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
This is an absolutely fascinating selection of people to have speaking at your event.
Whilst looking for an easily cut'n'pasted list for alt-text purposes, I discover it is even worse than it looks, because there are folk like Gad Saad too who don't get an entry on the poster for whatever reason. To steal someone else's summary, "just look at this fucking parade of grifters, scammers and out-and-out Russian assets".
"Columbia student suspended over interview cheating tool raises $5.3M to ‘cheat on everything’"
https://bsky.app/profile/hypervisible.bsky.social/post/3lne5zqaxyc2c
I’m sure whoever put money into that venture will see dramatically amazing returns, now there’s a founder that will not take the money and run.
I saw in passing a claim that investors (or rather gamblers) are fleeing the dollar for safer assets such as "gold and Bitcoin".
Gold might be true, the ancient relic is up against the dollar, but Bitcoin!? Someone tell me that isn't true and it's just coinfondlers trying to hype it, in order to steer stupid capital their way.
when stocks are suffering Bitcoin is seen as the automatic money machine cause allegedly line can only go up. It doesn’t produce or rely on supply chain logistics and is immune to trade wars so it quickly gets popularity again. And there’s no such thing as a former coiner because once there’s a hint of potential bag holders arriving then they activate like fucking sleeper agents ready to push the moon-prop
Quick check suggests that Bitcoin is indeed up over the last couple of days, but at time of posting is down YTD. Any dumb money going into Bitcoin to hedge against USD chicanery is replacing the money that came out of it in response to the overall economic disaster still in progress, so I wouldn't exactly call it a "flight to safety" as much as a "morons returning their still-on-fire hands to the hot stove"
Ed: also all the usual disclaimers about liquidity, stable coins, manipulation, etc. apply just as strongly as they do for any other discussion of the Bitcoin spot price.
Isnt the money in volume in bitcoin quite low reportedly? I figure the exchanges can track that, but not sure if they release that data, which should show if this is real at all
Inside baseball, and I don't really have a dog in this fight, but LW is crowing over a legal loss for RationalWiki
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KW5tjMmTqsoRa6zrd/pablo-s-shortform?commentId=wB9jcCPrXzNCLCQXL
They link to a TracingWoodgrain(!) tweet which is basically just a screenshot of a talk page
https://xcancel.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1913717061626347642
I don't know the significance of this, if any. I don't recognize the names of any of the plaintiffs(?) in the screenshot, so I find it a bit amusing that probably the only google juice they had were RW.
An lesswrong:
countless articles that have ruined careers, stifled research, and brought entire fields of inquiry into undeserved disrepute.
uh-huh
An different lesswrong:
LLMs can provide reasonable fact-checks.
Christ on a futa dick
when people do stuff like dismissing x-risk because their top Google search result pointed them at RationalWiki, what exactly was the proper non-free-speech-limiting solution to this problem?
How can we leverage the monopoly of violence of the state to promote our religious views?
Christ on a futa dick
He is risen!
The closest I could find to an official statement is at the bottom here:
We are under advisement from counsel not to discuss any ongoing litigation in public at this time. We'll let you know the status of the current issues when we are able to. Your patience and understanding are most appreciated.
Further up the page, an IP editor says that another user is probably TW; the user in question has since been blocked for "ban evasion". Dunno what that's about.
Ah that is a bit sad, I often link to Rationalwiki as it properly documents several far right people. (no idea about the people listed here, never heard of them). And seeing people defend/use the twg article is a bit sad. But I'm not going to repeat what what I said about that bullshit here before already. Anyway, typical Rationalism rationalization bullshit.
E: seems the problem is that RW is in a SLAPP suits allowed state and has little money. Of course the anti-RW people will use this loss to claim that RW is actually defamatory.
But I’m not going to repeat what what I said about that bullshit here before already
Yeah, I didn't write at truly Rationalist length about it, but I did spend longer than was healthy.
Yeah, that was quite a good post btw. I snicked again at the 'new sources of porn' and 'James Somerton plagiarized.' bits after seeing your link.
