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.)
the guy's a bit of an infosec mall ninja, so reread anything he claims in the calmest possible way
I certainly got that impression, and I confess to mostly skimming the parts beyond the technical breakdown for that reason. The conclusions he draws are arguably a bit spurious, but the persistent download and opaque opt-out are interesting facets.
Given the controversial nature of AI and the EU's recent antitrust fines of Google, I can see this getting some legal scrutiny - just not under the legislation he cited. I'd be interested to see how next year's Google's DMA compliance report frames it, assuming it's not lumped into a "confidential" redaction (which shouldn't even be allowed in a transparency report...).