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.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)
I’m imagining no fewer than three fictional versions of Eris/Discord laughing at this orange-site fool:
Meanwhile I cannot turn my living room LED lights on or off because I control them through discord.
Ok, so, some typical clueless VC mixed up atlas and sisyphus, which absolutely tracks. A VC thinks they are performing the all-important task of holding up the universe, when really they are just pushing a boulder up a hill and letting it fall down again.
VCs really think they are prometheus bringing fire to man, when really they are the eagle eating prometheus’s ever regrowing liver, where prometheus is the working class and the liver is collective wellbeing.
New superpredictor lore dropped on r/mapporn. If you believe in prediction markets and meet someone from Blaine MT or Essec NY, you have to do whatever they say because they are smarter and better at predicting than you.
I mean, up until this year they would both have been beat by Clallum County, WA, which had matched the National winner since Gerald Ford. So way to identify the best of the losers I guess?
Breaking news: “AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably”!
Or, you know, not.
Wired tried to put out a defence of tech and the result is incoherent drivel. See for yourself.
If you gotta conclude with, “tee hee! simulation theory!” you’re not just cooked… you’re seared and roasted
So why must binary digits define, for all time, the limits of computation, and our experience of it?
There’s enough layers of irony here that it’s a bit hard to tell if he’s making a serious argument here or not; but this is one of the weirder straw-men arguments I’ve ever read.
“No no no, it’s not all the exploitation, social ills, lack of user control, shoddy quality, and general capitalism I hate in the modern “tech” industry; it’s the fact that it uses binary!”
Shorter HN: wasting gigawatts of power to increase VC valuations - fine. Discarding 80k pounds of butter because of missing allergen information is the worst thing to happen since the burning of the library of Alexandria
I was watching an old Day9 stream today and this story is bouncing off of some comments he made about the importance of degenerate players to competitive design. Like, this is a pretty dumb outcome of regulation, but at the same time if you try to define regulations to create an exception for what “everybody knows” is in something suddenly that process gets taken advantage of by self-interested manufacturers who will figure out how to convincingly argue that “everybody knows” their generic shampoo contains peanuts and shellfish or whatever. And in the context of this kind of regulation that degenerate play will get people killed.
Gasp
This is just like the fall of Rome.
E: eurgh the people arguing against regs that help people with allergies.
Crossposting this thread from nottheonion@lemmy.world with the fortune article “Elon Musk’s AI turns on him, labels him ‘one of the most significant spreaders of misinformation on X’”. The article itself is nothing much, but it does have this quote:
The smackdown from his own AI system, ironically, came soon after Musk touted the system to his followers in a tweet reading “Use Grok for answers that are based on up-to-date info!”
A little delicious irony is fine as a treat.
looks like the autoplag bullshit is causing a “fun” new frontier in the hellscape of youtube copyright fuckery
Some techbro proposes “HumaneRank” as a distribution system in the post-AI era and while HN finds it disturbingly like a global popularity system at least “it’s better than Communism”:
same type of people who call everything a communist social credit score btw
Competitive college admissions and tech-industry hiring practices really have done permanent damage to these people, haven’t they
TL;DR:
AI will take over the economy for reasons so humans will have no economic value for reasons which is terrifying for reasons and also we can’t just have males sitting around because y’know so we need to make a pretend economy because communism. So anyway y’know PageRank? Well don’t be shocked but humans have relationships too. So yeah basically let’s distribute ownership of all the world’s resources once a month proportionally to how many likes they receive (no I am not a vtuber why do you ask?).
What the heck did I just read?
youtube poop, apparently
Whuffie, but worse
also, I thought these guys loved The Culture…
is the
sinesrtweetsfor “shitty”? because holy fuck are they shittyIf you find yourself saying
There isn’t a single good term in English for people who are post-pubertal but below the legal age of consent or majority
you may already be morally diseased.
no part of me is surprised that every famous FOSS personality has a ridiculously bad age of consent take, but it is a real fucking problem that this keeps happening
You’re being perhaps too generous to consider ESR a famous FOSS personality.
He’s definitely up there, or at least used to be. The Cathedral and the Bazaar, his attempt to justify why Linux is more successful than GNU or BSD, used to be very much a part of the open source canon. He cofounded OSI. He forked some POP3 client to make his own bad and insecure one called Fetchmail, then refused to improve it.
Personally I’m happy to know he’s become less relevant nowadays.
Emphasis on used to. He worked fairly hard at becoming a household name, but ultimately his fame was pretty brief. Stallman achieved meme status, love him or hate him. Torvalds actually ships shit people use. There’s just no discourse around Raymond these days, good or bad.
Every once in a while someone trips over one of the pitons he’s driven into the wall of FOSS to try and climb it, discovers his abysmal takes, amd everyone promptly forgets about him again.
dunno, it’s definitely up there. maybe not a recent one, and I could understand people sub-25 perhaps not knowing the name, but across a fair bit of the foss space the name is household
unfortunately
Yes, he even gets mentioned by xkcd in the same breath as Stallman or Linus. (That it turns out the latter is the least worse of the three (he actually realized that being an asshole was bad) is quite the surprise).
