A Fair Scammer & #004584 Angels

August 3, 2023

Personal

Last week I went to an airshow with the Blue Angels and yesterday I went to the Nebraska State Fair.

The Fair Scammer #

My state, Nebraska, is largely agricultural, so it should be no surprise that the fair had multiple buildings stuff to the brim with animals - cattle, sheep, chickens, pigs - and while I find factory farming of the animals stomach churning, I’m also not about to stop eating meat (I guess my stomach is more powerful than my will), and either way, that’s not really what was on display here. Largely, these were show animals and they’d been well cared for. It appeared that the farmers and FFA kids, while they knew it was to be meat ultimately, mostly respected the animals. There was a “birthing pavilion” as well, and baby animals will melt anyone’s heart, mine included. It was great.

There was also a vendors area. You know what I’m talking about, the big show room floor lined with booth after booth of products where half of them are right on the edge of scams.

Three of them stood out to me:

A definitely from Ali-Express “Every Classic Game” console, with an NES mario demo.

(note, I don’t care about any pirating those games, but it’s still a little funny to see it in this environment)
A magnetic “healing” bracelet stand

Normally, I mess with these people. Strangely though, this one was staffed by old ladies that weren’t trying to sell the bullshit. While there were signs up that said it, the wasn’t really any predatory vibes from the staff themselves. So, they get a pass.
A guy selling super over priced android TV boxes that give you “Free TV, movies” and includes tech support. I didn’t actually see the price, but I think it was about $150

Okay, 1. and 2. are thinly veiled in slime, but it’s not oozing everywhere enough for me care. 3. though? That’s some toxic waste.

Let me provide some context here:

Most of them have malware (Linus Tech Tips).
They’re about $30 on amazon, about $20 on AliExpress
This is definitely piracy (again, I don’t care, but I think most of the customers were being mislead to think it wasn’t)

So, I happened to walk by this while an older couple was about to be suckered into it. I gave it one of those raised eyebrow, wow this is bullshit smirks, and the wife looked at me wondering what I thought. I leaned over and whispered,

“It’s piracy, it’s probably loaded with malware, and it’s about $30 on Amazon”

At seeing me whisper to his to-no-longer-be-customer, he went on the defensive. “What were you saying?”

“Oh, just that it’s a fantastic product. I’ve seen plenty of Android TV boxes and they’re all… great.”, I replied with an intentionally obviously forced smile and nod.

At which point, and bless her for doing this, the wife of the older couple piped in, “Is this secure on my network?” - she really sold it as an honest question too.

Now, at this point our scammer friend knew what was up, and said “I always love when tech guys like you come around. I used to shoo you away, but now I know your lot knows how to sell em’ for me - care to tell them how a VPN will protect their network?”

“Oh sure, a VPN - a virtual private network - is an added service you can, and would need to, buy if you run a product like this. It doesn’t prevent you from getting viruses, but it does prevent your internet service provider- like Comcast, Allo, Windstream, whatever - from seeing that you’re using a device like this to download pirated movies. "

Our scammy friend immediately responds, “It’s not downloading it’s streaming.”

Which, this one actually got me for a moment - this is such a weird argument to make. I realize to a non-technical person that may sound somewhat reasonable, but he also knew I knew what I was talking about by that point. Weirder, I don’t think he was intentionally making a bad argument, I think he legitimately didn’t understand that to stream something just means downloading it and throwing it away when done - that there’s no difference. He also didn’t defend the piracy, so, I guess at least he choose a hill with some chance at defense to die on? I tried to explain this for about 10 seconds getting in a good,

“Uh, that’s the same thing? Streaming just means-”

Before being cut off by him again, this time just saying,

“I’m going to call security on you”

Which, uh, what? Dude, I paid to get into the fair and you’re about to call security because you don’t like that someone is calling you out on your product? Okay.

