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.

    • froztbyte@awful.systemsOPEnglish
      0·
      3 个月前

      jesus, that’s telling. and I can 100% see that sentence forming in the heads of the types of people who fall over themselves to create something like these tools. so caught up in the math and the technical cool, they can’t appreciate other beauty

  • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    3 个月前

    Following up on this comment re: the TESCREAL wikipedia page https://awful.systems/comment/4332398

    It’s now been nominated for deletion (again), the discussion has blown up because it was noted on social media, and the nominator seems to be an… interesting… character

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/TESCREAL_(2nd_nomination)

    Edit I now see they have admitted conflict of interest and visually downgraded their “Delete” nomination (I have no fucking clue if that actually affects anything, it would not surprise me that Wikipedia considers strong formatting a valid signal for determining weight of opinion)

    • froztbyte@awful.systemsOPEnglish
      0·
      3 个月前

      glancing at their profile, they have “what if I were king tho”, something that claims to focus on “sensitive use of language” (it links to “wokism”)

      oh and to really add that flavour, they have this at the very top of their profile:

      As of 26 Jul 2024, I have a new plan to get a job in 2025, a new plan to save democracy from itself, …, and …. And it all started on Wikipedia.

      Applications of genetics, such as exploring ethical boundaries related to Eugenics… and maybe someday doing it right.

      just a real winner of a human being that everyone would definitely want to be around

      (e: jesus fuck I just looked at that political party too. wat.)

      • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        3 个月前

        Dude came up with an unofficial wikipedia article naming dispute resolution process, used it on a single article, saw the mostly negative feedback…

        And thought “you know what. I should build a political party around this and get Elon Musk on board”.

          • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
            0·
            3 个月前

            Even fewer people are watching it because Xshitter has gone hard into “don’t show any content on the site if you’re not logged in”. Get a fucking website, dude. And not your blog, last updated in 2015.

    • jax@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 个月前

      might involve some amount of hubris you say…

      This really opened my eyes to some historical context I never thought of before.

      My initial gut reaction was judgmental about the way billionaires spend their money; thinking it might involve some amount of hubris.

      Then I realized I have no idea of how sculpture that are now show in museums as treasured historical art pieces were judge in the time they were created. Today we treasure them. But what did the general population think of them? I have no idea.

      I imagine that at the time of their commissioning they were also paid by affluent people that could afford such luxuries. People that probably mirror today’s billionaires in influence and access. So what’s different about these?

      • sc_griffith@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        3 个月前

        brain throbbing furiously hang on… if artists produced what we say is moving and novel work WHILE wealthy people threw money at whatever bullshit they wanted, that must mean wealthy people throwing money at whatever bullshit they want is good

    • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 个月前

      I used to wonder if they had thought about deadlock/livelock re self driving cars. Thanks to modern technology I no longer have to wonder. Thanks!

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 个月前

      Oh this sounds like a dog I used to have as a kid! They needed more enrichment during the day or else she’d bark into the void all night and get super excited when another dog barked back.

      Have they tried taking the waymos out for walkies?

    • froztbyte@awful.systemsOPEnglish
      0·
      3 个月前

      saw a video of this yesterday, that “honk” title extremely understates how fucking dumb the problem is

      in the video I saw, those dumb-ass things are literally crawling forward and back in the parking lot, because the one in front of it is also doing it, because…

      yes, a multi-car movement deadlock, with a visually clear solution (which any human driver would be able to implement in seconds) that nonetheless still doesn’t happen because….? I guess waymo didn’t code in inter-car communication or something

      seriously, find a copy and watch. it’ll give a lovely kicker to your day :>

    • Mii@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 个月前

      Eric Schmidt Says Google Is Falling Behind on AI—And Remote Work Is Why

      That’s another great benefit of remote work, then.

      Also imagine …

      work-life balance […] was more important than winning

      … saying this unironically.

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        3 个月前

        I always want to point out how there are never specific metrics attached to these criticisms. Whenever I’ve seen actual numbers checked there doesn’t appear to be a significant impact between before and after companies started WFH during the pandemic.

        Of course I also haven’t looked to close because I’ve been too busy enjoying my life rather than pretending my boss is funny at a water cooler.

        • mountainriver@awful.systemsEnglish
          0·
          3 个月前

          So one one hand the CEO’s want their minions back into office and on the other they want to replace them with AI’s?

          Sounds like a conundrum. Or a business opportunity!

