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.)
Haven’t read the source paper yet (apparently it came out two weeks ago, maybe it already got sneered?) but this might be fun: OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws.
Full of little gems like
Beyond proving hallucinations were inevitable, the OpenAI research revealed that industry evaluation methods actively encouraged the problem. Analysis of popular benchmarks, including GPQA, MMLU-Pro, and SWE-bench, found nine out of 10 major evaluations used binary grading that penalized “I don’t know” responses while rewarding incorrect but confident answers.
I had assumed that the problem was solely technical, that the fundamental design of LLMs meant that they’d always generate bullshit, but it hadn’t occurred to me that the developers actively selected for bullshit generation.
It seems kinda obvious in retrospect… slick bullshit extrusion is very much what is selling “AI” to upper management.
Well, I’ll give them the text equivalent of a “you tried” sticker for finally admitting their automatic bullshit machines produce (gasp) bullshit, but the main sneerable thing I see is the ISO Standard OpenAI Anthropomo-
the developers actively selected for bullshit generation
every_tf2_class_laughing_at_once.wav
(Maximising lies extruded per ocean boiled was definitely what they were going for in hindsight, but it geniunely cracks me up to see them come out and just say it)
There’s an ACX guest post rehashing the history of Project Xanadu, an important example of historical vaporware that influenced computing primarily through opinions and memes. This particular take is focused on Great Men and isn’t really up to the task of humanizing the participants, but they do put a good spotlight on the cults that affected some of those Great Men. They link to a 1995 article in Wired that tells the same story in a better way, including the “six months” joke. The orange site points out a key weakness that neither narrative quite gets around to admitting: Xanadu’s micropayment-oriented transclusion-and-royalty system is impossible to correctly implement, due to a mismatch between information theory and copyright; given the ability to copy text, copyright is provably absurd. My choice sneer is to examine a comment from one of the ACX regulars:
The details lie in the devil, for sure…you’d want the price [of making a change to a document] low enough (zero?) not to incur Trivial Inconvenience penalties for prosocial things like building wikis, yet high enough to make the David Gerards of the world think twice.
Disclaimer: I know Miller and Tribble from the capability-theory community. My language Monte is literally a Python-flavored version of Miller’s E (WP, esolangs), which is itself a Java-flavored version of Tribble’s Joule. I’m in the minority of a community split over the concept of agoric programming, where a program can expand to use additional resources on demand. To me, an agoric program is flexible about the resources allocated to it and designed to dynamically reconfigure itself; to Miller and others, an agoric program is run on a blockchain and uses micropayments to expand. Maybe more pointedly, to me a smart contract is what a vending machine proffers (see How to interpret a vending machine: smart contracts and contract law for more words); to them, a smart contract is how a social network or augmented/virtual reality allows its inhabitants to construct non-primitive objects.
OK I think this has gone a bit too far
I almost wanna use some reverse psychology to try and make him stop.
‘hey im from sneerclub and we are loving this please dont stop this strike’
(I mean he clearly mentally prepped against, arguments and even force (and billionaires), but not someone just making fun of him. Of course he prob doesnt know about any of these places and hasn’t build us up to Boogeyman status, but imagine it worked)
Also the point is to get attention of broader public, not just those at the labs.
The highest possible attainment, to generate several popular memes about crazy cult member does something slightly odd to show his devotion, but isn’t brave enough to do it outside his own home
disclaimer
memes often contain mild inaccuracies
The way typical US educations (idk about other parts of the world) portray historical protests and activist movements has been disastrous to the ability of people to actually succeed in their activism. My cynical assumption is that is exactly as intended.
What do you mean by this?
But he’s getting
so much attention.
If you use physical force to stop me however, I will make it a priority to ensure you regret doing this when you are on your deathbed. You have probably never met an enemy as intelligent, creative and willing to play the decade-long game as I am.
“When you were partying, I studied the blade.”
NoEstuans interius
Ira vehementi.
Estuans interius
Ira vehementi.
