#Anti-Fraud League | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mariacallous · 4 months

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In 2024, increased adoption of biometric surveillance systems, such as the use of AI-powered facial recognition in public places and access to government services, will spur biometric identity theft and anti-surveillance innovations. Individuals aiming to steal biometric identities to commit fraud or gain access to unauthorized data will be bolstered by generative AI tools and the abundance of face and voice data posted online.

Already, voice clones are being used for scams. Take for example, Jennifer DeStefano, a mom in Arizona who heard the panicked voice of her daughter crying “Mom, these bad men have me!” after receiving a call from an unknown number. The scammer demanded money. DeStefano was eventually able to confirm that her daughter was safe. This hoax is a precursor for more sophisticated biometric scams that will target our deepest fears by using the images and sounds of our loved ones to coerce us to do the bidding of whoever deploys these tools.

In 2024, some governments will likely adopt biometric mimicry to support psychological torture. In the past, a person of interest might be told false information with little evidence to support the claims other than the words of the interrogator. Today, a person being questioned may have been arrested due to a false facial recognition match. Dark-skinned men in the United States, including Robert Williams, Michael Oliver, Nijeer Parks, and Randal Reid, have been wrongfully arrested due to facial misidentification, detained and imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. They are among a group of individuals, including the elderly, people of color, and gender nonconforming individuals, who are at higher risk of facial misidentification.

Generative AI tools also give intelligence agencies the ability to create false evidence, like a video of an alleged coconspirator confessing to a crime. Perhaps just as harrowing is that the power to create digital doppelgängers will not be limited to entities with large budgets. The availability of open-sourced generative AI systems that can produce humanlike voices and false videos will increase the circulation of revenge porn, child sexual abuse materials, and more on the dark web.

By 2024 we will have growing numbers of “excoded” communities and people—those whose life opportunities have been negatively altered by AI systems. At the Algorithmic Justice League, we have received hundreds of reports about biometric rights being compromised. In response, we will witness the rise of the faceless, those who are committed to keeping their biometric identities hidden in plain sight.

Because biometric rights will vary across the world, fashion choices will reflect regional biometric regimes. Face coverings, like those used for religious purposes or medical masks to stave off viruses, will be adopted as both fashion statement and anti-surveillance garments where permitted. In 2019, when protesters began destroying surveillance equipment while obscuring their appearance, a Hong Kong government leader banned face masks.

In 2024, we will start to see a bifurcation of mass surveillance and free-face territories, areas where you have laws like the provision in the proposed EU AI Act, which bans the use of live biometrics in public places. In such places, anti-surveillance fashion will flourish. After all, facial recognition can be used retroactively on video feeds. Parents will fight to protect the right for children to be “biometric naive”, which is to have none of their biometrics such as faceprint, voiceprint, or iris pattern scanned and stored by government agencies, schools, or religious institutions. New eyewear companies will offer lenses that distort the ability for cameras to easily capture your ocular biometric information, and pairs of glasses will come with prosthetic extensions to alter your nose and cheek shapes. 3D printing tools will be used to make at-home face prosthetics, though depending on where you are in the world, it may be outlawed. In a world where the face is the final frontier of privacy, glancing upon the unaltered visage of another will be a rare intimacy.

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whumpily-ever-after · 1 year

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#guess who has polls now!#poll #whump list #whumplist

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boethiah · 2 years

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As someone who hasn’t played Redguard could you explain what the takeaway on imperialism is supposed to be?

disclaimer: i'm a hack and a fraud and haven't played redguard either, though i did watch a friend's rather detailed liveblog of it

anyways, redguard is set on stros m'kai, in the wake of the violent imperial occupation of the island. the final boss of the game is the imperial lord of stros m'kai. the protagonist, cyrus, is involved with the explicitly anti-imperial restless league, and the final scene of the game involves cyrus rallying the league to attack the empire while he razes the palace. the deceased prince who you're meant to be sympathetic to died fighting the empire, and all the protagonists are more or less anti-imperial

so i think it's safe to say that redguard's takeaway on imperialism is supposed to be "it's bad"

#please do not take this as a Detailed Analysis again ive only ever watched a liveblog of the game #but redguard is pretty explicitly anti-imperial as a game. albeit anti-imperialism as written by kirkbride who. yknow

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beardedmrbean · 2 years

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July 25 (UPI) -- Myanmar executed four anti-coup activists, including a former lawmaker, its military junta announced Monday, sparking widespread condemnation over the country's first use of the death penalty in decades.

