this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2025
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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.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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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.

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

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 2 points 3 hours ago

Nice and lengthy sneer against AI in academia came out a couple days ago - highly recommend reading.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 8 hours ago (2 children)
[–] yellowcake@awful.systems 3 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

Is “triangle man” a slur I’m unaware of or a goofy name to be calling someone for whatever reason?

[–] pikesley@mastodon.me.uk 4 points 1 hour ago

@yellowcake @irelephant it's... from a TMBG song

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

Vercel's logo is a triangle. Unless there's extra context I'm missing.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Small point, but I heard nitter is run by chuds, xcancel is better.

E: I always get clowdstrike and cloudflare confused, which were the ones who protected the nazis again and which ones were the ones who took down the internet for a day? ;) (Ha, the last page even leaves out this incident)

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Are you thinking of nitter.poast.org? That's run by the same guy behind poa[.]st, a really awful pleroma instance.

iirc, xcancel.com became popular before nitter.net was revived.

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

I don't know the guys behind it, just repeating what others have heard. I'd have included a source if I had one sorry.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 10 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Promptfondlers on lobste.rs are unhappy about the tag "vibecoding", used to denote development using GenAI. I'd not recommend reading the thread, just want to observe that if slop coding had actually taken the coding world by storm, I doubt there would be much pearl clutchign about how slop-slingers are treated on the site. We're talking about people willing to pay Scam Altman money monthly after all.

https://lobste.rs/s/gkzmfy/let_s_rename_vibecoding_tag_llms

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

shoutouts to @dgerard@awful.systems and @mawhrin@circumstances.run for reminding me that Steve Klabnik being really shitty isn’t a temporary state of affairs

[–] ShakingMyHead@awful.systems 6 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Anthropic to pay 1.5 billion to authors

That's... quite a bit. I wonder if we'll start to see more complaints about people reaching their token limit "prematurely" or if Anthropic will release a $1000/month "unlimited" plan or something like that.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

given the run rates all these fuckers have, I half expect they feel glad it’s “as low as it is”. couple of the authors I’ve seen speak about it reckon pay out better to them (once off) than they tend to get from book royalties (I saw chisnall and some others post around it earlier). precedent from this is probably a good thing, even if I wish it went harder (esp given how likely “a fine you can afford is just a tax” is to develop as a normal situation)

re burn rates: openai confirmed in the last day or so that it expects a $118b burn through 2028. fucking obscene

[–] ShakingMyHead@awful.systems 5 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

According to the article, it could be higher than 1.5 billion, though by how much they don't really say. But they're estimating about $3000 per book. For a class action that actually seems extremely high.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

But compared to the anti piracy fines for sharing music from decades ago it is pretty low.

Saw people suggest it was because the judge doesnt want to kill the goose that is laying pyrite eggs.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 6 points 22 hours ago

yep, I was seeing some folks reckon it might be 20~30x what they’d make in later royalties. I’m not knocking the suit or the value to authors - mostly just wishing it were more so it might cause an even sharper effect

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

there's a place called r/nuclearweapons where people come, collect declassified and FOIA'd info, do some maths and speculate on how nukes work. 7d ago they had an incident where reddit admin removed a couple of posts from one user https://www.reddit.com/r/nuclearweapons/comments/1n4c1i3/we_had_a_thing_happen/ head mod stepped down in a response

four days later this thing surfaced https://www.reddit.com/r/nuclearweapons/comments/1n75vej/our_schmuck_from_doge/ linked article https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5464437-ai-nuclear-weapon-detection/

so probable sequence of events is that someone from anthropic talked up some bozo from doe or somewhere else, bozo from doe ran confabulation engine on some part of internet, and then notified/threatened reddit admin, who complied by removing some rando's account. whoa they must have saved quadrillions of americans by that brave action

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

why is everything about these people so fucking stupid

access to nukes is limited by availability of fissile material. not maths of it, not supremely complex engineering because it's not that hard, not by money, not by access to ores, not anything else. it just requires one of two very specific, expensive and slightly dangerous to operate facilities which is well within budget of any serious state actor and unless diplomatic or military action is taken, a state that decides to get nukes will get them. this is the case now and has been for the last 50 years or so

but yeah some idiots wowed by chatbot will Save the World. this also puts that weird block on claude's biology topic filter in much stupider and doomerist light e: it does not escape my attention that thehill ran an article based entirely on anthropic blog post

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

96% accuracy. So... unusable. That is an extremely high rate of failure.

Imagine how often it triggers on just people talking about hearts of iron 4 alone.

E: read more about it:

we achieved a 94.8% detection rate for nuclear weapons queries and zero false positives

'zero false positives' Sure bud.

[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Its a real fun subreddit if you’re into that kind of thing.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I love how one of the benefits of crypto is anonymous money, but you have to upload an ID to buy some anyway.

[–] yellowcake@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I love how it’s a public ledger of transactions so once a wallet can be identified to an owner, everyone can see what you’ve done. Not very great system to keep anonymous.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago

And if you want to avoid that, you have to use a coin with some form of automatic money laundering built in (e.g. Monero), which brings its own legal problems for you and everyone working with you.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'm just hoping GNU taler ends up being good, because it seems like it could be big.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] dgerard@awful.systems 3 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

to elaborate, Taler has been busy going nowhere for coming on ten years now. There is no reason to expect it will do anything. It doesn't do anything ordinary non-nerds don't already get from money.

Given this, and its track record of going nowhere, how does it seem like it could be big?

(I once had rms email me personally asking me to publicise Taler on my blockchain blog. I never got around to it because I couldn't find anything interesting to say about it. Literally its only point of interest is the GNU label, same as the only reason anyone knows about Hurd.)

