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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.

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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 2nd February 2025 (awful.systems)
submitted 6 days ago by blakestacey@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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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.)

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[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (2 children)

Hackernews woke up feeling like fascism ( make sure to enable dead + flagged comments if you hate yourself):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42905937

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42897696

(Two comment threads about the CDC purging "woke" research, the comments are bad even by HN standards)

Gee given a forum full of hackers you'd expect them to be against arbitrary removal of scientific studies. What happened to "information wants to be free"?

Bonus US terribleness: the NTSB suddenly thinks Twitter* is the bee's knees and way better than email! What coincidental timing https://xcancel.com/NTSB_Newsroom/status/1885734974298435943

Also I know I know, more US politics. It turns out silicon valley fascists have gained power so expect this to keep happening for the forseeable future 🙃.

These past two weeks have made me very uncomfortable working in Silicon Valley, I know last time I said I was planning to get out; but now it feels urgent both for my own well being, and to stop contributing to this industry. In trans communities we immediately saw coupy stuff** for the attempted transgender genocide that it is, the wider public and media is waking up to this very slowly.

* An account-only platform that sometimes bans US citizens for being cool.

** If there's interest I could try turning all of this into a top level post on morewrite or techtakes. I've been trying to avoid inundating people with US politics, but it's extremely bad. Like constitutional crisis, rise of techno-fascism, dismantling of the administrative state, transgender extermination, put career roadblocks in front of minorities bad.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 2 points 41 minutes ago

I've been trying to avoid inundating people with US politics, but it's extremely bad. Like constitutional crisis, rise of techno-fascism, dismantling of the administrative state, transgender extermination, put career roadblocks in front of minorities bad.

yep. haven’t been posting about it here because not sure where here we’d put it (while a lot of it is well within the orbit of regular content and posters) and it’s not quite entirely anything I can do anything about but offer words of comfort and keeping watch on the nasty shit, but been speaking a lot with friends in places (signal generally, or some other spaces we actually control (i.e. not discord, etc))

I feel moderately confident that at least for a bit of the foreseeable future we’ll be okay this side of the world, but I also know enough history and context to know how vacuous that is by itself. these fuckers won’t stop.

I also wish I could just make people understand that none of this is by mistake, none of this is these fuckers just finding some shit they disagree with under the seat cushions. I wish I could make them understand the depth and extent of planning and preparation that went into this, the sheer commitment behind it all. but too often such concerns would all be received as this toot put it

there’s so much more I could say but I guess I’ll leave it there for now

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 1 points 52 minutes ago* (last edited 52 minutes ago)

I saw (via Stross) a mention that passport issuance was already starting to hit weirdness too

e: this one

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 7 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sT5MX8jK9tHiBM5NK/re-taste

A random walk, in retrospect, looks like like directional movement at a speed of √n.

No it doesn't, you fools, you absolute rubes

If you consider your normative values to be true, then everything looks like progress.

wat

Scott Alexander was a founding though-leader behind the Lightcone salon.

Your future region of the spacetime diagram is inside a locker, nerd

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 7 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (2 children)

Aaaah my eyes

The Great City was built on a modular grid system designed to eliminate geography.

This future doesn't have hexagon city so I already hate it. Hexagons are the bestagons.

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 3 points 1 hour ago

I mean, we tried the whole "fuck yeah grids fuck local geography" thing. That was fucking Le Corbusier and friends' whole deal. And it created dead cities and/or places in cities that people hated to live in.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Hexagons are great, would love to see some hexagon based city plans. Especially if they have designed for walkability and public transport!

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Heck yeah walkability!

Also note how the author said the city transcends geography, as if geography was something useless or to be overcome by an advanced civilization (except for a bunch of artsy folks tucked away in a corner I guess?). But humans need variety. I would get so antsy if I lived in a perfect grid city with nothing out of order (or even a perfect hexagon city, no offense hexagons). There need to be paths and trails and rivers. There need to be trees and mountains in the distance.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 3 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah weird thing to eliminate from a city, or weird thing to see without context. Basically: Wrongers try and envision a better world without deleting the parts of human experience that make it meaningful or worthwhile challenge (impossible)

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 3 points 1 hour ago

But think of how high the number can go!

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 3 points 3 hours ago

The ideal wronger future after all is a simulation where human experience is deleted altogether!

