this post was submitted on 21 Sep 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.

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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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[–] veganes_hack@feddit.org 19 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

personal vent: at my job yesterday i had to come up with a few fake book titles/author combinations for a project. a fun little task and opportunity to hide some cheeky easter eggs. so, i came up with a few and then asked my coworkers to share in the fun. one of them though just couldn't come up with anything at all, and eventually just resorted to "asking chat gpt".

mind you, i work a creative job, and so do my coworkers. this is a minor thing i guess, but it just made me very sad. how could you just outsource your creative joy to some mindless word salad machine?

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 13 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

Man, knowing nothing else about your coworker, they sound like a completely joyless person. Coming up with fake titles for things is like, such a high fun-to-effort ratio. “Creativity and the essence of Human Experience” by Chat GPT. Boom, there’s one. “Cooking With Olive Oil” by Sam Altman. “IQ184” by Harukiezer Murakowsky. This is so fun and easy that it’s basically hack outside of situations where it is solicited.

[–] veganes_hack@feddit.org 12 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

not joyless at all. i suspect they're creatively worn out. if you make a job out of your hobby, etc etc. combine that with habitual chatbot use and there you go. it's overall just grim honestly. i'll change vocation though if i'm ever forced to partake in the slop at work, thankfully so far that hasn't happened yet.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 3 weeks ago

Ah, gotcha. fwiw I wasn’t saying that to say “joyless people are bad”; burnout also tends to look like joylessness.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Is NP P or is NP not P, thats the question, by Scott Scottersons-Scottsson

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Quantum Computing Since Diogenes by Karl Snarx

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[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

God, we had so much fun doing this at my uni when creating an example DB table for an exam (only it was fake song/band combinations). Are you sure your coworker isn't a robot themselves?

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 8 points 3 weeks ago

This story gives "Bezos buying random cassettes at the gas station" doesn't it?

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 17 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)
[–] ShakingMyHead@awful.systems 14 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

“We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that’s bringing those people to life”

This quote is just... something.

Is the plan to literally create 8 billion podcasts in the near future? This company doesn't think that might be a tad excessive?

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Tech take from the near future: Podcast life begins at conception i.e. the instant one thinks the inside thoughts should be outside

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

new extreme strain of catholicism: life begins at conceptualization

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Uh I think we are very quickly and dangerously approaching Dawkinsian Meme Theory

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

RAIDEN!

Ed: I'm sure there's an MGS2 quote I can't think of that would make this actually funny, but here we are.

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[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The Ai bubble has taught me that the luddites are really misunderstood.

The Luddites were a 19th century guerrilla movement that smashed textile machines, burned factories and threatened their owners. But they were not motivated by a fear of technology [...] the luddites [...] were engaged in the most science-fictional exercise imaginable – asking not what a technology does, but who it does it to and who it does it for. The Luddites, you see, were skilled weavers whose intense physical labor produced the textiles that clothed the nation. The difficulty of their trade – both in terms of esoteric knowledge and physical prowess – allowed them to command high wages and good working conditions.

All that was threatened by the advent of textile machines, which produced more fabric in less time, and required less skill. The owners of textile factories bought these machines with profits derived from the weavers' labor, and then used those machines to grind down the weavers. Their hours got longer, their pay got shorter, and many of them were maimed or killed by the new machines.

Weaving engines are ingenious and delightful machines. The Luddites had no beef with the machines – their cause was the social relations that governed those machines. By painting Luddites as mere technophobes, we strip ourselves of the ability to learn from history. The lesson of the Industrial Revolution is that merely asking what a machine does and not who it does it for and to can lead to literal genocide.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/04/general-ludd/

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 17 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

A full timeline on the RubyGems takeover has been put together - looks like the entire situation's been caused by pressure from Shopify.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

Who's left to do actual work? Who would start a new project that depends on these institutions? Does ruby just die now?

Also:

When the Advanced Custom Fields plugin was stolen by WordPress, DHH said “This is totally crazy. Like if the operators of rubygems dot org just decided to expropriate the official Rails gems, hand over control to a new team, and lock the core team out of it. We’re in uncharted and dangerous territory for open source now. What a sad sight."

lol

[–] corbin@awful.systems 8 points 3 weeks ago

I'm curious whether you or @BlueMonday1984@awful.systems are familiar with the concept of MINASWAN. The only time it's appeared in the discussion is in one of the apologies posted by one of the Ruby Central board members, as their signoff line. Quoting a 2016 analysis of MINASWAN in which it is argued that Ruby's central tenet is not MINASWAN, but wa (和):

Just for the record, MINASWAN is at least half true. Matz is nice. … I would not call DHH nice. … So if MINASWAN is really a basic truth about the Ruby culture, then how does DHH fit in at all? … MINASWAN is garbage. It'd be more accurate to say, "Ruby showcases the Japanese value of 和, but we are arrogant Americans, so we reduce this to a really basic American idea, harshly compressing it in the process to a state where it cannot possibly mean anything any more, instead of bothering to learn something about the outside world for once." But MINASWAN was already a long acronym, so I guess they had to draw the line at RSTJVO和BWAAASWRTTARBAIHCIITPTASWICPMAAMIOBTLSATOWFO.

Also, I really think it's worth understanding that Ruby is not at risk here. Ever since the release of RPG Maker XP in 2005, Ruby has been a staple of embedded scripting for game engines. Really, what we're seeing here is the demise of Rails.

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[–] nfultz@awful.systems 15 points 3 weeks ago

They put 'environmental impact of AI' on the front of the student newspaper (below the fold, but still), then you flip and see this

kinda feeling two steps forward, three steps back rn on top of all the other drama on campus

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 15 points 3 weeks ago

Harvard Business Review: AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity

[...] Employees are using AI tools to create low-effort, passable looking work that ends up creating more work for their coworkers. On social media, which is increasingly clogged with low-quality AI-generated posts, this content is often referred to as “AI slop.” In the context of work, we refer to this phenomenon as “workslop.” We define workslop as AI generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task.