Going off-topic a bit - there's a new expose on Limited Run Games, and its a doozy
who?
TL;DR: They're a boutique video game company who scam video game collectors with overpriced physical releases of video games, and dress up their entire operation in the guise of video game preservation.
Recently, their inner workings have been exposed, showing the company to be an abusive hellscape roughly on par with Activision-Blizzard (minus the rampant misogyny), with employee abuse at basically every level and widespread financial misconduct.
I had no idea thanks!
Sorry annoyed rant incoming, have no other place to put it in a normal way. Has nothing to do with out regular subjects, feel free to ignore. I just needed to scream into the void
Saw Lazerpig released a 'culture war' video (content warning for anybody who wants to look it up), in which he is doing a 'both sides should listen to each other' stick. (yeah, I know). In which he includes a bit on how Daryl Davis (the anti KKK guy) was called a white supremacist by antifa. Which was news to me, I never heard anybody near anti-facism call him that (but yeah filter bubbles). (I have hear a lot of people say they he gives KKK/racist members a shield to get back into respectability without doing the actual work, get lesser jail time, and that his work is only temporary and the places where he got rid of the KKK they just came back later). So I was annoyed that Lazer'talk to both sides'Pig didn't actually talk to anybody involved in antifa. But it got worse, as far as I can tell the event his is talking about took place in 2019, they protested against the alt-right being there, who according to event organizer Tim Pool(posted mostly for the picture) were not there. Other organizers are this guy (note the tweet about Jimmy concepts, as we talked about that fool more on that below in other threads. The myth thing he organizes also just tweets transphobia (funny thing, they started this org because of 'Zeitgeist: The Movie', aaaaa)), and a third guy who I didn't find any social media profile off. (Source for the organizers. Exactly the type of shit antifa says Daryls naively helps (Don't get me wrong, him convincing individual members is good, I just don't think he is without flaws (for example, the people he follows on twitter)). Do some research lazerpig, obv they didn't protest Daryl, they protested the other guys there, and Daryl got caught in the crossfire because he knows about the KKK, not the alt right. (the far right loved it, their 'they called Daryl a nazi' articles are all over the place). The racists nowadays don't don the hood, they wear the frog, and pretend to be hated by the KKK while planning marches with them.
(Posting it here because I had to get it off my chest (and it got worse the more I looked into it), and due to how the video is framed if I were to comment this people wouldn't listen to me and claim that I'm doing exactly what the video is claiming is bad about 'the left').
Yeah, that video was rough. I wasn't actually expecting him to be super lefty or anything, but the "both sides bad and should talk more instead of screaming" take was still a blow.
Yeah, of course I didn't expect him to be totally on my side, even if he mostly has his heart in the right place. (with a few exceptions, like the downplaying of the nazis in azov (granted, Ukranian anarchists did ask if people could focus less on them as the nazis there are not the main problem right now, which is a different take than 'the nazis are not real', more a militant neo-nazis we can deal with, but the Russian state we cannot etc), and the 'harsher punishment for crimes' shit). I had hoped for more. I had hoped my comment written around the mental health break point, would end up to be a total egg on my face, react before watching the whole video gotcha mistake on my part. Sadly it was not (also why I don't go into the various issues the vid had after that point, even if the repeatedly shows his intention were good, just he is an Ent), but imagine if it was, imagine him going at the end, 'ow correction yeah the Daryl thing, turns out that was Tim Pool, did yall notice how much you went along with my framing? Do you get it now? Sadly it was not.
Yeah that was a bit of a rough one, and I say that as someone who at this point needs to admit that I enjoy multi-hour video essays as a genre. The "Ent" framing is also kind of awkward because the whole point of that bit of LotR was that even though the ents didn't want to go to war the war came to them just the same.
Though to be fair I think I already started doubting his sourcing when it turned out that that Moskva maintenance leak was a fake.