          Presenting Srvile! The brand new Servility as a Service company, with AI powered robots that will laugh at all boss jokes at the water cooler and say things like “That is such a great idea boss! Since I am an AI I can’t realise that you are just regurgitating what you read on Xshitter!” and “We certainly need more AI to solve any problem!”

          Call now to order!

          (AI may at times be enhanced by remote human control for “quality control”. Actual level of servility may vary and is not guaranteed.)

  • self@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    3 个月前

    this will probably become a NotAwfulTech post after I explore a bit more, but here’s a quick follow-up to my post last stubsack looking for language learning apps:

    the open source apps for the learning system I want to use do exist! that system is essentially an automation around reading an interesting text in Spanish (or any other language), marking and translating terms and phrases with a translation dictionary, and generating flash cards/training materials for those marked terms and phrases. there’s no good name for the apps that implement this idea as a whole so I’m gonna call them the LWT family for reasons that will become clear.

    briefly, the LWT family apps I’ve discovered so far are:

    • LWT (Learning With Texts) is the original open source system that implemented the learning system I described above (though LWT itself originated as an open source clone of LingQ with some ideas from other learning systems). the Hugo Fara fork is the most recently-maintained version of LWT, but it’s generally considered finished (and extraordinarily difficult to modify) software. I need to look into LWT more since it’s still in active use; I believe it uses an Anki exporter for spaced repetition training. it doesn’t seem to have a mobile UI, which might be a dealbreaker since I’ll probably be doing a lot of learning from my phone
    • Lute (Learning Using Texts) is a modernized LWT remake. this one is being developed for stability, so it’s missing features but the ones that exist are reputedly pretty solid. it does have a workable mobile UI, but it lacks any training framework at all (it may have an extremely early Anki plugin to generate flash cards)
    • LinguaCafe is a completely reworked LWT with a modern UI. it’s got a bunch of features, but it’s a bit janky overall. this is the one I’m using and liking so far! installing it is a fucking nightmare (you have to use their docker-compose file only, with docker not podman, and absolutely slaughter the permissions on your bind mounts, and no you can’t fire it up native) but the UI’s very modern, it works well on mobile (other than jank), and it has its own spaced repetition training framework as well as (currently essentially useless) Anki export. it supports a variety of freely available translation dictionaries (which it keeps in its own storage so they’re local and very fast) and utterly optional DeepL support I haven’t felt the need to enable. in spite of my nitpicks, I really am enjoying this one so far (but I’m only a couple days in)
    • sc_griffith@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 个月前

      you have to use their docker-compose file only, with docker not podman, and absolutely slaughter the permissions on your bind mounts, and no you can’t fire it up native

      yeah I have no idea what any of these words mean

        • froztbyte@awful.systemsOPEnglish
          0·
          3 个月前

          speaking of

          one of my endeavours the last few days (although heavily split into pieces between migraines and other downtimes) was to figure out how to segment containers into vlan splits (bc reasons), and doing this on podman

          the docs will (by omission or directly) lie to you so much. the execution boundaries of root vs rootless cause absolutely hilarious failure modes. things that are required for operation are Recommended packages (in the apt/dpkg sense)

          utter and complete clownshow bullshit. it does my head in to think how much human time has been wasted on falling arse-over-face to get in on this shit purely after docker ran a multi-year vc-funded pr campaign. and even more to see, at every fucking interaction with this shit, just how absolutely infantile the implementations of any of the ideas and tooling are

          • self@awful.systemsEnglish
            0·
            3 个月前

            our entire industry will regret using Docker in the relatively near term, but nobody will learn a damn thing from the mistake

  • cornflake@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    3 个月前

    Post from July, tweet from today:

    It’s easy to forget that Scottstar Codex just makes shit up, but what the fuck “dynamic” is he talking about? He’s describing this like a recurring pattern and not an addled fever dream

    There’s a dynamic in gun control debates, where the anti-gun side says “YOU NEED TO BAN THE BAD ASSAULT GUNS, YOU KNOW, THE ONES THAT COMMIT ALL THE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS”. Then Congress wants to look tough, so they ban some poorly-defined set of guns. Then the Supreme Court strikes it down, which Congress could easily have predicted but they were so fixated on looking tough that they didn’t bother double-checking it was constitutional. Then they pass some much weaker bill, and a hobbyist discovers that if you add such-and-such a 3D printed part to a legal gun, it becomes exactly like whatever category of guns they banned. Then someone commits another school shooting, and the anti-gun people come back with “WHY DIDN’T YOU BAN THE BAD ASSAULT GUNS? I THOUGHT WE TOLD YOU TO BE TOUGH! WHY CAN’T ANYONE EVER BE TOUGH ON GUNS?”

