Jeff Guthrie

🇺🇸living in 🇦🇺. Former dev, interested in all things technology; especially Ai. Sharing what I have learned from 100's of hours of Ai tool usage & research.

[The Wolf Of All Streets @scottmelker]

This is the post of the year.

[Everett Stern @EverettStern1]

Dear Secretary Bessent @SecScottBessent,

My name is Everett Stern. In 2010 I was a compliance officer at @HSBC. From a back office in New Castle, Delaware, I watched billions of dollars move to drug cartels, sanctioned regimes, and terrorist organizations. The enemies of the United States. I documented it, I escalated it, and when the bank would not act, I took it to the @FBI, the @CIA, and eventually the @SECGov.

The result was a $1.92 billion settlement. At the time, it was one of the largest in American history. It was also about five weeks of the bank’s profit. Not one banker was charged. Not one went to prison.

I paid a different price. I lost my career, my savings, and my place in the industry I had trained for. I was blacklisted. Every door in American finance closed at once. I slept on a camping cot in a 300 square foot apartment because I could not afford a bed, and I waited tables at @PFChangs to eat. I tell you this not for sympathy, but so you understand that I know exactly what it costs to do the right thing in American finance, and exactly how little the system does in return.

I made that sacrifice because I believed it would change something.

Yesterday, your department fined @BankofAmerica $1.2 billion for failing to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions, some of it tied by your own findings to Chinese laundering networks, narcotics, and the southwest border, alongside 475 apparent sanctions violations touching Russia, Iran, and global terrorism. The bank admitted it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act.

Fourteen years after HSBC. A bank with “America” in its name. And once again, not one individual charged.

Secretary Bessent, I want to say plainly what I believe you already know. The fines are not working.

A fine is paid by shareholders, absorbed by the balance sheet, and forgotten by the next earnings call. Bank of America reported earnings this morning. Nobody who set the alert thresholds, nobody who decided the 2024 cease and desist could wait, nobody who chose the backlog over the law will lose a single thing they value. Their lives are untouched. That is the entire reason the behavior repeats.

This is money laundering. This is blood money. Money that reaches a cartel buys fentanyl that kills Americans. Money that reaches a terrorist organization buys the next attack. This country has fought a war on drugs and a war on terror for decades, at enormous cost in lives and treasure, and all the while we have allowed the financing to flow through institutions we charter and regulate. Cut off the money and we win. We have never seriously tried.

There is also a question of equal justice that I cannot let go.

Before I walked into the FBI building to report HSBC, I stopped in front of the Great Seal on the wall and read the words engraved beneath it: “Justice is the defense of our liberty.” I believed that. I still want to. But every day in this country, people go to prison for crimes that are nothing next to moving money for the people who want Americans dead. A suit, a title, and a corporate badge should not be a shield from the consequences that apply to everyone else. If a street dealer goes to prison for what he sells, the banker who moved the cartel’s money should be standing next to him.

I also want to raise something that is rarely said in these conversations. Why has no one inside Bank of America come forward the way I did? The answer is that everyone in American banking knows what happened to me, and to the whistleblowers who came after. The last person who spoke up is the only policy anyone believes. That is a culture problem, and it starts with leadership, in the banks and in the agencies that regulate them.

This is not a political issue. It has spanned administrations of both parties. It is a national security issue, and I am asking you to treat it as one.

Three things would change the math overnight.

Refer individuals for criminal prosecution. Not the analyst in the queue. The executives who set the thresholds and chose the risk. One banker in handcuffs would do more than every fine in Treasury’s history combined.

End “too big to jail.” An institution cannot be too big to fail and too big to jail at the same time. If it is the first, it must be held to a higher standard, not a lower one.

And if Bank of America will not act as America’s bank, review its charter. A national charter is a privilege granted on behalf of the American people. It should be conditioned on not moving money for the people trying to kill them.

Secretary Bessent, you said yesterday that these actions send a clear message that even the biggest institutions are not above the law. With respect, the institution was never the problem. The people inside it are above the law, and they know it. Until that changes, I will keep writing letters like this one, and the next bank will keep paying the next fine.

I gave up everything I had to stop this. I am asking you to use the power you have to finish it.

Respectfully,

Everett A. Stern
HSBC Whistleblower
Founder and Intelligence Director, Tactical Rabbit

[Linus ✦ Ekenstam @LinusEkenstam]

yo fam, this Opus 5.5 LEGO is wild

LEGO should legit create a bricks API. I know we’ve got BrickLink.

But LEGO could open up a whole new massive business vertical here.

Imagine being able to hook this up to an official LEGO API, where you can order whatever you can dream up.

