this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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TechTakes

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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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For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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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. If you're wondering why this went up late, I was doing other shit)

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[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Looks like they're gonna ruin BattleBots with AI somehow. Bright Data appear to be web scraping bastards as a service.

I'll never forgive them for what they did to the 80 lb slab of rotating steel.

[–] BasiqueEvangelist@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh god, Bright Data...

I know of them because they were trying to get into the Minecraft modding sphere by offering people to put their ""SDKs"" into their mods. (though not the full SDK initially, just Telemetry™ about what kinds of computers modded players have)

https://notes.highlysuspect.agency/blog/who_is_bright_data/ has more info about it

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Thanks, this is a nifty read; I'm appreciating having a look into the world of the bastards who are ruining the web with residential proxy/botnet operations. I had kind of (mistakenly) assumed that the scrapers mostly relied upon IoT trash and hacked Fire sticks. We really can't have nice things anymore, huh?

The company is embroiled in legal action in Israel. After it filed suit against a former employee, he countersued, alleging that Luminati is widely used for click fraud. As part of the suit, it was revealed that the spyware company NSO Group was a Luminati client.

Well that escalated quickly

PS: i really really wish my special interests would quit touching