That was way back in 2007. Probably close to when I read his stuff… but even then he was clearly still clinging to the Halloween Letters and seemed extremely old school.
On top of the disgusting subject matter, why do these people think that even unlimited-character Twitter is a good format for posting these screeds? The site design, even on the main site, is absolutely terrible for presenting this much writing. Everything mashed into the constrained center column means way too many line breaks, meaning it’s a chore to read. Same thing with that freak Ackman; whatever overwrought bullshit he was posting just made my eyes glaze over.
libertarianism.tweet
Least insane ESR post
Previous thread on esr
yikes on bikes
Folks, huge W today. I was hanging out with my parents today and my mother was scrolling her feed, commenting out loud about everything she saw when she came across some autoplag content. “This is fake!” she said, and I could not be prouder. Not just because she IDed the slop, but because it meant she at least has a better brain than my trumper family members that habitually repost trumper slop.
Cherry on top: she showed me a text chain where she was trolling a “my phone died, this is my new number” scammer.
Elon Musk, Ramaswamy land Trump admin roles
President-elect Trump has tapped tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead an advisory group focused on cutting federal spending and reducing the size of the government.
Trump announced Tuesday that Musk and Ramaswamy would lead his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), an initiative meant to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures” and restructure federal agencies.
We live in the dumbest timeline
I wasn’t expecting complete fascist victory to be so… cringe
Fascists were always cringe. Himmler was a weird occultist. Goering was a drug addict still high on his glorious from World War I. Hitler was a profoundly lazy man with terrible taste in art. There were normal fascists (there had to be), but the leadership was always cringe. Unfortunately, being cringe doesn’t stop a movement from killing vast numbers of people.
This Adolf guy kinda had me when he was just a dude traumatized by war who liked buildings and was kinda shit at drawing them, but his political takes were full on yikes and he quickly lost me when it came to the arts as well.
skibidi purges
guantanamo rizz
hot sneer from lizzy w:
I voted for Liz in 2020 :( instead they gave me diamond joe
This is literally going to be an embezzlement op isn’t it
Its gonna be the largest embezzlement scheme in US history, that much I’m certain. How much damage the pair will do to the federal gov I’m not sure, but I expect there won’t be much left of it once they’re done.
@BlueMonday1984 It’s going to be like Alves dos Reis all over again, isn’t it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alves_dos_Reis
Personally I’m betting on Teapot Dome: somebody in the Cabinet will be convicted of something like bribery, foreign influence, or electoral interference; and the cleanup will implicate multiple other Cabinet members. Trump needs to do this at some point anyway; he’s already done all of the Nixon things like Watergate and interfering in foreign wars, and while he attempted a Teapot Dome last time with Ryan Zinke, he needs to actually have a Cabinet member removed or convicted in order to truly be a worse president than Warren G. Harding.
How would that even happen with a Trumpist DOJ?
Trump would have to literally kill all lawyers. Think of the DoJ as a pile of folks who all took an oath to the law itself. When pundits complain that it’s being “weaponized”, they’re actually talking about a facet of overcriminalization where the DoJ’s limited attention can be controlled somewhat; it’s always going to be a full-power laser that targets what the law perceives as criminality.
In particular, the President doesn’t have the authority to tell the DoJ to stop an investigation, and the DoJ usually can’t tell individual prosecutors to stop filing motions. Trump wasn’t able to protect Cabinet member and Teapot Dome Candidate #2 Michael Flynn from prosecution, nor can he protect Eric Adams. The worst that he can do is a Saturday Night Massacre, where he fires lawyers until the investigations stop, and the entire pattern of special counsel is purpose-designed to prevent that from actually working.
Sweet summer child.
Because project 2025 and the mass deportations won’t actually solve the problems his base is feeling, and at a certain point this kind of scandal will either be his downfall or his only option to scapegoat someone else.
Such meme. Much wow. I see we’re continuing with giving dumb names to everything the Muskrat is involved in. Glad that hasn’t changed.
Kabosu didn’t die for this.
@BlueMonday1984 I am dead. From Fremdschämen
But Trump can’t explain things, and Urbit defies explanation. So does the statement “Trump explains Urbit” represent undefined behavior in English?
What is worse? Trump explaining urbit and coming close? Or him explaining it so wrong you feel the need to set the record straight about the gravest misconceptions? (“Trump said Elon invented it, but it actually was Yarvin, also as Elon didnt invent it, he certainly didnt say ‘good idea sir’ to Trump”).
I think in this case, the equivalent of a compiler error for undefined behavior would be a swiftly forgotten wire story entitled “Trump promotes cryptocurrency project” published on a Friday afternoon. Just one more scam among the flood, and not one that can be offered for easy monthly payments with a banner ad in the margins of an RSBN broadcast.
Yeah, everyone in the traditional media seems to be even more committed to sane-washing than they were in the lead up to the election.
Though the spike doge got today is definitely in the “laugh to avoid screaming” column.
begins invisible accordion
Then Curtis Marvin, very smart guy, went to MIT like my famous uncle, he said, “but sir, a monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors”
Many such cases, I said.
masterful endofunctor, sir
saltman: no better time to be a startup
Have any of the trumps been on the red scare pod yet? Feel like that’s on the timeline.
