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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)
Folks, huge W today. I was hanging out with my parents today and my mother was scrolling her feed, commenting out loud about everything she saw when she came across some autoplag content. āThis is fake!ā she said, and I could not be prouder. Not just because she IDed the slop, but because it meant she at least has a better brain than my trumper family members that habitually repost trumper slop.
Cherry on top: she showed me a text chain where she was trolling a āmy phone died, this is my new numberā scammer.
Elon Musk, Ramaswamy land Trump admin roles
President-elect Trump has tapped tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead an advisory group focused on cutting federal spending and reducing the size of the government.
Trump announced Tuesday that Musk and Ramaswamy would lead his āDepartment of Government Efficiencyā (DOGE), an initiative meant to āslash excess regulations, cut wasteful expendituresā and restructure federal agencies.
We live in the dumbest timeline
I wasnāt expecting complete fascist victory to be soā¦ cringe
skibidi purges
guantanamo rizz
Fascists were always cringe. Himmler was a weird occultist. Goering was a drug addict still high on his glorious from World War I. Hitler was a profoundly lazy man with terrible taste in art. There were normal fascists (there had to be), but the leadership was always cringe. Unfortunately, being cringe doesnāt stop a movement from killing vast numbers of people.
This Adolf guy kinda had me when he was just a dude traumatized by war who liked buildings and was kinda shit at drawing them, but his political takes were full on yikes and he quickly lost me when it came to the arts as well.
hot sneer from lizzy w:
I voted for Liz in 2020 :( instead they gave me diamond joe
This is literally going to be an embezzlement op isnāt it
Its gonna be the largest embezzlement scheme in US history, that much Iām certain. How much damage the pair will do to the federal gov Iām not sure, but I expect there wonāt be much left of it once theyāre done.
@BlueMonday1984 Itās going to be like Alves dos Reis all over again, isnāt it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alves_dos_Reis
Personally Iām betting on Teapot Dome: somebody in the Cabinet will be convicted of something like bribery, foreign influence, or electoral interference; and the cleanup will implicate multiple other Cabinet members. Trump needs to do this at some point anyway; heās already done all of the Nixon things like Watergate and interfering in foreign wars, and while he attempted a Teapot Dome last time with Ryan Zinke, he needs to actually have a Cabinet member removed or convicted in order to truly be a worse president than Warren G. Harding.
How would that even happen with a Trumpist DOJ?
Because project 2025 and the mass deportations wonāt actually solve the problems his base is feeling, and at a certain point this kind of scandal will either be his downfall or his only option to scapegoat someone else.
Trump would have to literally kill all lawyers. Think of the DoJ as a pile of folks who all took an oath to the law itself. When pundits complain that itās being āweaponizedā, theyāre actually talking about a facet of overcriminalization where the DoJās limited attention can be controlled somewhat; itās always going to be a full-power laser that targets what the law perceives as criminality.
In particular, the President doesnāt have the authority to tell the DoJ to stop an investigation, and the DoJ usually canāt tell individual prosecutors to stop filing motions. Trump wasnāt able to protect Cabinet member and Teapot Dome Candidate #2 Michael Flynn from prosecution, nor can he protect Eric Adams. The worst that he can do is a Saturday Night Massacre, where he fires lawyers until the investigations stop, and the entire pattern of special counsel is purpose-designed to prevent that from actually working.
Sweet summer child.
Such meme. Much wow. I see weāre continuing with giving dumb names to everything the Muskrat is involved in. Glad that hasnāt changed.
@BlueMonday1984 I am dead. From FremdschƤmen
Kabosu didnāt die for this.
But Trump canāt explain things, and Urbit defies explanation. So does the statement āTrump explains Urbitā represent undefined behavior in English?
What is worse? Trump explaining urbit and coming close? Or him explaining it so wrong you feel the need to set the record straight about the gravest misconceptions? (āTrump said Elon invented it, but it actually was Yarvin, also as Elon didnt invent it, he certainly didnt say āgood idea sirā to Trumpā).
I think in this case, the equivalent of a compiler error for undefined behavior would be a swiftly forgotten wire story entitled āTrump promotes cryptocurrency projectā published on a Friday afternoon. Just one more scam among the flood, and not one that can be offered for easy monthly payments with a banner ad in the margins of an RSBN broadcast.
Yeah, everyone in the traditional media seems to be even more committed to sane-washing than they were in the lead up to the election.
Though the spike doge got today is definitely in the ālaugh to avoid screamingā column.
begins invisible accordion
Then Curtis Marvin, very smart guy, went to MIT like my famous uncle, he said, ābut sir, a monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctorsā
Many such cases, I said.
masterful endofunctor, sir
saltman: no better time to be a startup
Have any of the trumps been on the red scare pod yet? Feel like thatās on the timeline.
