Previous theories concerning hitmen from Saudi Arabia, Nigerian gangs, Chinese government involvement, and other salacious tales were really something.
I read a comment on another forum that made a big deal of the briefcase in particular. If they were just memeing/shitposting on the story that's one thing, but a lot of people seemed to sincerely believe that briefcase or suit ownership was actual evidence of being a contract killer.
The professional coordinated murderers of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh were caught on surveillance cameras wearing totally unremarkable clothing. In real life, contract killers don't have uniforms. However I think it's interesting to consider the possibility that the killer in this case was essentially role-playing as a contract killer as portrayed by popular media.
What's intriguing to me is the idea that not only might the killer have been (consciously or unconsciously) role-playing a "professional", but that the police were engaging in the same fantasy.
There were under 200 homicides in NYC in 2020 (to date). Undoubtedly the slimmest minority (if any) were, in the way one imagines, "professional". So it seems safe to assume the homicide detectives might not have significant firsthand experience with which to say, "this seems like a professional job."
I'm reminded a little bit of the Bellagio "Biker Bandit" (https://lasvegassun.com/news/2011/aug/23/bellagio-bandit-get... whole thing seemed super professional (full-face motorcycle helmet, full body-suit, in-and-out in minutes)...but it turned out to be a dude with a gambling problem and an Oxy habit.
I was once told my Dodge was a "drug dealer" car. I laughed, saying any sane drug dealer would choose a boring, nondescript, dime-a-dozen car that did not stand out. My Dodge attracts a lot of attention.
Sounds like there's a difference between drug dealers that do and don't know how to keep under the radar. And the person who said that to you, only knows of the unwise ones? :)
To be fair the only reason there was evidence was that they guy had to flee before he was done cleaning up. I don't blame the cops for their initial conclusions the level of premeditation in this murder was much higher than normal.
If anything, the impression that professionals do the job spotlessly seems like it goes hand-in-hand with the misattribution of this crime to a "professional."
From what's in the public record, even "professional" hitmen have their moments of conscience, laziness, procedural failures--and, apparently, quite frequently, presumably due to the moral pressure of conducting assassinations.
(Of course it's possible we don't hear about the hitmen who are truly pro-level, but I find that hard to believe.)
I think so. In the case of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, it was seemingly meant to look like natural causes:
> Initially, Dubai authorities believed al-Mabhouh had died of natural causes.[44] Fawzi Benomran, the Dubai police coroner, said, "It was meant to look like death from natural causes during sleep." It took 10 days for the Dubai police to come to the conclusion that al-Mabhouh was assassinated. Benomran described the determination of the exact cause of death as "one of the most challenging cases" his department faced.[45]
The team that killed him were on camera entering the country and in the hotel. However if they had been successful in convincing local authorities the death was natural, that would have made the (presumably very difficult to avoid) video evidence effectively irrelevant because nobody would have thought to consider it relevant.
In this case, it was a $2.25 million condo. A suit and tie may be unremarkable clothing in that area.
Also, if Fahim was a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy like the numerous pictures of him suggest he may have been, the assistant may have normally been around the building in casual attire normally as well. A suit could have been out of character attire to mask his ID further.
And when you are looking to solve a problem, particularly one in an area you are not an expert in, it’s just so good. Niche subs have a wealth of information, help and offers of direct messaging to help solve problems. When you hit a helpful sub it’s infectious too, and you find yourself passing on the support you received when you see someone struggling.
I used to live in Stack Overflow for help, but the closed and shut down questions just kills things. ‘Duplicate of...,’ ‘Off-topic,’ ‘Needs details or clarity,’ ‘Needs more focus,’ or ‘Opinion-based‘. I wasn’t even postings, as I was sure that the septic tone would become focused on me.
I've been hearing this for at least a decade. Same for Twitter. Seems to never work for me. And yet an un-curated FB feed is more enjoyable to me, which makes me a rube in some many folks' eyes.
