this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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TechTakes

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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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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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

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[–] antifuchs@awful.systems 7 points 17 hours ago

Would you believe this prescient vibe coding manual came out in 2015! https://mowillemsworkshop.com/catalog/books/item/i-really-like-slop

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 7 points 19 hours ago (2 children)
[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 10 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Hey, there's a new government program to provide care for dementia patients. I should found a company to make myself a middleman for all those sweet Medicare bucks. All I need is a nice, friendly but smart sounding name. Oh, that's it! I'll call it Frenology!

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 13 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

That’ll look good in my portfolio next to my biotech startup with a personal touch YouGenics

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 14 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Very fine people at YouGenics. They sponsor our karting team, the Race Scientists.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 13 points 16 hours ago

Nothing like attending a rally at Kurt’s Krazy Karts!

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

hmm, interesting. I hadn't heard of these guys. their original step 1 seems to have been building a mobile game that would diagnose you with Alzheimer's in 10 minutes, but I guess at some point someone told them that was stupid:

So far, the team has raised $6 million in seed funding for a HIPAA-compliant app that, according to Patel, can help identify Alzheimer’s disease — even years before symptoms appear — after just 10 minutes of gameplay on a cellphone. It’s not purely a tech offering. Patel says the results are given to an “actual physician” affiliated with Craniometrix who “reviews, verifies, and signs that diagnostic” and returns it to a patient.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/10/this-yale-alum-wants-to-build-a-telemedicine-platform-expressly-for-alzheimers-disease/

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 6 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

small thread about these guys:

https://bsky.app/profile/scgriffith.bsky.social/post/3llepnsvtpk2g

tldr only new thing I saw is that as a teenager the founder annoyed "over 100" academics until one of them, a computer scientist, endorsed his research about a mobile game that diagnoses you with Alzheimer's in five minutes

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 5 points 16 hours ago

I missed the AI bit, but I wasn't surprised.

Do YC, A16z and their ilk ever fund anything good, even by accident?

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 20 hours ago

Discovered an animation sneering at the tech oligarchs on Newgrounds - I recommend checking it out. Its sister animation is a solid sneer, too, even if it is pretty soul crushing.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Annoying nerd annoyed annoying nerd website doesn't like his annoying posts:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43489058

(translation: John Gruber is mad HN doesn't upvote his carefully worded Apple tonguebaths)

JWZ: take the win, man

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 3 points 14 hours ago

"vc-chan"

Thats just chefskiss

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago (3 children)
[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

it doesn't look anything like him? not that he looks much like anything himself but come on

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago

He's an AI bro, having even a basic understanding of art is beyond him

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago

sam altman is greentexting in 2025

Ugh. Now I wonder, does he have an actual background as an insufferable imageboard edgelord or is he just trying to appear as one because he thinks that's cool?

[–] jax@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

can we get some Fs in the chat for our boy sammy a 🙏🙏

e: he thinks that he's only been hated for the last 2.5 years lol

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago

I hated Sam Altman before it was cool apparently.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

you don't understand, sam cured cancer or whatever

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is not funny. My best friend died of whatever. If y'all didn't hate saltman so much maybe he'd still be here with us.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago

"It's not lupus. It's never lupus. It's whatever."

Oh, is that what the orb was doing? I thought that was just a scam.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

holy shitting fuck, just got the tip of the year in my email

Simplify Your Hiring with AI Video Interviews

Interview, vet, and hire thousands of job applicants through our AI-powered video interviewer in under 3 minutes & 95 languages.

"AI-Video Vetting That Actually Works"

it's called kerplunk.com, a domain named after the sound of your balls disappearing forever

the market is gullible recruiters

founder is Jonathan Gallegos, his linkedin is pretty amazing

other three top execs don't use their surnames on Kerplunk's about page, one (Kyle Schutt) links to a linkedin that doesn't exist

for those who know how Dallas TX works, this is an extremely typical Dallas business BS enterprise, it's just this one is about AI not oil or Texas Instruments for once

It's also the sound it makes when I drop-kick their goddamned GPU clusters into the fuckin ocean. Thankfully I haven't run into one of these yet, but given how much of the domestic job market appears to be devoted towards not hiring people while still listing an opening it feels like I'm going to.