Starting off this Stubsack with a solid essay I ran across: Donāt expect the tech platforms to help us this time.
A bit of an aside, but how did everyone decide to use the exact phrase ādecisive victoryā when congratulating president elect Trump? It keeps jumping out to me and I find it kind of weird. It has almost a militaristic tone.
IMO, coordinated media strategy. you can send all the people you want to congratulate you a prebaked message or tweet or whatever, saves them the trouble of writing something themselves. That or copy paste
I think that particular talking point also serves an exculpatory purpose: āIf it was only a razor-thin victory I might understand being angry with me, but see itās a decisive victory. He has the mandate
of heavenof the people (this is a Trumpian victory! not a Democrat failure!) ! It would be wrong not to congratulate him!āafter this decisive victory, I guess I have no choice but to take this mask off, what a shameā¦
that+ losing the popular vote in 2016 must have really hurt that ego of his.
LLM Use cases:
- Crime
- Laziness
- Congratulating Donald Trump for anything ever
Maybe itās one of those cliches like ābus plungeā
Could be they are sharing a bit of a media bubble. In 2016 there was a bit of a (pre election) āhe will win in a landslideā thing due to Scottbert.
Also it isnāt? 50.2% to 48.1% of votes is not decisive in any sensible meaning of the word?
If you account for the turnout (around 60%) it means 30% voted for Trump and 28.9% for Harris, so ānone of thoseā won decisively with 40%!
Losing every swing state and failing to even win the consolation trophy of the popular vote after even Hillary fucking Clinton managed that much is something Iād call getting your ass handed to you. The US election system is terrible, but itās the game they were playing and Trump won hands down.
Also, not that itās the point but I have to note that technically most election victories are decisive, in the sense that they resolve the winner with little to no ambiguity (which is usually the case, even when the margin is narrow). In that sense, the only way Trumpās victory is not decisive is if you contest the legitimacy of the whole election.
Also, not that itās the point but I have to note that technically most election victories are decisive, in the sense that they resolve the winner with little to no ambiguity (which is usually the case, even when the margin is narrow). In that sense, the only way Trumpās victory is not decisive is if you contest the legitimacy of the whole election.
This is such pedantry that you might as well say āthe Merriam-Webster dictionary defines decisive asā¦ā
considering trump has spent the last four years pretending he won the previous election I actually do wonder if part of the subtext is āwe acknowledge you won for real realsies and we cannot talk shit about you as a fake presidentā
Yea I know, had to get that digression out of my system, especially since you said āin any sensible meaning of the wordā and all. Sorry, I didnāt mean to nuh-uh you on semantics, just point out something that tickled my pedantry sense.
Edit: I also brought it up because IMO ādecisiveā is a bit of an odd choice to describe election victory, unless referring to some grander context where the election marks a major historical turning point in national or international politics in favor of the winning side.
I see calling like Raeganās margin in 1984 ādecisiveā
That they are posting this on substack, and how important that platform has become in the blogosphere is already a bit of a sign.
Four Passengers Die in Burning Tesla After Electronic Doors Seemingly Wonāt Open
I always had a hunch Teslas were death traps but Jesus Christ
Yeah itās sad. As the article points out similar incidents have happened repeatedly. Anyone who saw the door design could have (and did!) predict something like this would happen. My coworker was trapped in his Tesla in his garage for 15 minutes (and he wasnāt in a panic).
Look at the picture of the manual door release here: Itās pretty well hidden, you reach in and pull up on the door buttons.
ā¦ then scroll down and look at the picture of the rear door manual release. You have to pull off some trim from inside the pocket, pull off another panel, and then pull a cable.
ā¦ but wait! Thereās more!
Note: Not all Model Y vehicles are equipped with a manual release for the rear doors.
Jesus, I hope the engineers who signed off on this think about what theyāve done and do better. I would say I hope someone regulated bad emergency door releases out of existence butā¦ yāknow.
Imagine what other flaws these cars have if the tried to āinnovateā like this on the solved technology that is fucking doors.
The lack of a speedometer in front of your face is a pretty glaring quality issue. You have to turn your head to look at the massive touchscreen. The one that replaces all other dashboards and most tactile controls
for manufacturing cost savingsto be a cool futuristic vehicle of the future.I wonāt even start talking about the whole CyberStuck thing again because thatās too easy; except to point out that it has turn buttons on the steering wheel instead of a turn signal stalk, a shifter on the ceiling, and the steering wheel is not round.
