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Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? 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 soo 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.

Last week's thread

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

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[-] gerikson@awful.systems 4 points 12 hours ago

Dude discovers that one LLM model is not entirely shit at chess, spends time and tokens proving that other models are actually also not shit at chess.

The irony? He's comparing it against Stockfish, a computer chess engine. Computers playing chess at a superhuman level is a solved problem. LLMs have now slightly approached that level.

For one, gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct rarely suggests illegal moves,

Writeup https://dynomight.net/more-chess/

HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42206817

[-] sc_griffith@awful.systems 2 points 4 hours ago

LLMs sometimes struggle to give legal moves. In these experiments, I try 10 times and if there’s still no legal move, I just pick one at random.

uhh

[-] pikesley@mastodon.me.uk 4 points 12 hours ago
[-] misterbngo@awful.systems 7 points 17 hours ago

Stack overflow now with the sponsored crypto blogspam Joining forces: How Web2 and Web3 developers can build together

I really love the byline here. "Kindest view of one another". Seething rage at the bullshittery these "web3" fuckheads keep producing certainly isn't kind for sure.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago
[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 7 points 18 hours ago

When the reporter entered the confessional, AI Jesus warned, “Do not disclose personal information under any circumstances. Use this service at your own risk.

Do not worry my child, for everything you say in this hallowed chamber is between you, AI Jesus, and the army of contractors OpenAI hires to evaluate the quality of their LLM output.

[-] self@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

a better-thought-out announcement is coming later today, but our WriteFreely instance at gibberish.awful.systems has reached a roughly production-ready state (and you can hack on its frontend by modifying the templates, pages, static, and less directories in this repo and opening a PR)! awful.systems regulars can ask for an account and I'll DM an invite link!

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago
[-] dgerard@awful.systems 13 points 1 day ago

The mask comes off at LWN, as two editors (jake and corbet) dive in to frantically defend the honour of Justine fucking Tunney against multiple people pointing out she's a Nazi who fills her projects with racist dogwhistles

https://lwn.net/Articles/998196/

[-] slopjockey@awful.systems 2 points 4 hours ago

Is Google lacing their free coffee??? How could a woman with at least one college degree believe that the government is even mechanically capable of dissolving into a throne for Eric Schmidt.

[-] self@awful.systems 12 points 1 day ago

fuck me that is some awful fucking moderation. I can’t imagine being so fucking bad at this that I:

  • dole out a ban for being rude to a fascist
  • dole out a second ban because somebody in the community did some basic fucking due diligence and found out one of the accounts defending the above fascist has been just a gigantic racist piece of shit elsewhere, surprise
  • in the process of the above, I create a safe space for a fascist and her friends

but for so many of these people, somehow that’s what moderation is? fucking wild, how the fuck did we get here

[-] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 5 points 15 hours ago

See, you're assuming the goal of moderation is to maintain a healthy social space online. By definition this excludes fascists. It's that old story about how to make sure your pink bar doesn't turn into a nazi punk bar. But what if instead my goal is to keep the peace in my nazi punk bar so that the normies and casuals keep filtering in and out and making me enough money that I can stay in business? Then this strategy makes more sense.

[-] FRACTRANS@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago
[-] dgerard@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago

Centrists Don't Fucking Be Like This challenge not achieved yet again

https://social.kernel.org/notice/AoGpED4fw3LSGhxTLU

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 1 day ago

fwiw this link didn't jump me to a specific reply (if you meant to highlight a particular one)

[-] FRACTRANS@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago

It didn’t scroll for me either but there’s a reply by this corbet person with a highlighted background which I assume is the one intended to be linked to

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago

Post by Corbet the editor. "We get it: people wish that we had not highlighted work by this particular author. Had we known more about the person in question, we might have shied away from the topic. But the article is out now, it describes a bit of interesting technology, people have had their say, please let's leave it at that."

So you updated the article to reflect this right? padme.jpg

[-] mii@awful.systems 3 points 8 hours ago

Seems like they've actually done this now. There's a preface note now.