I tried to keep talking a bit, but kept getting cut off by the security thread. I was never actually rude, never raised my voice, and kept a smile on the entire time. After about the third time of being cut off with a security threat I started to walk away and he, having to get in a last laugh said “Go back to your mother’s basement.”

Go. Back. To. Your. Mother’s. Basement.

I’m a full time embedded software engineer making a handsome paycheck, I don’t live at home anymore. Plus, even if I did, I don’t think there’s shame in that. Really, this makes me laugh, but it is still a personal attack rooted in this idea that nerds are not self sufficient and that anybody willing to take the time to call someone out on this must not having anything better to do. He made it a personal attack. Sure, it was a low-blow, not accurate, and just sorta dumb, but, still a personal attack. There’s no reason for that, and, frankly, making him eat those words just became a fun challenge.

Still, I was still with my girlfriend at the time (albeit she was a booth or two away) so I didn’t want to deal with security at that particular moment, so I did just walk away.

About 20 minutes later, my GF wanted to wander a bit on her own, and I took the opportunity to find a good spot to silently wait - you know, right by his booth. I wasn’t saying a word, just standing there, but he clearly remembered me because after my standing there waiting for about a minute, he stopped his sales pitch to a now context-less couple to loudly shout at me (again, silent, looking totally innocent) to say “I’LL CALL SECURITY IF YOU DON’T LEAVE RIGHT NOW” to which I shrugged and said “oh-kay, I’ll wait here” and put on a confused look that made it look like I was just an confused as to why he’d single me out as the crowd around was.

He talks to his wife, his wife gets an older lady working the fair, she tell’s me I should leave them alone and that, well, I just overstepped my bounds by costing him a customer. I said I’d wait on security.

Security shows up, very confused because there’s really nothing happening, so I raise my hand for the man and say “Hi, I’m [firstname] [lastname], I believe you we’re called because of me. It’s nice to meet you.” I outstretch my hand as he walks over and give him a good shake. He is now very confused, because the wife that fetched security in the first place is making quite the scene and I’m being as cooperative as can be. He actually thought it was my booth for a moment.

I explain to him the situation, covering in a calm and clear manner that:

Their product is predatory, illegal, and given findings and reporting on similar products, has a high likelihood of being loaded with malware.
That the booth owner has used security as a threat multiple times
The the booth owner told me “Go back to your mothers basement”

Now, Mr. Security is very clearly annoyed to be dealing with this, and asks “How can we resolve this?”. I let him know that I was just standing there and could walk away, but, you know, it seems wrong to me that I, a patron of the fair, would be treated like this just because I have concerns about a product and talked to one of his customers.

At this point, security is now 100% on my side. Between the wife being a total Karen, them wasting security’s time, and my general calm and collected attitude it was no contest. He pulls me aside, and says “Okay, I’m going to write stuff in this notepad, you say you’re name very slowly and make a face like you’re upset then leave. I’ll be letting our vendor manager know of their behavior.”

Now, I’m recalling this story for a few reasons:

I think it’s important that more people technically literate people call out scummy products and behavior like this
To do that, you need to know HOW to call it out.

So, look at what I did:

I consistently made him look like the bad guy by letting him get angry, but only every smiling and laughing myself.
- This requires knowing how to remain cool even when being shouted out and personally attacked.
- My heartrate was still super high and I swear you could see it beat through my shirt. This is easy to say, but hard to do.
I lost a battle to win the war - I walked away when I needed to
- By leaving when it became personal, I maintained the “better person” card for later.
- By coming back later and letting him explode in front of people with no context, it made my point stronger.
I didn’t back down from threats
- He was trying to use an implied better relationship with security and so a position of power against me. I showed that I both wasn’t afraid and forced him have to carry though with his bluff.
I kept track of the power dynamics and likelihood of agreement
- The first lady on staff to show up wasn’t security, but she hoped to deescalate before security even arrived and to end it there, but she wasn’t on my side. She was also older, and so likely didn’t grasp the technical aspects of the situation, while I knew security was likely to a younger male.
I respected the judge, and showed him I was peaceful
- The security guy that showed up was about to be in a position of ultimate power over the situation. Anybody that “has to do their job” in a security role is immediately annoyed to some extent. By showing that he was called because of the booth owner’s actions, not mine, and by introducing myself in a polite, calm, way I shifted the situation to being about me to being about the booth owners actions.

