TechTakes

1915 readers

88 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

dgerard@awful.systems

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 11th May 2025 (awful.systems)

submitted 1 month ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

195 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

(page 3) 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 8 points 4 weeks ago

Quick update from Brian Merchant: he's looking for stories about AI screwing people over.

If you've got any, send them to AIKilledMyJob@pm.me

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 8 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (11 children)

Derek Lowe comes in with another sneer at techbro-optimism of collection of AI startup talking points wearing skins of people saying that definitely all medicine is solved, just throw more compute at it https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/end-disease (it's two weeks old, but it's not like any of you read him regularly). more relevantly he also links all his previous writing on this topic, starting with 2007 piece about techbros wondering why didn't anyone brought SV Disruption™ to pharma: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/andy-grove-rich-famous-smart-and-wrong

interesting to see that he reaches some of pretty much compsci-flavoured conclusions despite not having compsci background. still not exactly there yet as he leaves some possibility of AGI

load more comments (11 replies)

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 7 points 4 weeks ago

New piece from Brian Merchant: Four bad AI futures arrived this week, taking a listicle-ish approach to some of the horrific things AI has unleashed upon us.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 7 points 1 month ago

whoops e_thread

so it looks like openai has bought a promptfondler IDE

some of the coverage is .. something:

Windsurf brings unique strengths to the table, including a seamless UI, faster performance, and a focus on user privacy

(and yes, the "editor" is once again VSCode With Extras)

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Unrelated to my recent posts on sciencefiction, and not sure if this is something I should ask here publically but it is the easiest place I could think off. But @dgerard@awful.systems is Rationalwiki dead or not?

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

broadcom continuing to make vmware even more unappealing

bit of a fucking weird thing to do, too. guess they’re going full oracle?

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 6 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

A minor controversy over the Touhou 20 demo containing generative AI background textures has been making the rounds on ~~the weeaboo parts of~~ social media: https://www.reddit.com/r/touhou/comments/1kf4h6e/touhou_20_spellcard_backgrounds_might_be/

https://imgur.com/a/curious-th20-textures-xq8mm5i

I have made it my whole life without really figuring out what Touhou is all about, but it seems like at least the English fandom isn't really a fan of generative AI. A lot of them disappointed (or hoping it was an accident due to using stock art websites). Touhou 19 had an arguably anti-AI afterword.

Edit: some more (kinda confusing) details https://bsky.app/profile/richardeffendi.bsky.social/post/3lorvs4jfps2e

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments