This post covers the foundations of e-sports betting with machine learning: financial decision-making, expected profits of a bet, multiple bets with the Kelly criterion, probability calibration, and the winner’s curse.
In this blog post, I explore the problem of name classification with ChatGPT and 3 ML models of increasing complexity (logistic regression, FastAI LSTM, and HuggingFace DistilBERT).
ChatGPT delivers the best accuracy of them all with no model training, just prompt engineering. It classifies 100k names in 18 minutes for under $5.
We see a lot of ChatGPT chat examples, but here I show how to use its API to solve an actual text classification problem (albeit a simple one).
GPT is transforming tasks that required deep machine learning knowledge into software + prompt engineering problems. As a data scientist, I’m not worried about it taking over my job, as predictive modelling is only a small aspect of what a data scientist does.
In the beginning I also considered Atlas, but that seemed way too much trouble and expenses for two businesses that may or may not be viable.
In the end, I decided to go with Paddle (https://paddle.com/). The integration was really easy, it is just a button that links to my subscription plans (with webhooks that alert my server when subscriptions are created and paid).
thanks for the recommendation -- i'm also a brazilian and i was wondering how much of a hassle would be to do all that for some business i have on the side.
I have lived most of my life in Brazil, and even though I am very privileged, the following has happened to me:
1) Watch stolen by drug addict with a syringe when I was 12 years old
2) Cellphone stolen by a thug with a glass shard when I was 16
3) Also when I was 16, three thugs tried to steal my cellphone, they said they would blow my brains if I didn't comply and faked having a gun (I didn't).
4) Two thugs invaded my frat house, held us hostages with handguns, and stole all we had (I will never forget the cold metal of the gun touching my head, while I was threatened).
5) My car was jacked right in front of my house.
6) Another cellphone stealing incident that I'd rather not share in details.
7) My spare tire was stolen while I was in a bar for a couple of hours.
This is just what has happened to me in less than 30 years. Stories like those abound. My girlfriend also went through (4) and (7), independently of me. Pretty much everyone I know has had a cellhphone stolen at some point in their lives.
If you want to actually experience the dread that is living in Brazil, search for "brazil" in reddit's /r/watchpeopledie.
Latin America really varies by country. You'd have to be insane to want to spend time in Venezuela right now. Brazil, especially north Brazil has a reputation for violence.
Chile on the other hand is very safe, has good infrastructure and is a pretty pleasant place to visit with lots of varied scenery and low corruption. They even have a startup incubator program. The beaches don't have warm water unfortunately.
For what it's worth the U.S. has four cities in the top-50 list. I've been to a couple of them. Yeah you can't be a dummy, but I don't think most people there are in fear of their life.
No matter what I do, I would always look like a foreigner in Venezuela. This is also true in Thailand but they seem to do a much better job of protecting farang from violent crime.
When you're living in Latin America as an expat, the odds are pretty strong that you're in or near a tourist resort with very little (observable) crime. I say observable because, yeah, of course a mafia is operating in the area, but it's not an all out war like in Tijuana or Juarez because it's not lucrative for the mafia to scare tourists off. Tourists go to the mafia's bars and restaurants at the end of the day, which is part of how they launder money.
It's not like you're gonna spend your whole time in the resort. Otherwise why bother going to Latin America? We have resorts here in the US too.
Indeed, most people who travel to Latin America want to travel and do sight-seeing. And that can be dangerous, especially for "gringos" (Anglo-Saxon whites) because they are perceived as wealth targets by kidnappers.
You don't really have that problem in a place like Thailand.
I am very hesitant about visiting visiting Brazil especially since it would cost me $$ as an American (yes, I understand it's reciprocal).
However, I don't think it's fair to lump all of Latin America together. I found living in Peru for 9 months safe, and I travelled all over the country. I also visited Bolivia and Colombia but less extensively. In fact, most of these places felt safer than SF after you know the lay of the land.
This is insane, this judge must be on a power trip. WhatsApp is now part of Brazilian social life and economy. Everyone here is part of many groups of friends, family or workmates, that is where most instant communication happens.
In my company, our deployment engineers, who usually are on very remote places with bad and unreliable internet, rely on WhatsApp. I'm not saying this is the best practice, but this is simply the way Brazil works right now. Even the mobile phone companies offer plans with free WhatsApp connection, because that is what most people here care about. Another example: In Brazil, 9 in 10 doctors use WhatsApp to talk to patients (http://www.cityam.com/230372/digital-health-wearables-and-ap...).
