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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
personal vent: at my job yesterday i had to come up with a few fake book titles/author combinations for a project. a fun little task and opportunity to hide some cheeky easter eggs. so, i came up with a few and then asked my coworkers to share in the fun. one of them though just couldnāt come up with anything at all, and eventually just resorted to āasking chat gptā.
mind you, i work a creative job, and so do my coworkers. this is a minor thing i guess, but it just made me very sad. how could you just outsource your creative joy to some mindless word salad machine?
God, we had so much fun doing this at my uni when creating an example DB table for an exam (only it was fake song/band combinations). Are you sure your coworker isnāt a robot themselves?
This story gives āBezos buying random cassettes at the gas stationā doesnāt it?
Man, knowing nothing else about your coworker, they sound like a completely joyless person. Coming up with fake titles for things is like, such a high fun-to-effort ratio. āCreativity and the essence of Human Experienceā by Chat GPT. Boom, thereās one. āCooking With Olive Oilā by Sam Altman. āIQ184ā by Harukiezer Murakowsky. This is so fun and easy that itās basically hack outside of situations where it is solicited.
not joyless at all. i suspect theyāre creatively worn out. if you make a job out of your hobby, etc etc. combine that with habitual chatbot use and there you go. itās overall just grim honestly. iāll change vocation though if iām ever forced to partake in the slop at work, thankfully so far that hasnāt happened yet.
Ah, gotcha. fwiw I wasnāt saying that to say ājoyless people are badā; burnout also tends to look like joylessness.
Is NP P or is NP not P, thats the question, by Scott Scottersons-Scottsson
Quantum Computing Since Diogenes by Karl Snarx
Sorry to ask to dissect the frog, but whatās the story behind Altman and olive oil?
Kind of a fluff story (archive) where saltyās douchiness is on full display.
I referenced it because fake book titles are throwaway jokes, you can reference something hyperspecific and not have to worry about whether or not someone will get it, because they might not even notice it at all.
They put āenvironmental impact of AIā on the front of the student newspaper (below the fold, but still), then you flip and see this
kinda feeling two steps forward, three steps back rn on top of all the other drama on campus
They say āLudditesā as if itās a bad thingā¦
āWe believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company thatās bringing those people to lifeā
This quote is justā¦ something.
Is the plan to literally create 8 billion podcasts in the near future? This company doesnāt think that might be a tad excessive?
Tech take from the near future: Podcast life begins at conception i.e. the instant one thinks the inside thoughts should be outside
new extreme strain of catholicism: life begins at conceptualization
Uh I think we are very quickly and dangerously approaching Dawkinsian Meme Theory
RAIDEN!
Ed: Iām sure thereās an MGS2 quote I canāt think of that would make this actually funny, but here we are.
black mirror enhancement: because the algorithms involved may present multiple likely fits to any given input, each output is also considered a conception and given due protection (even if not used)
deleted by creator
The Ai bubble has taught me that the luddites are really misunderstood.
The Luddites were a 19th century guerrilla movement that smashed textile machines, burned factories and threatened their owners. But they were not motivated by a fear of technology [ā¦] the luddites [ā¦] were engaged in the most science-fictional exercise imaginable ā asking not what a technology does, but who it does it to and who it does it for. The Luddites, you see, were skilled weavers whose intense physical labor produced the textiles that clothed the nation. The difficulty of their trade ā both in terms of esoteric knowledge and physical prowess ā allowed them to command high wages and good working conditions.
All that was threatened by the advent of textile machines, which produced more fabric in less time, and required less skill. The owners of textile factories bought these machines with profits derived from the weaversā labor, and then used those machines to grind down the weavers. Their hours got longer, their pay got shorter, and many of them were maimed or killed by the new machines.
Weaving engines are ingenious and delightful machines. The Luddites had no beef with the machines ā their cause was the social relations that governed those machines. By painting Luddites as mere technophobes, we strip ourselves of the ability to learn from history. The lesson of the Industrial Revolution is that merely asking what a machine does and not who it does it for and to can lead to literal genocide.
The spectre of Marx nods in approval
A full timeline on the RubyGems takeover has been put together - looks like the entire situationās been caused by pressure from Shopify.
Whoās left to do actual work? Who would start a new project that depends on these institutions? Does ruby just die now?
