SCAMLAND where you get PIG-BUTCHERED

Pig-butcher by Dall-E

You’re on 'linked in'. You hook up with Anna, who lives in Singapore.  After about six month chatting online, she tells you how she got into crypto and doubled her investment.  She  can clue you in.  You take the bait. After you double your money, you decide to cash in. Poof, it’s gone. So is Anna. You’ve been pig-butchered.

Anna is a captive living in camp-town in Myanmar. If she doesn’t keep up the scams, she's punished.  Her minders don’t fool around. Torture is common. 

Scamming is a 500bn dollar business -  on par  with the illegal drug business without the product. Social media was made for scamming. A perfect site to nurture a pig, butcher him. when the scan pays off.  AI has escalated the danger.  If you get butchered, tell your friends. You might save potential pigs from getting the axe.  

Source: Economist

Next week:  BAD-ASS-BROS:  Tump. Vance. Musk 

Note: Okay, be careful out there. The best course of action in most cases is simply to ignore the threats. Do nothing. Do not reply to people you do not know in real life. If you get a message claiming you have been hacked, the hack likely is a psychological one: they try to make you panic and react, then get you the hook when trying to "fix" the non-existing hack. As said, ignore, do nothing. Be zen.

CU

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Eki

DEEPSEEK: new hot-shot on the block

A storm in a teapot by Flux1 dev AI

DeepSeek rocked Silicon Valley. Sent tech titans into a tizzy. Sam Altman, OpenAI boss is dead sure DeepSeek used OPEAI data. Nvidia, chip-maker , darling of investors, lost 500 bn.  The brouhaha ain’t over yet.

DeepSeek, a small hedge fund, used cheaper chips and less machinery to come  up with a super AI app. 

It cost approx. 6 m. Just after OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle had signed a 500 bn contract with Trump’s blessing. Oy very, have they got a headache.

Governments worry that the DeepSeek is tapping data - Tik Tok* was blocked by the US Supreme Court for that reason.  Researchers claim DeepSeek is peppered with propaganda. The Chinese Top Dogs worry DeepSeek’s  bite is bigger than theirs. Users don’t seem to give a rat’s ass. What comes next?  EKI! 

*Trump gave Tik Tok  a 75 day reprieve

Source:s: Economist, New York Times, Washington Post

Next week: SCAMLAND where you get PIG-BUTCHERED

Note: The DeepSeek storm in a teapot lasted a few days. It turns out, it's a pretty decent model, somewhat censored - but so are the US models, just on different topics. DeepSeek does not want to talk about Tianamen square, ChatGPT does not want to talk about sex. Both reflect the norms of the originating society.

The alleged low training cost of DeepSeek came with an asterisk. Yes, the final training run was cheap. No, that is not the cost of the development of the model, but rather just a small fraction of it. Anyway, the AI community has moved on, the brouhaha is pretty much history.

Today (18. of February - it is necessary to give exact date, not just a vague description like mid-feb, as the progress is so fast) X-Ai released Grok 3, the king of the hill for as-of-now. Last week it was Google's Gemini 2.0. That is unless you consider the reasoning models, where OpenAI:s o3-mini(high) was on top. DeepSeek belongs in the bubbling under category, together with another Chinese LLM, Qwen.

It looks like we're still at an exponential curve of progress. No-one knows how long that will last. Interesting times.

PS: I would not be surprised, if stiffling competition rather than real security concerns were behind the TikTok ban. Oh, and Trump had pretty much nothing at all to do with that 500 bn investment. The way i see it, this was a cheap way to buy influence into Trump administration for the companies involved - they did not really need to do anything more than tolerate being in the same room with Trump for a few minutes, while he took the credit for the investment that would have happened with or without him.

CU

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Eki

ELISA OY & INTRUM sue LITTLE MARGIE

Phoney gangster by Flux AI

It was Monday. I called Eki. He said, ‘you’ve been sued for 2euros, 40 cents.’  I called Intrum Justitia, the debt collector, it was 10 euros, 4 cents. And 308 euros 80 cents at the District Court. Elisa Corporate Service, host for Littlemargieproductions’ website, was the plaintiff.

The LMMP site was paid by direct debit. My bank stopped payments because Elisa’s bills weren’t the correct format. LMP was no longer a company.  I told Elisa to send the new E-bills to my personal acct. Or take down the site. When the site was till up, I assumed the bills were paid.  Big mistake.

My bank contact paid  the bills LMP’s former accountant received from Intrum collection agency*.  I called Elisa to verify. An agent told me the December bill was still due. I gave her a short version of  Elisa V LMP. She cancelled the December bill. Sent a verification and wished me a HAPPY NEW YEAR.

