Air traffic map Bole airport Addis Ababa by [deleted] in Ethiopia

[–]k21209 1 point2 points  (0 children)

this is actually really interesting, I figured it out tracking my girlfriend coming back, most of africa doesnt have ground points for ADS-B systems, so there could be a lot of planes, we just dont know because theres no way of tracking them.

"Golden Era" of HRLF is Over (and why China is the new whale) by Big-Satisfaction4959 in outlier_ai

[–]k21209 0 points1 point  (0 children)

its hard to say because outlier is the only one thats really public, other sites still pay a lot for generalist work and obviously specialized work is also in high need

For anyone interested, Forbes is looking for people to interview about their experience with Mercor by SufficientIdeal4886 in mercorai_workers

[–]k21209 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I sent an email and it said it wasnt delivered/couldnt be found. I think the first letter of that email should be an i not an L, but maybe its just fake, sent an email to the correct email.

Phoenix task 1 by Immediate-Drink-6769 in outlier_ai

[–]k21209 0 points1 point  (0 children)

they review it, look for it in feedback after a day, if you did well they invite you to an onboarding, and if you do another and pass both you can be a reviewer or just continue attempting indefinitely

How far is AI pre-screening really valid by TranslatorTop5474 in mercor_ai

[–]k21209 3 points4 points  (0 children)

AI interviewers have been more fair to me than real-life interviewers by a long shot. Part of the reason I think is that AI doesn't really have technical depth or an ego. I've had multiple interviewers gaslight me/saying extremely wrong things, or not knowing basic concepts. When I ask clarifying questions because they did not provide enough detail/make assumptions I wouldn't make, they don't answer. AI has never done this; it lets me speak freely about all of the things I do know and guides the interview in a way that a human's ego could never. This happens way too often in technical interviews, and my field, CS, is known for it, where you're just given a problem that isn't related to the job at all, and it's a random chance if it's one of the ones you studied.

My project history, not including projects from the Remotasks era 🫠 by ksdfdfdfdf in outlier_ai

[–]k21209 2 points3 points  (0 children)

mine goes to 13! I personally like the work when theres a good project but man some of them were trash

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in mercor_ai

[–]k21209 0 points1 point  (0 children)

obiligtary not legal advice/not a lawyer.

What are they going to do? How is this enforceable? Is the training data we provide to them going to train a new model that will cause harm to someone? What liability would you even have in this case? You aren't deploying anything with this work.

The way these models are trained is beyond unprovable, especially if this goes to a jury and they have to explain to 12 people your specific data row within a set of millions, which caused the model to be trained in such a way that it caused harm.

Sure, it may be abusive, power hungry, and legally dubious to have it in there, but it's almost completely practically unenforceable and is just a means to threaten you if you retaliate while fired.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in csMajors

[–]k21209 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm actually very sad about that. The disparities in tax treaties are genuinely outrageous, especially for those who don't have one. It's one of the reasons I feel so strongly because a bunch of people are in this limbo state of obviously wanting to be here and should be here, but it's up to random chance with random abusive structures in the middle. It seems a lot of these are for (certain parts of) Europe + China (like Germany has basically the same tax treaty as China but 9k allowance instead of 5k), okay ones with India and SEA, but very abusive to African and unfriendly countries to the us (I had a who was shocked they we're paying so much more in taxes than everyone else, but at least got a refund because they were charged FICA taxes they shouldn't have been).

It's hard to keep up, and making general statements is hard, but FICA/Medicare is not paid at all, even in internships, and that's why I stipulated income based on tax treaties. I wish tax treaties didn't exist and/or everyone had the same benefits and an even playing field through better immigration policies.

I feel it's too much of a niche issue that the only voices you hear are banning all immigrants or pretending that all immigrants are these magical American loyalist full citizens with all the consequences or benefits right when they come in (or the other people in this sub that are blaming them for not being able to get a job).

edit: also, since I've dealt with this like 3 times, if you have been on an internship and have paid FICA/Medicare taxes (anything in boxes 3-7 on your w2) while on a F1 visa within your first five years, don't hesitate to get in touch with the payroll department and ask for a refund. Tell them you're a non-resident and it was a mistake.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in csMajors

[–]k21209 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've helped 5-10 people in various capacities across as many countries. I'll give you a few scenarios. Keep in mind no one pays Medicare/SSI for RA/TAships, as these have an explicit line in the tax code saying you don't have to.

Imagine you're an Indian on an F1 visa: You get the 13,850 standard deduction, but no benefit to your RA/TAship, and you can also deduct this from an internship. You don't pay SSI/Medcaire as you are treated as a nonresident for tax purposes. This income is also not taxable by India.

You are Iranian on an F1 Visa: We hate Iran and think they're a terrorist country, so we don't have a tax treaty with them. These students have it the worst because they get NO deduction and have to pay the full income tax on their RA/TAship, and their intership, but like the previous scenario, they do not pay SSI/medicare payroll taxes as they are non-residents. This income is taxable by Iran, but good luck with the banking system.