I only recently bought my first car and itās just old enough that it didnāt even have a backup camera until I got one installed. Honestly half the reason of buying used was so I could have a car without a touchscreen haha.
a shifter on the ceiling
I still canāt get over the design, engineering, and basic reasoning failures that must have gone into the decision to put supposedly the main way to change gears on the same type of mount that secures your rear-view mirror; a notably inconvenient and fragile place to put anything (and just like a rear-view mirror that got fucked with too intensely, a bunch of these shifters have already detached)
ofc it comes with a square wheel.
The austin allegro was far ahead of its time.
wikipedia picture of austin allegro steering wheel. It is square with deeply rounded corners.
absolutely delightful
Just a general comment on the state of things. Now that Musk has fused with the ideological flesh chimera of the next US government and is tapping others to be absorbed, any US politics will be TechTakes-adjacent. Perhaps some ground rules must be set so we arenāt drowned in non-procedurally generated slop.
Either way, Iām cutting back on the musk unless it is directly sneerable.
Breaking news: āAI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorablyā!
Or, you know, not.
Iām imagining no fewer than three fictional versions of Eris/Discord laughing at this orange-site fool:
Meanwhile I cannot turn my living room LED lights on or off because I control them through discord.
Ok, so, some typical clueless VC mixed up atlas and sisyphus, which absolutely tracks. A VC thinks they are performing the all-important task of holding up the universe, when really they are just pushing a boulder up a hill and letting it fall down again.
VCs really think they are prometheus bringing fire to man, when really they are the eagle eating prometheusās ever regrowing liver, where prometheus is the working class and the liver is collective wellbeing.
More election shit, unfortunately. This time itās hot tea from SRD:
Holy shit I had no idea there was a left wing branch of the mad cryptofascist meme stock cult.
Missed opportunity in the headline: superstonkers go super bonkers
damn that is so much better
funnily enough I had posted in that thread and some neolib guy enthusiastically recommended tracingwoodgrains on David Gerard (?!) in my replies
How cute, look at that wild rat trying to appear neutral and unbiased and not-at-all a rat and Just Leaving This Here for you to read where āthisā refers to the entire fucking canon of rationalist writings.
itās so practiced too ā āso I guess you could read Wikipedia but also! this tracingwoodgrains guy might have some points worth considering!ā and from there youāre meant to ping-pong off the Wikipedia article into traceās long-winded literal horseshit and the rest of the inane crap thatās linked after that, til you can no longer remember the non-rationalist sources youāve read because your mindās overwhelmed with the worst shit ever written, but you feel like you thoroughly researched both sides (and thatās only part of why centrism is a fucking trap)
how do I know? because this:
finally, iām going to link to some posts from slatestarcodex and astral codex ten, its sucessor blog, some classic ones just to give you a feel for what people appreciate about it at its best
is exactly how Joe Rogan fans get you listening to his stupid shit daily, til youāre no longer listening to his podcast (supposedly) āat its bestā and instead youāre just listening to an overwhelming volume of right-wing horseshit with an occasional nod to both sides centrism so you donāt feel your world get smaller and darker as you embrace fascism
Just trying to be helpful! Iām definitely not trying to introduce you to this cult that was called out as a cult a few comments earlier! Which you would agree with me if you read all the things I posted and realised that we are the reasonablists.
look, they are just neutral and balanced, and pretend awful.systems and sneerclub donāt exist because they donāt even mention it.
See, if you just learn about this shit when youāre in high school and slowly read and occasionally reread the essays over the course of a decade or so it doesnāt seem overwhelming at all!
hereās a matt yglesias article on the ordeal that i think is pretty even-handed
eat a dick
Words words words and more words that link to even more words (that you can ctrl-f for the relevant bits!)
Googleās Gemini has told a user to āplease dieā and that they are āa stain on the universeā without provocation: https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1gq4acr/gemini_told_my_brother_to_die_threatening/
The output:
This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe.
Please die.
Please.
all the replies anthropomorphizing the LLM cause it generated something creepy and they donāt know why arenāt surprising, but for some reason this one really pisses me off:
I just checked out the conversation and it looks legit. So weird. I cannot imagine why it would generate a completion like this. Tell your brother to buy a lottery ticket.
an LLM generating absolute garbage that happens to be abusive in some way is a lottery ticket event, is it? I had no idea lottery wins happened that fucking frequently
Yeah absolutely. This is happening right on the coattails of that Character.AI suicide too so itās not like a freak impossible to predict accident. I mainly posted it because it flies in the face of all the talk of AI safety and āresponsible AI practicesā.
Like Google says in their AI principles:
We will continue to develop and apply strong safety and security practices to avoid unintended results that create risks of harm. We will design our AI systems to be appropriately cautious, and seek to develop them in accordance with best practices in AI safety research. In appropriate cases, we will test AI technologies in constrained environments and monitor their operation after deployment.