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 5 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

https://xcancel.com/tsarnick/status/1882927003508359242

Eliezer Yudkowsky says he would like to be a post-human some day, but the way to get there is by experimenting on augmenting biological intelligence through adult gene therapy targeting the human brain with suicide volunteers who may end up schizophrenic rather than taking a "leap of death" into unconstrained AI development

(found via flipping through LW for sneerable posts/comments)

[–] ShakingMyHead@awful.systems 1 points 7 minutes ago

Am I reading this right? Is he suggesting doing experiments on the suicidally depressed?

[–] istewart@awful.systems 4 points 5 hours ago

L. Ron Hubbard says new "high-voltage" e-meters set to enter testing with Sea Org volunteers, possibly capable of purging body thetans at an unlimited rate

[–] hrrrngh@awful.systems 5 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Some light uplifting news amid *gestures at everything*. I saw this a minute ago from the guy who runs TheCodingHorror and co-founded Stack Overflow and Discourse: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ifd3ys/im_giving_away_half_my_wealth_to_make_the/

No EA stuff! $1M each going to eight great charities and non-profits as far as I can tell: Children’s Hunger Fund, First Generation Investors, Global Refuge, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, PEN America, The Trevor Project, Planned Parenthood, and Team Rubicon. (from The Trevor Project's blog post)

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 7 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (3 children)

Project Gutenberg has AI generated summaries?? How the mighty have fallen.

I was researching a bizarre old sci-fi book I once read (don't judge; bad old sci-fi is a trip), and Gutenberg's summary claims it was written in the 21st century. There's actually no accurate information about this book online, as far as I can tell the earliest reference is Project Gutenberg typing it up into a text file in 2003.

Given that it's in the public domain, no one has any idea where it came from, and it has old sci-fi vibes; I strongly suspect it was written in the 20th century*; making that misinformation. It's also just a bad summary that, while not wrong, doesn't really reflect the (amusingly weird) themes of the book.

Anyway someone needs to tell them that no information is leagues better than misinformation.

* maybe the '70s give or take but I'm not a professional date guesser

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

It definitely has that old sci-fi weirdness to it, but the earliest edition I'm seeing on goodreads was in '03.

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 2 points 54 minutes ago

The file metadata of the oldest copy on the gutenberg webserver says 2003 -- and the document itself says Gutenberg created it in 2003 and published it in 2005 (whatever that means, maybe they were delaying ebook releases to ensure a steady stream)

Anyway this 2003 copy had their public domain boilerplate; it was described as a book in the public domain.

There are indeed a lot of websites about this, but none with any more information that Project Gutenberg so I'm guessing they all trace back to the Gutenberg release. Probably you'd have to find some physical information about it in an actual library to trace it further.

But I'm not like a professional book researcher or anything, that's just my opinion!

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

That is indeed troubling, casts a shadow on Project Gutenberg's judgement. Now I wonder how long until Wikipedia falls too :( Gosh, I miss being excited about new tech. Now new tech is just making things worse.

About that book, so it is more "good bad" instead of "bad bad"? Maybe I'll take a look, some light/weird reading might be better than doomscrolling (and these days there's so much doom to scroll).

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 4 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

I don't remember (reading it was a bit like a fever dream) but there's a non-zero chance it has racist vibes in parts you have been warned.

But oh so quotable:

We have been treating the trees on a ten mile radius with an anti-flammatory solution for several years as well, and it is quite impossible to set them on fire.

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 3 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Okay thanks for the heads-up, I will give it a try. The "Note to the reader" it starts with is already pretty wild... (unless that's just part of the fiction. Edit: I assume it's part of the fiction)

Edit: okay... a few pages in, I don't think I can do this. The feeling of reading the first chapter reminded me a little of reading the timecube website.

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 5 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

I had an idea recently that some of the agile rituals we engage in are actually spiritual rituals. Like, they are these weird kind of shared prayers. The thought came as a result of a YouTube video of monks I happened to watch. The day of some monasteries is strictly regimented, often starting at 4am. There are designated times to pray individually, pray as a group, sing as a group, eat and work. Every monk is required to attend and failing to regularly attend the communal prayers, meals or songs can be grounds for the monk to be asked to leave the monastery. It made me think about how rituals are valuable as a recurring communal activity, even more so than their content. That is, just the monks all congregating in the chapel together may be more important than the prayers they say. I mean, it must suck to show up at 5am to chant some hymns but then you look around and see all of your brothers dutifully there and it may have some kind of psychological affect. I'm a proponent of remote work but I often wonder if I am being selfish. Monasteries are notoriously ridiculously productive and I wonder how much those rituals play into their success.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Days since tech bro tried to reinvent religion so they could javascript faster: 0. We have sold the 1 sign and donated the money.

