4 ms·

I love a good forgery. It's stories like this that can teach us how useless much of the things we think are "secure" are actually not. I'm always frustrated w

• asveikau 6y ago
  Something I think is lost from your comment, though: It's also stories like this that can show us that people are generally benevolent. Your reaction to this is to call this "forgery" and say the signage is not "secure". Neither of those actually occurred to me here. The only thing I see is a well-intentioned person fixing inadequate signage. It doesn't seem all that less legitimate than signage from the state. To me, a better argument for increasing "security" of the signage is that occasionally in urban areas I've seen taggers paint over highway signs. That has the potential to confuse drivers, possibly leading to accidents, and it costs the state money to re-paint. But there is no danger in a vigilante making the signage more accurate.
  • libria 6y ago
    He did it right by their standards, though. Apparently even affixed it well enough to not introduce liabilities (sign shearing off in high wind and slicing into a windshield). If you don't satisfy codes, the city will undo your work [1]. [1] https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/toronto-man-builds-park-stairs-for-550-irking-city-after-65-000-estimate-1.3510237 https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/toronto-man-builds-park-stairs...
• hinkley 6y ago
  A lot of traffic laws are essential to the distributed consensus algorithm that allows people to get where they want to go mostly safely. There are many things you could do in a car, but the small number of things you are allowed to do makes it manageable to build a mental model of the people around you, even when you can't see their body language. The only 'body language' you have is this static chunk of metal, which is why we mandate indicator lights, their size and their brightness, so you're telegraphing something at least.
  • DenisM 6y ago
    It's not the central point of your argument, but it bears calling out - there is plenty of body language on the road. I can see these and more: - Drivers turning their heads to check side mirrors before changing lanes. - Swerving slightly when making blind-spot check. - Front wheel turning before the vehicle turns. - Drifting side-to-side within lane, signifying the driver is distracted (or drunk). - Speed discrepancy signifying the driver is possibly lost and at risk. of making a sudden turn. - Tailgating or excessively quick approach, indicative of possibly impulsive behavior. Predicting behavior of other drivers on the road is key to survival.
    • hinkley 6y ago
      Oh absolutely. See also: - Turn signal on when there is no space to change lanes to indicate "soon I need to be in that lane so you'd better move before it becomes an issue" But it takes a long time to learn this which is part of the challenge of being a 16 year old (or in the case of some people I know, an inattentive 35 year old). The telegraphing is important enough that some of us flip out when a driver ignores right-of-way trying to 'be nice', or keeps tapping the gas and then not going. It's your turn (or at least it is now!) just go before you get somebody killed.
  • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    >A lot of traffic laws are essential to the distributed consensus algorithm that allows people to get where they want to go mostly safely. I take the opposite view. Traffic laws are just the distributed consensus that's dumbed down enough to codify into law. The traffic participants mostly agree what is ok and what isn't but it's so nuanced and complex that we can't legislate it all so we just write imperfect rules for the big stuff like "thou shalt drive on the same side as everyone else" and mostly ignore edge cases like all those situations it's perfectly acceptable do something that isn't within the letter of the law.
• emiliobumachar 6y ago
  If you get caught, there's no plausible deniability. No way to pretend you just got confused, or that you were in a hurry and just marked "Yes" and signed without reading. If you were e.g. applying for state welfare while living out of state, a forged bill with an in-state address would not get you caught, but may be crucial for proving ill intent if you get caught by unrelated means. A lot of security measures add just that much security. It's easy to break, but breaking it removes plausible deniability. Most home locks wouldn't stop even a person slightly below average strength, bump it with your shoulder a couple times, and you're in. But you can't then claim you got lost, confused, or thought it was your friend's house, or thought you heard someone say "come in". A surprised homeowner will be less hesitant to use available violence, and no court would believe you meant no harm.