I donāt even care that much if Google wants to host a chatbot, but they keep trying to imply it has safety properties it doesnāt. Itās like writing a web framework without any HTML or SQL sanitation support and saying āWe will continue to develop and apply strong safety sand security practicesā¦ā and acting shocked when all the websites get hacked.
I guess including 4chan in the training data was a mistake.
Considering the user is trying to cheat on a test about elder care of all things, Gemini might have a point there
Crossposting this thread from nottheonion@lemmy.world with the fortune article āElon Muskās AI turns on him, labels him āone of the most significant spreaders of misinformation on Xāā. The article itself is nothing much, but it does have this quote:
The smackdown from his own AI system, ironically, came soon after Musk touted the system to his followers in a tweet reading āUse Grok for answers that are based on up-to-date info!ā
A little delicious irony is fine as a treat.
The job site decided to recommend me an article calling for the removal of most human oversight from military AI on grounds of inefficiency, which is a pressing issue since apparently weāre already living in the Culture.
The Strategic Liability of Human Oversight in AI-Driven Military Operations
Conclusion
As AI technology advances, human oversight in military operations, though rooted in ethics and legality, may emerge as a strategic liability in future AI-dominated warfare.
Oh unknowable genie of the sketchily curated datasetsClaude, come up with an optimal ratio of civilian to enemy combatant deaths that will allow us to bomb that building with the giant red cross that you labeled an enemy stronghold.So, ethics and legality are strategic liabilities? Jesus fucking Christ, thatās not even sneer-worthy. This guy is completely fucking insane.
If youāve convinced yourself that youāll mostly be fighting the AIs of a rival always-chaotic-evil alien species or their outgroup equivalent, you probably think they are.
Otherwise I hope shooting first and asking questions later will probably continue to be frowned upon in polite society even if itās automated agents doing the shooting.
This is straight up Hague material right there, all he wants is plausible deniability
Computer said so š„ŗ
e: thatās a shit take for several reasons and we have autonomous killers already. itās called air defense (in some modes) because how many civilians are going at mach fuck with RCS of 0.1m^2, thatās no civilian thatās ballistic missile. also lmao at speed of decision
perun video on this topic https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tou8ahLZvP4
Honestly the most surprising and interesting part of that episode of Power(projection)Points with Perun was the idea of simple land mines as autonomous lethal systems.
Once again, the concept isnāt as new as they want you to think, moral and regulatory frameworks already exist, and the biggest contribution of the AI component is doing more complicated things than existing mechanisms but doing them badly.
As AI technology advances, human oversight in military operations, though rooted inethics and legality, may emerge as a strategic liabilityin future AI-dominated warfare.This is awful for sure, but thankfully low impact. Turns out that this Terminator Enjoyer is an unemployed idea guy. Maybe heās wrangling for an IDF contract?
From jobbie site:
āAn accomplished manager, with expertise in developing innovative concepts and ideas into client services operations and streamlining delivery of products/services within Defence / Cyber Security and Information Technology industry.ā
and
Technology and Innovation executive , Currently on short sabbatical May 2024 - Present 7 months
Also, the image is perfect. I especially like the Joe Kucan-looking general embedded in the star trek tactical station. The Technology of Peace aināt what it used to be, is it?
human oversigh :(
and daiquiri nominations :)
Eliminating Mothman is our prime strattgic priority
Private Bbailcy! I see you back there! Cut it out with the oversighing, youāre dragging down morale KPIs for this quarter!
Also, I the image is perfect. I especially like the Joe Kucan-looking general embedded in the star trek tactical station. The Technology of Peace aināt what it used to be, is it?
Is that a screenshot from Command&Conquer 4?
what if C&4, but in the metaverse?
Didnāt have that on my bingo card for this year, but itās on brand. A big part of The Onionās MO is just riding out the insanity and inject a little of their own.
Hate to break this, but https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/elon-musk-x-corp-alex-jones-infowars-rcna180487
Seems he is now fully sold on the idea that this is his world, weāre just living in it.
Oh my god, that is right on the edge between making all of this either a lot more depressing or even funnier.
Shorter HN: wasting gigawatts of power to increase VC valuations - fine. Discarding 80k pounds of butter because of missing allergen information is the worst thing to happen since the burning of the library of Alexandria
I was watching an old Day9 stream today and this story is bouncing off of some comments he made about the importance of degenerate players to competitive design. Like, this is a pretty dumb outcome of regulation, but at the same time if you try to define regulations to create an exception for what āeverybody knowsā is in something suddenly that process gets taken advantage of by self-interested manufacturers who will figure out how to convincingly argue that āeverybody knowsā their generic shampoo contains peanuts and shellfish or whatever. And in the context of this kind of regulation that degenerate play will get people killed.
Gasp
This is just like the fall of Rome.
E: eurgh the people arguing against regs that help people with allergies.