[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 14 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

This scream into the void has been on my mind for a while: Apparently I work for an AI company now.

Kinda.

When I had the interviews with my now-employer at the beginning of the year, they were an open-source cybersecurity startup. Everything sounded great, we got along, signed the contract. I took a long vacation before starting the position, and when I got back, I was... amused? bewildered? to find that a), we are no longer open source; and b), we have pivoted, hard, towards AI.

Luckily, I still get to work 100% of the time on the core (cybersecurity) product (which is actually a really good and useful thing, sorry, not going to be more specific), it's just that part of the dev team, as well as all of marketing and sales, now work on building and selling an AI product built on top of that.

At least it's not a wrapper around ChatGPT, and does offer something kinda new and actually beneficial, but still, it's an LLM product.

Now, for the actual scream-into-the-void: Once a month, in a company-wide meeting, I have to observe how people praise LLMs to the the moon, attribute nonsense or downright bugs to something akin to proto-sentience, and give absurd estimates of profitability based on the idea that AI will totally be used everywhere and by everyone, very soon now, you'll see. What finally prompted (pun intended) me to post this is the CEO yesterday unironically referencing AI 2027's "predictions".

Can't wait for the bubble to burst. I'm really curious to see if I'll keep my job through that. At the end of the day, the stuff I work on luckily has nothing to do with AI, and basically every other application of the product makes more sense; but now the entire company has shifted gears towards AI...

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You would hope that, if they take their job seriously, the managers who predict AI mooning, that they also write predictions for the other situations. And not just the best case scenarios.

[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I mean... yeah, you would hope that, wouldn't you? And to be fair, they were selling the product beforehand as well. It's just apparently a lot easier to sell the AI angle right now.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Yeah hope for your job that they don't bet the company on the 2027 thing. Because that would be quite the failure of management. If they just use it as a tool for sales I get it (don't like it, but I get it), the CEO being all in on it is worrying though, which is why I hope he has also made predictions for what if he is wrong and AI never advances anymore significantly (or even becomes a liability as a sales tool).

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[–] dgerard@awful.systems 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

crikey. I assume the CV is in good order and kept updated on the job sites just to see what comes in.

[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 9 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah... (Un)fortunately, everything not AI-related is pretty great in regards to the company, so I've decided to stick with it and hopefully still be there after the bubble bursts, unless they try to reassign me to the AI-project, then I'm gone.

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[–] gerikson@awful.systems 12 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Cloudflare sponsors Ladybird and Omarchy, techfash workfare

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 14 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

TIL about Omarchy.

Of course it uses Hyprland. Of course the demo video on the website shows using Grok in it.

Still can't believe that choosing a Linux distribution now involves decision-making factors like "what's their take on fascism". But I guess the real problem is that such questions weren't asked for way too long before.

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[–] BasiqueEvangelist@awful.systems 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

why the hell are they sponsoring omarchy
how is a customized hyprland config "helping the open web"

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[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 10 points 3 weeks ago (13 children)

Damn, I was kinda hoping the Ladybird guy wouldn't turn out awful but nah, can't have shit in IT.

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[–] swlabr@awful.systems 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

it would be very funny if Rocco Basilico’s legacy was that his name bore resemblance to Roko Basilisk and nothing else

image descQuote tweet: “my name is rokos basilisk and i’m making artificial intelligence that you put on your body”

Quoted tweet: an embedded article platforming Meta’s Chief Wearables Officer named “Rocco Basilico”

My name is Rocco Pa'perclip Basilico Yudkowski Way...

[–] nfultz@awful.systems 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

They banned the guy that wrote the theil antichrist notes.

https://sfstandard.com/2025/09/23/spilled-peter-thiel-s-antichrist-secrets-now-s-banned-lectures/

Stephens and Thiel did not respond to requests for comment. Kulkarni declined to answer questions about the lectures, citing the off-the-record policy.

legal threats?

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[–] nfultz@awful.systems 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Just got back from the Ted Chiang talk at the law school, talk was good but all the Q&A was lawyers ask-telling about LLMs. Not a single question for him about his fiction. :(

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[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

The Nerd Reich has a post with criticisms of Thiel's Antichrist lectures, including some from European Catholic theologians.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 10 points 3 weeks ago

Bethany Brookshire:

Some people think ChatGPT has a place writing things like news briefs, stuff written to a specific style and tone and, y'know, kinda boring.

So Science did a study.

ChatGPT failed.

Why? It got stuff wrong. "Also, extensive editing for hyperbole was needed." https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/can-chatgpt-help-science-writers

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Cloudflare seems to be trying to make a shitcoin https://netdollar.cloudflare.com/

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 3 weeks ago

Starting this Stubsack off with Brian Merchant's newest article: The Luddite Renaissance is in full swing

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 8 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

From RationalWiki: Yud claims that the only women he gave orgasms for completing math homework was his future wife. If he ever denied dating / playing with people from his foundation or making people who wanted to play with him fill out an IQ test I can't find it.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

Any mention of my name is now often met by a claim that I keep a harem of young submissive female mathematicians who submit to me and solve math problems for me, and that I call them my "math pets".

I see he did the whole 'making an accusation sound more silly to undermine it' thing here, nobody said things about a whole harem of mathematicians, who just solve math problems. Nice steelman. I expect nothing less of somebody who was the subject of seven broadway plays.

(Amazing he basically admits the story is true after that, but continues to debunk the strawman).

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