There is more than just the war came to them. The Ents are wrong in their 'nobody is there for us' assessment. (like the modern day 'Entlike' people), the Wizards were in fact there for them, that is why the betrayal of Saruman hits so hard. A wizard should know better, aka a wizard should be there for them to protect their neutrality, aka the wizards respected their desires to be left alone. I assume Gandalf, Radagast, and the blue man group didn't try to recruit them on purpose. Also the Elves gave them the gift of speech 'the cure to dumbness', in fact in the previous war the area the Entwives lived was razed by Sauron. One of the powers of lord of the rings is that not all people speak with wisdom, but they always speak their truth. Treebeard spoke the truth the Ents believed, but they were not wise (a pattern often repeated in things various people say, as Bret Devereaux mentions here). (They could be read as the Dutch/Belgians in a lot of ways, even if they according to Tolkien were a Macbeth reference). Which all fits back into Lazerpig, yes you are an Ent, but it isn't a positive thing, and the lack of selfawareness of what this Entness means is why your vid is so rough.
Being an Ent is like being like a Libertarian, ~~deadly afraid of bears~~, "like house cats, they’re convinced of their fierce independence while dependent on a system they don’t appreciate or understand."(E: hahah) But think his heart is in the right place, he clearly has done more for Ukraine than any of us here I assume, just that the anti-antifa part of the video shows a lot of repeating rightwing sources uncritically (like the BLM in 2020 vs the statues shit in 2017 fuckup, time goes the other way dude, and there wasn't a unite the left rally). And the weird US style confusing the democrats/the left/antifa as one big block. Etc
And yes, longer videos are fine, I use them a lot when im doing repetitive tasks which do not require my full cognitive load. Does mean you sometimes miss things, but that happens. It is entertainment anyway. And hey he is right on the Ent part in an other way, over 2 hours, with another hour on the cutting room floor, all to conclude that hobbits are not orcs.
I believe you!
Thanks, not that I really needed to be believed, I was just really annoyed that he does this whole thing about how the right does all kinds of things and then still falls into their trap.
He then says 'politically I'm an Ent' which is very funny, as I used that in a negative way here before. Apart from that his heart is somewhat in the right place, clearly he isn't a bigot (so I'm not cancelling the pig, im just going 'oof that was a particularly bad take in a bit of an iffy but well intended video. He will become really insufferable if somebody ever introduces him to grey tribe style Rationalism)
You’ll accept my belief and like it, dammit! /s
Ow I liked it, the thanks was genuine.
Ran across a piece from Jan Wildeboer: Botnet Part 2: The Web is Broken, which focuses on the "residential proxy" services which he discovered to be a likely source of the AI slop scrapers that are DDoSing the 'Net.
Ending paragraph is pretty notable IMO, so I'm dropping it here:
I am now of the opinion that every form of web-scraping should be considered abusive behaviour and web servers should block all of them. If you think your web-scraping is acceptable behaviour, you can thank these shady companies and the “AI” hype for moving you to the bad corner.
Jimmy Concepts casually acknowledges being a useful idiot (or useful not-quite-an-idiot?) for the absolute worst people out there
I don't recognize this person, know of a good background primer?
His claim to fame is this bs note how he eventually got too shitty that even some of the people who joined him on this disavowed him. Before his turn to zionism he dropped a lot of antisemitic dogwhistles. (Forgive me for quoting this guy but here is a (source). He also was too crazy for dr phil (source), a guy who shouts 'ok groomer' at lgbt people a lot, a proud manspreader (yeah, I hope you get the point he is wierd, like mega weird, but this gets weirded, he had some proud (I think now deleted) manspreader picutre you twitter with one of those sex cult women, NXIVM iirc), a sword guy. A white genocide guy, And this is only what I can recall on the top of my head. The guy is made for the 'weird' label, and any disavowal he makes should be reacted at like this
Hot damn it’s like he just kept reaching for the chud high score
Puts the “Oh, the nazis used me!” wankpost tweet in a whole other light
Yeah the guy sucks incredibly. Always found it a bit glaring that there was no rationalwiki page on him specifically. But I have long ago decided that I will not start to help maintain a wiki on all these people (I already have an unhealthy focus on this stuff, that would just cross the line), or I would have helped out.