    Embarrassing to be this uninformed about such a high profile issue, no less that you’re choosing to write about derisively.

    • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 个月前

      ‘TESCREAL’ refers to a nonsense conspiracy theory that disparages people such as Nick Bostrom without citing any sources that are credible on the question of whether Nick Bostrom is an ‘evil eugenicist’ or whatever.

      WP:LOL. WP:LMAO even.

      • imadabouzu@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        3 个月前

        I’m ok with this because everytime Nick Bostrom’s name is used publicly to defend anything, and then I show people what Nick Bostrom believes and writes, I robustly get a, “What the fuck is this shit? And these people are associated with him? Fuck that.”

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 个月前

      That’s certainly one approach to commenting on someone’s picture. Pretty sure it’s better to stick with the standard “Wow! 😍😍😍” but this certainly sticks out from the crowd?

    • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 个月前

      “Inexplicable Cimmerian Vibes” is the name of my next band.

      Bonus points if this turns out to be the output of an LLM trained by phrenologists.

    • BigMuffin69@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 个月前

      omg, next time my wife asks me how she looks, I’m definitely dropping that “legible magyar admixture”

      • Mike@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        3 个月前

        “Babe, you’re looking Haplogroup I-M437 tonight. No. Not M-437. Damn, girl, you’re an M-438.”

        • o7___o7@awful.systemsEnglish
          0·
          3 个月前

          When you really want to confuse your astronomy post-doc partner.

          EDIT: I’ve been reliably informed that that’s too many Messier objects.

        • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          0·
          3 个月前

          In particular she felt like Anna, whom she’d been closest with, was being dishonest about what they hoped to achieve with this whole project. Sanje further alleged that Anna’s good standing largely stemmed from her incomprehensibility, because people don’t have a clue what this is actually all about. Possibly Anna doesn’t, either.

          most straightforward hegelian

        • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systemsEnglish
          0·
          3 个月前

          Haela Hunt-Hendrix, the singer from the black metal band Litvrgy, was one of the principal organizers of this “symposium.” […] Besides making music, she seems to be interested in esoteric religious themes, numerology, and Orthodox iconography. In any case, Hunt-Hendrix claimed that Anna was stealing her ideas and twisting them in a “cryptofascist” manner.

          Oh no! How could she!

          • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systemsEnglish
            0·
            3 个月前

            Oh my god I only now notice the title is a reference to Tiqqun’s Preliminary Materials For a Theory of the Young-Girl, this is like a supercollision of dumbfuck cryptoreactionary nonsense I’ve obsessed over.

        • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
          0·
          3 个月前

          Hegelian e-girls’ VIP “symposium”

          Excuse the rather formal philosophical latin but qvid in fvck?

          I tried looking through the post to find out what possibly they could have to do with Hegel and found

          Thankfully, Matthew shared the Googledoc the e-girls had sent him with their prepared remarks. My commentary over the next several paragraphs will only make sense if you read over them (they’re mercifully short), so I’d urge everyone to open up the hyperlink and give it a quick look.

          Okay, first of all, it’s like 5 pages, “mercifully short” lol, go take a hike. Second,

          Concrete philosophizing means applying insight to the alchemical transformation of everyday life.

          This is in the first paragraph. I feel like reading this would make me devolve into an entire day of incoherent screaming and I have enough respect for my coworkers and loved ones to not subject them to that

        • blakestacey@awful.systemsEnglish
          0·
          3 个月前

          I got as far as “Dimes Square bohemians” in the fourth sentence before realizing that everything in that article I recognized, I would regret.

  • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    3 个月前

    Baby, new AI doom vector just dropped: AGI will corrupt knitting sites so crafters make Langford visual hack patterns![1]

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-ai-scams-are-infiltrating-the-knitting-and-crochet-world/

    [1] doom scenario is my interpretation, not actually included in ZDnet article.

    Sadly, Langford hacks seem to have never achieved memetic takeoff. Having an internet legally enforced on pain of death to be text-only would probably be a good thing.

    comp.basilisk.faq

  • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    3 个月前

    Who had Trump accusing the Harris campaign of using AI to inflate crowd size photos on their Election ‘24 bingo card? Anyway, I’m sure that being associated with fraud and fakes is Good For AI.