this post was submitted on 20 Apr 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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For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 27th April 2025 (awful.systems)
submitted 3 days ago by BlueMonday1984@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.

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

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[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 1 points 5 minutes ago

Not the usual topic around here, but a scream into the void no less....

Andor season 1 was art.

Amdor season 2 is just... Bad.

All the important people appear to have been replaced. It's everything - music, direction, lighting, sets (why are we back to The Volume after S1 was so praised for its on-location sets?!), and the goddamn shit humor.

Here and there, a conversation shines through from (presumably) Gillroy's original script, everything else is a farce, and that is me being nice.

The actors are still phenomenal.

But almost no scene seems to have PURPOSE. This show is now just bastardizing its own AESTHETICS.

What is curious though is that two days before release, the internet was FLOODED with glowing reviews of "one of the best seasons of television of all time", "the darkest and most mature star wars has ever been", "if you liked S1, you will love S2". And now actual, post-release reviews are impossible to fine.

Over on reddit, every even mildly critical comment is buried. Seems to me like concerted bot actions tbh, a lot of the glowing comments read like LLM as well.

Idk, maybe I'm the idiot for expecting more. But it hurts to go from a labor-of-love S1 which felt like an instruction manual for revolution, so real was what it had to say and critique, to S2 "pew pew, haha, look, we're doing STAR WARS TM" shit that feels like Kenobi instead of Andor S1.

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 1 points 13 minutes ago

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-04-23/state-bar-of-california-used-ai-for-exam-questions

When measured for reliability, the State Bar told The Times, the combined scored multiple-choice questions from all sources — including AI — performed “above the psychometric target of 0.80.”

"I dunno why you guys are complaining, we measured our exam to be 80% accurate!"

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 6 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Found a thread doing numbers on Bluesky, about Google's AI summaries producing hot garbage (as usual):

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 6 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Also on the BlueSky-o-tubes today, I saw this from Ketan Joshi:

Used [hugging face]'s new tool to multiply 2 five digit numbers

Chatbot: wrong answer, 0.3 watthours

Calc: right answer, 0.00000011 watthours (2.5 million times less energy)

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Julien Delavande , an engineer at AI research firm Hugging Face , has developed a tool that shows in real time the power consumption of the chatbot generating

gnnnnnngh

this shit pisses me off so bad

there's actually quantifiable shit you can use across vendors[0]. there's even some software[1] you can just slap in place and get some good free easy numbers with! these things are real! and are usable!

"measure the power consumption of the chatbot generating"

I'm sorry you fucking what? just how exactly are you getting wattage out of openai? are you lovingly coaxing the model to lie to you about total flops spent?

[0] - intel's def been better on this for a while but leaving that aside for now..

[1] - it's very open source! (when I last looked there was no continual in-process sampling so you got hella at-observation sampling problems; but, y'know, can be dealt with)

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 9 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

I tried this a couple of times and got a few "AI summary not available" replies

Ed: heh

The phrase "any pork in a swarm" is an idiom, likely meant to be interpreted figuratively. It's not a literal reference to a swarm of bees or other animals containing pork. The most likely interpretation is that it is being used to describe a situation or group where someone is secretly taking advantage of resources, opportunities, or power for their own benefit, often in a way that is not transparent or ethical. It implies that individuals within a larger group are actively participating in corruption or exploitation.

Generative AI is experimental.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 9 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

NOT THE (PORK-FILLED) BEES!

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 1 points 1 hour ago

Now we know why dogs eat bees!

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

The link opened up another google search with the same query, tho without the AI summary.

image of a google search result descriptionQuery: “a bear fries bacon meaning”

AI summary:

The phrase "a bear fries bacon" is a play on the saying "a cat dreams of fish" which is a whimsical way to express a craving. In this case, the "bear" and "bacon" are just random pairings. It's not meant to be a literal description of a bear cooking bacon. It's a fun, nonsensical phrase that people may use to express an unusual or unexpected thought or craving, according to Google Search.

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 7 points 9 hours ago

It really aggressively tries to match it up to something with similar keywords and structure, which is kind of interesting in its own right. It pattern-matched every variant I could come up with for "when all you have is..." for example.

Honestly it's kind of an interesting question and limitation for this kind of LLM. How should you respond when someone asks about an idiom neither of you know? The answer is really contextual. Sometimes it's better to try and help them piece together what it means, other times it's more important to acknowledge that this isn't actually a common expression or to try and provide accurate sourcing. The LLM, of course, has none of that context and because the patterns it replicates don't allow expressions of uncertainty or digressions it can't actually do both.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 9 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (6 children)

pic of tweet reply taken from r/ArtistHate. Reminded me of Saltman's Oppenheimer tweet. Link to original tweet

image/tweet descriptionOriginal tweet, by @mark_k:

Forget "Black Mirror", we need WHITE MIRROR

An optimistic sci-fi show about cool technology and hot it relates to society.

Attached to the original tweet are two images, side-to-side.