LEGO then packs your specific built to order box, and charge per brick with a small premium.

Absolutely absurd what could come out of this.

@LEGO_Group should pay attention.

[Emma Camp @emmma_camp_]

Can rent control fix the housing crisis? No. In fact, it could make things a whole lot worse.

Find out more in my latest for @WSJFreeEx

[Kahris @chrissotraidis]

GoldenEye 007 N64 running natively on iOS and iPadOS for the first time.

Not an emulator. The GoldenEye decompilation community spent years reconstructing the original game. GoldenEye64Recomp, N64Recomp, N64ModernRuntime, and RT64 provided the static recompilation, runtime, and rendering foundations.

I built GoldenPad on top: the iPhone and iPad app, touch interface, native audio and saves, controller support, and the mobile lifecycle work needed to make it run on real devices.

It runs great on iPhone. GoldenEye runs better through GoldenPad than it has in any N64 emulator I have tried on iOS. Native ARM64 code, high-resolution Metal rendering, and modern dual-stick controls make a huge difference.

No JIT, no N64 code being interpreted at runtime, and no streaming from a Mac.

This is the original 1997 N64 game, not the XBLA version, and it is not based on GoldenEye Metal.

I am actively working on full local split-screen multiplayer for iPad. MacOS support soon.

I built the iOS and iPadOS integration with 5.6 Sol.

Open sourcing it all below. Happy Friday!

[Jay Anderson @TheProjectUnity]

Here is an entire feature-length documentary that I filmed, edited & narrated myself, travelling across Peru, documenting historical anomalies.

For free ✌️

All I ask in return is that if you enjoy original work like this, help it grow with a comment, a like and a repost.

[dank @cptdankkk]

Gary Payton says he refuses to let the Oklahoma City Thunder retire his jersey because it would be disrespectful to Seattle

“Oklahoma City fans never watched me play a game in Oklahoma City. Who watched me play all the time, Seattle fans. Why would I disrespect the Seattle fans by going up there, getting in a celebration on a court, and let them get that when I've disrespected them”

“I'll never do that ever in life. The fans in Seattle are the ones who supported me and got me to where I wanted to be. It's nothing against Oklahoma City. I never played one day in Oklahoma City, so I'm not doing that. It's only right for me to respect the people in Seattle for that, and I won't”

[Jeff Guthrie @jeffguthrie]

@JossMonzoni Amazing work. Thank you for making and sharing this

[Don Pettit @astro_Pettit]

I finally have all 1.2 million raw image files from my latest mission to ISS! Here is a sample of one of my favorite Milky Way photos, taken from the Cupola with Nikon Z9, Arri Zeiss 15mm lens, T1.8 with custom sidereal drive that cancelled out star motion relative to our orbit.

[Jeff Dye @JeffDye]

Soccer. 😂

[Buzz Patterson @BuzzPatterson]

An Aussie discovers Texas Road House for the first time. Epic!

The World Cup needs to be permanently held in the US. It offers the most for the teams and the fans. 🤣🇺🇸🇦🇺

[Daily Wire @realDailyWire]

America is SO BACK (we never left)

[Tim Young @TimRunsHisMouth]

Europeans have been fed a pile of lies about how terrible America is…

They’re learning from first hand experience that our country is incredible.

Love this.

[Tom Dutton @TomDutty]

The Scotland fans are absolutely class 😂🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[Matthew Camenzuli @Matt_Camenzuli]

"The people in charge of our country are idiots... and they treat our money like they found it in a sack by the river and they've gotta spend it before someone finds out"

- Dave Hughes

👏👏👏

[Jason Kneen @jasonkneen]

Good god please don't listen to this horseshit.

1. OpenClaw is a ralph loop with messaging it's not f**king the greatest piece of software ever written and there's alternatives like paperclip and nanoclaw and tinyclaw that work as good if not better.

2. You don't have to be burning money like this fool. He's making his on clicks and views and so all this drama is great for his numbers but having a 24/7 workforce that's cost him tens of thousands has lead to him releasting ZERO products over last months.

Even his screenshots showed 0 tool use.

It's all engagement farming bullshit.

But you can choose to follow the fool or listen to people who actually know what they're talking about and aren't farming for likes and replies and horseshit.

Up to you I have no skin in the game -- just sick of FUD.

[Jeff Guthrie @jeffguthrie]

@OwenShroyer1776 April 1.

[MaryCate Delvey @marycatedelvey]

NOT ENOUGH OF YOU ARE HEARING ME:

Jet Ski Jousting

[Wes Winder @weswinder]

this guy literally called this 11 days ago

and this was thariq's response lol

[jenny ☀️ @jennsun]

overheard a new insult: you have a short context window 💀