this post was submitted on 06 Apr 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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[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 6 days ago (5 children)
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[–] rook@awful.systems 17 points 1 week ago

Gumroad’s asshole CEO, Sahil Lavingia, NFT fanboy who occasionally used his customer database to track down and get into fights with people on twitter, has now gone professional fash and joined DOGE in order to hollow out the department of veterans affairs and replace the staff with chatbots.

https://tedium.co/2025/04/06/gumroad-open-source-doge-drama/

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Sometimes, checking the Talk page of a Wikipedia article can be entertaining.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Markov_chain#Proposal_to_reintroduce_peer-reviewed_source_(Wiley,_2017)

In short: There has been a conspiracy to insert citations to a book by a certain P. Gagniuc into Wikipedia. This resulted in said book gaining about 900 citations on Google Scholar from people who threw in a footnote for the definition of a Markov chain. The book, Markov Chains: From Theory to Implementation and Experimentation (2017), is actually really bad. Some of the comments advocating for its inclusion read like chatbot (bland, generic, lots of bullet points). Another said that it should be included because it's "the most reliable book on the subject, and the one that is part of ChatGPT training set".

This has been argued out over at least five different discussion pages.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

"Conspiracy" is a colorful way of describing what might boil down to Gagniuc and two publicists, or something like that, since one person can hop across multiple IP addresses, etc. But, I mean, a pitifully tiny conspiracy still counts (and is, IMO, even funnier).

A comment by Wikipedia editor David Eppstein, theoretical computer science prof at UC Irvine:

Despite Malparti warning that "it would be a waste of time for everyone" I took a look at the book myself. 60 pages of badly-worded boring worked examples with no theory before we even get to the possibility of having more than two states. As Malparti said, there is no theory, or rather theory is alluded to in vague and inaccurate form without any justification. For instance the steady state (still of a two-state chain) is first mentioned on 46 as "the unique solution" to an equilibrium equation, and is stated to be "eventually achieved", with no discussion of exceptional cases where the solution is not unique or not reached in the limit, and no discussion of the fact that it is never actually achieved, only found in the limit. Do not use for anything. I should have taken the fact that I could not find a review even on MR and zbl as a warning.

It's been a while since I've seen a math book review that said "Do not use for anything."

"This book is not a place of honor..."

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[–] swlabr@awful.systems 16 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Utterly rancid linkedin post:

text inside image:Why can planes "fly" but AI cannot "think"?

An airplane does not flap its wings. And an autopilot is not the same as a pilot. Still, everybody is ok with saying that a plane "flies" and an autopilot "pilots" a plane.

This is the difference between the same system and a system that performs the same function.

When it comes to flight, we focus on function, not mechanism. A plane achieves the same outcome as birds (staying airborne) through entirely different means, yet we comfortably use the word "fly" for both.

With Generative AI, something strange happens. We insist that only biological brains can "think" or "understand" language. In contrast to planes, we focus on the system, not the function. When AI strings together words (which it does, among other things), we try to create new terms to avoid admitting similarity of function.

When we use a verb to describe an AI function that resembles human cognition, we are immediately accused of "anthropomorphizing." In some way, popular opinion dictates that no system other than the human brain can think.

I wonder: why?

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I can use bad analogies also!

  • If airplanes can fly, why can't they fly to the moon? It is a straightforward extension of existing flight technology, and plotting airplane max altitude from 1900-1920 shows exponential improvement in max altitude. People who are denying moon-plane potential just aren't looking at the hard quantitative numbers in the industry. In fact, with no atmosphere in the way, past a certain threshold airplanes should be able to get higher and higher and faster and faster without anything to slow them down.

I think Eliezer might have started the bad airplane analogies... let me see if I can find a link... and I found an analogy from the same author as the 2027 ~~fanfic~~ forecast: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HhWhaSzQr6xmBki8F/birds-brains-planes-and-ai-against-appeals-to-the-complexity

Eliezer used a tortured metaphor about rockets, so I still blame him for the tortured airplane metaphor: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Gg9a4y8reWKtLe3Tn/the-rocket-alignment-problem

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[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yes the 2 rs in strawberry machine thinks. In the same way that an airplane flies. /s

E: it gets even worse as half the AI field says the airplanes fly like how birds do. That is why the anthropomorphization is bad. Because it both doesn't think as in the function, nor think as in the system. And by anthropomorphizing people make it look like it can do both.