Sephiroth!
E: Have a snickers you turn into a real Sephiroth when you are hungry.
Now I want to mod an item that reverts a boss fight to phase 1.
“Have a snickers, Malenia, you turn into a real Goddess of Rot when you’re hungry”
“‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’ - wait, now I’m really hungry”
“I have a particular set of skills. Mostly 20,000-word blog posts.”
Hmm, it’s still on the funny side of graph for me. I think it could go on for at least another week.
Depends if he’s cheating or not, heh
the talking point about disparaging terms for AI users by choice “I came up with a racist-sounding term for AI users, so if you say ‘clanker’ you must be a racist” is so fucking stupid it’s gotta be some sort of op
(esp when the made-up racist-sounding term turns out to have originated with Warren fucking Ellis)
i am extremely disappointed that awful systems users have fallen for it for a moment
Side note: The way I’ve seen clanker used has been for the AIs themselves, not their users. I’ve mostly seen the term in the context of star wars memers eager to put their anti-droid memes and jokes to IRL usage.
Same here, I’ve never actually seen the term “clanker” be used in reference to a person using the AI, but the AI itself. Which to me was analogous to going to an expensive bakery and accusing the bread of ripping you off instead of the baker (or whoever was setting prices, which wouldn’t be the bread).
If there was any sort of op going on (which I don’t think there is), I’d guess it would be from the AI doomers who want people to think of these things as things with enough self-awareness that something like “clanker” would actually insult them (but, again, probably not, IMO).
Slightly related to the ‘it is an op’ thing, did you look at the history of the wikipedia page for clanker? There were 3 edits to the page before 1 June 2025.
The truth is that we feel shame to a much greater degree than the other side, which makes it pretty easy to divide us on these annoying trivialities.
My personal hatred of tone policing is greater than my sense of shame, but I imagine that isnt something to expect for most.
The billionaires’ dreams of defeating death with technology have been “realised” by Marvel, which is planning an AI-Poweredtm hologram of him at L.A. Comic Con.
To the shock of nobody, this act of exploitation through digital necromancy is being met with unfiltered disgust.
death will be defeated as long as it stands in the way of profits (man i fucking hate it there)
Enjoy this Rat pitch for a “pastor” who shall spread the gospel of Bayes to the unwashed masses:
Check the guys profile. He took some random remark from Gwern indicating what looks to me like human interest, as some sort of commandment.
My first instinct was to dismiss him as an oddball—until a friend told me I was dealing with a legend of rationality. I have to admit: I nearly shit myself. His comment got more likes than the post I’d spent years working on.
Someone with, what, a 152 IQ wanted my accounts of surviving bureaucratic military hell? And I’m the same guy who applies scientific rigor to Pokémon analysis
(The text is bolded etc in various places which I didn’t reproduce)
So this looks and sounds 100% AI generated, but
Possible performance idea: A “kata of doubt,” mixing martial arts stances with expressions of deep confusion.
might be the first time AI slop made me laugh (not out loud, but still)
If this is truly the path, then Wimp Lo must be the most rational man in the universe
If Yud and Soares are on a book tour I want them to go on hot ones
Forgive my stupidity, but I don’t know what this means. Or it’s referencing something I don’t know.
All is forgiven. Hot Ones is an internet interview show. Its core premise is that the host and interviewee conduct their interview while eating increasingly spicier chicken wings. As with any interview platform, it’s a common stop for public figures to hit up, especially on PR tours.
The show has a reputation for researching its guests well and asking insightful/deep questions. There’s also an element to it where, for some guests, as they experience spicier wings, they are unable to keep up whatever facade or persona they usually keep up in interviews.
I wasn’t making any profound commentary; I want to see Yud in pain while trying to explain alignment.
It’s only fair that his audience shouldn’t be the only ones suffering when that happens.
it would be incredible if yud’s one of the types to lose his focus around sauce 3, would do a real kicker to the shine of his grift
Thanks.
