this post was submitted on 03 May 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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Want to wade into the sandy 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.)

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[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago (4 children)
[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 11 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

man if there was a common household chemical, like plastifier, that causes psychosis after couple months of use in small segment of population, you would absolutely hear no end of this [1]. but you see, now it's an app, oh we're just throwing hands, can't do anything about it and it's but one of inconveniences that we all have to pay for Progress and Glorious Technocratic Future

[1] i'm thinking here of things like phthalates, bisphenol A, PFOA or paraquat, herbicide linked to increased risk of parkinsons and banned in some countries. their harmful effects need a lot of time to show up and are nowhere as dramatic

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 1 points 13 minutes ago

bindeez 2007 recall would be close. tldr childrens toy contained plastifier that turned out to metabolize to ghb, this in turn was put in there as an unauthorized cost cutting measure by manufacturing subcontractor. within 2 weeks of the first incident there was a global recall. note that nobody died and there are no expected long term medical consequences. new batches had added bitrex and undergo qc for this specific contaminant, and brand name was changed

[–] flowerysong@awful.systems 5 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

For future reference: "throwing hands" means initiating a fight, it's a piece of slang that is very distinct from throwing your hands (up/in the air.)

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 2 points 16 hours ago

I don't want to underplay how bad this is, but did BBC really need to use the "slutty anime witch" image of Ani for that story? Or was that the actual avatar he had set for it? Like, I'm not saying that it changes the problem or makes him less the victim here but it is yet another example of "goddamn why is this cyberpunk dystopia so cringe?"

[–] schnoopy@awful.systems 9 points 1 day ago

"In fiction, the main character is often the centre of events," he says. "The problem is that, sometimes, AI can actually get mixed up about which idea is a fiction and which a reality. So the user might think that they're having a serious conversation about real life while the AI starts to treat that person's life as if it's the plot of a novel."

This is such a bad way of explaining it. Yikes. The issue is that it's all improv roleplay, all text is bullshit in the frankfertian sense. It might be accurate — lots of fantasy contains true facts like chairs and tables being made of wood and used for sitting at — but it might be completely divorced from reality and the model cannot know!

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago

Both the rationalists and chatbots in delusion mode offer people the chance to be the main characters in a story and not just part of a team. Organizing lawyers and lobbyists to make chatbot companies' lives hell over years is much more effective than firebombing an office or stalking a random vehicle which the bot says has a team of corporate assassins inside.

Taka in Japan is a neurologist which I think is a type of MD.