol with every RT to LA,
>         Espanola, Pojoaque.   As the weather warms, this may get
>         better.   I picked up Ford's bargain version with low miles a
>         few weeks ago and it will displace the otherwise happy Prius I
>         bought for Mary a couple of years ago.  It also (by design
>         limits) wants to burn a tiny bit of gas for most RTs from
>         home... most notably the 2500' climb to Los Alamos.   The Ford
>         battery is just over 1/2 the capacity of the Volt (when new)
>         but at half the mileage, it performs nearly as well.   Both
>         vehicles are showing a roughly 70mpg equivalent over their
>         lifetimes, but my idiosyncratic use is constantly raising that
>         average...
>
>         I'm looking for a homeless person (to gift it to) with regular
>         access to a 110 outlet as the HVAC, entertainment system, and
>         bucket seats are still good enough to live in, and the EV
>         range would allow for a few miles of daily excursion or
>         occasional relocation.
>
>         Unfortunately my Hypershell exo isn't able to fully make up
>         for my recovery limitations or I'd be "jogging" to Pojoaque
>         for groceries with a backpack? 2 hr round trip with only about
>         5lbs of tech overburden (maybe 8 if you include good sturdy
>         shoes and helmet if I start running too fast).   With my HMD
>         and a brain interface helmet I could maybe be
>         reading/responding to FriAM while the Exo FSD feature
>         navigates me to/from the market... maybe even knows the route
>         inside the store so all I have to do is reach out and pluck my
>         groceries on command.   If I had a humanoid robot, I wouldn't
>         have to go at all and if I shifted to HUEL or SOYLENT could
>         skip that visit at all.. Just a 50lb bag of nutrients
>         delivered monthly?
>
>         What is the line where I become it's meat-puppet or am
>         deprecated entirely?   From what I see of the homeless and
>         DOGE/MAGA aspirations, the homeless folks are in line for
>         deprecation before me but after immigrants.
>
>     </endTangent>
>
> </endTangent>
>
> On 3/27/25 8:01 AM, glen wrote:
>
>     I finally found the site I learned about from 404 Media:
>
>     http://dogeqstqzn2yjns2d6ccns7aa52tglno63ay2uv2orfvd7e23khcsxid.onion/
>
>
>     I admit it's a bit chilling.
>
>
> .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..
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