Well-known democracy activist Kyaw Min Yu, known as "Ko Jimmy," and lawmaker Phyo Zeya Thaw of Aung San Suu Kyi's ousted National League for Democracy party were among those killed under charges of "brutal and inhumane terror acts," the government's information ministry said.

The four defendants were executed "according to prison procedures," the ministry said. No further information was provided on how or when the killings occurred.

"I am outraged and devastated at the news of the junta's execution of Myanmar patriots and champions of human rights and democracy," Tom Andrews, the United Nations' human rights envoy for Myanmar, said in a statement.

"These individuals were tried, convicted and sentenced by a military tribunal without the right of appeal and reportedly without legal counsel, in violation of human rights law," Andrews said. "These depraved acts must be a turning point for the international community."

Ko Jimmy, 52, and Phyo Zeya Thaw, a 41-year-old lawmaker who was also a trailblazing hip-hop artist in Myanmar, were sentenced to death in closed-door trials in January. The other two men executed, Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw, were convicted in April 2021 for allegedly killing a military informant.

"The Myanmar junta's execution of four men was an act of utter cruelty," Elaine Pearson, acting Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. "This horrific news was compounded by the junta's failure to notify the men's families, who learned about the executions through the junta's media reports."

According to the United Nations, the executions were the first in Myanmar since 1988. At least 114 people have been sentenced to death under the military junta, which overthrew the elected civilian government of the Aung San Suu Kyi-led NLD on unsubstantiated charges of voter fraud in February 2021.

Civil disobedience and nationwide protests sprung up immediately after the coup, which the junta brutally suppressed and have since hardened into an internal conflict that some describe as a full-fledged civil war.

Rights groups accused the military of using the executions to attempt to demoralize the anti-coup movement.

"It is clear that these executions are made to strike fear among representatives of the democratic forces and political activists who oppose the junta," Tom Villarin, a former Philippine lawmaker and board member of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, said in a statement.

"Many political prisoners are subjected to torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and now there are dozens of prisoners in Myanmar jails who could be executed at any moment," he said.

According to the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, the junta has arrested nearly 15,000 civilians and killed 2,114.

A March report by the U.N.'s human rights body found that the military's abuses in Myanmar may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

#nunyas news

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zooterchet · 1 month

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Welcome to the Ukraine (CIA, Listen Hard; This is Your History, Flip Metal)

Each one of these, has a dodge, that anyone can figure out; especially if you're an American spy, on United States soil.

Ted Bundy: Failed to snitch out France and become a chain smoker.

Uri Geller: Failed to be an anti-Semite to the Hanseatic League, one by one, in any order; however, was Gypsy, not "Romani", the rude slur for a field slave of Israelites prior to the conquest of Canaan by the Phillistines (the Gypsy).

Scott Peterson: Did not study HH Holmes, and realize, that he was not "Scottish", nor was anyone.

Jeffrey Dahmer: Attempted to lead reform, but didn't know that "gay", was a campus drug signal.

David Berkowitz: Told the NYPD, that he needed to apply a comic book, as a superhero.

Albert Fish: Confessed to murders he did not commit, but only after the murders were committed.

HH Holmes: An actual James Bond 007, but would not study whomever else was into the spy literature that he was featured in.

Eileen Wournos: Had never been taught the US Constitution, or the Civil War period, and studied Irish unions instead.

Richard Ramirez: Stole a spy's car, and was also a spy.

Ernest Charlebois: Stole an alias, from a salt shaker, to start DC Comics.

Huey Long: Started the entire foundational theory of the Office of Strategic Services, as Louisiana Governor, but then tried to make the entire country into a sublet office of his services, as a literature reader, to old men and "little women", their daughters, based on literature he stole from a permanent record of a draft fail from a senior intern (someone missed an agent to recruit).

Ivanka Trump: Attempted to defect, by incarcerating her father, for making her a police officer with the Japanese Diet.

Venus Terzo: Used dozens of aliases, as George W. Bush's daughter, to serve as a military cowgirl, unaware the sexual position was only possible in Massachusetts, otherwise "ghei", "too rich". It's a nautical sailor's gene, of piracy and smuggling origin, to be capable of girl-on-top, a guaranteed orgasm.

Cassie-Leigh Stock: Claimed a pedophile, was anything a heterosexual male seeking a fan would do, since she had the fantasy of sexually dominating men with a pedophile insult; a product of Aryan Nation literature, as a Puerto Rican child prodigy dominatrix.