[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

Hopefully it doesn't go the way of GNU Hurd

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago

The "solution" crypto-people have for this is to go to a "bitcoin meetup" and give people cash there. Or use an exchange that just ignores the regulation.
I am not going to a fucking crypto-meetup just so I can send someone €10 worth of bitcoin.

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

The common clay of the new west:

transcriptChatGPT has become worthless

[Business & Professional]

I’m a paid member and asked it to help me research a topic and write a guide and it said it needed days to complete it. That’s a first. Usually it could do this task on the spot.

It missed the first deadline and missed 5 more. 3 weeks went by and it couldn’t get the task done. Went to Claude and it did it in 10 minutes. No idea what is going on with ChatGpt but I cancelled the pay plan.

Anyone else having this kind of issue?

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I am extremely, extremely sickos.png for having all these weird little fucks find out that all this nonsense is heavily subsidised by VCs

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 11 points 2 days ago

Same here. The world's been forced to deal with these promptfucks ruining everything they touch for literal years at this point, some degree of schadenfreude at their expense was sorely fucking needed.

[–] ebu@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago

replacing ChatGPT with a script that replies "Great, I'll finish that for you by ${Date.Now() + 86400}"

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 18 points 2 days ago

I just found out the name of Scott Alexander's psychiatry practice (Lorien Psychiatry) is a Lord of the Rings reference, so my guess as to direct Thiel money just went way up

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Not totally in our wheelhouse, but seems like the Abundance movements has a bit of a right wing speaker problem: https://bsky.app/profile/therealbrent.bsky.social/post/3lxzn3lxqo22b

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 12 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Oh Abundance, the repackaging of Reaganomics by liberals to court conservatives, is having a conference and has booked right wing speakers? Nobody could have predicted this

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 9 points 2 days ago

OpenPhilanthropy has been seeding (b) a bit of money to local liberal activist groups but (a) guys to get them to do Abundance shit, under that name, then the guys play coy about the EA agenda

source: talking to people wondering who the fuck these weirdos were. they said "OpenPhilanthropy" and I went "ohhh boy have I got some disconcerting news for you"

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

@swlabr

I'm not sure if it wasn't actually Reaganomics repackaged by conservatives to court liberals.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I looked into this because I was curious. There's a wikipedia article that discusses abundance, titled "supply-side progressivism")

So it appears the earliest mention of liberal tinted Reaganomics is Miles Kimball's opening blog post "What is a Supply-Side Liberal" on his blog "Confessions of a Supply-Side Liberal." I am not going to investigate his politics at any real depth, so I'd say he's mostly a liberal/centrist.

I think my understanding of "abundance" before reading that wiki page was that known liberal quantities Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson wrote a book on it, and therefore must have invented it.

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 9 points 2 days ago (3 children)

@swlabr

oh no Kimball: "Astral Codex Ten—and its prior incarnation, Slate Star Codex—is one of my favorite blogs. "

Another link he posted last year: "Richard Hanania's Argument for Legalizing Euthanasia"

Also he seems to be more of a "classical liberal" than what people tend to consider a liberal in the left-of-center sense.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

"Classical liberal" usually registers to me as a libertarian/paleoconservative trying to mainstream themselves.

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

@istewart

Yes this. Libertarian yahoos in waistcoats. "I'm not one of those people, I am dignified."

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

that's a big oof from me dawg.

RE: "liberal" as a label: the way that I define "liberal" is pretty much purely in the classical sense, and it still covers the "modern" "left-of-center" sense, because someone who claims to be a left-liberal that still supports the underlying liberal politics is actually disconnected from any actual leftist ideology. Most left-liberals are willing to throw actual leftists and leftist causes under the bus so that their ~~sports team~~ party can get into power.

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 9 points 1 day ago

@swlabr

When I said "repackaged by conservatives to court liberals" I was using 'liberal' in the common sloppy American sense where it just means someone on the center left to left, as opposed to the "progressive shop talk" sense of "ratfucking centrists".

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago

Yet another lawsuit has hit Midjourney, this time coming from Warner Bros Discovery.

[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Did you guys know Hugo de Garis went full time MGTOW a few years back?

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I didnt know anything about him, not even who he was, but DuckDuckGo search suggestions suggested I search for him and mgtow, so the search engine knew. First link shows he isn't mgtow, he is a masculinist. https://profhugodegaris.wordpress.com/masculisting-the-mgtows/

His wikipage on his beliefs is wild. Legit beliefs skynet or eclipse phases TITANs will attack.

Quote from his site a free book he provides: "MASCULISM : Men’s Rebellion Against Being Manslaves to Women, An e-Textbook of 370+ Masculist Flyers for Men’s Studies Courses”"

Manslaves rise up you have nothing to lose ~~but your money in the divorce~~ as half your stuff was hers anyway.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

is this where Yud gets his style from? jesus fuck.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The more you read the worse it gets. And sadly, no all these manosphere dweebs write like this.

(A lot of them also credit Heartiste, which is why his popularity, enough for Scott to publish the anti-heartiste faq, which he didnt write. Was such a bad sign. (Also the guy is a neo-nazi racist, openly hated black and jewish people)).

Edit: And from Hugos blog: (source: https://profhugodegaris.wordpress.com/masctemp/)

"With a video you get not only the content, but can also see the emotion behind the content. Initially I only put up a video link to YouTube, but since the CEO of YouTube is a Jewish feminazi who censors and even terminates whole masculist and MGTOW video channels"

Look anti-Semitism. The fucker.

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