this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
30 points (100.0% liked)

TechTakes

1638 readers
115 users here now

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Taking over for Gerard this time. Special thanks to him for starting this.)

(page 3) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago

Making my service slightly worse once again to own the libs.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

MoreWronger is concerned that the shitty fanfic the community excretes is limited to LW and Xhitter and wonders if The Atlantic is a better venue

Look I have nothing against fanfic myself but if there's one powerful corrective it lacks, it is commercial content editorial feedback.

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 12 points 1 week ago

The way the responses talk about "polarization", ugh fucking ghouls.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 12 points 1 week ago
[–] fasterandworse@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago

hay guys, sorry for spam - I just want to shill my videos/audios i'm trying to put out twice a week (I've already done 9!). They are 3-5 mins long and all around one particular theme of tech crit

video versions: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwvAAoSdsXWxHwFbULgbpVGiLmJZv4X1g audio versions:

Let me know if you like it/hate it

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago (7 children)

I randomly remembered crying wolf and decided to make that everybodies problem

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (9 children)

That was literally the inflection point on my path to sneerclub. I had started to break from less wrong before, but I hadn't reached the tipping point of saying it was all bs. And for ssc and Scott in particular I had managed to overlook the real message buried in thousands of words of equivocating and bad analogies and bad research in his earlier posts. But "you are still crying wolf" made me finally question what Scott's real intent was.

load more comments (9 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

AI researchers continue to daub soot on the walls of Plato's cave, scaring themselves witless:

https://www.emergent-values.ai/

At least I've IDd the transmission vector from LW to lobste.rs

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

other vein

it's amazing that the paper site has its own little pretty marketing pictures. easily digestible unseriousness!

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

so apparently one of the weird creeps went to go shittalk europe (video, transcript (archive))

it's some full-on doublespeak and utterly wild shit. some of the best tho:

The US innovators of all sizes already know what it’s like to deal with onerous international rules.

"waaaaaaaah how dare you have your own rules we need to care about, so hard"

[–] DeviantNull@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago

Nothing to see here, just a strong implication that in the minds of these lizards “AI” is a weapon, and the only thing that can stop a bad guy with an AI is a good guy with an AI. Because this precise line of thinking has yielded such good results historically.

Also, think of the GDP growth! Imagine the shareholder value we could create boiling an ocean to predict how many letters “r” there are in “strawberry” and failing after billions in VC funding. This should not be regulated, lest progress is halted!

And don’t fret about safety kids, because once we build the genie we get three wishes for sure, and then Sam Altman’s dad will finally look him in the eye and say “I’m proud of you” for the first time, and all will be well in the world.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

does anyone know why Venmo has a faux social media presentation? a feed, payments visible to other users (??) by default, etc

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Though if I had to guess: data tagging for data mining.

load more comments (1 replies)

In lighter news, has anyone else noticed that it's necessary for any kind of Cybersecurity course to open with what is effectively a Tumblr-style DNI for unethical hackers? Like, I'm not criticizing exactly and I certainly don't have any better ideas to prevent people using these skills for evil, but the disclaimer up top fits into a certain kind of pattern that I, for one, find hilarious.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago (4 children)

nasb, Curtis Yarvin's Cult For Billionaire Morons

the comment around 13:00 onwards, "it was very hard to get people to care about this before". felt in my bones.

[–] mii@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago

Peter thiel looks like if nosferatu never hit puberty

This image will now forever live in my head. Thanks, random YT commenter.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Okey, what is with these dweebs and never taking their leather jackets off? (Talking about the opening still, have not even started the video)

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago

They think leather jackets are cool but don’t know why, and have never been challenged on their fashion choices. Fuckers need a good mugging to change their ways.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Keeps the stank in, also shaping (I.e. spanx for dudes).

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] dovel@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

A massive fan favorite in this community and CEO of a thermodynamics startup recently linked up with Grimes.

Nitter link: https://xcancel.com/BasedBeffJezos/status/1889072622409064649#m

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

a thermodynamics startup

what

Like what do they do, find ways to increase entropy faster? Or are they bootstrapping thermodynamics from first principles to disrupt the field of physics with blockchain-powered quantum synergy

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I feel like there's something to be said about how merely wearing a suit apparently means "Bond villain aesthetics". Or is posing with a pretty young woman what makes the suit Bond villainy?

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›