[–] rook@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Dijkstra did it first, but it is very ai-booster to steal work without credit or understanding, I guess.

The question of whether Machines Can Think... is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.

Threats to computing science

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[–] dgerard@awful.systems 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

In the late 2000s, rationalists were squarely in the middle of transhumanism. They were into the Singularity, but also the cryonics and a whole pile of stuff they got from the Extropians. It was very much the thing.

These days they're most interested in Effective Altruism (loudly -the label at least) and race science (used to be quiet, now a bit louder). I hardly ever hear them even mention transhumanism as it was back then.

Did rationalists abandon transhumanism?

Is it just me? What happened?

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

As to cryonics... for both LLM doomers and accelerationists, they have no need for a frozen purgatory when the techno-rapture is just a few years around the corner.

As for the rest of the shiny futuristic dreams, they have give way to ugly practical realities:

  • no magic nootropics, just Scott telling people to take adderal and other rationalists telling people to micro dose on LSD

  • no low hanging fruit in terms of gene editing (as epistaxis pointed out over on reddit) so they’re left with eugenics and GeneSmith’s insanity

  • no drexler nanotech so they are left hoping (or fearing) the god-AI can figure it (which is also a problem for ever reviving cryonically frozen people)

  • no exocortex, just over priced google glasses and a hallucinating LLM “assistant”

  • no neural jacks (or neural lace or whatever the cyberpunk term for them is), just Elon murdering a bunch of lab animals and trying out (temporary) hope on paralyzed people

The future is here, and it’s subpar compared to the early 2000s fantasies. But hey, you can rip off Ghibli’s style for your shitty fanfic projects, so there are a few upsides.

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 14 points 1 week ago

Solid, high-quality sneer from Adactio - the end is a particular highlight:

The worst of the internet is continuously attacking the best of the internet. This is a distributed denial of service attack on the good parts of the World Wide Web.

If you’re using the products powered by these attacks, you’re part of the problem. Don’t pretend it’s cute to ask ChatGPT for something. Don’t pretend it’s somehow being technologically open-minded to continuously search for nails to hit with the latest “AI” hammers.

[–] rook@awful.systems 14 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Shopify going all in on AI, apparently, and the CEO is having a proper born-again moment. Don’t have a source more concrete than this yet:

https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/114298302252798365

(and transcript: https://infosec.exchange/@barubary/114298367285112648)

It’s a lot like this:

Using AI effectively is now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify. It’s a tool of all trades today, and will only grow in importance. Frankly, I don’t think it’s feasible to opt out of learning the skill of applying AI in your craft; you are welcome to try, but I want to be honest I cannot see this working out today, and definitely not tomorrow. Stagnation is almost certain, and stagnation is slow-motion failure. If you’re not climbing, you’re sliding.

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[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 13 points 1 week ago

"Imagine a technology so useless you cannot run doom on it" https://bsky.app/profile/sosowski.bsky.social/post/3lm63a2srgc24

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 13 points 1 week ago (3 children)
[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 12 points 6 days ago

She Licking my County till I back away is this anything?

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

How much of this is the AI bubble collapsing vs. Ohiophobia

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[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

So many of the responses pointing out how bad this is for the local communities in Licking County (lol), but I feel like this has to be a case where the bezzle is collapsing more than a decision causing new harm, right? The bubble wasn't sustainable and those jobs were unlikely to manifest past the initial construction, especially since data centers aren't exactly labor-intensive to run.

That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt for those communities, especially in the midst of the economic ruin left in the wake of Hurricane Tarrif, but I feel like there's an important lesson being lost here.

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[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 12 points 1 week ago (9 children)

I just made an unfortunate discovery so now y'all get to see it too

Why does Reachy 2 have a tank top? Are they shy about their bot nipples or something?

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 13 points 1 week ago (3 children)

What the hell

Why are there so many of them?

Why do they all look like shit?

Why do so many look suspiciously like a guy in a suit?

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 8 points 6 days ago

I found it really fun to drag the filter sliders around and cackle at the remaining details

roll up to 180k and you get one that can do 18kg load! amazing

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[–] BigMuffin69@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago (8 children)

:( looked in my old CS dept's discord, recruitment posts for the "Existential Risk Laboratory" running an intro fellowship for AI Safety.

Looks inside at materials, fkn Bostrom and Kelsey Piper and whole slew of BS about alignment faking. Ofc the founder is an effective altruist getting a graduate degree in public policy.

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