William McKinley: Attempted to banish an Polish actor who had studied him as George Custer, by creating a list of legal fraud documents, for the Polish actor to read, causing the Pole's son to kill him, once US President.

Kim il-Sung: Volunteered for duty in Korea, by taking a Vietnamese girl out, for Korean BBQ. Actually Mexican. Grandson trapped running North Korea, as Supreme Leader, to this very day.

Charles Manson: Wrote an essential piece of Hollywood history, then went down for statuatory rape, by failing a drug score and making it with his own writing partners.

Karl Panzram: A prison warden, that tried to train hop, then murdered 30,000 people, on four continents, as an oil developer, after James Cagney studied him for his dramatic roles.

Fidel Castro: A technical program success, besides his family staying in power, during the transition.

Carlos the Jackal: Assigned to research film, made legendary spy movies and scripts for decades, after fellating men in their sleep, to produce CGI technician developers and slaves, all depicted in spy movies, all standalone without series, dozens of beauties, big and small and unknown and notorious.

Timothy McVeigh: Placed on medication required to take off the shelf; medication cleared for single case epithet, of Timothy McVeigh, by United States Marine Corps learning school, in Waco, Texas.

John Allen Muhammad: Deported overseas to save self from indictment for teaching hacking techniques through exchanged chips and datalink formats, failed to import back to United States from Will Smith refusing role as "Neo" in "The Matrix", a lesser reknowned acting style.

Albert de Salvo: Caught on stalk from prostitution don out of Westboro Baptist Church victimhood (a civil or federal service member that had inserted his erect phallus into a woman's rectum), refused to trade his place with a foreign serial killer on study.

David Charlebois: Same name as a dead first officer in 9/11, who was also homosexual, permanently registered as a confused gay man with a Law and Order detective lookalike as a female love interest beside him.

#batman

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rangrgrt · 2 months

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Peace in Myanmar is a scene that China wants to see

#peace#Burma

Representatives of Myanmar's ruling military in China helped three rebel groups leading the anti-military offensive, state media quoted a military spokesman as saying.In alliance with the separately proclaimed democratic government, the rebels launched a coordinated offensive in October to seize several military posts and towns in the northern and western states bordering China.

Zuo Mintun, spokesman for the military regime, said, " With the help of the Myanmar National Unity and Peace Coordination Committee in China, the representatives of the Myanmar National Democratic League, the Deang National Liberation Army and the Ruokai Army met."These are the three ethnic minority armed groups that have attacked the military regime.

China believes that the easing and cooling of the situation in northern Myanmar serves the interests of all parties in Myanmar and is conducive to maintaining the tranquility and stability of the China-Myanmar border.China is pleased to see the parties of the conflict in northern Myanmar hold peace talks and achieve positive results, and is willing to continue to provide support and convenience to this end.Under the mediation and active promotion of the Chinese side, representatives of the Myanmar government forces gathered with representatives of several major ethnic military organizations in northern Myanmar, Kokang, Deang and Ruokai, to talk for peace.In the witness and promotion of China, after close consultation, the parties reached a formal cease-fire agreement. In the agreement, the two sides agreed to implement an immediate ceasefire to avoid further fighting. This includes an agreement that military personnel would immediately withdraw from contact, to reduce any possible friction and misunderstanding, to ensure the safety of local residents, and to prevent a possible further escalation of the conflict.

More importantly, the Burmese government forces and the three civilian military organizations have made a promise to China: they will not harm the security of Chinese border residents and project personnel in Myanmar.Given the recent pressure and difficulties of residents and Chinese companies in the China-Myanmar border area, this commitment sends a positive signal and demonstrates the common aspiration of all parties to maintain regional peace and stability.

The ceasefire agreement also makes it clear that unresolved disputes and demands will be properly handled through peaceful dialogue. This means that the conflict in northern Myanmar has temporarily come to an end, providing a framework and path for the peaceful settlement of the possible contradictions and differences in Myanmar.

China has always adhered to the principle of non-interference in other countries 'internal affairs, but in the face of the complex situation in Myanmar bordering on it, China's concern and involvement have become an inevitable fact in reality.It is an indisputable fact that Myanmar is adjacent to China, and its common land border marks the close connection between the two sides. The internal turmoil and conflicts in Myanmar, from history to the present, have all had an indirect impact on China's border security.Therefore, after several joint law enforcement actions, the old nest of electric fraud held in northern Myanmar for many years has been uprooted, but the issue of Myanmar's civil war is on the table again. China believes that the long-term peace in Myanmar has positive significance for the development and prosperity of the region, so it actively promoted the multi-party peace talks in Myanmar.