  • rantwasp 6y ago
    you are going to dislocate your shoulder if you bump the door. you should use your foot and you apply more pressure without breaking anything Here: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/how-to-break-down-a-door/ https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/how-to-break-down-a-...
    • emiliobumachar 6y ago
      Thanks, that was interesting. And counter-intuitive, I generally worry more about injuring my knees than my shoulders.
      • rantwasp 6y ago
        you’re welcome! the good thing about this technique is that the load is distributed and it’s knee+hip. also because of the lower contact area you can deliver more force in the right area (ie the handle)
    • deleted 6y ago
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  • snowwrestler 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
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• mindslight 6y ago
  Technically those are real checks you're making, not forgeries. A depositing bank might refuse to accept them if they don't conform to the technical requirements of automated processing, but they're legitimate negotiable instruments. Also, I could see your bank charging you a hefty fee if they had to manually process one. Does anyone know how this actually works out? AFAIK there's a huge legal distinction between someone (else) forging a whole check, or stealing your duly created check and just forging your signature. For one, if your checks are stolen you have a duty to notify your bank (whereas you can't possibly be aware of a complete forgery). So you might not want to leave extra printouts hanging around.
  • mattkrause 6y ago
    I was sad to discover that the “negotiable cow” story is fictional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Inland_Revenue_v_Haddock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Inland_Revenue_v_Hadd... The principle is true enough though: a check is just an order to pay a certain amount of money from a certain account to a certain person: https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/3/3-104 https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/3/3-104 It doesn’t need to be in the standardized form found in a checkbook.
  • jcrawfordor 6y ago
    Yeah, I wouldn't risk not using MICR ink just because you will eventually run into a party that uses a bank that still uses MICR readers and it will turn into a massive headache. But it's misleading to imply that MICR is a security feature, it wasn't even used until the very late '50s. The security model of checks is complicated. Ultimately the paper document is not really regarded as any kind of authentication, it's usually destroyed fairly early in processing (by the depositor's bank) and replaced by an image. In some cases, less common today, it may later go from image back to a "replacement document" which is a brand new copy of the check produced for convenience when clearing with a bank that doesn't yet support clearing by image. Nothing about the document itself is important to or required for clearing, only the data on it. Yet it is common for printed checks to contain various anti-counterfeiting features. From first principles this seems a bit confusing. But checks are not authenticated by their own right. A party who accepts a check is taking on a certain amount of risk, the amount of which depends on the nature of the situation. They are not really "authenticating the check" but actually performing a risk analysis, in which only one of the factors is security features present on the physical document. When you ask to cash a check at a grocery store, they are unlikely to cash it unless it is a payroll check from a nearby company and has expected security features---this is because they are taking on a relatively great risk. But when you deposit a check via ATM, you're often credited the full amount (up to some limit) instantly with virtually no verification besides the ATM trying to parse the number. This is because, as a holder of an ATM card, you have an ongoing relationship with the bank and they feel fairly confident that, if the check is bad, they can recover the value from you in some way. My point is that talking about forging checks for payroll direct deposit reasons is kind of the most extreme possible case. The only reason you're asked to present a check is because most companies have had way too many incidents of people providing the wrong routing and account numbers and it turning into a real headache when their paycheck disappears. If you went to the trouble of forging a check in order to set up DD, I suspect it's also very likely that you got the routing and account numbers right, clearly you put some effort into this. So in practice a "forged" check is probably every bit as good for their purposes as a legitimate one.
• slg 6y ago
  This is just the physical equivalent of the same thing we have been dealing with in the virtual world. A utility bill provides no more or less proof than having both my mother's maiden name and the name of my first pet. Most people are good so most companies and organizations choose convenience over security. The end result is that it is often incredibly easy for malicious actors to socially engineer themselves into secured areas both physically and digitally.
• betenoire 6y ago
  All security (crpyto math aside) is weak. Door is locked? Break the window. Circumventing security measures means you understood what you were doing, and can be punished more severely for it.