Also:
When the Advanced Custom Fields plugin was stolen by WordPress, DHH said āThis is totally crazy. Like if the operators of rubygems dot org just decided to expropriate the official Rails gems, hand over control to a new team, and lock the core team out of it. Weāre in uncharted and dangerous territory for open source now. What a sad sight."
lol
Iām curious whether you or @BlueMonday1984@awful.systems are familiar with the concept of MINASWAN. The only time itās appeared in the discussion is in one of the apologies posted by one of the Ruby Central board members, as their signoff line. Quoting a 2016 analysis of MINASWAN in which it is argued that Rubyās central tenet is not MINASWAN, but wa (å):
Just for the record, MINASWAN is at least half true. Matz is nice. ā¦ I would not call DHH nice. ā¦ So if MINASWAN is really a basic truth about the Ruby culture, then how does DHH fit in at all? ā¦ MINASWAN is garbage. Itād be more accurate to say, āRuby showcases the Japanese value of å, but we are arrogant Americans, so we reduce this to a really basic American idea, harshly compressing it in the process to a state where it cannot possibly mean anything any more, instead of bothering to learn something about the outside world for once.ā But MINASWAN was already a long acronym, so I guess they had to draw the line at RSTJVOåBWAAASWRTTARBAIHCIITPTASWICPMAAMIOBTLSATOWFO.
Also, I really think itās worth understanding that Ruby is not at risk here. Ever since the release of RPG Maker XP in 2005, Ruby has been a staple of embedded scripting for game engines. Really, what weāre seeing here is the demise of Rails.
Does ruby just die now?
Part of the background to this issue is the development of
rvwhich apparently offers a future where rubygems is much less important, and some folk seem to be taking that as a threat.Whether or not the new tooling delivers, the rubygems debacle has probably helped the new project considerably.
Itād be lovely to see the correct folks build a better one with blackjack and webhooks.
Whoās left to do actual work? Who would start a new project that depends on these institutions? Does ruby just die now?
Honestly, it probably will. The RubyGems takeover shattered any trust people had in the Ruby ecosystem - thatās something which is damn-nigh impossible to recover from.
I have no idea about Ruby or the politics behind the scenes, but I do know who DHH is and so it seems like literally none of this wouldāve happened if not for point 2. on the list?? Just like, donāt platform the rancid toxic cesspit of a man and youāre fine??
Todayās related news: the tailwind css guy is a big fan of dhh and the rubygems takeover.
https://bsky.app/profile/jaredwhite.indieweb.social.ap.brid.gy/post/3lzofv4wi4yz2
I miss the days when being publicly fashy was considered poor pr, but on the other hand it does make it a lot easier to avoid their companies and products.
Tailwind is pointless, incidentally.
Harvard Business Review: AI-Generated āWorkslopā Is Destroying Productivity
[ā¦] Employees are using AI tools to create low-effort, passable looking work that ends up creating more work for their coworkers. On social media, which is increasingly clogged with low-quality AI-generated posts, this content is often referred to as āAI slop.ā In the context of work, we refer to this phenomenon as āworkslop.ā We define workslop as AI generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task.
This scream into the void has been on my mind for a while: Apparently I work for an AI company now.
Kinda.
When I had the interviews with my now-employer at the beginning of the year, they were an open-source cybersecurity startup. Everything sounded great, we got along, signed the contract. I took a long vacation before starting the position, and when I got back, I wasā¦ amused? bewildered? to find that a), we are no longer open source; and b), we have pivoted, hard, towards AI.
Luckily, I still get to work 100% of the time on the core (cybersecurity) product (which is actually a really good and useful thing, sorry, not going to be more specific), itās just that part of the dev team, as well as all of marketing and sales, now work on building and selling an AI product built on top of that.
At least itās not a wrapper around ChatGPT, and does offer something kinda new and actually beneficial, but still, itās an LLM product.
Now, for the actual scream-into-the-void: Once a month, in a company-wide meeting, I have to observe how people praise LLMs to the the moon, attribute nonsense or downright bugs to something akin to proto-sentience, and give absurd estimates of profitability based on the idea that AI will totally be used everywhere and by everyone, very soon now, youāll see. What finally prompted (pun intended) me to post this is the CEO yesterday unironically referencing AI 2027ās āpredictionsā.
Canāt wait for the bubble to burst. Iām really curious to see if Iāll keep my job through that. At the end of the day, the stuff I work on luckily has nothing to do with AI, and basically every other application of the product makes more sense; but now the entire company has shifted gears towards AIā¦
You would hope that, if they take their job seriously, the managers who predict AI mooning, that they also write predictions for the other situations. And not just the best case scenarios.
I meanā¦ yeah, you would hope that, wouldnāt you? And to be fair, they were selling the product beforehand as well. Itās just apparently a lot easier to sell the AI angle right now.
Yeah hope for your job that they donāt bet the company on the 2027 thing. Because that would be quite the failure of management. If they just use it as a tool for sales I get it (donāt like it, but I get it), the CEO being all in on it is worrying though, which is why I hope he has also made predictions for what if he is wrong and AI never advances anymore significantly (or even becomes a liability as a sales tool).
Realistically, the bubble bursting just means going back to pre-2025 target markets. But who knows.