*I have an Elisa email but was never notified

**Because of macular degeneration I can’t use online banking  

sources; Elisa, Intrum, personal experience

Next week: Social media INFLUENCERS: world MARKETEEERS


Note: 

In my honest opinion, Elisa sucks as a company. It used to be a landline share co-operation (HPY) that worked to benefit all users, but has changed into a company that just maximizes profits for the stock market, charging more and more for their enshittifying services. Users be damned.

If I did not have a retro-grade e-mail address from the olden days I want to keep (kolumbus.fi), i would probably have already severed my ties with Elisa completely. I have changed to another ISP / phone company though.

For me, the camel's back was broken by them selling me 5G connection (to replace copper), that would be "twice as fast" as the landline version. In reality, i got 5 mbit/s from the promised 500 mbit/s. After way too much digging around and consulting the (paid) support line, i got a hold to a person that actually knew what was the issue. There simply are no 5G antennas near enough to my address yet - that did not stop them from selling and billing for it though. No refund offer, and they refused to change it back to landline. Competing service (DNA) got me that 500 mbit/s over cable, cheaper. And it actually works as advertised.

Now, let's not even get into that loan shark "service", Intrum Justitia. I think escalating that 2,40€ missing interest payment all the way to a court without properly contacting littlemargieproductions is not an outlier. I think it is a business model.

Despicable businesses, both of them.

CU

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Eki

UNCANNY VALLEY

Self portrait with LightWave 3D (Eki Halkka, 1999)

Eki has used AI in the LMP blog for approx. two years. It's been fun to watch the  leaps. Then he told me about Uncanny Valley - the creeps people can get when they're up close to a humanoid like AI-DA.  The AI that painted Alan Turing's portrait.*

In the article she was striking. Large eyes, a short black bob. I was okay until AI-DA cautioned US to be careful of AI. Her wide-open eyes, that  blank stare. She looked right through you. It was getting dark. I turned on all the  lights. Put on some music. Had  a drink. And tried to forget that blank stare.

In a poll I took nobody knew what "Uncanny Valley" was. But it's been round since the 1970s, coined by  Masahiro Mori, a professor at Tokyo University, when  AI was in its first throes. They may not know UV now, but they will. And it ain't fun.

*Alan Turing's portrait sold at Sotheby's for 1.8m

Sources: Economist, Guardian

Next week: CULT BRANDING:  big buck and loyalty

Animatronic Arnold (Orion Pictures, 1984)

Note: Uncanny valley has been the curse of my line of work, visual effects, for a long time. First, the animatronic puppets that were almost life-like, but not quite - see e.g. puppet Arnold Schwarzenegger the original Teminator. Then 3D animation, that was the same. Remember Polar Express, or the scorpion king from The Mummy returns? Firmly in the valley. 

At the highest level, the valley has been long crossed. The computer generated humans in big budget Hollywood productions have been convincing enough to go unnoticed for at least a decade. It's only when we know there must be shenanigans going on (resurrecting dead actors, or making old ones look young again) that we look carefully enough to tell something may be off.

Personally, I never put in the work (or perhaps just didn't have the talent) to create fully realistic close-up ready humans from scratch. Perhaps I never even made it into the valley - an early attempt from the last millennium (above) may serve as an example. Anyway, it still is not an easy task. At all. 

This said, there are tools like Epic Metahumans, and of course the AI tools we get to play with nowadays, that can pass the valley with flying colours, without needing a team of artists specializing on just this one thing full time for months on end to get results.

PS: Masahiro Mori is a roboticist, and Uncanny Valley was (and arguably still is) more about appearance and motion than artificial intelligence. Not to say that AI can't be spooky too ;-)

CU

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Eki

TIK TOK ROCKS

PigTok!!

TIK TOK's no-brainer short video format is a world-wide blockbuster. In the US it has170m TTers - more than half the country's pop. But unless ByteDance, the Chinese co. that owns it sells out to an American company it's curtains in the US.  Or so they say. To top it off, t3 states have sued TT for being addictive to kids.

With 2bn users worldwide, it's addictive period. Kamala Harris' two videos got 50mn hits. A big chunk for one site. To rake in more doe TT has an online store,  is publishing digital books and the old-fashioned kind.

Eki advised me to stay off the app. But I got hooked on  two TT trends in the Washington Post and New York Times: castor oil for wrinkles and apple cider vinegar for eczema.* They work. I think.