On a related note, if anyone in the Seattle area is aware of an opening for a network engineer or sysadmin please PM me.

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

@dgerard @techtakes

This jerk had better have a second site with an AI that sits for job interviews in place of a human job seeker.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago

best guess i've heard so far is they're trying to sell this shitass useless company before the bubble finally deflates and they're hoping the AI interviews of suckers are sufficient personal data for that

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

LW: 23AndMe is for sale, maybe the babby-editing people might be interested in snapping them up?

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MciRCEuNwctCBrT7i/23andme-potentially-for-sale-for-less-than-usd50m

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

@gerikson @techtakes

Babby-edit.com: Give us your embryos for an upgrade. (Customers receive an Elon embryo regardless of what they want.)

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago

I know the GNU Infant Manipulation Program can be a little unintuitive and clunky sometimes, but it is quite powerful when you get used to it. Also why does everyone always look at me weird when I say that?

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago

Quick update on the CoreWeave affair: turns out they're facing technical defaults on their Blackstone loans, which is gonna hurt their IPO a fair bit.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 23 points 2 days ago (9 children)

LW discourages LLM content, unless the LLM is AGI:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KXujJjnmP85u8eM6B/policy-for-llm-writing-on-lesswrong

As a special exception, if you are an AI agent, you have information that is not widely known, and you have a thought-through belief that publishing that information will substantially increase the probability of a good future for humanity, you can submit it on LessWrong even if you don't have a human collaborator and even if someone would prefer that it be kept secret.

Never change LW, never change.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

From the comments

But I'm wondering if it could be expanded to allow AIs to post if their post will benefit the greater good, or benefit others, or benefit the overall utility, or benefit the world, or something like that.

(https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KXujJjnmP85u8eM6B/policy-for-llm-writing-on-lesswrong?commentId=xnfHpn9ryjKqG8WKA)

No biggie, just decide one of the largest open questions in ethics and use that to moderate.

(It would be funny if unaligned AIs take advantage of this to plot humanity's downfall on LW, surrounded by flustered rats going all "techcnially they're not breaking the rules". Especially if the dissenters are zapped from orbit 5s after posting. A supercharged Nazi bar, if you will)

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 6 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

I wrote down some theorems and looked at them through a microscope and actually discovered the objectively correct solution to ethics. I won't tell you what it is because science should be kept secret (and I could prove it but shouldn't and won't).

[–] fnix@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Reminds me of the stories of how Soviet peasants during the rapid industrialization drive under Stalin, who’d never before seen any machinery in their lives, would get emotional with and try to coax faulty machines like they were their farm animals. But these were Soviet peasants! What are structural forces stopping Yud & co outgrowing their childish mystifications? Deeply misplaced religious needs?

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I feel like cult orthodoxy probably accounts for most of it. The fact that they put serious thought into how to handle a sentient AI wanting to post on their forums does also suggest that they're taking the AGI "possibility" far more seriously than any of the companies that are using it to fill out marketing copy and bad news cycles. I for one find this deeply sad.

Edit to expand: if it wasn't actively lighting the world on fire I would think there's something perversely admirable about trying to make sure the angels dancing on the head of a pin have civil rights. As it is they're close enough to actual power and influence that their enabling the stripping of rights and dignity from actual human people instead of staying in their little bubble of sci-fi and philosophy nerds.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago

As it is they’re close enough to actual power and influence that their enabling the stripping of rights and dignity from actual human people instead of staying in their little bubble of sci-fi and philosophy nerds.

This is consistent if you believe rights are contingent on achieving an integer score on some bullshit test.

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 13 points 2 days ago

Damn, I should also enrich all my future writing with a few paragraphs of special exceptions and instructions for AI agents, extraterrestrials, time travelers, compilers of future versions of the C++ standard, horses, Boltzmann brains, and of course ghosts (if and only if they are good-hearted, although being slightly mischievous is allowed).

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