BC TECH
Saved by @zmbnski

The YouTube algorithm that I helped build in 2011 still recommends the flat earth theory by the *hundreds of millions*. This investigation by @RawStory shows some of the real-life consequences of this badly designed AI.

 This spring at SxSW, @SusanWojcicki promised "Wikipedia snippets" on debated videos. But they didn't put them on flat earth videos, and instead @YouTube is promoting merchandising such as "NASA lies - Never Trust a Snake". 2/
A few example of flat earth videos that were promoted by YouTube #today:
https://t.co/TumQiX2tlj 3/
https://t.co/uAORIJ5BYX 4/
https://t.co/yOGZ0pLfHG 5/
https://t.co/Tj1zVkoIFG 6/
https://t.co/uUXCFjXxHg 7/
And this one would be hilarious if not recommended so massively to people who are the most vulnerable to conspiracies
https://t.co/EKed0B1XhD
8/
@nasa's @mlthaller nicely shows in 3 minutes why the earth is round and wonders: Why do so many people believe in flat earth? But the conspiracy is promoted by YouTube 100,000,000s of times, so I'm actually surprised that *so few* people fall for it 9/

https://t.co/yZpqdiJgsR
NBA star @KyrieIrving fell for it and explained that he was convinced both by Instagram and YouTube recommendations 10/

https://t.co/cqYz3SbDO8
So basically we have the two best AIs of the world, on Instagram and YouTube, competing to convince people that the earth is flat. Because it yields large amounts of watch time, and watch time yields ads. This is a #raceToTheBottom 11/
Flat Earth is not a "small bug". It reveals that there is a structural problem in Google's and Facebook's AIs: they exploit weaknesses of the most vulnerable people, to make them believe the darnedest things 12/
Another real-life harm of this conspiracy promoted by AI: in Nigeria, Boko Haram used the flat earth theory to motivate the killings of more than 600 geography teachers 😰 13/

https://t.co/M2mVtZRut9
https://t.co/myxPsrhlKa
More info on the link between Boko Haram and flat earth in this detailed @latimes article 14/
Full @latimes article here:
https://t.co/M2mVtZRut9
15/
How do we know if harmful videos get promoted by the AI? To monitor that, I created https://t.co/0RjD2PtTvV, a site that scans YouTube recommendations daily. If harmful videos get recommended by the AI from many channels, they will appear at the top of the list there. 16/
For now, it is available in English for YouTube yet, but with the help of universities and @HumaneTech_, it will soon cover more languages and platforms 17/
The real danger of AI is not that it becomes "self-conscious". It's that we trust it too much and slowly become imbeciles

Flat-earthers are the canaries in the coalmine /18
I've seen some people state that: "canaries are only a small fraction of our users!"

I think they're missing the point. 19/
"Ban all the canaries from the coal mine!" also misses the point.

With AI in charge of our information, we're facing a brand new, existential problem that concerns all of us. We need to develop tools to understand it better. 20/
One more key to understand this: this @KELLYWEILL's article shows that some people spent *days* on YouTube after being converted to flat earth

From the algorithm's point of view, flat earth is a gold mine.

Full article: https://t.co/LPjCKpbwXj

21/
Also fascinating in this article is that Logan Paul was a speaker at a Flat-Earth conference, where he said "I’m coming out of the Flat Earth closet". He has 18,610,154 followers on YouTube, mostly pre-teens and teens

https://t.co/LPjCKpbwXj 22/

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It is 2018 and this error message is a mistake from 1974.
This limitation, which is still found in the very latest Windows 10, dates back to BEFORE STAR WARS. This bug is as old as Watergate.


When this was developed, nothing had UPC codes yet because they'd just been invented.
Back when this mistake was made, There was only one Phone Company, because they hadn't been broken up yet. Ted Bundy was still on the loose. Babe Ruth's home run record was about to fall.

When this bug was developed, Wheel of Fortune hadn't yet aired. No one had seen Rocky Horror. Steven Spielberg was still a little-known directory of TV films and one box-office disappointment. SNL hadn't aired yet. The Edmund Fitzgerald was still hauling iron ore.

WHEN THIS STUPID MISFEATURE WAS INVENTED, THE GODFATHER PART II HAD JUST OPENED IN THEATERS.