Four Passengers Die in Burning Tesla After Electronic Doors Seemingly Won’t Open
I always had a hunch Teslas were death traps but Jesus Christ
Yeah it’s sad. As the article points out similar incidents have happened repeatedly. Anyone who saw the door design could have (and did!) predict something like this would happen. My coworker was trapped in his Tesla in his garage for 15 minutes (and he wasn’t in a panic).
Look at the picture of the manual door release here: It’s pretty well hidden, you reach in and pull up on the door buttons.
… then scroll down and look at the picture of the rear door manual release. You have to pull off some trim from inside the pocket, pull off another panel, and then pull a cable.
… but wait! There’s more!
Note: Not all Model Y vehicles are equipped with a manual release for the rear doors.
Jesus, I hope the engineers who signed off on this think about what they’ve done and do better. I would say I hope someone regulated bad emergency door releases out of existence but… y’know.
Imagine what other flaws these cars have if the tried to ‘innovate’ like this on the solved technology that is fucking doors.
The lack of a speedometer in front of your face is a pretty glaring quality issue. You have to turn your head to look at the massive touchscreen. The one that replaces all other dashboards and most tactile controls
for manufacturing cost savingsto be a cool futuristic vehicle of the future.I won’t even start talking about the whole CyberStuck thing again because that’s too easy; except to point out that it has turn buttons on the steering wheel instead of a turn signal stalk, a shifter on the ceiling, and the steering wheel is not round.
I only recently bought my first car and it’s just old enough that it didn’t even have a backup camera until I got one installed. Honestly half the reason of buying used was so I could have a car without a touchscreen haha.
a shifter on the ceiling
I still can’t get over the design, engineering, and basic reasoning failures that must have gone into the decision to put supposedly the main way to change gears on the same type of mount that secures your rear-view mirror; a notably inconvenient and fragile place to put anything (and just like a rear-view mirror that got fucked with too intensely, a bunch of these shifters have already detached)
ofc it comes with a square wheel.
The austin allegro was far ahead of its time.
wikipedia picture of austin allegro steering wheel. It is square with deeply rounded corners.
absolutely delightful
Starting off this Stubsack with a solid essay I ran across: Don’t expect the tech platforms to help us this time.
A bit of an aside, but how did everyone decide to use the exact phrase “decisive victory” when congratulating president elect Trump? It keeps jumping out to me and I find it kind of weird. It has almost a militaristic tone.
IMO, coordinated media strategy. you can send all the people you want to congratulate you a prebaked message or tweet or whatever, saves them the trouble of writing something themselves. That or copy paste
I think that particular talking point also serves an exculpatory purpose: “If it was only a razor-thin victory I might understand being angry with me, but see it’s a decisive victory. He has the mandate
of heavenof the people (this is a Trumpian victory! not a Democrat failure!) ! It would be wrong not to congratulate him!”after this decisive victory, I guess I have no choice but to take this mask off, what a shame…
that+ losing the popular vote in 2016 must have really hurt that ego of his.
LLM Use cases:
- Crime
- Laziness
- Congratulating Donald Trump for anything ever
Maybe it’s one of those cliches like “bus plunge”
Also it isn’t? 50.2% to 48.1% of votes is not decisive in any sensible meaning of the word?
If you account for the turnout (around 60%) it means 30% voted for Trump and 28.9% for Harris, so “none of those” won decisively with 40%!
Losing every swing state and failing to even win the consolation trophy of the popular vote after even Hillary fucking Clinton managed that much is something I’d call getting your ass handed to you. The US election system is terrible, but it’s the game they were playing and Trump won hands down.
Also, not that it’s the point but I have to note that technically most election victories are decisive, in the sense that they resolve the winner with little to no ambiguity (which is usually the case, even when the margin is narrow). In that sense, the only way Trump’s victory is not decisive is if you contest the legitimacy of the whole election.
Also, not that it’s the point but I have to note that technically most election victories are decisive, in the sense that they resolve the winner with little to no ambiguity (which is usually the case, even when the margin is narrow). In that sense, the only way Trump’s victory is not decisive is if you contest the legitimacy of the whole election.
This is such pedantry that you might as well say “the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines decisive as…”
considering trump has spent the last four years pretending he won the previous election I actually do wonder if part of the subtext is “we acknowledge you won for real realsies and we cannot talk shit about you as a fake president”
Yea I know, had to get that digression out of my system, especially since you said “in any sensible meaning of the word” and all. Sorry, I didn’t mean to nuh-uh you on semantics, just point out something that tickled my pedantry sense.
Edit: I also brought it up because IMO “decisive” is a bit of an odd choice to describe election victory, unless referring to some grander context where the election marks a major historical turning point in national or international politics in favor of the winning side.
I see calling like Raegan’s margin in 1984 “decisive”
Could be they are sharing a bit of a media bubble. In 2016 there was a bit of a (pre election) “he will win in a landslide” thing due to Scottbert.
That they are posting this on substack, and how important that platform has become in the blogosphere is already a bit of a sign.