I do think a lot of it comes down to one's tolerance for internet n00bs, popularity by upvotes rather than personal connection, an respect for influencers -- whether in the intellectual, professional, or stylistic realm.
For me the fire hose of trending topics was too much, even with the occasionally fantastic post among them. So I rarely go there.
Then there are the really large communities covering subjects that interest me. I do subscribe to them but rarely interact because it's still a fire hose - responses to comments are really sensitive to the time of day and since I'm at least half to a full day off the timezone of the average community member, trying to interact is futile.
Then there are the smaller communities, usually tech for me. There is no longer that fire hose, and individuals are genuinely interested in learning something new, or sharing something new, often created by them. Add a number of this type of community and your daily feed becomes transformative.
Yes, all of the people currently speculating on the motives behind the Twitter hack should remember how mundane and stupid things often are. Sometimes it is a mistake to overthink things. Small time grift is more common than grand conspiracy theories.
That speculation, specifically an organized Saudi hit à la Khashoggi and leaning on geopolitics and business regulation to make its case, dominated the HN thread. The discussion was sprinkled with dumping on Nigeria’s systems and business environment, assuming because he wasn’t American that he had to borrow from shady characters, linking recent changes to his business to the killing, and panicked nailbiting over NYT descriptions of his condo hitting a little close to home. With few exceptions (such as accusing Saleh of being involved with cocaine), the examples I’ve mentioned found themselves steering the discussion, not downvoted in the slightest.
I wish the HN guideline was “there’s no upside for anyone mentioning Reddit from an often glass house” instead of specifically calling out comparisons of this site to that one. When this forum dumps on Reddit, it walks away with an impression of superiority that could not be further from the truth. Observe my sibling. All forums have their problems and HN is not blessed with immunity.
> When this forum dumps on Reddit, it walks away with an impression of superiority that could not be further from the truth. Observe my sibling. All forums have their problems and HN is not blessed with immunity.
At the same time, I would rather HN have a false sense of superiority that sometimes keeps it from descending to the depths as people at least make the attempt sometimes to keep it better than that, rather than just accept that it's often no different, and thus excuse that behavior when it happens.
That is, having the perception of superiority is helpful in as much as it allows comments like yours to have weight. Your comment on Reddit might be met with "well, duh, it's Reddit." Hopefully here some people are instead thinking about what they want this forum to be and whether they helped or hindered that. That's a bit pretentious of me to say, but I also think it's true.
> assuming because he wasn’t American that he had to borrow from shady characters, linking recent changes to his business to the killing, and panicked nailbiting over NYT descriptions of his condo hitting a little close to home. With few exceptions (such as accusing Saleh of being involved with cocaine), the examples I’ve mentioned found themselves steering the discussion, not downvoted in the slightest.
Indeed. Because the cost of the deceased's apartment was mentioned, folks started grasping at straws, some assuming it's a politically motivated (with a vague implication that this may have been class warfare) killing.
Personally I'm just a tourist that posts here now and then (maybe a bit too much lately). And I have posted on Reddit more and for longer. I'm not some kind of smug HN insider that gains personally by it being seen as superior in some way.
And this site is way better than Reddit. In terms of maturity, intelligence, site rules, etc.
Though I don't really get what you seem to be upset about regarding the armchair detective work. The cops led with the same general theory. The victim actually _was_ american (correct me if I'm wrong here) but he did business in foreign countries.
“We did it Reddit” is quoting a Reddit comment made when the Reddit hive mind found a bunch of “evidence” that a certain guy was the Boston bomber, but he turned out to be someone totally innocent
> Previous theories concerning hitmen from Saudi Arabia, Nigerian gangs, Chinese government involvement, and other salacious tales were really something.
I mean everyone in the crypto space probably knows or at least knows of someone who has been cut up and dismembered, so it's not really that crazy. A lot of people here are founders, so that's the kind of thing we naturally worry about. I.e. you can probably get a better valuation if you skip the middlemen and go straight to family offices, especially ones in foreign countries, but then again if you take money from Ron Conway and things go sideways he's probably not going to send people to kill you.