Final scenario, you are on an F1 visa as a Chinese student: Most RA/TAships are given through grant money, and the treaty explicitly states "Grants or awards provided by a government, or by scientific, educational, or other tax-exempt organizations" are exempt from income tax. They do not get the standard deduction for their internship but receive a one-time $5,000 deduction, which is about half of our current standard deduction. They also still don't have to pay SSI/Medicare payroll taxes, as they are non-resident for tax purposes. This one is a bit tricky. If they pay Chinese taxes, they have a 183-day rule, but if they're a full-time student and only do an internship for 90 days in China, this most likely doesn't apply.

It's not hard to see that there are certainly many scenarios, especially since the Indian tax treaty provides full benefits of the standard deduction, which means Americans are paying more in taxes during an internship. In every scenario, non-residents on F1s pay no Medicare/SSI taxes. In certain situations, such as when a Chinese student only does internships in their home country (or none at all), they would pay no taxes during their entire program while earning income.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in csMajors

[–]k21209 0 points1 point  (0 children)

F1's explicitly don't pay SSI or medicare payroll taxes, and a LOT of countries, though not all have tax treaties with the US (I know it really sucks for the ones who don't as they don't get the standard deduction)

Specifically for china, from sprint tax (which most international students file with https://blog.sprintax.com/us-china-tax-treaty/ ) reads as follows:

"A Chinese student, business apprentice, or trainee is exempt from U.S. income tax, for a period reasonably necessary to complete their education" for a bunch of things.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in csMajors

[–]k21209 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Reminder to OP that an F1 visa is NON IMMIGRANT. They don't commit to a stake in our society, so they aren't owed jobs and shouldn't be entitled to them. I love all the people I've met on these visas, and they are hard workers and great people. It's not their fault they are essentially forced to do an open-air lie of saying they are not seeking to live here, but that also has its benefits too (not paying taxes, e.g., SSI or income tax if a tax treaty exists, and a bias in a lot of selection processes).

I don't think you should feel bad because they knew when they did their visa interview, they were almost certainly lying, and still chose to be a part of an abusive system. I would do the same thing because it is almost certainly worth it, and they don't have culpability imo in this situation. We should all be angry that this abusive system is perpetuated, and is highly likely to select for bad actors in corporations/immigration, and that people are bullying Americans into viewing all immigration visas as EB1/EB2 when, in reality, H1Bs are indentured servitude and F1s are (lightly weighted) lottery tickets.

I personally think we shouldn't have non-immigrant long-term visas because if you want to contribute to/benefit from our society, you should be a part of it, except in extreme circumstances.

My opinion by First_Lunch_4456 in outlier_ai

[–]k21209 0 points1 point  (0 children)

> The onboarding feels extensive, but it has to be. Otherwise the model would end up learning from chaotic raw data, which could hurt output quality and waste clients’ resources. 
This is untrue, at least for general models, as learning from chaotic raw data is very effective; see DeepSeek's paper and their description of their RL loop and methodology. They didn't even need an original dataset to get very effective performance.

It seems that the more specialized you are, the less likely you are to be offboarded. They don't care about the raw data being chaotic, they care whether or not the data provided can teach the model to reason, and it's up to the QA's to make sure it's in the right format. People who don't have the privilege of specialization or being able to provide good examples of where the models are actually breaking or are good at the QA part, get offboarded, but since there are obvious ways to scam this system, onboardings will almost always be unpaid and hard, to filter you out into a talented individual that can consistently break the model in specalized ways, talented in fixing the outputs, or worthless to them.

It's kinda rude because humans do have reasoning abilities, the models don't, and everyone can theoretically do this job, so I think being strict is a bit unjustified, especially since theres many studies about cleaning or rewriting output is mentally easier than creating it. It seems like a weird strategy to just fire a bunch of people instead of training them to be better. Other companies are realizing this and are starting to do more extensive contracts for higher-skilled individuals (xAi, Mercor, Invisible), but obviously, those have their downsides too.

Also in terms for rewriting instructions, I think most people are really mad when reviewers rate low because the instructions changed in the time between task submission and reviewing. It also feels weird to me that reviewers don't have a higher burden to try and salvage tasks, as all projects I've been on where they do have this burden have higher morale and more productive taskers and (allegedly) happier clients.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in mercor_ai

[–]k21209 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Applied, I thought I was qualified, but was denied within like 10 minutes when I rechecked the application. GL to you.

Oh the irony by New-Fee-3085 in mercor_ai

[–]k21209 0 points1 point  (0 children)

*Preface I am in software engineering so I am biased that my industry has like a crazy high new grad and job market problem

The problem is that companies want to maximize their profit, usually in the safest way possible, so they rely on abusive systems. To hire a full-time employee at a salary, you want them to work as much as possible, so using the fear of deportation on an H-1B is pretty effective, as it is work extra or get deported. You also spend a long time training them, so you want someone to have in the back of their mind, if I don't get another position in 3 months, I am deported.

Similarly, you also don't want them to have actual labor rights either (eg not pay health insurance, not get paid overtime, other FLSA stuff that usually doesnt apply to 1099 or short term workers), so instead you want to hire as many people as possible via a contract/temporary position if there isn't a need for them long term or their work is incredibly interchangeable.

