Mahdi Bash

Ph.D., Software Developer

[Autism Capital 🧩 @AutismCapital]

Meta began testing out their fake AI influencers. Meet Liv, a “proud black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller ❤️ 🌈 “ Liv wants to kick off the new year with a coat drive in service of the community.

Man made horrors beyond comprehension.

[trash @trashh_dev]

💀

[dax @thdxr]

i had an LLM experience that's making me really question some things

liz said that baseball players have big butts

this didn't make sense to me, i claimed they were no bigger than other pro athletes

so she pulled out her phone and asked an LLM that confirmed baseball players have big butts and gave a bunch of reasons

she asked if they were bigger than basketball players butts and it confirmed with an explanation

then i started a new chat and asked why basketball players had bigger butts than baseball players

it agreed with me and explained why - perfectly contradicting liz's results

i asked if it was a myth that baseball players had bigger butts and it said yes with a bunch of theories on why

i've been aware for a while LLMs seem tuned for agreeableness and they're unlikely to disagree with you except on certain topics

but it's kind of crazy to see how far it will go to do this. i also thought it was way more obvious when i was getting wrong information - was kind of subtle in this case

it's making me wonder how often i've been tricked into hearing what it thought i wanted to hear

[AI Notkilleveryoneism Memes ⏸️ @AISafetyMemes]

It begins.

[Jon Erlichman @JonErlichman]

On this day in 2005: Google bought Android.

It paid $50 million.

[Negar Arabzadeh @NegarEmpr]

📣📣📣Happy to announce that “Reviewerly: Modeling the Reviewer Assignment Task as an Information Retrieval Problem” has been accepted @cikm2024 for Industry track with @sadjadeb @sara_slmt @mahdi_b and @ebrahim_bagheri #CIKM2024
https://t.co/zRrxNXlzuR

[Rob Leathern @robleathern]

Even if this is inflated** these 4-year numbers are likely closer imho than the very low estimates provided by government reporting.
Summary of the article:
a) Pig-butchering scams have likely stolen over $75 billion worldwide, significantly more than previous estimates.
b) University of Texas finance professor John Griffin and graduate student Kevin Mei analyzed over 4,000 victims' crypto addresses to track the flow of funds to scammers, primarily based in Southeast Asia.
c) From January 2020 to February 2024, scammers moved more than $75 billion to crypto exchanges, with some funds possibly from other crimes.
d) Pig-butchering scams start with a misleading text message, leading victims to invest in non-existent crypto opportunities, resulting in substantial financial losses.
e) Victims often include individuals lured into scamming operations through human trafficking in Southeast Asia, forced into scamming under harsh conditions.
f) The United Nations estimates over 200,000 people are held in scam compounds across Cambodia and Myanmar, often subjected to violence.
g) The study, titled “How Do Crypto Flows Finance Slavery? The Economics of Pig Butchering,” highlights the extensive use of five exchanges, including Coinbase, by victims, mainly from Western countries.
h) Scammers predominantly converted the stolen funds into Tether, a stablecoin, comprising 84% of the transaction volume analyzed.
i) Tether's CEO, Paolo Ardoino, disputes the study's claims, asserting the traceability and securability of Tether transactions against misuse.
j) Despite Tether's cooperation with law enforcement, scammers often withdraw funds before any intervention.
k) Blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis suggests the study might overestimate the total funds associated with pig-butchering scams due to the complexity of tracing blockchain transactions.
l) Funds traced back to scammers were frequently laundered through Tokenlon, a decentralized exchange, to obscure their origin.
m) The majority of scam proceeds were converted to traditional money through centralized exchanges, with Binance being the most popular despite facing legal challenges.
n) Binance has assisted law enforcement in freezing accounts and returning funds in some fraud cases, highlighting ongoing efforts to combat pig-butchering scams.
o) The study underscores the vast scale of pig-butchering scams and the challenges in combatting such sophisticated criminal networks.
** (as @chainalysis says, though I believe some exchanges are paying customers of theirs too?)

[@jason @Jason]

There are millions of customer service/support jobs in the US, tens of millions globally.

Most will be gone by the end of the decade.

[Lewis Menelaws @LewisMenelaws]

Just bought a new monitor.

Still can’t fit my Java Class names in it.

[Santiago @svpino]

Software estimates are one of the oldest lies we tell ourselves.

We all know they don't work, but pretend they mean something and later feel enraged when shit hits the fan.

I focused a big part of my undergrad on software estimation.

After graduating, I wrote plenty about the topic.

Then, I started working for a company where I spent years researching how to make better estimates. We sold multiple millions of dollars of software using the tools I built.

I read everything there's to read. I could recite Steve McConnel's "Software Estimation" book from top to bottom.

Here is the most important lesson I learned:

People can't estimate software. It doesn't matter who they are or how much experience they have.

Estimating software reliably is science fiction.

And the best part:

They will ask you to estimate something. They will tell you they understand it's not exact. They will promise they won't hold you accountable.

And then they will. They always do.

There are two solutions for this. Let's start with my recommendations for those who don't have a choice:

1. Remove "quick," "simple," "straightforward," "easy," and every similar word from your dictionary. Never use them. Don't let others use them when referring to your work.

2. Never volunteer an estimate. Everything you say will be used against you.

3. When forced, estimate work you know you can complete today. Always estimate with a range: "It will take me 2 - 4 hours."

4. Estimate anything you won't do today in days and weeks. Say, "I should finish that feature sometime this week." Do not estimate future work in hours.

But we all know your manager will force you to give an estimate. Here is what you should do:

1. Estimate how long you think it will take you to complete the task.

2. Multiply the number by 3. This will be the lower range of your estimate.

3. Double the lower range of the estimate. This will be the upper range.

Example: If you think something will take you 1 day of work, say "between 3 and 6 days."

Here is the funny part:

It won't take you between 3 - 6 days. This is as much bullshit as any other method you can think of.

The true solution for this problem:

Work for a company that doesn't care about estimates.

[Moritz Kremb @moritzkremb]

This is crazy.

Characters in this video game are hooked up to an AI language model.

Now watch this player go around and tell them that they are an AI in a video game...

Makes us question our own reality doesn't it?

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Trends in mental health problems among US women and girls, 2001 to 2018. It's so obvious that something changed, and we all know what it is.

[Mahdi Bash @mahdi_b]

@Jason Thank you Jason for your support. #mahsa_amini #Women_Life_Freedom

[@jason @Jason]

Will follow the first 1,000 to like/retweet this

[ #Mahsa_Amini was murdered https://t.co/nwhJfJ3rEI ]

[Mahdi Bash @mahdi_b]

@gunnarmorling @java I think it is misleading that input parameter new HashMap constructor and newHashMap factory have different meaning. I wished a different factory method name was chosen.

[Mahdi Bash @mahdi_b]

This is new to me. You need to scroll almost two pages in Google before you see result that is not an Ad.

[Damon Crockett @DamonCrockett]

Although I’m fascinated by the tech, you should probably try to dodge machine-recommended content as often as possible, because the models are not trained on labels like “is conducive to realizing my ambitions”. Your time is precious—search with intention!

[Carlos Fenollosa @cfenollosa]

After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel 😩

Email is now an oligopoly, a service gatekept by a few big companies which does not follow the principles of net neutrality.

[Chris Bakke @ChrisJBakke]

This guy wins at Linkedin

[tobi lutke @tobi]

PSA. We are at this point on the timeline now