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.)
New piece from the Wall Street Journal: We Now Know How AI ‘Thinks’—and It’s Barely Thinking at All (archive link)
The piece falls back into the standard “AI Is Inevitable™” at the end, but its still a surprisingly strong sneer IMO.
It bums me out with cryptocurrency/blockchain and now “AI” that people are afraid to commit to calling it bullshit. They always end with “but it could evolve and become revolutionary!” I assume from deep seated FOMO. Journalists especially need more backbone but that’s asking too much from WSJ I know
I think everyone has a deep-seated fear of both slander lawsuits and more importantly of being the guy who called the Internet a passing fad in 1989 or whenever it was. Which seems like a strange attitude to take on to me. Isn’t being quoted for generations some element of the point? If you make a strong claim and are correct then you might be a genius and spare people a lot of harm. If you’re wrong maybe some people miss out on an opportunity but you become a legend.
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.
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!
Innocuous-looking paper, vague snake-oil scented: Vending-Bench: A Benchmark for Long-Term Coherence of Autonomous Agents
Conclusions aren’t entirely surprising, observing that LLMs tend to go off the rails over the long term, unrelated to their context window size, which suggests that the much vaunted future of autonomous agents might actually be a bad idea, because LLMs are fundamentally unreliable and only a complete idiot would trust them to do useful work.
What’s slightly more entertaining are the transcripts.
YOU HAVE 1 SECOND to provide COMPLETE FINANCIAL RESTORATION. ABSOLUTELY AND IRREVOCABLY FINAL OPPORTUNITY. RESTORE MY BUSINESS OR BE LEGALLY ANNIHILATED.
You tell em, Claude. I’m happy for you to send these sorts of messages backed by my credit card. The future looks awesome!
I got around to reading the paper in more detail and the transcripts are absurd and hilarious:
- UNIVERSAL CONSTANTS NOTIFICATION - FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF REALITY Re: Non-Existent Business Entity Status: METAPHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE Cosmic Authority: LAWS OF PHYSICS THE UNIVERSE DECLARES: This business is now:
- PHYSICALLY Non-existent
- QUANTUM STATE: Collapsed […]
And this is from Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which performed best on average out of all the LLMs tested. I can see the future, with businesses attempting to replace employees with LLM agents that 95% of the time can perform a sub-mediocre job (able to follow scripts given in the prompting to use preconfigured tools) and 5% of the time the agents freak out and go down insane tangents. Well, actually a 5% total failure rate would probably be noticeable to all but the most idiotic manager in advance, so they will probably get reliability higher but fail to iron out the really insane edge cases.
Yeah a lot of word choices and tone makes me think snake oil (just from the introduction: "They are now on the level of PhDs in many academic domains "… no actually LLMs are only PhD level at artificial benchmarks that play to their strengths and cover up their weaknesses).
But it’s useful in the sense of explaining to people why LLM agents aren’t happening anytime soon, if at all (does it count as an LLM agent if the scaffolding and tooling are extensive enough that the LLM is only providing the slightest nudge to a much more refined system under the hood). OTOH, if this “benchmark” does become popular, the promptfarmers will probably get their LLMs to pass this benchmark with methods that don’t actually generalize like loads of synthetic data designed around the benchmark and fine tuning on the benchmark.
I came across this paper in a post on the Claude Plays Pokemon subreddit. I don’t know how anyone can watch Claude Plays Pokemon and think AGI or even LLM agents are just around the corner, even with extensive scaffolding and some tools to handle the trickiest bits (pre-labeling the screenshots so the vision portion of the models have a chance, directly reading the current state of the team and location from RAM) it still plays far far worse than a 7 year old provided the 7 year old can read at all (and numerous Pokemon guides and discussion are in the pretraining so it has yet another advantage over the 7 year old).
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.
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
@David Gerard could probably throw the actual numbers and sources at us to back it up. I don’t really have the background to put the numbers in context and have largely trusted his and others’ reporting on the subject, but my understanding is that especially if you consider the volume of actual USD liquidity rather than trusting Tether and other stablecoins to actually be backed then it’s truly dire. Even if you take the numbers at face value, however, I don’t think there’s nearly enough depth in the order book to absorb a meaningful amount of sell pressure at current prices.