This topic was chosen based on the technical merit of the project before we were aware of its author's political views and controversies. Our coverage of technical projects is never an endorsement of the developers' political views. The moderation of comments here is not meant to defend, or defame, anybody, but is in keeping with our longstanding policy against personal attacks. We could certainly have handled both topic selection and moderation better, and will endeavor to do so going forward.

Which is better than nothing, I guess, but still feels like a cheap cop-out.

Side-note: I can actually believe that they didn't know about Justine being a fucking nazi when publishing this, because I remember stumbling across some of her projects and actually being impressed by it, and then I found out what an absolute rabbit hole of weird shit this person is. So I kinda get seeing the portable executables project, thinking, wow, this is actually neat, and running with it.

Not that this is an excuse, because when you write articles for a website that should come with a bit of research about the people and topic you choose to cover and you have a bit more responsibility than someone who's just browsing around, but what do I know.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 1 points 5 hours ago

Well, at least they put down something. More than I expected.

And doing research on people? In this economy?

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago

so is corbet the same kind of fucker that'll complain "everything is so political nowadays"? it seems like they are

[-] pikesley@mastodon.me.uk 7 points 1 day ago

@dgerard @BlueMonday1984 also, and I know this is way beside the point, update the design of your website, motherfuckers

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 1 points 6 hours ago

I don't run any websites, what are you coming at me for

[-] self@awful.systems 13 points 1 day ago

most of the dedicated Niantic (Pokemon Go, Ingress) game players I know figured the company was using their positioning data and phone sensors to help make better navigational algorithms. well surprise, it’s worse than that: they’re doing a generative AI model that looks to me like it’s tuned specifically for surveillance and warfare (though Niantic is of course just saying this kind of model can be used for robots… seagull meme, “what are the robots for, fucker? why are you being so vague about who’s asking for this type of model?”)

[-] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 5 points 16 hours ago

Quick, find the guys who were taping their phones to a ceiling fan and have them get to it!

Jokes aside I'm actually curious to see what happens when this one screws up. My money is on one of the Boston Dynamics dogs running in circles about 30 feet from the intended target without even establishing line of sight. They'll certainly have to test it somehow before it starts autonomously ordering drone strikes on innocent people's homes, right? Right?

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago

Pokemon Go To The War Crimes

[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 day ago

Pokemon Go To The Hague

[-] o7___o7@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Peter Watts's Blindsight is a potent vector for brain worms.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Watts has always been a bit of a weird vector. While he doesn't seem a far righter himself, he accidentally uses a lot of weird far right dogwhistles. (prob some cross contamination as some of these things are just scientific concepts (esp the r/K selection thing stood out very much to me in the rifters series, of course he has a phd in zoology, and the books predate the online hardcore racists discovering the idea by more than a decade, but still odd to me)).

To be very clear, I don't blame Watts for this, he is just a science fiction writer, a particularly gloomy one. The guy himself seems to be pretty ok (not a fan of trump for example).

[-] Architeuthis@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

That's a good way to put it. Another thing that was really en vogue at one point and might have been considered hard-ish scifi when it made it into Rifters was all the deep water telepathy via quantum brain tubules stuff, which now would only be taken seriously by wellness influencers.

not a fan of trump for example

In one the Eriophora stories (I think it's officially the sunflower circle) I think there's a throwaway mention about the Kochs having been lynched along with other billionaires on the early days of a mass mobilization to save what's savable in the face of environmental disaster (and also rapidly push to the stars because a Kardashev-2 civilization may have emerged in the vicinity so an escape route could become necessary in the next few millenia and this scifi story needs a premise).

[-] antifuchs@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago
[-] o7___o7@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Oh man where to begin. For starters:

  • Sentience is overrated
  • All communication is manipulative
  • Assumes intelligence has a "value" and that it stacks like a Borderlands damage buff
  • Superintelligence operates in the world like the chaos god Tzeench from WH40K. Humans can't win, because all events are "just as planned"
  • Humanity is therefore gormless and helpless in the face of superintelligence

It just feeds right into all of the TESCREAL nonsense, particularly those parts that devalue the human part of humanity.