To disregard all the people and businesses that rely on WhatsApp for whatever reason is unbelievable. But this is not without precedent, once another Brazilian judge blocked YouTube for a whole day because it refused to take down a celebrity video.
This says a lot about the over-sized, inefficient, and stupid state we have, always meddling and intervening.
I'm a client of Bradesco, a popular bank in Brazil. I've chosen to migrate my account to a digital account called "Bradesco Prime Digital". The main communication channel with my account manager is WhatsApp, so he can take the day off.
I'm also selling my house and I'm pretty sure that every Real Estate agents in São Paulo use WhatsApp as the main communication channel. So no visits today.
I was having a conversation with the pediatrician of my children, so no answers today on what to do with my baby vomiting. It's not so serious to make a call, but it was fine to send a message.
My mother is 63 and sends WhatsApp messages every day to me, so no mommy messages today.
Well, it's not all that bad... I think today may be a very productive day for me.
After reading this and other messages like this, I feel like I'm living on a bubble. I hardly ever use whatsapp and didn't know it was so widely used by everyone around me.
Contempt of court in the U.S. escalates considerably beyond fines if the company doesn't start complying quickly. The court can jail the company's officers, issue an injunction forcing them to stop doing business, instruct customs to blockade them at the U.S. border (in the case of companies selling physical goods), and a range of other things.
That's when it's a US company if it's foreign it will end up on the US trade department sanction list which will blacklist them world wide not only in the US and will prevent any entity which operates in the US from doing any sort of business with them.
There is nothing that a Brazilian judge can do to whatsapp other than to harm them financially cutting off 100m users even in a developing market sends a clear sign.
Facebook has an office in Brazil. I don't really understand why they couldn't just levy financial penalties, since Facebook does actually have a business presence in the country.
WhatsApp and Facebook are still separate legal entities as far as i know, the subpoena was issued to WhatsApp it didn't comply they've issued a court order to block it in order to compel it to comply.
If a US company would not comply to a court order, a US judge can prevent the company from operating at all by freezing all of their assets and halting all of their operations.
You're presuming that that Facebook office in Brazil actually has a lot of assets in Brazil to seize. It's likely that it's a shell organisation and has nothing to seize.
This isn't might makes right this is a corporation pissing over laws, if this was some oil company killing seals would you respond in the same manner?
WhatsApp provides a service in a country, they gain direct financial benefit from almost 100M users, they received a subpoena and ignored it because it's Brazil, if this would've been a European nation they would most likely have complied, if it were a US court order they would for sure have complied.
The only "might makes right" here is WhatsApp ignoring the subpoena because they are an almighty multi billion dollar US company which thinks it's above the law. And on the other side we know that there's pretty much no company on the planet that would dare to defy a US subpoena or court order.
Should only US and "western" nation's legal systems be respected? Is this some how morally compelling to you?
Things should be taken into consideration, a "confidential" investigation that closes an service used by millions of citizens is highly controversial. They don't do the same to any Telecom company, so that's very suspicious.
A spilling of oil is not controversial. It's damage made by a company accidentally and that is causing great environmental damage.
The Brazilian government has the power to ask try to enforce their legislation, but asking other companies to close the service should be the last thing they do. And if necessary, they should close the service completely, 48h is pure nonsense. They should arrest representatives before closing the service. this is nonsense. Also, the reasons are all confidential, so we can't even know it they are justifiable. This is manipulative, not transparent, and very keen to a dictatorship.
Subpoena is a subpoena, most wire taps and telecom subpoenas are confidential you can't really have your target knowing that you are tapping them can you?
No where did i mentioned spilling of oil it's just an example if an energy company doesn't want to cooperate with the government it's perfectly legitimate to order your energy sector to stop importing oil from them this happens quite often. Same goes for websites that violate laws like copyright which are blocked by ISP's.
The Brazilian government has no power over WhatsApp and WhatsApp knows this very well this is why they've utterly ignored them, this isn't some civil rights issue WhatsApp cooperates with US and EU countries all the time this is they CBA because it's Brazil.
And lastly Brazil was part of the 3rd world during the Cold War and is a member of the Non-Aligned Movement so it's really not a western country.
a wiretap does not close the entire communication channel, does it?