For the company hopefully, but it could also turn into āany mention of AI gets interpreted as a bad signā and you need to pivot before that affects the bottom line. (clearly the pendulum is towards it being a good sign atm).
crikey. I assume the CV is in good order and kept updated on the job sites just to see what comes in.
Yeahā¦ (Un)fortunately, everything not AI-related is pretty great in regards to the company, so Iāve decided to stick with it and hopefully still be there after the bubble bursts, unless they try to reassign me to the AI-project, then Iām gone.
take care and step carefully. thereās a moment where the stress from working for a company with goals that counter your personal ethics is going to be hard to bear, and the worst thing you can do then is to change your value system to reduce the cognitive dissonance.
Thanks, I appreciate the concern. Luckily, the entire core dev team is very critical/cynical about AI, itās not just me, everyone I directly work with also wants to build the product for its intended purposes, not for AI-use. I think that somewhat lessens the pressure to go with the narrative.
Plus, I canāt see that happening while participating in discussions on this lemmy instance :D
In any case, thank you for the sound advice,
Mawhrin-SkelFlere-Imsaho!
They banned the guy that wrote the theil antichrist notes.
https://sfstandard.com/2025/09/23/spilled-peter-thiel-s-antichrist-secrets-now-s-banned-lectures/
Stephens and Thiel did not respond to requests for comment. Kulkarni declined to answer questions about the lectures, citing the off-the-record policy.
legal threats?
Doubt that is legal, but yeah good luck suing Thiel over an event like this and keeping a job. Stuff is so fucked. Remember when hackers were proud to leak this stuff, like how people worked together to go after scientology.
The Nerd Reich has a post with criticisms of Thielās Antichrist lectures, including some from European Catholic theologians.
it would be very funny if Rocco Basilicoās legacy was that his name bore resemblance to Roko Basilisk and nothing else
image desc
Quote tweet: āmy name is rokos basilisk and iām making artificial intelligence that you put on your bodyā
Quoted tweet: an embedded article platforming Metaās Chief Wearables Officer named āRocco Basilicoā
My name is Rocco Paāperclip Basilico Yudkowski Wayā¦
Just got back from the Ted Chiang talk at the law school, talk was good but all the Q&A was lawyers ask-telling about LLMs. Not a single question for him about his fiction. :(
Ted Chiang rules.
Cloudflare sponsors Ladybird and Omarchy, techfash workfare
TIL about Omarchy.
Of course it uses Hyprland. Of course the demo video on the website shows using Grok in it.
Still canāt believe that choosing a Linux distribution now involves decision-making factors like āwhatās their take on fascismā. But I guess the real problem is that such questions werenāt asked for way too long before.
Remind me: why is Hyprland bad? I donāt doubt it is, I just need it to add to my mental list of stuff to avoid.
https://drewdevault.com/2023/09/17/Hyprland-toxicity.html
tl;dr: incredibly toxic transphobic community enabled by the devs
why the hell are they sponsoring omarchy
how is a customized hyprland config āhelping the open webāMaybe more on-purpose obscurantism ala Urbit?
Damn, I was kinda hoping the Ladybird guy wouldnāt turn out awful but nah, canāt have shit in IT.
has there been more indication of him being a bit fashy since that one github issue? havenāt been following it that much.
he keeps hanging out with fascists and receiving money from organizations that support fascists and something about his personal brand in interviews being wearing āBig Tech is gangstalking meā t-shirts also very much rubs me the wrong way
ladybird is a ridiculously unserious project (last I heard they were considering a rewrite in Swift and ignoring everyone who told them why thatās a terrible idea, maybe theyāve given up on that by now) and I frankly have no idea why itās being hyped over Servo as an independent browser project other than a general willingness in tech to play ball with weird little fascists
e: also this lobste.rs subthread
fucking hell. but in hindsight, the vibes were always just a little bit off in his videos. guess servo is the only hope for a decent browser free from corporate/technofascist garbage.
nice, good collection of links, will help next time I need to find it. couple weeks ago I mentioned it on masto and I had someone Very Huffily reply to me (a situation I resolved by simply blocking them, gfy with that nonsense)
The lobsters thread linked in a sibling comment has more examples, but hereās him eulogizing Charlie Kirk in a nazi bar https://nitter.net/awesomekling/status/1966456391146606806
as a bonus here he does a āiām not usually political, but the left is evilā https://nitter.net/awesomekling/status/1967493595545682220 great, just great
real fucking weird tweet from ronacher there too
I never got much of a sense that Charlie would be open to have his own mind changed
No way, really? Are you really doubting the professional nazi trollās desire to have his convictions challenged through good faith dialogue?
no, you see, exchange of opinions with charlie kirk was supposed to work like this: you get in with your opinion and leave with his
It is well known that the Marketplace Of Ideas is Zero Sum
I was hoping it was meant as a trollish sort of post (because anybody who didnāt realize that soon after ~2016 has not paid any attention), but then he did a bothsides. Really doing a ālets be open to the idea of gay people being stoned (and that isnāt even the correct quote, it is put to death, leviticus is specific (it also seems to only be about people in Israel, or else the land will vomit you out, and old testament. Kirk wasnāt even a good bible scholar). and trans people being eradicatedā.
dunno, I seem to recall Iāve seen a couple other stinkers from ronacher lately. dudeās also full on the LLM bandwagon iirc
probably need to keep a notes file
Red siteās having a normal one about it
Usual suspects weighing in.