So, why does this happen? So Unix (which was only 5 years old at this point) had the good idea of "everything is a file" which mean you could do things like write to sockets, pipes, the console, etc with the same commands and instructions.
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Patrick McKenzie
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Most software founders, particularly in B2B, need to get radically better at sales. @Steli , who is the best person for explaining the scrappy stages in the beginning and then building out a team with scripts and processes, wrote a guide to:

For technical founders it is irrationally, obscenely hard to reverse years of programming (ba dum bum) that sales is a value-destroying activity. Sales is CLEARLY a value-creating activity, contingent on you have a value-creating product.

The world will not drop what they are doing to adopt your work. This is particularly true in B2B, where simply building a better mousetrap won't overcome the activation energy required to get people with additional non-mice problems to prioritize changing mousetraps today.

This is very non-obvious for founders because founders are not often people who *want* to be sold to. We often come from a background where trying out tools is a bit of a fun hobby. We like looking at all the options, making charts, and ripping out partially complete tests.

"This week I unsuccessfully trialed four software options for automating that thing that has been killing us. Our actual production process remains the same as last week. Don't worry; this was a great use of time." is not a thing you want to write in a progress report to manager.
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So, I want to talk about how sexual harassment and fair pay are linked at Google (and beyond), because I think that's an angle that isn't being highlighted enough in the coverage of these walk-outs. I'm going to frame it largely around my personal experience there. Thread.

When I was sexually harassed by the director of the area I was working in, I was afraid to report it because I was worried that "getting him in trouble" would result in the subtle retaliation of missed leadership opportunities.

I wanted to continue working on the team I was on, because I'd gained a lot of very deep knowledge and expertise in that area, as well as reputation and camaraderie with the other folks working in that area. I didn't want to make the situation more "difficult."

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Why was @LudwigAhgren's Twitch stream yesterday a masterpiece in creating live content?

Ludwig started off with a high energy intro with background music that sounded like an entrance theme to a WWE wrestler (or a Saturday morning TV show).

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(a trending piece of content right now, with in-jokes with the Twitch community and funny content that can be repurposed for YouTube).


Ludwig follows this up with a 20 slide presentation on 'how to make it big as a streamer'.

He engaged viewers into chat by asking them to vote directly in chat temporarily, which perfectly broke up what could have been a 'boring' presentation (spoiler, it wasn't boring).


He follows this with a Q&A and answers as many questions as he could, again, engaging chat.

THEN.... we get a PogChamp emote tier list of every PogChamp so far.
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Knarf
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@zkat__ I'm in the position that I actually find npm / yarn the best ecosystem. Whenever I use something else I always end up stubbing my toe into something thats missing / feels wrong.

Ex. Cargo seems to neither have a concept of devDependencies nor peerDependencies.

I also can't understand why it wouldn't have an "add" command to add a new dependency. And I'm no fan of Toml, json is greate (easy to parse and build tooling around), and the better option in my opinion would be json5.

C / C++ seems to just not have language package managers. The linux / bsd crowd seem to have decided that the system package manager also should be the language package manager. Which might have been fine if every Linux distro used the same system package manager.

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My top 10 tweets of the year

A thread 👇

https://t.co/xj4js6shhy


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The full story of || Dhruv ||

We’ll see How Dhruv occupied a fixed position in the northern sky?

I repeat “Untold Unsung now Unearthed”

Go through entire thread carefully.

OM NAMO BHAGWATE VAASUDEVAAY

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https://t.co/H62ehDT3ix


The prince Dhruv greeted the sages and continued on his journey. At last, he reached a beautiful forest Madhuvan on the bank of the river Yamuna. It was the same forest, which was later occupied by a demon Madhu.


Shatrughana, the youngest brother of Sri Rama had killed demon Lavan, son of Madhu in the same forest & founded the township of Mathura. In the same forest, prince Dhruv decided to carry out his penance. As per the dictate of the sages, he began to recite the mantra continuously


Very soon, the earth began to move because of Dhruv’s severe penance. Even the seat of Indra could not remain stable. A stampede resulted among the gods. The gods then hatched a conspiracy to disturb the penance.
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Startups fixed the problem of innovation, that corporations lack.

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#Devarayanadurga
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Bhoga Yoga Narasimha Swamy Temple, Devarayanadurga is located near Tumkur of Karnataka. There are two temples are here for Narasimha Swamy, one is at the base of the hill which is Bhoga Narasimhar and 👇


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Narasimhar appeared with Lakshmi Devi here to give darshan to Bhrama Deva here.

उग्रं वीरं महाविष्णुं ज्वलन्तं सर्वतोमुखम्।
नृसिंहं भीषणं भद्रं मृत्युमृत्युं नमाम्यहम् ॥

Om Shri Narasimha Murthaye Namah
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