[-] Architeuthis@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Sentience is overrated

Not sentience, self awareness, and not in a parτicularly prescriptive way.

Blindsight is pretty rough and probably Watt's worst book that I've read but it's original, ambitious and mostly worth it as an introduction to thinking about selfhood in a certain way, even if this type of scifi isn't one's cup of tea.

It's a book that makes more sense after the fact, i.e. after reading the appendix on phenomenal self-model hypothesis. Which is no excuse -- cardboard characters that are that way because the author is struggling to make a point about how intelligence being at odds with self awareness would lead to individuals with nonexistent self-reflection that more or less coast as an extension of their (ultrafuturistic) functionality, are still cardboard characters that you have to spend a whole book with.

I remember he handwaves a lot of stuff regarding intelligence, like at some point straight up writing that what you are reading isn't really what's being said, it's just the jargonaut pov character dumbing it way down for you, which is to say he doesn't try that hard for hyperintelligence show-don't-tell. Echopraxia is better in that regard.

It just feeds right into all of the TESCREAL nonsense, particularly those parts that devalue the human part of humanity.

Not really, there are some common ideas mostly because tesrealism already is scifi tropes awkwardly cobbled together, but usually what tescreals think is awesome is presented in a cautionary light or as straight up dystopian.

Like, there's some really bleak transhumanism in this book, and the view that human cognition is already starting to become alien in the one hour into the future setting is kind of anti-longtermist, at least in the sense that the utilitarian calculus turns way messed up.

And also I bet there's nothing in The Sequences about Captain Space Dracula.

[-] istewart@awful.systems 3 points 15 hours ago

I got a really nice omnibus edition of Blindsight/Echopraxia that was printed in the UK, but ultimately, the necessarily(?) cardboard nature of the vampire character in Echopraxia was what left me cold. The first chapter or two are some of the most densely-packed creative sci-fi ideas I've ever read, but I came to the book looking for more elaboration on the vampires, and didn't really get that. Valerie remains an inscrutable other. The most memorable interaction she has is when she's breaking her arm and making the POV character guy reset it, seemed like she was hitting on him?

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

I hear you. I should clarify, because I didn't do a good job of saying why those things bothered me and nerd-vented instead. I understand that an author doesn't necessarily believe the things used as plot devices in their books. Blindsight a horror/speculative fiction book that asks "what if these horrible things were true" and works out the consequences in an entertaining way. And, no doubt there's absolutely a place for horror in spec fic, but Blindsight just feels off. I think @Soyweiser explained the vibes better than I did. Watts isn't a bad guy. Maybe it's just me. To me, it feels less Hellraiser and more Human Centipede i.e. here's a lurid idea that would be tremendously awful in reality, now buckle up and let's see how it goes to an uncomfortable extent. That's probably just a matter of taste, though.

Unfortunately, the kind of people who read these books don't get that, because media literacy is dead. Everyone I've heard from (online) seems to think that it is saying big deep things that should be taken seriously. It surfaces in discussions about whether or not ChatGPT is "alive" and how it might be alive in a way different from us. Eric Schmidt's recent insane ramblings about LLMs being an "alien intelligence," which don't call Blindsight out directly, certainly resonate the same way.

Maybe I'm being unfair, but it all just goes right up my back.

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 1 day ago

I, too, have done the “all communication is manipulative”, but in the same way as one would do a bar trick:

all communication is manipulative, for any words I say/write that you perceive instantly manipulate (as in the physical manner / modifying state) your thoughts, and this is done so without you requesting I do so

it’s a handy stunt with which to drive an argument about a few parts of communication, rhetoric, etc. because it gives a kinda good handle on some meta without getting too deep into things

(although there was one of my friends who really, really hated the framing)

[-] Architeuthis@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago

Explaining in detail is kind of a huge end-of-book spoiler, but "All communication is manipulative" leaves out a lot of context and personally I wouldn't consider how it's handled a mark against Blindsight.

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this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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