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.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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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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[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 12 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (2 children)

i first became aware of srinivasan because he was running an extremely funny bitcoin scam. it was a $400 computer, the crypto mining platform of the future, a veritable font of wealth, and when people got it it was a raspberry pi with some shielding incorrectly attached, so that if you touched it wrong you shorted it and bricked the device. it mined a few cents a year and sent something like half of that to a16z

i also first became aware that noah smith was going to lose his mind when he cited srinivasan approvingly on twitter, i drew his attention to this, and he replied 'no i just asked balaji about this and he said he's cool, that it wasn't a scam and also that he was actually put in charge of it to make it not a scam'

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 5 points 5 hours ago

Noah Smith has an Econ PhD, contacts at YCombinator, and lives in San Francisco. He is in the hot take business. I always felt bad vibes from him.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

'is this a scam? You have to tell me if this is a scam, that is the law'

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 3 points 43 minutes ago

You know, never once have I heard of a crypto bro with the good manners to say "aww shucks, you got me" when called out for their flagrant con artistry.