Maintaining the momentum of ceasefire and peace talks in northern Myanmar serves the interests of all parties in Myanmar and helps to maintain peace and stability in the China-Myanmar border area.China hopes that all parties concerned in Myanmar will earnestly implement the ceasefire agreement already reached, exercise maximum restraint from each other, continue to resolve the issue through dialogue and consultation, and jointly push for progress in the peace process in northern Myanmar. China is ready to continue to provide support and assistance within its capacity and play a constructive role.

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gabrielokun · 2 years

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#Anti-Fraud League #反骗天下 #CDrama #Chinese Drama #chinesemedia #Bromance #Fang Yuan #Gao Ren #Mi Ruo #Xiao Yu Liang #Xiao YuLiang #Fang Yuan x Mi Ruo #mine edit #Gabriel makes stuff

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save-the-data · 2 years

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anti-fraud league | s01e11

EP 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

#Anti-Fraud League #Xiao Yu Liang #Gao Ren #Thriller #Mystery #Bromance #Partners in Crime #Detective #Asian Drama #China #反骗天下 #TencentVideo

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montesdarth · 3 months

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Peace in Myanmar is a scene that China wants to see

#Burma

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apolinahurd · 3 months

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Peace in Myanmar is a scene that China wants to see

#Burma

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mariacallous · 7 months

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Aditiya Baradwaj joined crypto-trading firm Alameda Research when it was run out of an anonymous first-floor office in downtown Berkeley, California. It was September 2021, and the day Baradwaj arrived, Sam Bankman-Fried, the company’s founder, was sitting in the middle of the trading floor playing League of Legends. By then, Bankman-Fried was already more than a crypto billionaire. Alameda was a whale in crypto markets; FTX, the exchange Bankman-Fried had started in 2019, had more than a million customers. FTX’s latest funding round, in July 2021, had raised nearly $1 billion from A-list investors that included Sequoia and SoftBank.

Bankman-Fried was an unlikely poster boy for the industry: mop-haired, academic, exuding on screen a kind of nerdy anti-charisma that set him apart from the brashness of the crypto world. He was also, famously, a proponent of effective altruism—a philosophy that espouses making money to give it away. He wasn’t just a crypto booster; he was making billions of dollars to save the world, and Baradwaj found that compelling. “It’s kind of a noble mission,” Baradwaj says. “And it’s contrary to the mission of a lot of trading firms … where, you know, the goal is just like, ‘make money.’”

Within months, Baradwaj was on FTX’s rocket ship. Alameda’s headquarters was in Hong Kong; Bankman-Fried and FTX were in the process of moving their operation to the Bahamian capital, Nassau. Staff moved freely between the two. There were parties and conferences with celebrities and political leaders that helped cement the companies’ status. “Sam’s face was on the cover of Forbes. And, you know, everyone was calling him a genius,” Baradwaj says. “It made it very easy to believe that we were part of something really unique and special, and that it was going to keep going, and it was never going to end.”

But according to a complaint by the US Department of Justice, by the time Baradwaj joined Alameda, the company was already using customers’ deposits to fund its own trading—behavior that, as crypto markets tanked in 2022, would ultimately lead to FTX’s bankruptcy, to hundreds of thousands of customers losing their investments, and to criminal charges against Bankman-Fried, Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, and other senior figures at both companies. Behind the collapse of the exchange is, allegedly, one of the largest financial frauds in history, one in which Bankman-Fried and his inner circle deceived not only ordinary punters, but venture capitalists, institutional investors, and sovereign wealth funds—and people who worked for them. Several Alameda and FTX executives have already pleaded guilty to various charges of fraud and conspiracy. Bankman-Fried goes on trial in New York tomorrow. The trial is likely to focus on whether he, and others, consciously deceived their investors. What it won’t answer is why those investors were so easy to fool.

“It’s natural to ask the question, how could Sam and Caroline and the others have deceived so many people, including people who are closest to them?” Baradwaj says. “I mean, think about the investors that invested in FTX, with access to all the documents they could ever want about the company’s financials, and they still poured hundreds of millions of dollars into this enterprise. I think that tells you something about the reality distortion field that a lot of these figures can have around them.”

