this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2025

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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 26th January 2025 - awful.systems - awful.systems (awful.systems)

submitted 1 month ago by blakestacey@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

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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.

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

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[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 17 points 1 month ago

CIDR 2025 is ongoing (Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research). It's a very good conference in computer science, specifically database research (an equivalent of a journal for non-CS science). And they have a whole session on LLMs called "LLMs ARE THE NEW NO-SQL"

I didn't have time to read the papers yet, believe me I will, but the abstracts are spicy

We systematically develop benchmarks to study [the problem] and find that standard methods answer no more than 20% of queries correctly, confirming the need for further research in this area.

(Text2SQL is Not Enough: Unifying AI and Databases with TAG, Biswal et al.)

Hey guys and gals, I have a slightly different conclusion, maybe a baseline 20% correctness is a great reason to not invest a second more of research time into this nonsense? Jesus DB Christ.

I'd also like to shoutout CIDR for setting up a separate "DATABASES AND ML" session, which is an actual research direction with interesting results (e.g. query optimizers powered by an ML model achieving better results than conventional query optimizers). At least actual professionals are not conflating ML with LLMs.

[–] mlen@awful.systems 16 points 1 month ago

Polish commentary on Hitlergruß: https://bsky.app/profile/smutnehistorie.bsky.social/post/3lgaoyezhgc2c

Translation:

it’s just a Hindu symbol of prosperity
a normal Roman salute
regular rail car
wait a second

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 15 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

From the "flipping through LessWrong for entertainment" department:

What effect does LLM use have on the quality of people's thinking / knowledge?

I'd expect a large positive effect from just making people more informed / enabling them to interpret things correctly / pointing out fallacies etc.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 13 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

You'd think the AI safety chuds would have more reservations about using GPT, which they believe has sapience, to learn things. They have the concept of an AI being a good convincer, which, hey, idiots, how have none of you thought the great convincing has started? Also, how have none of you realised that maybe you should be a little harder to convince in general???

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[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 14 points 4 weeks ago (19 children)

PhysicsForums was apparently deliberately corrupted with LLM content in old posts.

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[–] istewart@awful.systems 14 points 4 weeks ago (17 children)

This is a thought I've been entertaining for some time, but this week's discussion about Ars Technica's article on Anthropic, as well as the NIH funding freeze, finally prodded me to put it out there.

A core strategic vulnerability that Musk, his hangers-on, and geek culture more broadly haven't cottoned onto yet: Space is 20th-century propaganda. Certainly, there is still worthwhile and inspirational science to be done with space probes and landers; and the terrestrial satellite network won't dwindle in importance. I went to high school with a guy who went on to do his PhD and get into research through working with the first round of micro-satellites. Resources will still be committed to space. But as a core narrative of technical progress to bind a nation together? It's gassed. The idea that "it might be ME up there one day!" persisted through the space shuttle era, but it seems more and more remote. Going back to the moon would be a remake of an old television show, that went off the air because people ended up getting bored with it the first time. Boots on Mars (at least healthy boots with a solid chance to return home) are decades away, even if we start throwing Apollo money at it immediately. The more outlandish ideas like orbital data centers and asteroid mining don't have the same inspirational power, because they are meant to be private enterprises operated by thoroughly unlikeable men who have shackled themselves to a broadly destructive political program.

For better or worse, biotechnology and nanotechnology are the most important technical programs of the 21st century, and by backgrounding this and allowing Trump to threaten funding, the tech oligarchs kowtowing to him right now are undermining themselves. Biotech should be obvious, although regulatory capture and the impulse for rent-seeking will continue to hold it back in the US. I expect even more money to be thrown at nanotechnology manufacturing going into the 2030s, to try to overcome the fact that semiconductor scaling is hitting a wall, although most of what I've seen so far is still pursuing the Drexlerian vision of MEMS emulating larger mechanical systems... which, if it's not explicitly biocompatible, is likely going down a cul-de-sac.

Everybody's looking for a positive vision of the future to sell, to compete with and overcome the fraudulent tech-fascists who lead the industry right now. A program of accessible technology at the juncture of those two fields would not develop overnight, but could be a pathway there. Am I off base here?

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 12 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

This seems like yet another disconnect between however the fuck science communication has been failing the general public and myself.

Like when you say space I think, fuck yeah, space! Those crisp pictures of Pluto! Pictures of black holes! The amazing JWST data! Gravitational waves detection! Recreating the conditions of the early universe in particle accelerators to unlock the secrets of spacetime! Just most amazing geek shit that makes me as excited as I was when I was 12 looking at the night sky through my cheap-ass telescope.

