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Sam Bankman-Fried doesn't recall
- simonw 3y agoMolly White has been at the court and livestreaming her notes about the trial each evening. Her commentary has been really fun to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6ZR0rgWB_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6ZR0rgWB_8
- nivethan 3y agoReally is the nerd superbowl out there.
- bagels 3y agohttps://www.mollywhite.net/ https://www.mollywhite.net/ "I research and write critically about the cryptocurrency industry, blockchains, the idea known as "web3", and the tech industry more broadly. I'm a fellow at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, and an affiliate of the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society. I run the website Web3 is Going Just Great , where I highlight examples of how cryptocurrencies, web3 projects, and the industry surrounding them are failing to live up to their promises. I also publish a regular newsletter, and have written a series of essays about blockchains."
- cinntaile 3y agoIt's fascinating to see how both sides have their fanatics. It's like a religion.
- dheera 3y ago"don't recall" I'm guessing this is largely just an ass-covering strategy to avoid giving the opposing side an upper hand. If you say "yes" to anything you might give them verbal grounds to convict you of more than they can directly find and show external evidence for.
- fasthands9 3y agoDefinitely - but it's still notable that he's doing this after voluntarily taking the stand.
- steveBK123 3y agoYes, not a lawyer so maybe theres some nuance here but.. I don't get taking the stand voluntarily to just say "I don't recall" endlessly? At some point does the judge tell you to GTFO and strike all your testimony? Can they instruct the jury in some manner harmful to you as a result of your obvious malign intent? Etc..
- vkou 3y ago> Can they instruct the jury in some manner harmful to you as a result of your obvious malign intent? Etc.. The judge doesn't need to do anything, the jury should have no problem putting two and two together on their own. Someone who makes up an elaborate story, but can't recall any of the details when cross-examined looks guilty as sin.
- steveBK123 3y agoHopefully! If SBF doesn't go down & spend time behind bars, its going to open the gates to a lot more fraud. SBF did things that would make even the worst Wall St actors from the GFC blush. No arcane accounting/valuation rules, risk models, capital requirement arb, regulatory capture, misaligned incentives, loose prop trading rules.. letter of law vs spirit of law stuff, etc. SBF committed the most open, direct, simple to understand version of all the fraud people imagined behind the GFC. Primarily he moved a substantial portion of customer deposits into prop trading accounts and then lost the money by trading poorly. He literally lied about things like having insurance, seemingly didn't keep any true books & records (and asked for 7 variations of a balance sheet to find one that looked least bad). You have emails where his dad that he hired as legal is approving transfers of customers money for uses like buying his parents a condo, lol.
- 3y ago
- omneity 3y agoWhat’s the term when both recall and precision are abysmal?
- Hamuko 3y agoOften it's "drunk".
- patapong 3y agoLow SBF1-score
- bcrosby95 3y agoWhen you're a relatively intelligent human that isn't impaired in some way? lying
- pcthrowaway 3y ago> that isn't impaired in some way Sounds like a tall order for SBF
- anon25783 3y agoI wonder if he's going through amphetamine withdrawal? That could certainly make your recall and precision bad. Still doesn't mean he isn't a massive liar
- RationalDino 3y agoIn SBF's case, Adderall withdrawal?
- pphysch 3y ago> Behind all the finance sheets and code bases, the fall of FTX was in a way incredibly childish: a nerd posse running away with a bunch of other people’s money in the stupidest and simplest way possible. And yet our bimodal justice system spends huge amount of resources giving this 31yo fraudster every possible chance to escape the consequences, simply because he is a member of the elite.
- spiderice 3y agoProbably because he's on trial..
- pphysch 3y agoThe fact that there's a significant chance that he can get away with totally inept, broad daylight theft of billions of dollars is a major motivation for such crimes. Millions of Americans aren't afforded such luxuries; they can't afford adequate legal resources, maybe they get manipulated into a bad plea deal. Hence we have a clearly bimodal justice system.
- edgyquant 3y agoEvery US citizen is guaranteed a right to a trial by a jury.
- jowea 3y agoNot everyone gets a top notch lawyer and money for bail through.
- justrealist 3y agoLet's focus on giving other people resources so they can have a fair trial, rather than complaining that someone does did get it.
- H8crilA 3y agoWhat is amazing is that nobody infiltrated their structure and ran off with the money. There are sophisticated criminal organisations out there that go to much, much more effort to obtain funding. Just to take Hezbollah since it's all over the news recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_Hezbollah#Latin_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_Hezbollah#Latin_Ame...
- renewiltord 3y agoI posted something shortly before the crash https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32077583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32077583 Security exploitations are oversold in the tech community. Probably out of a desire to be cool and hacker-like. If you wanted hundreds of millions it was there for the taking.
- csomar 3y agoYou need knowledge for such a penetration. This kind of internal knowledge is usually only available to people working close to the execs.
- WillAdams 3y agoAll it took to get almost a million dollars from a customer of a previous employer was to penetrate the e-mail server, collect a list of high-value accounts and a sample billing statement, then to send an e-mail with "updated" banking credentials for a large payment which was coming due.