Ugh, what a piece of shit.
even some of the people who joined him on this disavowed him
Normal fascist shit.
Before his turn to zionism he dropped a lot of antisemitic dogwhistles.
For a Christian nationalist, zionism is an antisemitic dogwhistle
He also was too crazy for dr phil (source)
He’s probably malding over the fact that he doesn’t have Ben Shapiro’s career.
Yeah you are right on the zionism stuff, see also 'judeo-christian values' and how a lot of Jewish people hate it when people say that. I meant it more as a 'before the whole gaza invasion/genocide' thing. To show this anti-Semitic shit (in which I include his zionism) is a pattern, im not saying he had a 'come to Jesus moment' and suddenly repented his shit ways.
Normal fascist shit.
Indeed. He just went too mask off. Ironically in a way as he basically is doing that now re the (imaginary) people he says are further right than him.
I’d also like a primer! That being said, I decided to take 1 minute of psychic DOT and looked at his profile. His Bio:
Perennial outsider. Cancelled by both sides. Pro-America. Anti-Communist. Anti-Fascist. Based af. Liberty First! 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲
Chud shit. At best, he’s a Pinker-esque centrist (and therefore a cryptofascist). At worst, a Nazi. My bet is Nazi.
Scrolling through some of the tweets, it’s clear that:
Not a great guy, it seems!
E: at the very surface of his tweets, he takes every opportunity to denounce fascism. What he is really opposed to is authoritarianism, or more specifically, dictatorships. Normal chud shit.
For more of a primer, see my reaction to op. He has been a long term far right weirdo. One of those people that if you seriously listen to them you will get dumber as a result, he has jumped on all the far right culture war bandwagons so far, he is their 'scientific/academic social justice explainer' and he is just full of shit. Wanted to see if some breadtuber had done a video on him (This is the only one I found before I gave up scrolling past all the rightwing bullshit, sorry it is a bit corny) but jesus christ he himself put a lot of stupid vids out there. The problem of the cost of producing bullshit vs debunking it. Did find out he is a 'new atheist' who found religion. So 10 for 10 on those people being shit lol.
E: eurgh sometimes I don't like how much I know about all these weird dorks.
Dan Olson finds that "AI overviews" are not as constant as the northern star.
The phrase “don’t eat things that are made of glass” is a metaphorical one. It’s often used to describe something that is difficult, unpleasant, or even dangerous, often referring to facing difficult tasks or situations with potential negative outcomes.
But also,
The phrase “don’t eat things made of glass” is a literal warning against ingesting glass, as it is not intended for consumption and can cause serious harm. Glass is a hard, non-organic material that can easily break and cause cuts, damage to the digestive tract, and other injuries if swallowed.
Olson says,
Fantastic technology, glad society spent a trillion dollars on this instead of sidewalks.
Thank god for wikipedia and other wikis, may they live long and prosper.
Kicking off the week's Stubsack with the evening's example of "why do I know who these people are":
Paul Graham approvingly mentions Jordan "Cremieux" Lasker as one who "has spoken out against both wokeness and authoritarianism".
Graham wtf are you doing the man is a racist. We dint praise hitler for standing up to authoritarianism re stalin.
Also amazing finger on the pulse of where the pendulum is swinging towards. Putting trumpian fascism and being pro trans rights/diversity in some false equivalence.
E: also lol at including alleged TP0 (cremieux) 'death to people who do adultery' in a list of anti authoritarians.
E2: double lol doing this a day after James Lindsay post a similar but even more disingenuous 'mea culpa' 'I learned nothing, and im gonna make it worse' post (he blames a shadowy global group of nazis (which he also capitalized) behind the people who influenced him for everything, while remaining as anti-cultural marxism as ever (in style of posting not direct words))
How many of those people on the list were either Jeffrey Epstein buddies or a recipient of Thielbux
OT: made it to Tallinn, now I gotta watch for those delivery robot things!