I mean, of course they are. Perfect culture fit, both projects.
Starting this Stubsack off with Brian Merchantās newest article: The Luddite Renaissance is in full swing
From RationalWiki: Yud claims that the only women he gave orgasms for completing math homework was his future wife. If he ever denied dating / playing with people from his foundation or making people who wanted to play with him fill out an IQ test I canāt find it.
Any mention of my name is now often met by a claim that I keep a harem of young submissive female mathematicians who submit to me and solve math problems for me, and that I call them my āmath petsā.
I see he did the whole āmaking an accusation sound more silly to undermine itā thing here, nobody said things about a whole harem of mathematicians, who just solve math problems. Nice steelman. I expect nothing less of somebody who was the subject of seven broadway plays.
(Amazing he basically admits the story is true after that, but continues to debunk the strawman).
I also donāt understand why he objects to that story given that it gets people talking about him as weird but able to get what he wants? But the claim that he dated women at MIRI and wanted them to provide free labour attacks the narrative that MIRI is nothing like Leverage Research or the Zizians.
Yeah, I thought that it read like a guy who constantly denies rumors about having an enormous wang.
Dude is a serious narcissist.
and the person who made up the āmath petsā allegation claimed no such source
I was about to point out that I think this is the second time he claimed math pets had absolutely no basis in reality (and someone countered with a source that forced him to) but I double checked the posting date and this is the example I was already thinking of. Also, we have supporting sources that didnāt say as much directly but implied it heavily: https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/42iv09/a_yudkowsky_blast_from_the_past_his_okcupid/ or like, the entire first two thirds of the plot of Planecrash!
TvTropes says that the Yudkowsky-insert protagonist of Project Lawful/Planecrash! is driven by desire to have 144 children (and prove his society wrong for not paying him to have 144) which sounds like Scott Aaaronson? Did they know each other in those days?
I am glad that all I knew about Yud in 2022 was āwrote a Harry Potter fanfic that I did not finish, and runs a website where people pretend to be experts.ā
š¶ I would sire a gross of kids / and I would sire a whole gross more / just to be the man who dropped full two gross kids in baskets at your door š¶
This is the first time that I have viscerally rejected reading the epigrammatic quotes at the top of a TV Tropes page. Like, itās TV Tropes, and I just closed the tab. Dear sweet and crunchy lord.
He does not admit āI was wrongā very often does he? And if I were a kinky polyamorist, I would be much quicker to respond to āhave you dated staff at the organization that funds your life?ā than ādid you play a specific scene?ā
Planecrash seems to be the 1.8 million word Pathfinder fic with tumblrās UnitOfCaring
And how the eff does someone claim to love Pterry in his dating profile but see people as things? Greg Egan is basilisk-unfriendly too.
Some people think ChatGPT has a place writing things like news briefs, stuff written to a specific style and tone and, yāknow, kinda boring.
So Science did a study.
ChatGPT failed.
Why? It got stuff wrong. āAlso, extensive editing for hyperbole was needed.ā https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/can-chatgpt-help-science-writers
Cloudflare seems to be trying to make a shitcoin https://netdollar.cloudflare.com/
Okay, letās see what the dumbshits are trying to sell this time
(This took longer than Iād liked, because copy-paste is pretty laggy on Cloudflareās shit-ass page)
Built for the rise of agents and machines, NET Dollar will enable seamless, automated transactions without human intervention.
āAgentsā are automatic data breach machines, letting them repeat that time they stole vibe-codersā crypto on a larger scale is a terrible idea
The rise of autonomous agents and connected devices is creating a new economic paradigm
Autonomous agents donāt exist, and the only ānew economic paradigmā being made is one where tech is completely unmoored from reality
These systems need a reliable medium of exchange that can handle high-frequency, automated transactions without human intervention.
See my previous point
Rules, triggers, and workflows can be embedded directly into payments, making them smarter and adaptable.
Went so well for Wolf Game, didnāt it?
NET Dollar will work across networks and ecosystems, enabling frictionless, global commerce.
And by āfrictionless, global commerceā, I presume they mean āsanctions evasion and ransomwareā
Every coin will be fully collateralized by a U.S. dollar, ensuring transparency, reliability, and price stability.
NET Dollar will be made available soon.
How about never.
Cloudflare is about to get really familiar with North Koreans.