*10% of the world's pop. has eczema 

 Economist, Washington Post, New York Times, internet

Next week: UNCANNY VALLEY: creepy eerie feelings when humans up close to an  AI person

Note: What to say... of all the time-sinking ratholes of the world, TikTok is **not** the one i will dive into. Making the viral miss maggypiggy was fun though ;-)

-- Eki

AI & Eki make a boffo music video for LMP

Michael "Melting Mike" Dalisalvadoré: Heel Over Heads For You

‘Michael "Melting Mike" Dalisalvadoré: Heel Over Heads For You’ in B&W, echoes Hollywood’s golden age. An art deco fashion show:  elegant models in bizarre costumes, snobby viewers,  a goofy, appealing singer, who looks like he’s been on a slap-happy bender.   Inspired  by art deco designer, Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dali who designed  a joint collection in the late 30s.

It’s fun to be in on it. I write short plots for Eki to write his AI prompts. One of the most famous designs of Schiaparelli and Dali was their shoe hat.  Michael gives nutty nod to them.

So far Eki has made four videos for the album. In each one you can see the progress - Michael’s Head Over Heels is a giant leap. Altogether we've planned eight.  Can't wait for AI and Eki to finish number 5. 

Sources: Eki. wikipedia, personal experience

Next week:  TIK TOK: trends and influencers world-wide

Note: This project has, again, been an interesting dive into AI and new techniques. The pace of development in AI has been so fast that when the project started, the tools were in many ways different, even though it was just like three months ago. We have maybe two or three months more to go until we've done all the eight films. 

During this time, the AI video tools and all sorts of AI generation tools have improved so much that there's a clear difference in quality. It will be more when we come to the last films. 

It's also been a learning journey for me, a good reason to take time to explore the new tools available. It's always better to have a project where you test new tools instead of just trying to sit on your bum and work your way through stuff without actually getting any viable result from it. 

So, yeah, halfway through, and I'm also interested to see what comes next.

PS: I tried a new method of "writing" this time - I dictated the text to ChatGPT, which kindly not only turned my voice to text, but also cleaned out all the filler words etc., making the result 90% to what I wanted - I just manually trimmed a few sloppy parts here and there, tightened it, and - done. The future is now.

CU

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Eki

2024 Election: HARRIS &WALZ road show

Kamala at oval office, by Flux1-dev AI

"It’s time for us to do what we have been been doing.  And that time is every day." 

Kamala  Harris (1964-)

When Kamala Harris, a so-so VP got bumped up to pres. candidate she chose Tim Walz, gov. of Minn. for VP.  The most progressive, probably the least known of the candidates.  Rousing rally crowds seem to go for their message. Her poll numbers are up.  And in a recent Financial Times poll she jumped ahead of Trump managing the economy.

It’s no secret that big-wig Dems were pissed when Biden crowned Harris. Terrific candidates were in the wings ready to jump in. Josh Shapiro, gov. Pa., Gretchen Whitener, gov. Mich., Andy Beshear, gov. KY.  But when Harris was a fait accompli, they quickly organised the Harris/ Walz road show: a happy-go-lucky tour of battleground states with Beyonce music.

Poor Trump. The last couple of weeks has left him limp: the maladroit choice of J.D. Vance for VP, shot at a rally, Biden dumped. A lot for an old guy, past his sell-by date. If the stakes weren’t so high, US Election 2024 would be the most ’must watch’ soap opera of the year.

Sources: New York Times, Economist, Financial Times

Next week: TIK TOK TRENDS shoot the MOON

“There’s no company and no country in the world – no country in the world has ever ripped off the United States like the incredible job that they did on this country and the people that ran it.”

"Covfefe"

Donald Trump (1946-)

 

Note: I think Harris has done a fine job as VP of Biden, on the perhaps most effective Democrat presidency in modern history. Yes, despite considerable differences of opinion in some issues, and his age, I do think Biden has been a good president. Appearances are irrelevant, policies matter.

I also do think Harris will make a good president, and Walz will do fine as VP. When it comes to coherence and substance, she is on a completely different planet from her opponent. She may have made a gaffe or two, that's only human. Trump (and Vance) make more of them in the first minute of any given speech than she has done in her whole career. We've just grown numb for it.

As far as the VP nominations go, I'm happy she chose a somewhat progressive candidate instead of a lukewarm centrist. Despite "progressive" being often used as an insult, the actual progressive policy ideas are widely liked, even among ground-level republicans (as long as you do not call them progressive).

CU
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Eki

PS: Choosing that Kamala quote doesn't do much else than show how easy it is to become an useful idiot, an echo chamber for hollow right-wing talking points. Oh well ;-)