Month: February 2025

Trump Mistakes Ukraine for Russia in Diplomatic Blunder | February 28 2025, 01:25

“…A flustered Trump realizes that all this time he had been confusing Russia and Ukraine”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The new presidential administration encountered a rare public relations slip-up when a flustered President Donald Trump realized that he had been confusing Russia with Ukraine all this time.

The error was eventually detected by a White House aide who started asking questions after the president publicly stated that Ukraine was responsible for starting the war.

After further investigation, the aide privately informed Trump that he had mixed up the two countries.

“It’s the other way around, as far as I understand,” Trump told reporters at an impromptu press conference in the Oval Office. “The country that started the war, invading another country, apparently was Russia. Honestly, they are easy to confuse. They are right next to each other. And the cold winters. Very cold. I always thought that this little guy Zelensky was from Russia. He sounds Russian.”

One administration insider said that Trump’s realization of the mix-up could potentially change the whole outlook for peace negotiations. “It’s kind of a substantial difference,” the source said. “He took such a tough stance on Ukraine because he thought they had started the war, when it was Russia who invaded. We had to pull out a big map and show him that Russia is actually big and Ukraine is small. All is well, he’s got it all figured out now.”

At the time of publication, Trump proposed a newly revised peace plan in which the United States would simply annex both Ukraine and Russia as new territories.

BabylonBee well done

Detecting ChatGPT Use in Job Interviews | February 27 2025, 03:46

Job interview. Tell me, how can you tell when the person on the other end is sitting with ChatGPT? And I don’t know, maybe a friend types up the questions, he sees the answers and tries to use them on the fly without really understanding them. I can’t say for sure that this was the case with the dude I recently interviewed, but it looked very similar.

During the process, I figured out that you can partly combat this by asking questions that don’t have a simple answer, and through rapid-fire questions which ChatGPT can quickly respond to, but if the person isn’t familiar with the topic, a quick LLM response won’t really help them, and there’s no time to read a long response. Meaning, ChatGPT will still answer correctly, but to use ChatGPT’s response, the person needs to carefully read through the whole block of text in the answer. And conversely, you shouldn’t ask questions that ChatGPT can immediately answer.

But generally, it’s quite a task to come up with such questions.

For example, instead of asking “How does SOAP differ from REST”, it’s better to ask “for which task might REST API not be the best choice”. ChatGPT starts giving a smart, bulleted answer, which you can’t simply read off the screen without understanding it.

But I’m really curious, what have HR departments come up with to combat tips from LLMs? After all, you could quite well train an LLM to display something you are generally familiar with, but recalling it yourself would take longer and with mistakes.

At the end of the interview, I requested a Live Coding – shuffle the array, where I planned to change the task setting after receiving the first version of the code. Well, you get it, there wasn’t even a first version beyond the shuffle() method header.

Kira Kuzmenko

Navigating Life in a Spanish-Dominant World | February 25 2025, 23:50

Our half of the planet is primarily Spanish-speaking. 455 million (that’s 91% of all Spanish speakers) compared to 280 million English speakers. In other words, we, with our English, are in the minority here. Hence, it’s no surprise that during all my trips to Mexico and Colombia, my English was of no use to anyone. Even Portuguese is spoken almost as much as English, but Spanish leads the way.

Overall, I’m struggling here without Spanish. Nobody understands me. I have to explain complex concepts like “do you accept cards or only cash” or “how can I get to the library” using hand gestures.

It’s silly to wonder why they don’t teach English properly here. Probably, from their standpoint, we should be the ones learning Spanish, considering they outnumber us twofold, and Spanish is spoken in 19 countries, whereas English, or its variants, just in 13 (among them Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago).

Interestingly, in Canada French is an official language, yet it’s spoken throughout Americas as much as the Quechua language.

But the funniest thing is that the name of the city I’m currently in, Guadalajara, came from the Arabic Wādī al-Ḥijāra, which means “Valley of Stones” or “River flowing through stones.”

Creative Mnemonics for Uncommon Names | February 24 2025, 13:03

I constantly have to spell out my last name, and they keep making mistakes anyway.

With the help of ChatGPT, I found some nice alternatives for “alpha lima indiana echo victory”:

For the surname Aliyev:

1. Alex Learns Interesting English Vocabulary

2. Anna Lives In Eastern Village

3. Angry Lizards Invent Evil Vacuums

4. “Alligators Lick Ice-cream, Expect Violence.”

5. “Apes Lose Internet Every Vacation.

6. “Aunt Lucy Insults Every Viking.

7. “Ants Love Investigating Empty Vans.

8. “Astronauts Land Inside Enormous Vegetables.

For the name Rauf:

1. “Rabbits Always Use Forks.”

2. “Robots Are Usually Funny.

3. “Raccoons Ate Uncle’s Fish.

4. “Reindeer Avoid Ugly Frogs.

5. “Rick Always Underestimates Ferrets.

6. “Rats Argue Under Furniture.

7. “Rhinos Always Use Facebook.

8. “Robots Attack Ugly Farmers.

9. “Raccoons Ate Uncle’s Fries.

10. “Rats Admire Useless Fences.

11. “Rick Accidentally Unplugs Fridge.

12. “Rabbits Annoy Unlucky Fishermen.

What’s the coolest? What should I remember?

How is it going for you?

Financial Service Frustrations: Navigating Modern Security Hurdles | February 24 2025, 12:44

It seems like financial companies are competing to see which one can “reinvent the wheel” first and in the most unconventional way. I needed to change something in my Fidelity account, where I handle my pension contributions. I log in, but the 2FA fails because, for some reason, they have my number incorrectly listed, so I can’t receive the SMS to log in. Okay, these things happen. But then they ask me to enter a code that the operator will give me if I call phone number XXX. So I call.

To get to this operator, you need to enter your SSN using the phone keypad, which is a bit of a stretch, but still normal. Usually, they just ask for the last four digits. But that’s not enough. Their robot asks me to enter my password! From the phone keypad! The very one I use on the web. How do I do that — literally pressing the keys ABC, DEF, etc. And my password is long, I at least need to see it in front of me. Okay, I managed to find it (meanwhile the robot tries to hang up because it thinks I’ve frozen). I laboriously entered the password. Clearly, things like case sensitivity aren’t considered, and luckily, my password doesn’t contain special characters that aren’t on a phone keypad — I can’t even imagine how I’d enter them.

It doesn’t go through! Damn, I have to repeat it. Last attempt, it says. Enter it again. I entered it a second time, this time correctly. The robot thanked me and said they are currently off, so goodbye.

In another service, UBS, I’m constantly asked to change not just the password, but also the username. In a third service, you can’t recover a password, you can only call to reset it, and they send the temporary password in plain text via email, and it’s not temporary at all.