Who gives a single fuck about sending people up there when we have probes and rovers, true marvels of engineering, feeding us data back here? Did you know Voyager 1, Voyager Fucking ONE, almost 50 years old probe, over 150 AU away from Earth, is STILL SENDING US DATA? We engineered the fuck of that bolt bucket so that even the people that designed it are surprised by how long it lasted. You think a human would last 50 years in the interstellar medium? I don't fucking think so.

We're unlocking the secrets of the universe and confirming theories from decades ago, has there been a more exciting time to be a scientist? Wouldn't you want to run a particle accelerator? Do science on the ISS? Be the engineer behind the next legendary probe that will benefit mankind even after you're gone? If you can't spin this into a narrative of technical progrees and humans being amazing then that's a skill issue, you lack fucking whimsy.

And I don't think there's a person in the world less whimsical than Elon fucking Musk.

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[–] gerikson@awful.systems 11 points 4 weeks ago

Agree with space travel being retro-futurist fluff. It's very rich men badly remembering mediocre science fiction.

The US could lead the world in innovation in green technology but that's now tainted by wokeness.

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[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Rationalist death count keeps climbing https://xcancel.com/jessi_cata/status/1882182975804363141#m

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 14 points 1 month ago (5 children)

What the fuck?

The agents were conducting a routine roving patrol when they stopped Bauckholt and a female in the town close to the border. During a records check, the unidentified female occupant was removed from the vehicle for further questioning, broke free, and began shooting at the agents, the incident report shows.

After the female suspect was hit by return fire, Bauckholt emerged from the vehicle and also began firing on the agents. He sustained gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead.

....... What the fuck?

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Jesus wept, it's so frustratingly obvious that anytime some flavor of cop kills someone, the news media reporting (if any) will be this weird Yoda grammar pidgin.

The femoidically gendered female shot with its gun by very personally pulling the trigger, with this viscerally physical action performed by the said femalian in most pointedly concrete terms amounting to it (the femaloidistical entity, a specimen of the species known as females) firing lethal gunshots at the border patrol with the female's own two hands.

Subsequently return fire manifested itself from somewhere and came into contact with the female suspect female. The Justice Enforcement Officers involved in the situation were made a part of a bilateral exchange of gunfire between the shooting female and the officers situated in the scenario in which shooting was, to some extent, quite possibly performed from their side as well.

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[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Does anyone know who or what is Ziz in this context? Google says jewish mythological beast.

edit: found this:

The Zizians were a cult that focused on relatively extreme animal welfare, even by EA standards, and used a Timeless/Updateless decision theory, where being aggressive and escalatory was helpful as long as it helped other world branches/acausally traded with other worlds to solve the animal welfare crisis.

They apparently made a new personality called Maia in Pasek, and this resulted in Pasek's suicide.

They also used violence or the threat of violence a lot to achieve their goal.

This caused many problems for Ziz, and she now is in police custody.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago (5 children)

https://zizians.info/

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

it's like looking from outside at minor splinter groups within scientology, and the purported voice of reason says that the right way to deal with these transgressors is to return to scientologist orthodoxy. it even includes seasteading

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

It's another one of those things that the further you read the worse it gets, isn't it?

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[–] corbin@awful.systems 13 points 1 month ago (8 children)

You may have heard that Catturd doesn't have any fiber in his diet and was hospitalized for bowel blockage. (Best sneer I've seen so far: "can't turd.") Along similar lines, Srid isn't taking his statins for high cholesterol caused by a carnivore diet.

Meta: I'm kind of pissed that Catturd is WP notable but laughing my ass off at the page for carnivore diets. Life takes and gives.

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 17 points 1 month ago (5 children)

My favorite part of the carnivore diet is that apparently scurvy can become enough of a problem that you'll see references to "not wanting to start the vitamin C debate" in forums.

I'm pretty sure it's not just a me thing, but I thought we all knew that sailors kept citrus on board specifically to prevent scurvy by providing vitamin C and that we all learned about this as kids when either a teacher tried to make the colonial era interesting or we got vaguely curious about pirates at some point.

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[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 13 points 1 month ago

So that's how to translate "Yo, this diet is for chumps" into Wikipedian.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

you could say that being full of shit finally caught up to him *rimshot*

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Here's a bonus high fiber diet pro-tip: Metamucil tastes like old socks and individual capsules have hardly any fiber anyway, I eat triscuits and Oroweat Double-Fiber bread instead because they're both much much better tasting. Also chili is the food of the gods.

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[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 12 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (6 children)

so I ran into this fucking garbage earlier, which goes so hard on the constituent parts of "the spam is the point", an ouroborosian self-reinforcing loop of Just More Media Bro Just One More Video Bro You'll See Bro It'll Be The Best Listicle Bro Just Watch Bro, and the insufferably cancerous "the medium is the message" videos-made-for-youtube-because-youtube that if it were a voltron it'd probably have its own unique Special Moment sequence instead of being one of the canned assembly shots

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 12 points 4 weeks ago (5 children)

various topics (e.g., AI news, crypto, fitness, personal finance)

That sure is a specifc selection of topics.

