this post was submitted on 07 Sep 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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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 13th September 2026 (awful.systems)
submitted 3 days ago by blakestacey@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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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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[–] rook@awful.systems 12 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

Tesla’s new self-driving taxi seems to be entirely made of red flags and those horror movie moments where you can’t understand why anyone would go in there, because they’re clearly going to die.

https://archive.is/2026.09.05-135619/https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tesla-cybercab-no-steering-wheel-emergency-plan-push-musk-austin-rcna595741

Highlights:

  • No door handles. Good luck getting out instead of burning to death and/or drowning!
  • Doors might not unlock if there are power issues, eg. Bad things happened in a crash.
  • No manual controls! First responders will have to push it out of the way.
  • Unless there’s a power issue, because the parking brake will engage if there’s no power, so it’ll need to be barged by another vehicle, I guess?
  • Or you push it faster than 5mph, because the brake will engage for safety reasons.
  • Or if it is in the wrong gear or mode, because back-driving the motor can cause electrical safety issues or overheating, which will presumably increase the risk of people trapped inside being burned to death.
  • The vehicle is silent and may move without warning. You can’t tell if it is unpowered. First responders are instructed to “cage” the vehicle before trying to interact with it. Otherwise I guess it might just main or kill them by surprise.
  • Not all high voltage components are labelled. Exposed bits in a crash might just kill you if you don’t have suitable ppe, and you can’t tell which bits those are, lol.

The guide advises first responders to contact the company via the car’s communications system or phone for most emergencies, and says that the Tesla can assist emergency personnel by moving the car remotely, helping provide access to on-board controls or putting the car in neutral so that it can be pushed.

If Tesla cannot be reached by phone, the manual advises first responders to use an email address to learn more about how to move the Tesla, though it warns, “This email is not monitored for emergency requests.”

🤡

Welcome to the future, where first responders might just opt to watch you die because they’re not certified to rescue you from your autonomous death trap, because there’s no point in you all dying.

H/t to violet blue. https://mastodon.social/@violetblue/117237691936474802

[–] jaschop@awful.systems 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

The door handles don't sound so bad from a firefighter perspective. More excuses to break out the slicy claw. ಠᴗಠ

Having to account for the stupid thing to start driving on its own for no reason seems more irritating. Maybe we can invest in some big jaws attached to the front of the truck to crunch down on and immobilize struggling robo-taxis. This seems like a very reasonable direction to develop car technology.

[–] rook@awful.systems 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

There was a photo from a cybertruck crash not so long ago where you could see that the doors and windows had been attacked with crowbars to try and get the damn things open before the people trapped inside burned to death. It didn’t work.

Things (and skills) for busting open locked doors and laminated glass aren’t (yet?) commonplace, and I wouldn’t trust tesla engineering to keep me alive long enough for the professionals to turn up with the right tools 🫤

[–] jaschop@awful.systems 4 points 3 hours ago

You're right of course, stupid engineering like that will kill people and already has.

From an emergency responder perspective I'm mostly asking how can I keep my squad safe and how can I rescue survivors. Once we're there we usually got all the tools you would ever need. And I'm 100% sure, if someone is in danger I'm breaking out the can opener before I would ever bother to call remote support.

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 6 points 10 hours ago

Literally "just push it over there with the rest of the fire and send an email."

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 6 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Tesla has not gotten clearance from safety regulators to deploy vehicles without features such as brake pedals, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Friday it had opened an investigation into whether the Cybercab meets vehicle safety standards.

The fuck do you mean opened an investigation. I don’t care that the US are a fake made-up country, there is no conceivable world in which you can legally put random shit on public roads without some kind of permit.

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 7 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Quick search and from somewhere else

the company relied on self-certification, the standard method automakers use to affirm compliance with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards without pre-approval from regulators. NHTSA can audit that self-certification at any time, and it has now requested the engineering data and testing records Tesla used to reach its conclusion

you can’t be fucking serious

[–] rook@awful.systems 3 points 5 hours ago

That’s horrifying.

[–] veganes_hack@awful.systems 3 points 7 hours ago

oh wow, it's that bad huh. i guess it make sense, there's a reason why the cybertruck is not legal in europe yet still on the streets in the us.