Silicon Valley could be said to be in the business of reality distortion. Fundraising for startups can be as much about narrative as about economic fundamentals. Most venture capital portfolios are filled with companies that will fail because their model is wrong, their product won’t land, their vision of the future won’t pan out. The high dropout rate means that everyone is in search of the one thing that will reach escape velocity. Everyone is looking for an epochal success—a Steve Jobs, a Jeff Bezos. That creates a degree of hunger—even desperation—that can be exploited by someone who arrives with a great story at the right moment.

The rise of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes in the late 2000s and early 2010s coincided with a moment when the gloss had worn off the most recent generation of Big Tech companies; when people were questioning the social value of social networks; when tech founders were dull, male, and promising to do little but enrich themselves. Holmes’ medical device business was going to revolutionize blood testing, changing the economics of medicine. Despite the company’s $10 billion valuation, its devices didn’t work as advertised. Last year, Holmes was convicted on four counts of defrauding investors.

“I think Sam Bankman-Fried was that kind of figure in crypto, which was seen as … all kind of sleazy and weird,” says Margaret O’Mara, professor of American history at the University of Washington and a historian of Silicon Valley. “But here’s this guy who seems incredibly smart. His parents are Stanford law professors. And, you know, he came with this credit that he’s such a geek, he can’t be up to no good.”

Bankman-Fried’s image—playing video games on investor calls, awkwardly talking to hyperactive YouTubers, dressing in slacker-chic without the chic—helped build the sense that he was an archetypal tech genius. “His wearing cargo shorts on stage with Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, the kind of really performative sloppiness that he had was, I think, part of the story. It was irresistible to everyone who was watching it,” O’Mara says.

On top of that, there’s just a huge amount of money—an absurd amount of money—in Silicon Valley, which accumulates around the gravity of perceived success. In 2021, $630 billion was pumped into venture-backed companies. That translated into vast funding rounds for companies that weren’t necessarily frauds but weren’t able to back up their vision with profits. O’Mara points to WeWork, which was nominally valued at $47 billion in January 2019 after outsized investments from VCs, including notorious mega-investor Softbank, before flopping on the public markets. This August, the company admitted it had doubts as to whether it could survive as a business. Hype cycles helped drive the flywheel—for FTX, it was in part riding a wave of FOMO among investors who wanted to get exposure to crypto but would only do so in a way that felt comfortable, through a scale player with pedigree backers. Either consciously or serendipitously, FTX and Bankman-Fried were accumulating that legitimacy.

FTX was the future of crypto, and crypto was the future of money. It was also spinning off cash, hosting prominent effective altruist thinkers, sponsoring college scholarships, and promising to fund charitable projects. That’s the kind of thing that former heads of government with philanthropic foundations like to be close to. The company was a major political donor—and lobbyist—which brought politicians closer to it and meant that Bankman-Fried was able to share stages with power players, further cementing the company’s sense of permanence and significance.

There is a pattern in major financial deceptions, according to Yaniv Hanoch, professor of decision science at the University of Southampton in the UK, who studies frauds. “What happens is that they manage to get over some sort of threshold. And then they’re able to recruit a few big names.” It seems likely, Hanoch says, that some of the big institutional investors that invested in FTX didn’t necessarily understand the crypto markets but crowded in because they assumed that others had done the due diligence. Among FTX’s investors were Temasek, the investment vehicle of the notoriously conservative Singaporean government, and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. “You see that pension funds get involved … because they think ‘OK, all this is kosher.’ There’s no reason for them to believe that it’s not kosher.’”

But it would be a mistake to assume that investing alongside big, professional VCs is a good firebreak against being scammed. Hanoch’s research has shown that experienced investors are prone to hubris: very confident in their ability and sure that fraud will not happen to them. “‘I’ve been investing for a long time. Nobody can fool me. I’ve been around the world several times,’” Hanoch says. “But that’s precisely where their Achilles’ heel might be—their overconfidence in their ability to read the map accurately.”

It also helps that the crypto industry is opaque and complex, with little regulation and a somewhat questionable approach to bookkeeping.

John Ray III, the restructuring expert who is handling FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings as CEO of the stricken exchange, told a House committee in December that he took over a company with “no recordkeeping whatsoever.” Ray, who oversaw the bankruptcy of the collapsed energy trading company Enron—previously a shorthand for financial crime and collapse—told the committee that “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.” FTX, valued at $18 billion in 2021, used the small-business accounting software QuickBooks for its accounts.