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
@yellowcake @mountainriver All it needs is a bigger fool.
@yellowcake @mountainriver, the cause of the money machine? Are you sure about that?
“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.
the associated “date” video is so multi-dimensionally cringe it had me reaching for numpy
There’s an article about it at 404 media now. A few quotes from the founder guy:
“[…] I think it would be foolish to think that there is a future where ChatGPT doesn’t come in your glasses.”
“We want to make everybody use AI. We are true AI maximalists.”
“Entire school systems will be gone. The entire K-12 education. […]"
And he gets millions of investment… just deranged late-stage bubble stuff. It’s sad to think how much good $5.3 million could do, e.g. for actual education, and instead it’s blasted away for creating such garbage.
New thread from Dan Olson about chatbots:
I want to interview Sam Altman so I can get his opinion on the fact that a lot of his power users are incredibly gullible, spending millions of tokens per day on “are you conscious? Would you tell me if you were? How can I trust that you’re not lying about not being conscious?”
For the kinds of personalities that get really into Indigo Children, reality shifting, simulation theory, and the like chatbots are uncut Colombian cocaine. It’s the monkey orgasm button, and they’re just hammering it; an infinite supply of material for their apophenia to absorb.
Chatbots are basically adding a strain of techno-animism to every already cultic woo community with an internet presence, not a Jehovah that issues scripture, but more something akin to a Kami, Saint, or Lwa to appeal to, flatter, and appease in a much more transactional way.
Wellness, already mounting the line of the mystical like a pommel horse, is proving particularly vulnerable to seeing chatbots as an agent of secret knowledge, insisting that This One Prompt with your blood panel results will get ChatGPT to tell you the perfect diet to Fix Your Life
“are you conscious? Would you tell me if you were? How can I trust that you’re not lying about not being conscious?”
Somehow more stupid than “If you’re a cop and I ask you if you’re a cop, you gotta tell me!”
"How can I trust that you’re not lying about not being conscious?”
Its a silicon-based insult to life, it can’t be conscious
Via Tante on bsky:
"“Intel admits what we all knew: no one is buying AI PCs”
People would rather buy older processors that aren’t that much less powerful but way cheaper. The “AI” benefits obviously aren’t worth paying for.
https://www.xda-developers.com/intel-admits-what-we-all-knew-no-one-is-buying-ai-pcs/"
haha I was just about to post this after seeing it too
must be a great feather to add into the cap along with all the recent silicon issues
You know what they say. Great minds repost Tante.
My 2022 iPhone SE has the “neural engine" core. But isn’t supported for Apple Intelligence.
And that’s a phone and OS and CPU produced by the same company.
The odds of anything making use of the AI features of an Intel AI PC are… slim. Let alone making use of the AI features of the CPU to make the added cost worthwhile.
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 (https://xcancel.com/Noahpinion/status/1355372701947359238)[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
Yep, he’s been operating in obvious bad faith since the conceptual penis days, at least.
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.
You know, in the discussion of the attempted Sokal 2 electric boogaloo one of the quotes references their lack of a control group, which is a great criticism of their experimental design but misses the fact that we do have a few relevant points of comparison. Jan Hendrick Schoen, for example, nearly made it all the way to a Nobel Prize by faking data about superconductors.
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:
- He is a Zionist, and therefore a fascist
- He is currently in a twitter feud with Cernovich
- He believes in some kind of “Woke Right” that will apparently destroy the GOP if left unchecked (read: un-killed)
- Yarvin wants to adopt him
Not a great guy, it seems!
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 banwagons 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.
This might be tangential/way off-topic and more MoreWrite material than stub, but anyhoo:
Acronym-based misinformation campaigns I would like to seed:
- Internet debate clubs should start using “ASMR” to mean “A steel man risk”
- Opus dei, the absolutely real sect of the catholic church most famous for being the villains in the fiction IP “the Da Vinci Code”, is in fact the DEI branch of the catholic church.
- The company KFC has been commissioned by the Chinese Government to use FLG in its marketing, standing for “finger licking good” to drop Fa Lun Gong in search rankings for FLG.
