chatGPT, talk to me

📅 5. Februar 2023 · ⏱️ 1 min

"which mineral erupt mt st helen"
So be careful with chatGPT. Gave me the first best answer it could find I guess. Had to correct the answer:

I asked it again, and the bot accepted my correction:

"WHERE IS CA RICH FELDSPAR SOURCED FROM"

chatGPT also corrected the original response that CA is not a State in this context:

Did I just really changed the answers to those questions in chatGPT? We will see how much and whose knowledge we will have in the end.

Plaid - Do not do it.

📅 19. Dezember 2022 · ⏱️ 2 min

Plaid is a popular financial service that is used to connect to your bank account. Literally, it connects to your bank account.

Example: Coinbase, add a bank account:

Right, "Your data belongs to you".

It asks you for your username and password of your bank. And most users naively enter the username and password of their bank account, allowing Plaid to access and read all your bank transactions and positions. Once you entered your login credentials, it queries all your financial data and store it.

Username and password only belong to one place, and this is your bank login page.

Do not do it.
Yes, exit.

They already sold your data if you used Plaid last year. See the lawsuit for the $58 million settlement: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/fintech-firm-plaid-agrees-58-mln-deal-end-privacy-case-2021-08-06/
Search https://www.reddit.com/ for Plaid to get more insight.

You can request to clear your data using this form:
https://plaid.com/legal/data-protection-request-form/

What you need to do is to manually link your bank account using the routing number and account number, wait 2 business days for the verification test transfer of $0.01 and enter the code in the transaction description (ACH transfer).

Alternatively use the classic wire transfer, but this thing costs about $20 each time you use. It is safe and the best for large sums as it does not have any limitations.

PowerBall Mania

📅 4. November 2022 · ⏱️ 1 min

The Powerball jackpot is approaching another record of

Five numbers 1..69 + one Powerball number from 1..26 is all you need. Chances are 1 in 292 million according to the website.

69 68 67 66 65 26 = 35.064.160.560 combinations, but since the order does not matter (1,2,3,4,5 = 5,4,3,2,1), the probability is much lower. With a set of 5 numbers, there are 5 4 3 2 * 1 possible ways to order the numbers. That is 5! = 120.

The number of possible draws is
35.064.160.560 / 120 = 292.201.338

Rewriting using the factorial expression:
69 68 67 66 65 = 69! / 64! = 69! / (69-5)!

Adding the PowerBall with 26 combinations: (69! 26) / ((69-5)! 5!) = 292.201.338

Using the binominal coefficient:

The blog does not support the markdown math syntax. If, the code for the two math expressions above would be:
$$ \displaystyle {n\choose k}=\frac{n!}{k!(n-k)!} $$
$$ \displaystyle {69\choose 5}*26=\frac{69!}{5!(69-5)!}*26=292.201.338 $$

I have officially purchased 2 tickets to be part of this epic event.