TBF I can’t say I’m sold on the notion of watching Yudkowsky eat spicy wings while also arguing with someone.
YouTube interview show where the interviewee is fed hot-sauce coated chicken wings of escalating spiciness
As an aside, my personal tolerance is such that if I ever go on there, I’m going to end up bankrupting the fuckers
someday™ I’ll get around to looking into getting a season pack from the states to here (which possibly might be distinctly non-trivial, and if it is I’ll have bother trying to figure out the logistics of it, which ugh)
Well, I have had some of their hot sauces before and can confirm that they are not bad to pretty good, and are at a good gift sort of price point (if you live in the US).
An example from a local Nashville institution:
https://www.400degreeshotchicken.com/s/order?item=77#14
I’d gladly help you out with it!
will keep the offer in mind when I have the spoons and round tuits for it :)
Fresh of the press, only in german unfortunately: tagesschau
President of bavaria (and head of the extra fashy bavarian splinter party of the christian conservatives) wants to cut 10.000 public service jobs using AI.
All Söder does is spew bullshit and post bad tiktoks.
Hold on, we might just have found the first job LLMs actually can replace.
Doing my screaming into the void offtopic thing, but the Dutch parliament, consisting of the the liberal VVD all the far right (PVV, FVP, JA21) and half the extreme christian (but not far) right (SGP the reformed/protestants (*)) , and the conspiratorial partially far right farmers party (BBB) accepted a motion (also important to note that these are not that meaningful, nothing has changed legally) by the far right to declare antifa a terrorist organization.
Congrats to everybody here now being terrorists in the eyes of the Dutch gov. Ah the joys of living in an American colony.
*: Even less relevant to this sub, but perhaps interesting, did you know we have a so called bible belt in the Netherlands? See this wiki page and look at the voting results graph. (while there is no direct graph our second very christian party (The CU who often also votes with them (but didn’t this time because they are not that extreme) also generally gets their votes from this area. What makes this downright weird is that these voters are basically from our rural areas, but on the line that historically splits between protestantism and catholicism. But all these votes are more from the protestant side. Some sociologists prob could/can have written some interesting papers on that. So it can’t just be explained by pillarisation. Hope you enjoyed my random scream into the void which I tried to make somewhat interesting by talking about parts of our weird political situation.
(Bonus detail, the prot/cath split line is also the line of 'do they celebrate carnival really enthusiastically or not, for which the rule is, if you want a real party go to Maastricht (sorry link in Dutch), as it combines several styles of carnaval with its own thing (there are also some small dressup particularities, but as I don’t know them specifically. Great fun if it is your thing (or so I have been told)). Anyway the further south the better (we have different names for the carnaval styles even, ‘Bourgondisch carnaval’ vs ‘Rijnlands carnaval’ for example))
A second trashfire has hit the Ruby language - RubyGems was hit with a hostile takeover from Ruby Central, seemingly to squash an attempt at putting together an official governance policy.
Between that and DHH’s fascist screed, its not been a good week for Ruby.
Wonder if, esp considering the DHH situations this is sort of a nazi bar style takeover. Where the people who don’t want to make a fuss let in the nice but iffy people who then go mask off, and let the rest in. (The thing the far right accused the left of doing, in a bit of projections). But I know nothing about the politics of anybody involved, could also just be a regular hostile takeover.
(Doesn’t feel like one just looking at the rubycentral bsky account for a second though. They do have an amazing spin on it. It was to protect against supply chain attacks (also a link to an email article of them, which just feels weird)).
They do have an amazing spin on it. It was to protect against supply chain attacks
We at least got to see a well-aimed sneer in response:
Another sneer on the subject: https://bsky.app/profile/tef.bsky.social/post/3lz7fdou4uk2y
"In case you’re not sure who dhh is, he’s a danish counterstrike player and race car owner who writes essays like “i am smarter than you” and “foreigners bad”
rich enough not to worry about consequences but at the very same time, still desperate for status, a man two friends short of a podcast"
Followup by somebody else:
“I posted here about him driving at Le Mans in 2024, and several people told me that he’s disliked and mocked as much in the motorsport community as he is in the tech community.”
