this post was submitted on 04 May 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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[–] nightsky@awful.systems 13 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Amazon publishes Generative AI Adoption Index and the results are something! And by "something" I mean "annoying".

I don't know how seriously I should take the numbers, because it's Amazon after all and they want to make money with this crap, but on the other hand they surveyed "senior IT decision-makers".. and my opinion on that crowd isn't the highest either.

Highlights:

  • Prioritizing spending on GenAI over spending on security. Yes, that is not going to cause problems at all. I do not see how this could go wrong.
  • The junk chart about "job roles with generative AI skills as a requirement". What the fuck does that even mean, what is the skill? Do job interviews now include a section where you have to demonstrate promptfondling "skills"? (Also, the scale of the horizontal axis is wrong, but maybe no one noticed because they were so dazzled by the bars being suitcases for some reason.)
  • Cherry on top: one box to the left they list "limited understanding of generative AI skilling needs" as a barrier for "generative AI training". So yeah...
  • "CAIO". I hate that I just learned that.
[–] nightsky@awful.systems 7 points 17 hours ago

For the part on generative AI skills as job requirement: just came across this, and it's beautiful. Made even better by the answer post from an audiobook narrator.

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 14 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

The Generative AI hype at my job has reached a fever pitch in recent months and this is as good a place to rant about it as any.

Practically every conversation and project is about AI in some way. AI "tools" are being pushed relentlessly. Some of my coworkers are terrified of AI taking their jobs (despite the fact that the code writing tooling is annoying at best). Generative AI is integrated with everything it can be integrated with, and then some. One person I talked to admitted to using a chatbot to write performance reviews for their peers. Almost everyone at my job who I'm not close friends with is approximately 300% more annoying to talk to than a year ago.

Normally if there's some new industry direction we're chasing people are almost bored about it. Like "oh dang I guess we have to mobile better". Or "oh gee isn't implementing cloud stuff fun whoop-dee-doo". But with AI it's more like everyone is freaking out. I think techies are susceptible to this somehow -- like despite not really working that way at all it feels close to sci-fi AI. So a certain class of nerd can trick themselves into thinking the statistically likely text generator is actually thinking. This can't last forever. People will burn themselves out eventually. But I have no idea when things will change.

Basically I should have gone into an industry with more arts majors and less CS majors sigh.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 6 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I work with IT at a STEM company, but the typical education is chemistry. People are grounded in measurements and real world practicality, but sci fi is also rather popular.

Some people got hype last year, but most people was more in "new stuff, will this mess with my work flow?" mode. After getting and evaluating tools, some small uses were identified, mostly first draft of meeting minutes. Trying for themselves seems to have quelled the hype. Now there is mostly concern for how AI processes in surrounding companies will affect our products and sales.

So from that small measurement it feels like the hype is breaking. We have a sane and reality based management though, and that helps.

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 6 points 13 hours ago

Yeah my company is probably cooked as the kids say. Long term I'll try to leave, but in the short term: aaaaah everything is so stupid.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Prioritizing spending on GenAI over spending on security.

lol, lmao even.

Security folks are going to feast this decade, aren't they?

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 11 points 1 day ago

Only as blackhats as that is going to be the only way to get money, nobody hires non ai security, but an exploit goes for millions.