How Wired's Hiding Writer Was Found 83
newscloud writes "A twitter-savvy, gluten-free pizza shop nabbed missing Wired magazine writer Evan Ratliff in New Orleans early on Tuesday to win the $5,000 Vanish contest. Ratliff was ensnared in part by repeated non-TOR visits to our Facebook application, launched to support the contest's tracker community, and his secret travel journal on Twitter. 'The Vanish Team application became part of the game — essentially a trap for Evan — one he stumbled into each day knowingly and willingly. This is something that we would never do with our Facebook technology if Evan hadn't asked us to pursue him - but it's a useful reminder of "relative" anonymity on the Web.'"
Mouse Trap (Score:5, Funny)
Well this pretty much reminds me of game, Mouse Trap.
Fembot?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Twitter seems as appealing to me as gluten-free pizza, so presumably a "fembot" is some Twitterism with which I'm unfamiliar, and not an actual fembot?
Re:The first rule of not being seen: Don't stand u (Score:1, Funny)
Unless everyone else is standing up, in which case sitting down might be a giveaway...
Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fembot?!? (Score:1, Funny)
I don't know what a fembot OR a "female /r9k/" user is... jesus am I old?
does someone want to provide another definition for the over-30 crowd?
Re:The first rule of not being seen: Don't stand u (Score:5, Funny)
He fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is never use facebook.
Re:Fembot?!? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Fembot?!? (Score:1, Funny)
Rule 30:
There are no women on the internet.
Re:Great! (Score:4, Funny)
So everyone wins, then! :)
Re:this makes me gag (Score:2, Funny)
Actually, the moderation *system* works fine. It's the moderators who are broken.
Incidentally, in this case, I agree with the mods; GP was off topic. So, in this case, it's your opinion that's broken.
Re:The whole thing is ridiculous... (Score:5, Funny)
I tried asking a Democratic reformer in China, an atheist Iranian, a member of the Tibetan independence movement and a North Korean, but none of them could think of a situation where this might be useful.
I was hoping that they were about to walk into a bar ...