“rich enough not to worry about consequences but at the very same time, still desperate for status, a man two friends short of a podcast”
Got a pretty fitting post just up the thread:
anyway it turns out i spoke too soon: enough people have already stepped down to the point where dhh is now paying to keep the lights on
so the answer is “the only people left are paid to be there, everyone else walked away”
“Two friends short of a podcast” is the single most powerful burn I’ve seen in quite some time.
ruby’s had this problem for ~2 decades now. like, the “rockstar dev” archetype literally became big directly because of ruby’s popularity and perception at the time
I haven’t been active in/near the ruby space for a number of years now so I can’t speak to the modern details well at all, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to learn that the various branches of it haven’t really learned how to deal. I will say that I have seen some improvement over that period, but… yeah
ruby’s had this problem for ~2 decades now. like, the “rockstar dev” archetype literally became big directly because of ruby’s popularity and perception at the time
I had to look it up, the ~
Rails Conf~ Golden Gate Ruby Conf code like a porn star thing was 2009, I didn’t hallucinate it. DHH has deleted those tweets.I feel old now.
New premium newsletter from Ed Zitron: Is There Any Real Money In Renting Out AI GPUs?
(Clever use of Betteridge’s Law of Headlines there, I gotta say.)
So if I understood NVIDIA’s “strategy” right, their usage of companies like Coreweave is drawing in money from other investors and private equity? Does this mean, that unlike many of the other companies in the current bubble, they aren’t going to lose money on net, because they are actually luring in investment from other sources in companies like Coreweave (which is used to buy GPU and thus goes to them), whileleaving the debt/obligations in the hands of companies like Coreweave? If I’m following right this is still a long term losing strategy (assuming some form of AI bubble pop or deflation we are all at least reasonably sure of), but the expected result for NVIDIA is more of a massive drop in revenue as opposed to a total collapse of their company under a mountain of debt?
The racism machine does a racism: AI medical tools downplay symptoms in women and ethnic minorities
probably offtop? bad tech killing people, no need for imaginary robots, just greed https://xcancel.com/hntrbrkmedia/status/1968661471056769252#m https://hntrbrk.com/dexcom/
Nah, its completely on-topic - “bad tech hurting people” has become a major theme of our current times, a bad glucose monitor hurting diabetics is completely expected
idk you could put nestle water draining activities there and it would fit the pattern
A nonprofit that serves teenagers complains about getting mugged by Salesforce. dang dons his shining armor and dashes forth to save the uwu smol bean megacorp from the peasant mob.
Slack CEO responded there that it was all a “billing mistake” and that they’ll do better in the future and people are having none of it.
A rare orange site W, surprisingly heartwarming.
I really don’t buy the “billing mistake” line - they’ve been doing the same thing to many other community-org slacks. I’ve seen with my own eyes the mail that was sent to the ZA tech slack
I’m a bit split on this one
on the one hand, the post as first posted had a lot of “victimised” language (“omg slack is extorting us”) and frankly that felt like bait - esp as many, many volunteer-type orgs that have had similar slack setups have been taking a hammer for months now (as I posted before, a local ZA tech setup was one, and more recently that big k8s one too). there’s enough precedent here that expecting slack to have behaved otherwise (even “honourably”) seems to me to have been almost foolish
on the other, slack 100% only took action once this did hit hype and enough eyeballs, and only reacted since it was an embarrassment
but…yeah. slack hasn’t been a good option for public use for literally years now :|
It sucks how much time in tech is spend on 'sorry this tool we recommend before suddenly is no longer free, or removed some options (either totally or into the paywall part) so now we will have to look for something else.
Seen it happen to simple csv editors for example.
This one’s been making the rounds, so people have probably already seen it. But just in case…
Meta did a live “demo” of their
recordingnew AI.