- denimnerd42 3y agothat happens all the time
- H8crilA 3y agoYou also need knowledge and craft to get people in other countries' militaries to spy for you against their home country, yet this is done every day around the world. Compared to that (or compared to pretty much anything) FTX was a joke of an organization.
- medler 3y ago“I found myself reflecting on how smart the average person is. Maybe they don’t know calculus. Maybe they’ll never read Ulysses. Maybe they can’t code. But they definitely know how to identify bullshit when they see it.” How could anyone believe this? “Average” people fall for bullshit all the time.
- onionisafruit 3y agoThink of how smart the average person is. Now realize that half the world is _even smarter_. It blows my mind.
- golergka 3y agoYou're talking about median, not average.
- RationalDino 3y agoSince IQ falls on a very good approximation to a bell curve, it's "close enough for government work". Besides, it is a paraphrase of a well-known George Carlin quote.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rngname22 3y agoMy own intuition is that there are people who call bullshit often enough that they are often wrong and falsely accuse others, and there are people who always assume the best intentions and good faith on other actors but often miss being bullshitted, but that overall the accuracy of both groups in sensing and correctly identifying bullshit or non-bullshit is commonly, universally poor, and accurate bullshit-detection is a skill that is held by a minority. And further, that someone like the author who would assess an average person as being good at detecting bullshit is likely the type that thinks everyone is bullshitting all the time (and so is in fact able to evade being bullshitted with some frequency) but also commonly falsely accuses others of bullshitting when the other is operating honestly (not to say the other might not be stupid, or selfish, or naive, or have different values, etc, but not bullshitting). If you accuse everyone of being full of shit all the time, you might avoid signing up for a predatory loan but you'll probably also burn some bridges socially that if you'd known the truth you would have mended.
- mvdtnz 3y agoThis article has some really great stuff in it but I wish the author would cut the flowery bullshit and most importantly stop trying to make the piece about themselves. I do not care about how much YOU cringed, about the "holy fucking shit" you wrote on YOUR notes, etc. So many journalists nowadays think THEY are the story. Stick to the real story, keep yourself out of it.
- mpalmer 3y agoIt'd be one thing if the flowery writing were actually good, but the images don't even make sense. as prosecutor Danielle Sassoon went through a brutal line of questioning like a hot buzzsaw through a butter cow Shouldn't the brutal line of questioning be the buzzsaw, and SBF the butter?
- hotnfresh 3y agoOh damn, that's Lyttle Lytton material right there. So bad it comes back around and becomes good.
- jihadjihad 3y agoIt's ambiguous, but I read it as "the prosecutor effortlessly heaped a brutal line of questioning upon the defendant," or something to that effect.
- bagels 3y agoTypically bandsaws are used to process cows anyways, so it makes even less sense.
- harambae 3y agoI think it's this type of butter cow being referenced https://www.iowastatefair.org/about/butter-cow https://www.iowastatefair.org/about/butter-cow
- gizajob 3y agoIt’s strange how the writer seems to excuse themselves the cliche of saying “like a hot knife through butter” by jazzing it up. “A hot buzzsaw through a butter cow” would just make a huge mess everywhere, not get to the heart of the issue quickly. Mixing metaphors isn’t good writing, and getting them wrong makes for very poor style, but the writer (even though I enjoyed this article) seems to consider themselves a great stylist despite not thinking about the implications of this metaphoric language.
- Animats 3y agoThis is the worst case for a bullshitter - on trial, in a criminal court, under oath, being cross-examined, in front of a jury, with a competent prosecutor who has plenty of evidence.
- sgt101 3y agoI think that the defense (and SBF) must have concluded that they were looking at 40 years before he took the stand, and if it ends in him getting 80 does that really make a difference? Maybe, just maybe, he could have swung it - but it looks like he hasn't.
- closewith 3y agoI wonder if that's true. Right up until today, I think he thought he could walk on many or all of the charges through his guile.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoHe thought he could walk away. I suspect his legal team knew that was not happening and the best outcome was damage control and a relative slap on the wrist. The case is too big and public for him to walk.
- Animats 3y agoIt's worse than that. He probably could have pled guilty and cut a deal for 10 years of prison time or so. Maybe less, if he cooperated with prosecutors in getting some of the money back. But denying everything, going to trial, trying to evade all responsibility although he was in charge, and blaming everybody else does not go over well with juries.
- iaabtpbtpnn 3y agoSBF was never offered a deal. Why would the prosecution help him? They cut deals with his co-conspirators so that they could pin all the blame on SBF. The money is long gone.
- tarboreus 3y agoWhy does The Verge look like the new (old) Gawker now? Did they hire that team when it went under?
- Something1234 3y agoMIT has had a bunch of con artists and scammers walk through it's doors. It's amazing how often it happens. A whole lotta con artists and grifters. Why?
- Havoc 3y agoIf even half of what is alleged is true then the guy deserves to get wrecked by the justice system
- Animats 3y agoWell, testimony is over. Both sides have rested. Closing arguments tomorrow. Then it's up to the jury.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Animats 3y agoClosing arguments underway today. Prosecutor: "The defendant schemed and lied to get money, which he spent."