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

on a side note I found out what "agile" is a few months ago and I think I'd rather go back to working retail than do the little morning circlejerk thing. dehumanizing

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 4 points 11 hours ago

Rituals can be good, but yeah, agile standup meetings are not the good kind. Luckily I don't have them daily... several times a week is already draining enough. If they were daily, I would just burn out. And the standups are IMO not even the worst part of agile...

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 6 points 21 hours ago (5 children)

deepseek goes wild https://www.reddit.com/r/mathmemes/comments/1iehx5f/what_the_fuck/

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 4 points 11 hours ago

I have to keep reminding myself that this is the technology that they all claim will soon do all our work, our arts, our science, everything.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 18 hours ago

73 might be overrepresented because it's used by radioamateurs as a signoff. you can see it in old forums in comment footers as 73 [callsign]

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 6 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

oh well done, you've gone and made logorrhea a feature

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 18 hours ago

these chatbots are billed by token, so it only makes sense

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 7 points 21 hours ago

you'd think that $200+ entertainment would be better

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 1 day ago

People have worked out how to cram DeepSeek onto a Raspberry Pi

Anyways, here's a quasi-related sidenote:

Part of me suspects DeepSeek is gonna quickly carve out a good chunk of the market for itself - for SaaS services looking for spicy autocomplete or a slop generator to bolt on to their products, DeepSeek's high efficiency gives them a way to do it that doesn't immediately blow a massive hole in their finances.

[–] ShakingMyHead@awful.systems 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Oh no it's more US politics.

So as part of the ongoing administrative coup; federal employees have been receiving stupid emails from what everyone assumes is Elon Musk (since it's the exact same playbook as the twitter firings). But they apparently royally flubbed up NOAA's email security in the process so the employees are getting constant spam through an unsecured broadcast address.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago

Finally a thing Musk prob did all by himself, after the printout your code thing I assume his technical knowledge is firmly stuck in 1999.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 13 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Getting pretty tired of new coworker spruiking copilot all the time, please send me your sympathy and energy so I can weather this trial

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

You have my sympathy! Is the worst part that you have to review the slop or its general presence at all?

Asking because at my workplace it will be allowed soon, and some coworkers are unfortunately looking forward to it, and I'm horrified, especially by the thought of having to do code review then...

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 1 points 5 hours ago

It’s more the latter. I can’t really stop anyone from using it, and playing the game of “can you tell if this snippet of code was LLMed” is a fools errand, so I have to choose to ignore that part of it. Testing de-risks bad code, but there is never enough testing… well, there’s only so much I can do within my pay grade.

I’ve since asked this person to stop talking about their copilot usage, so this issue has been resolved, for now.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago

I have added your coworker to the list of people I will imagine being tortured in the future. Im no robotgod but it is the best I can do.

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[–] dgerard@awful.systems 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

lol holy shit this just came into reddit sneerclub (and was zapped immediately)

user HardboiledHack

also tried r/lesswrong and r/slatestarcodex

i'm sure the guardian can be trusted to report on anything involving trans people

the journalist is J Oliver Conroy https://www.theguardian.com/profile/j-oliver-conroy who now writes for the Washington Examiner and used to write for Quillette (the article has been deleted from the site) https://archive.is/aSBjW

from http://joliverconroy.net/

I am a journalist who specializes in features and profiles. I write about the American right, ideologues, intellectuals, extremist movements, the culture wars, true crime, and strange events and strange places.

by "about", he means "for"

I'm a journalist at the Guardian working on a piece about the Zizians. If you have encountered members of the group or had interactions with them, or know people who have, please contact me: oliver.conroy@theguardian.com.

I'm also interested in chatting with people who can talk about the Zizians' beliefs and where they fit (or did not fit) in the rationalist/EA/risk community.

I prefer to talk to people on the record but if you prefer to be anonymous/speak on background/etc. that can possibly be arranged.

Thanks very much.

i've also warned over at the old place

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