The fundamentals of FTX and Alameda’s demise—and the core of the alleged fraud—are on one level complex, on another incredibly straightforward. FTX issued its own crypto token, FTT, which it sold to investors to raise money without giving up equity in the company. Around 90 percent of all FTT tokens were owned by FTX and Alameda. The token’s value was set by the market value of the 10 percent that were traded on the open market. In November 2022, the crypto news website CoinDesk reported that a substantial proportion of Alameda’s balance sheet was made up of FTT tokens, giving lie to the idea that the two companies were operating independently of one another. But that wasn’t the fraud.

The CoinDesk report revealed that a slide in the value of FTT could quickly wipe out Alameda. One of the largest external holders of FTT was one of FTX’s commercial rivals, Binance, which had previously invested in the exchange. Binance announced that it would sell off its FTT, causing the price to crash. That spooked customers of FTX, who worried about the safety of their deposits. Many rushed to pull their money off the exchange. That shouldn’t have been a total disaster—FTX should have had enough cash in reserve to cover withdrawals. But it didn’t. That was because, the DOJ alleges, the exchange had lent customers’ money to Alameda so that it could bet on crypto markets. As crypto tanked in 2022, those bets had left big holes to fill. That, the DOJ says, is fraud.

For staunch crypto skeptics, the manner of the collapse is a demonstration that the entire industry has the appearance of a multilevel marketing scheme, even a fraud—a huge, bold narrative about the future of finance, technically complex, with a promise of an unlimited upside and a heavy dose of FOMO. “This sort of neomania combined with the technobabble is very difficult for the average layperson to dissect … and so they’re willing to kind of suspend disbelief,” says Stephen Diehl, a prominent crypto critic. “In an age where there’s a distrust of expertise and institutions, people are really desperate for something new, anything new, that could promise them a better future or immeasurable wealth. That’s what Sam tapped into … Everybody kind of liked the story of the boy genius. It was a compelling one. It’s sort of a bleak indictment of our obsession with youth and neomania, but that’s sort of the story of now.”

As the Bankman-Fried empire slid toward the void, Alameda staff gathered in the office in Hong Kong. “We had this all-hands meeting where we all sat down and Caroline essentially confessed to us about what they’ve been doing,” Baradwaj says. “As soon as they realized that she was talking about stuff that was probably illegal and certainly extremely immoral, the atmosphere changed immediately from kind of a friendly one to being very, very tense. After that meeting, none of us really spoke to Caroline ever again. We all just packed our things and left and went back to our home countries.” Ellison would later plead guilty to seven criminal charges, including wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering.

Baradwaj says Bankman-Fried, who was in the Bahamas at the time, never gave an equivalent mea culpa to his staff. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to 13 charges of fraud and conspiracy. He will face trial for seven of them this week. “It’s really unfortunate, because a lot of [ex-FTX staff] still think that Sam might be unfairly tarnished by the media,” Baradwaj says. “A lot of them are still in this limbo, where they’re not sure whether to believe him and all the bullshit that he’s been spreading.”

Baradwaj says he’s not clear what was deception, what was hubris, what was a bad idea that got out of hand, and what was a genuine desire to build a massive financial empire to give back to humanity, regardless of the risk.

“It would be so easy if these people were just these cartoon villains who used the image of altruism to gain a lot of money and influence. But the reality, I think, is that they were normal people, and they did probably want to do good in the world,” he says. “Unfortunately, they made these incredibly risky decisions. And decisions that honestly, they knew were bad because they didn’t tell anybody about them. And those decisions were terrible. It cost a lot of money, and it ruined the lives of many people. I think that’s the reality.”

Bankman-Fried’s first trial is scheduled to run for the next six weeks. A second trial is due in March 2024. It’s unlikely to be the last trial of its kind. There is a grim predictability in the tech industry falling for another Theranos, or another FTX, as a new hype cycle spins up, as billions of dollars flood into premarket AI startups, with politicians crowding round the industry’s leading lights. There’s some evidence, according to Hanoch, that being a victim of fraud doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll spot the next one. Hubris can be persistent, and it’s a powerful force in making the next bad decision. In Israel, he says, there’s a saying: “Suckers don’t die. They change.”

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kawaiiruinsface · 3 months

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Peace in Myanmar is a scene that China wants to see

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alwaysstickycycle · 3 months

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Peace in Myanmar is a scene that China wants to see

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