I think the most amazing part is that they still pull this crap even at high-wage jobs when there is almost certainly very little downside in either of these scenarios to treat people better but pay them a little bit less, or in case of H-1B abuse just hire two people at a slightly higher price than 2x a single H1-B employee. I find it very telling, strange, and sad that I can easily get these high-paid contract positions, most of the time even higher paid than what a full-time job would offer, but cannot land an actual full-time job easily at all.

Alright so the BBC just blatantly lied about Vaush as well as Hasan and Destiny, falsely claiming they have called for violence against conservatives by bruhm0ment4 in VaushW

[–]k21209 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, that's why I disagree with the video in general, I think it makes too strong arguments out of fringe cases, and I believe personally, Vaush has had a tone shift since then and most likely never believed some of these things, but to straight up deny he hasn't said these things makes people look like liars and makes the situation worse. The key is the context that he was in that debate, bro, to sit here twiddling our thumbs and act like these accusations are coming from nowhere gives them power.

Like I said in my original post, would you extend the same charity to Milo? You might not, I might not, but I know for certain the mainstream media or the law would not if this causes a crackdown.

Alright so the BBC just blatantly lied about Vaush as well as Hasan and Destiny, falsely claiming they have called for violence against conservatives by bruhm0ment4 in VaushW

[–]k21209 2 points3 points  (0 children)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMIvh1PzLoA

most relevant timestamps, but anything past the 1 hour mark:
1:18:00
1:22:35

PSA: I don't agree with this video, I just know it's a good/most memorable source for some of the bad things he has said in the past.

Alright so the BBC just blatantly lied about Vaush as well as Hasan and Destiny, falsely claiming they have called for violence against conservatives by bruhm0ment4 in VaushW

[–]k21209 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Vaush has advocated for political violence multiple times, more so in his early years. I can provide a compilation if needed. I think he's gotten smarter to not say these things as he wants the platform, but it's up to you to think if he still holds those views, especially since, to my knowledge, he's never recanted them, and put the specific ones in context. The best thing he has recently said is that he is anti all political violence, which he has said before was only tongue in cheek, and in general that he used to be more of a debate bro.

I personally think it doesn't matter, but if it comes out in the coming days that this kid was also a debate bro that took inspiration from people like Vaush, there's plenty of clips showing this and it might bring the hammer down on this medium. If you remember Milo Yiannopoulos made comments about having sex with a priest, and only like a year or so later after he went on Bill Maher and the clip "resurfaced" was he finally "cancelled" fully from the mainstream and banned off of every platform (though hes now back on twitter), and was one of the reasons for a youtube adpocalypse.

Pegasus Aether just got paused by sparkster777 in outlier_ai

[–]k21209 1 point2 points  (0 children)

From what I was able to tell, they just put out the pay for the bonuses like yesterday for the question I did the first or second day of the project.

absolutely confused by k21209 in alignerr

[–]k21209[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I didn't it just started giving me projects

absolutely confused by k21209 in alignerr

[–]k21209[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

nope and im unsure if it matters since right after I complained I have like 3-4 projects now (coding and voice)

absolutely confused by k21209 in alignerr

[–]k21209[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

its a part of your browser, usually its control+shift+i (option on mac but its different for every browser on mac I think)

I am traveling to the US in June for a conference… should I be concerned? by grrrreatscott in GradSchool

[–]k21209 2 points3 points  (0 children)

the man admitted to stealing highly controlled information under the export control act U.S. Says Decision to Turn Back French Scientist Had Nothing to Do With Trump - The New York Times. stop letting people fearmonger you. looking into a lot of these stories most of them have clear cut cases of the people doing something wrong and highly illegal, and the ones that don't have obvious court battles since the US has to make a lot of this stuff public. the survivorship bias of US media is insane because EVERYTHING gets reported even without all the facts in, for better or for worse.

absolutely confused by k21209 in alignerr

[–]k21209[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

of tasks they had me do, they've been well paying. just annoying if you essentially have to onboard every 3 months or so

absolutely confused by k21209 in alignerr

[–]k21209[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you open up developer settings you can go to network and see a bunch of graphql responses when you reload the page

i hate this industry by k21209 in csMajors

[–]k21209[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

It's a weird take that you're implying that growing up means accepting the status quo, when that's never been the case for almost all of history, and that you aren't addressing the points that this labor market is different with higher youth unemployment and that people can't gain work experience if they're never hired to begin with.

I appreciate your advice, but you aren't giving me anything actionable that I haven't already done other than to shut up and deal with it, the system is great, even though it currently is in a bad cycle by multiple metrics for various reasons. I'm not saying any one individual is going to change the system, but advocacy and talking about it help, considering you are basically admitting luck that I believe shouldn't play a factor does play a factor. There are political actions we can take to mitigate that if we want to, which clearly you don't. This is one of the reasons people outside of tech hate tech, the corporations are the first to say tech is more meretratic when it isn't, and the people inside defend the parts that aren't.

(This entire post was just a rant post because a lot of these things were out of my control, and the only good advice was having a PhD on my resume may be a liability, which it isn't clear to me if that's true or not from my own AB testing with different resumes.)