this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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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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Want to wade into the snowy surf of the abyss? 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 so 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. What a year, huh?)

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[–] gerikson@awful.systems 7 points 22 hours ago (4 children)

what absolute bullshit

https://www.moltbook.com/

AKA Reddit for "agents".

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 2 points 1 hour ago

does no-one rememeber Subreddit Simulator

at least its posts were shorter

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

There's a small push by promptfondlers to make this "a thing".

See for example Simon Willison: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/30/moltbook/

LW is monitoring it for bad behavior: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WyrxmTwYbrwsT72sD/moltbook-data-repository

I'm planning on using this data to catalog "in the wild" instances of agents resisting shutdown, attempting to acquire resources, and avoiding oversight.

[–] corbin@awful.systems 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

From this post, it looks like we have reached the section of the Gibson novel where the public cloud machines respond to attacks with self-repair. Utterly hilarious to read the same sysadmin snark-reply five times, though.

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented LinkedIn as a cautionary tale.

Tech Company: At long last, we have automated LinkedIn.

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 3 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

How did molt become a term of endearment for agents? I read in the pivot thread that clawdbot changed it's name to moltbot because anthropic got ornery.

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 6 points 21 hours ago

None of those words are in your favourite religious text of choice

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I think it went like this

  • clawd is a pun on claude, lobsters have claws
  • oh no we're gonna get sued, but lobsters moult/molt their shells, so we're gonna go ther
  • "molt" sounds dumb, let's go with openclaws

it's vibe product naming

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 2 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

mold will be more fitting