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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[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

pedal to the metal on the content and information theft, folks:

a photo taken on a huge banner advert on a building titled Bayfront Park. the ad reads "STOP HIRING HUMANS", with a tagline of "The Era Of AI Employees Is Here". the advert is from a company named artisan

seems it's this lot. despite their name, there appears to be almost nothing artful or artistic about them - it's all b2b shit for Selling Better

[–] veganes_hack@feddit.org 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

somebody had to do the design + layout for that banner. i wonder what was going through their head then.

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

"I should start the Butlerian Jihad"

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago

Wonder if the sinister look was demanded by the clients or the person doing the design.

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

Incorporating into your workflow a company that is a shell around other companies that are selling their products at a loss with no path to profitability seems like quite an unacceptable business risk to me. But I dont get paid the big bux

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

as long as you can mark it up and as long as the charade lasts, and as long as there's someone willing to pay, this will make money. when spicy autocomplete provider collapses just pack your bags and leave

[–] pikesley@mastodon.me.uk 7 points 1 week ago

@fullsquare @Soyweiser "I've sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook, and by gum, it put them on the map!"

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I think when you have integrated all this into your workflows doing that and going back might be hard esp on the enterprise level.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

For the enterprise using it, yes. For the enterprise selling it, probably not so much.

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[–] dgerard@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago (7 children)

apparently a complete archive of scott siskind's old livejournal. found on the EA forum no less. https://archive.fo/fCFQx

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[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

The kokotajlo/scoot thing apparently made it to the new york times.

So this is what that was about:

stubsack post from two months agoOn slightly more relevant news the main post is scoot asking if anyone can put him in contact with someone from a major news publication so he can pitch an op-ed by a notable ex-OpenAI researcher that will be ghost-written by him (meaning siskind) on the subject of how they (the ex researcher) opened a forecast market that predicts ASI by the end of Trump’s term, so be on the lookout for that when it materializes I guess.

edit: also @gerikson is apparently a superforcaster

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago

missed that at the time, but you'd think scoot would have an easy time finding a contact at a major publication like the NYT...

[–] TinyTimmyTokyo@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago

Check out the by-line. Big surprise!

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago

Spooks as a service

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

when you say "made it", i think FUCKING ROOSE

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

LW: "being a younger brother makes you gay, the Catholic hierarchy is full of younger brothers, ergo 80% of the Vatican is gay"

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ybwqL9HiXE8XeauPK/how-gay-is-the-vatican

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

tesla: "your car is not your car and we have deep, varied firmware and systems access to it on a permanent basis. we can see you and control you at all times. piss us off and we'll turn off the car that we own."

also tesla: "sorry no you can't return it"

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago

I wonder how often Musk fires employees who explain to him that, no using tesla cars for distributed computing is a bad idea and we should stop working on this.

[–] maol@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago (3 children)

A terrifying poster, spotted in the window of a tattoo shop in Dublin: A poster featuring images of leprechauns, celtic knots, harps, and other assorted paddywhackery. The images seem to have been created with AI. The poster lists prices for them as tattoo designs (!)

Hopefully no one will actually get these images tattooed on their body.

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

Hopefully no one will actually get these images tattooed on their body.

you know there's gonna be at least that one person with multiple of them

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[–] gerikson@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago (5 children)
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