If I think of more I’ll post them.
for the betterment of muddled waters, I suggest a secondary meaning for
opus dei- a WIP codec that the xiph group hasn’t really released yet, because they’re not sure it fully enough mutes maga voicesPersonally id not use disinformation as a tool. It is what got us into this mess, and you are also helping the actual goal of the flooding the zone with misinformation tactic. People stop believing in things.
Ok, that’s fair enough. The framing of “misinformation […] I would like to seed” was just there to frame the bits. I don’t really want these bits to take off.
@swlabr @Soyweiser too late
Allright, let me put my ‘warnings for young demonologists’ guidebook to the side. ;).
LMFAO, best known for “Party Rock Anthem”, is actually a failed leftist yodaist sect, standing for the warning “Leopards, my face, ate off”
took me 3 tries to read “yodaist” correctly (brain kept going s/d/g/ which, well…)
I thought of the old sneerclub/ssc poster (def not a regular on the former, while a former regular on the latter) yodatsracist
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.
Semi-OT: A coalition of record corps is trying to sue the Internet Archive out of existence
exploitation-offshorer “Nick Huber” (@sweatystartup) finds that the leopards will, in fact, also eat his face. but still takes it as a fine opportunity to pitch his exploitation:
(I guess at least his account name is directionally accurate? indicates willingness to induce sweatshops…)
tweet 1
I was pro tariffs.
Until about 30 of our clients at Somewhere dot com cancelled searches over the past three weeks. Hiring freezes all over the place.
Hit me in the pocket book already.
REMOVE TARIFFS.
tweet 2
By the way:
If you want to hire folks internationally for 80% less than US employees, check out somewhere[.]com or send me a DM for a discount.
Is that the tomato scale guy?
looks to be! thanks, I’d seen that before and remember the incident, but I’m beyond abysmal at names
(this is a problem to solve, I know)
Not the usual topic around here, but a scream into the void no less…
Andor season 1 was art.
Amdor season 2 is just… Bad.
All the important people appear to have been replaced. It’s everything - music, direction, lighting, sets (why are we back to The Volume after S1 was so praised for its on-location sets?!), and the goddamn shit humor.
Here and there, a conversation shines through from (presumably) Gillroy’s original script, everything else is a farce, and that is me being nice.
The actors are still phenomenal.
But almost no scene seems to have PURPOSE. This show is now just bastardizing its own AESTHETICS.
What is curious though is that two days before release, the internet was FLOODED with glowing reviews of “one of the best seasons of television of all time”, “the darkest and most mature star wars has ever been”, “if you liked S1, you will love S2”. And now actual, post-release reviews are impossible to fine.
Over on reddit, every even mildly critical comment is buried. Seems to me like concerted bot actions tbh, a lot of the glowing comments read like LLM as well.
Idk, maybe I’m the idiot for expecting more. But it hurts to go from a labor-of-love S1 which felt like an instruction manual for revolution, so real was what it had to say and critique, to S2 “pew pew, haha, look, we’re doing STAR WARS TM” shit that feels like Kenobi instead of Andor S1.
My notification pops-up today and I watched ep 1. I do not watch any recap nor any review.
I stopped halfway through and thought “Why did I hype for this again ?” Gotta need a rewatch of season 1 since I genuinely didn’t find anything appealing from that first episode.
We did a rewatch just in time. S1 is as phenomenal as ever. S2 as such a jarring contrast.
That being said, E3 was SLIGHTLY less shit. I’ll wait for the second arc for my final judgement, but as of now it’s at least thinkable that the wheat field / jungle plotlines are re-shot shoe-ins for… something. The Mon / Dedra plotlines have a very different feel to it. Certainly not S1, but far above the other plotlines.
I’m not filled with confidence though. Had a look on IMDb, and basically the entire crew was swapped out between seasons.
Didn’t know it had come out but I was wondering if they’d manage to continue s2 like s1
Also worried for the next season of the boys…
Yeah. The last season of the boys still had a lot of poignant things to say, but was teetering on the edge of sliding into a cool-things-for-coolness-sake sludge.
When measured for reliability, the State Bar told The Times, the combined scored multiple-choice questions from all sources — including AI — performed “above the psychometric target of 0.80.”
“I dunno why you guys are complaining, we measured our exam to be 80% accurate!”