You used an analogy to the oil spillage, that would not result in the same impact for rhetoric purposes, but they are not similar.
Again you are confusing what the subpoena was with what had to be done.
When a company doesn't comply you force it, there is almost nothing that Brazil can do to WhatsApp other than to harm them financially and their only way to do so is to block them.
The warrant was extreme yes but it also wasn't indefinite it was a warning shot, this would not have happened if WhatsApp would give the same amount of respect to Brazil as it does to N. American and European countries.
But since Brazil isn't "white and rich" as you've so colorfully described they just pissed all over them. I really don't understand how can you argue for a corporation to piss all over the law.
This isn't about privacy this is about respecting the legal framework of a nation which is one of the most important foundations of modern society, WhatsApp could as easily pissed over a law that protects your data as they pissed over a legal subpoena would you still go out of your way to defend them then?
What's app is a America n company, so it should only respond to American supoenas. Just as a American judge should not be able to order a Brazilian company to do anything before having it go though the Brazilian courts.
A Brazilian company with a presence in the US could absolutely be subject to a US court order without any court in Brazil needing to be involved. You don't get to dodge the laws of a country you're operating in just because your HQ is in some other country.
They are following legal procedures. Brazilian ones, which are the only ones they have to care about. Why would they possibly care in the slightest what American courts have to say?
I don't know, but for the sake of argument, I think it's OK to say no.
If I have a website that is reachable on the internet that hosts a wiki and logs access, does that mean I am doing business in all countries that have internet access? Can any of their courts compel me to disclose visitors from their country? What if I refuse to provide visitor logs, is it OK for them to block my site at the border? What about to order a private teleco to block my site?
I have opinions, but I don't see any obvious answers one way or the other.
It looks like you want to have your cake and eat it:
> If I have a website that is reachable on the internet that hosts a wiki and logs access, does that mean I am doing business in all countries that have internet access?
I'm guessing your answer to this question is "No". However, since you feel you are not doing business in Brazil (for example),then why complain when Brazil blocks your site? If your answer is "Yes" and you agree that you are in business in all countries, then you should be compelled to follow the laws of the countries whose populace are earning you wealth.
Morally and pragmatically, I feel that if you gain financial benefit from a country, you should follow their laws. If you find the laws unconscionable - refuse to do business there.
> What if I refuse to provide visitor logs, is it OK for them to block my site at the border? What about to order a private teleco to block my site?
That depends exclusively on the laws of the country in question, not on the laws of the country the offender is based on. That's what a sovereign state does, it determines its own rules.
All the points you raised are legitimate but if WhatsApp or any other company has a physical presence in a certain country, that country authorities have the SOVEREIGN right to uphold the laws of the land and bring transgressors to justice and offering & guaranteeing them a fair trial.
It also says that, in a contained but nontrivial aspect of life, Brazil has given up its sovereignty to WhatsApp (and by transitive ownership, Facebook, and by transitive law enforcement, USA/NSA). And for various reasons, it is applying for a similar serf status at Telegram as we speak.
Think about it: Mark Zuckerberg can task his employees with an elaborate "find and replace" on all brazillian texts, replacing e.g. "sugar" with "salt", and it will just happen. Think that's improbable? Facebook has been toying with your emotions before [0]
People voluntarily use WhatsApp because they consider it the best service. If it starts replacing "sugar" with "salt" I'm sure people will voluntarily start using something else. What should not happen is government force you to use something else.
Before, I was worried about facebook spying on me, but then I just asked all my friends to switch to spiderwizard (or whatever it's called) and now everything's fine.
. . . my friends didn't want to switch, so instead I simply stopped using Facebook and started using Telegram/email/SMS/IRC/any of a dozen other communication methods to talk with my friends?
Causality is a bit harder to integrate with current machine learning models as it's hard even with standard probabilistic graphical models. On the other hand, there has been a lot of work integrating deep neural networks with probabilistic models.
For example, the variational auto-encoders are a graphical model with Gaussian latent variables whose mean and variance are determined by (deep) neural networks [1]. There has been work exploring the neural network weights as latent variables themselves [2]. Finally, some new developments such as dropout can be interpreted as some form of deep Gaussian processes [3].
I believe there will be a lot further developments on this area in the near-future.
Torch7 has amazing GPU support. If you wanna send a tensor (array) to the GPU, you just type array:cuda(). All operations you do from now on will be on the GPU.