On the left/leading side is (presumably) a real promo poster for the newest black mirror season. It is an extreme close-up of the side of a person's face; only one eye, part of the respective eyebrow, and a section of hair are visible. Their head is tilted ninety degrees upwards, with the one visible eye glazed over in a cloudy white. Attached to their temple is a circular device with a smiling face design, tilted 45 degrees to the left. Said device is a reference to the many neural interface devices seen throughout the series. The device itself is mostly shrouded in shadow, likely indicating the dark tone for which Black Mirror is known. Below the device are three lines of text: "Plug back in"/"A Netflix Series"/"Black Mirror"

On the right side is an LLM generated imitation of the first poster. It appears to be a woman's 3/4 profile, looking up at 45 degrees. She is smiling, and her eyes are clear. A device is attached to her face, but not on her temple, instead it's about halfway between her ear and the tip of her smile, roughly outside where her upper molars would be. The device is lit up and smiling, the smile aligned vertically. There are also three lines of text below the device, reading: "Stay connected"/"A Netflix Series"/"Black Mirror"

Reply to the tweet, by @realfuzzylegend:

I am always fascinated by how tech bros do not understand art. like at all. they don't understand the purpose of creative expression.

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 6 points 10 hours ago

oppenheimer teaches all of us that even if you specifically learn arcane knowledge to devise a nazi-burning machine, you can still get fucked over by a nazi that chose to do office politics and propaganda instead

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 9 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

Vacant, glassy-eyed, plastic-skinned, stamped with a smiley face... "optimistic"

I mean, if the smiley were aligned properly, it would be a poster for a horror story about enforced happiness and mandatory beauty standards. (E.g., "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" from the famously subtle Twilight Zone.) With the smiley as it is, it's just incompetent.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 7 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

"The man in the glowing rectangle is Mark Kretschmann, a technology enthusiast who has grown out of touch with all but the most venal human emotions. Mark is a leveller, in that he wants to drag all people down to his. But as Mark is about to discover, there's no way to engineer a prompt for a map out of... the Twilight Zone."

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 8 points 9 hours ago

I mean, it feels like there's definitely something in the concept of a Where Is Everybody style of episode where Mark has to navigate a world where dead internet theory has hit the real world and all around him are bots badly imitating workers trying to serve bots badly imitating customers in order to please bots badly imitating managers so that bots badly imitating cops don't drag them to robot jail

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 9 points 13 hours ago

about cool technology and how it relates to society

My dude I've got bad news for you about what Black Mirror is about.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 8 points 14 hours ago

We have that already, it's called ads.

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 7 points 14 hours ago

need to see those proposed community notes

[–] rook@awful.systems 9 points 15 hours ago

Why are all the stories about the torment nexus we’re constructing so depressing?

Hmm, hmm. This is a tricky one.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Show HN: AI Paying with Bitcoin and Lightning – A Working Demo

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43770953

[–] pikesley@mastodon.me.uk 7 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

@o7___o7 @BlueMonday1984 hey cool they made something that absolutely nobody wants or will ever use

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 9 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

A service that gives a bullshit engine unsupervised access to the irreversible-transaction machine? What could possibly go wrong?

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Otoh, this does open up the potential for a headline like 'Chatgpt sanctioned for using stolen cryptocurrency assets.'

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 5 points 9 hours ago

ChatGPT finally achieved profitability due to unintended money laundering at unprecedented scale.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 9 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

exploitation-offshorer "Nick Huber" (@sweatystartup) finds that the leopards will, in fact, also eat his face. but still takes it as a fine opportunity to pitch his exploitation:

screenshot of tweets, transcript below

(I guess at least his account name is directionally accurate? indicates willingness to induce sweatshops...)

tweet 1I was pro tariffs.

Until about 30 of our clients at Somewhere dot com cancelled searches over the past three weeks. Hiring freezes all over the place.

Hit me in the pocket book already.

REMOVE TARIFFS.

tweet 2By the way:

If you want to hire folks internationally for 80% less than US employees, check out somewhere[.]com or send me a DM for a discount.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 7 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 10 hours ago

looks to be! thanks, I’d seen that before and remember the incident, but I’m beyond abysmal at names

(this is a problem to solve, I know)

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 13 points 1 day ago (3 children)

This might be tangential/way off-topic and more MoreWrite material than stub, but anyhoo:

Acronym-based misinformation campaigns I would like to seed:

  1. Internet debate clubs should start using “ASMR” to mean “A steel man risk”
  2. Opus dei, the absolutely real sect of the catholic church most famous for being the villains in the fiction IP “the Da Vinci Code”, is in fact the DEI branch of the catholic church.
  3. The company KFC has been commissioned by the Chinese Government to use FLG in its marketing, standing for “finger licking good” to drop Fa Lun Gong in search rankings for FLG.

If I think of more I’ll post them.

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 9 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

LMFAO, best known for "Party Rock Anthem", is actually a failed leftist yodaist sect, standing for the warning "Leopards, my face, ate off"

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

took me 3 tries to read "yodaist" correctly (brain kept going s/d/g/ which, well..)

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 16 hours ago

I thought of the old sneerclub/ssc poster (def not a regular on the former, while a former regular on the latter) yodatsracist

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

Personally id not use disinformation as a tool. It is what got us into this mess, and you are also helping the actual goal of the flooding the zone with misinformation tactic. People stop believing in things.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Ok, that's fair enough. The framing of "misinformation [...] I would like to seed" was just there to frame the bits. I don't really want these bits to take off.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 17 hours ago

Allright, let me put my 'warnings for young demonologists' guidebook to the side. ;).

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

for the betterment of muddled waters, I suggest a secondary meaning for opus dei - a WIP codec that the xiph group hasn't really released yet, because they're not sure it fully enough mutes maga voices

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 1 day ago

Semi-OT: Ed Zitron's Better Offline podcast just won a Webby:

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