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[–] mii@awful.systems 10 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

I wish YouTube would ban this shit wholesale, but it’s Google and of course they won’t.

Aside: I’ve been hammering “Don’t recommend this channel” on every video that remotely smells like AI slop for a while and so far that seems to keep the feed fairly clean.

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[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 12 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (5 children)

I hope everyone is ready for the constant overlap between politics and AI / Silicon Valley; because I'm not.

Trump Admin Accused of Using AI to Draft Executive Orders (Source Bluesky Thread).

I'm not 100% sure I buy that the EOs were written by AI rather than people who simply don't care about or don't know the details; but it certainly looks possible. Especially that example about the Gulf of Mexico. Either way I am heartened that this is the conclusion people jump to.

Aside: I also like how much media is starting to cite bluesky (and activitypub to a lesser extent). I assume a bunch of journalists moved off of twitter or went multi-platform.

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[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (5 children)

Buckle up humans; because humanity's last exam just dropped: https://lastexam.ai/ (Hacker News discussion). May the odds be ever in your favor.

Edit: Per NyTimes, whom I hate, they were apparently trying to avoid an over-dramatic name. Amazing:

The test’s original name, “Humanity’s Last Stand,” was discarded for being overly dramatic.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

i only want to notice that the example chemistry question has two steps out of three that are very similar to last image in wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocyclic_reaction (question explicitly mentions that it is electrocyclic reaction and mentions the same class of natural product)

e: the exact reaction scheme that is answer to that question is in article linked just above that image. taking last image from wiki article and one of schemes from cited article gives the exact same compound as in question, and provides answer. considering how these spicy autocomplete rainforest incinerators work, this sounds like some serious ratfucking, right? you don't even have to know how this all works to get that and it's an isolated and a bit obscure subsubfield

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 11 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

You think people would secretly submit easy questions just for the reward money, and that since the question database is so big and inscrutable no one bothered to verify one way or another? No, that could never happen.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (2 children)

well, it's not the most obvious thing but not because it's easy, it's because it's almost a trivia, a sort of thing you can see once in textbook and then never use it ever for anything and that doesn't really connects readily to anything else, most of the time. i haven't done electrocyclic reaction once in my entire phd programme, and last time i've seen them was in second year ochem course. these kinds of reactions are not very controllable or clean, synthesis of precursors looks like a major PITA, precursors would probably have to be kept in freezer under argon for maybe days before they decompose, and introduction of any modifications requires you to redo multistep synthesis, and then it might fail to work. i also suspect that this exact example might be in some undergrad textbook verbatim, and it will be in scihub pdfs at any rate. it's also kinda old stuff with research starting in 60s

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[–] self@awful.systems 11 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

oh cool, the logo’s just a barely modified sparkle emoji so you know it’s horseshit, and it’s directly funded by Scale AI and a Rationalist thinktank so the chances the models weren’t directly trained on the problem set are vanishingly thin. this is just the FrontierMath grift with new, more dramatic, paint.

e: also, slightly different targeting — FrontierMath was looking to grift institutional dollars, I feel. this one’s designed to look good in a breathless thinkpiece about how, I dunno…

When A.I. Passes This Test, Look Out

yeah, whatever the fuck they think this means. this one’s designed to be talked about, to be brought up behind closed doors as a reason why your pay’s being cut. this is vile shit.

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Somehow, Ross Ulbricht returned

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You gotta love how in the announcement the guy is so blatantly "hey they said and did such nice things for me that I just got a throw them a bone, and if releasing the leader of a notorious drug bazaar who tried to put out a hit on one of his employees is what they want then they can have it!"

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 12 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Sidenote: AFAIK, even with this pardon, Ulbricht still ended up spending more time in prison than if he took a plea deal he was reportedly offered:

He was offered a plea deal, which would have likely given him a decade-long sentence, with the ability to get out early on good behavior. Worst-case scenario, he would have spent five years in a medium-security prison and been freed.

Gotta say, this whole situation's reminding me of SBF - both of them thought they could outsmart the Feds, and both received much harsher sentences than rich white collar criminals usually get as a result.

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[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 9 points 4 weeks ago (10 children)

Xcancel is giving me issues so gimme a sec. That said: another killing. https://x.com/st_rev/status/1882852779582239053

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 10 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Is there any rundown on this backstory for people who missed it happening live over the last few years that doesn't get sidetracked into theological disputes with the murder cult?

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