So, please, if you see some scummy tech salesmen do the public a service and stop it when you can.

#004584 Angels #

The air show was a great time, the performances were incredible. The skill on display from the pilots is inspiring.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a few thoughts out of my head:

"[C]hildren who live in close proximity to an airport have at least 21% higher lead levels in their blood” - The airport the show was at is only 2½ miles from my apartment.
“The report estimates that more than 8% of female service members experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2021” - That 8% of women in that year. Mentally extrapolate that to a service member spending a decade or so in the armed forces and it’s even more disgusting.
As I’m sure any male (and to a lesser extent any female) that has gone though their teenage years in the US can tell you: They’re really, really, aggressive about recruiting. The entire air show is a recruiting event, and it’s not subtle.
These planes on display were made with one goal: Killing.
That is a lot of fuel, and therefore pollution and tax dollars, being used. At first I thought “Well, it’s an airshow, for the number of people watching, it’s not really any more wasteful than commercial flights”. So, I did what anyone should do when concerned about something like this and searched it,
- “In 2006 Air Force consumed around 2.6 billion gallons of jet-fuel which is the same amount of fuel U.S. airplanes consumed during WWII (between December 1941 and August 1945).” (source)
- “The US military is the largest institutional consumer of oil in the world. Every year, our armed forces consume more than 100 million barrels of oil” (source)
- At the time of writing, a barrel of oil is about $85, so going off that 100 million barrels figure, that is 8.5 BILLION dollars on just fuel.
  - In this years budget, there was a line “$2.5 billion for inflation impacts on fuel purchases” (source)
- Obviously the cost of the jets themselves, their maintenance, all of the personnel, etc. mean both the individual air show and armed forces spending as a whole is ludicrous.

This could rapidly devolve into a military spending rant, so to avoid itemizing all of the complaints, suffice it to say I think it’s absurd that the US is nearly spending as much as every other country combined. We’re at $842 BILLION a year, or about 20% of federal revenue when our infrastructure is falling apart, or education is unaffordable, we’re being hammered by the impacts of climate change, health care is totally unaffordable, etc. etc. etc.

So, I have all of this going through my head as I try to watch big planes do cool things and try my best to take all of that frustration and push it down so I can think “ohh, big fighter jet go ZWOOP” for a few hours. I just can’t force myself into that level of cognitive dissonance.

There’s a lot of people out there where planes, jets, flying - all of it - is their passion. Nothing can get them into a long excited expulsion of information quite like planes can. I know because I was friends with someone like this growing up and I worked at the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum for a few years, despite not being all that into it myself. For them, there air shows can be the highlight of their year. I wouldn’t want to deprive them of that either. But, that doesn’t make my points above any less addressable:

We could limit residential and school proximity to airports
We could limit military spending, recruit less aggressively, and better handle sexual misconduct in the armed forces.
The air shows could be shorter (this one was 2-days, the same show both days)
The shows could be done with entirely civilian aircraft, not aircraft made to end lives

I’m not trying to be some holier-than-thou critique of the shows that says we should never do anything fun because it’s wasteful.

For me, personally, I would’ve had more fun if it was a smaller, more relaxed event in a grass field instead of hot concrete, the planes were smaller and I knew lacked computer assistance, and I didn’t have to be surrounded by a group of people that I know are statistically more likely to commit sexual assault walking around with assault rifles slung over their shoulders and the planes being flown were made for fun, not for killing.

For some - hell, most - people the fact that it being put on by the armed forces made entry free and let them see bigger, meaner aircraft was probably better in their opinions. I don’t know if I find that alarming or reassuring that I’m different.