TechTakes

2111 readers

134 users here now

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

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

dgerard@awful.systems

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 27th July 2025 (awful.systems)

submitted 3 weeks ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

192 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.)

(page 3) 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 8 points 2 weeks ago

New piece from Brian Merchant, and a new edition of AI Killed My Job just dropped

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Going through work email I saw a link o an article about Quantum-AI. It was behind paywall, and I am not paying for reading about how woo+woo=woo^2. What do you do when your bubble isn't inflating anymore? Couple it with another stale bubble!

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 7 points 3 weeks ago

Enjoy this LW answer about "myths that encapsulate eternal truths". No. 3 will surprise you!

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nB79uLT4uRWYAKrxK/what-are-some-good-examples-of-myths-that-encapsulates?commentId=qv8ySAWsDxYmPawZX

[–] nfultz@awful.systems 7 points 2 weeks ago (9 children)

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-the-astral-codex-ten lol but good for lore:

The most toxic the comments section has ever got (beyond the very early days) was on the post Gupta on Enlightenment. I feel like the comments section on this post should be part of the ACX main canon because it is so cosmically hilarious. It concerns a man name Vinay Gupta (founder of a blockchain-based dating website) and his claims to have reached enlightenment. Some people in the comments are sceptical that Vinay Gupta is indeed an enlightened being, citing that enlightened people don’t typically found blockchain-based dating websites. A new forum poster with the handle ‘Vinay Gupta’, claiming to be Vinay Gupta and writing in a very similar style to the actual Vinay Gupta, turns up and starts arguing with everyone in an extremely toxic way (in the objective sense that his comments score very highly on the toxic-bert scoring system), which provokes more merriment that a self-described enlightened being would deploy such classic internet tough-guy approaches as ‘I don’t think much of a four-on-one face off against untrained opponents’ (link) and ‘this board is filled with self-satisfied assholes who feel free to hold forth on whatever subject crosses their minds, with the absolute certainty that they’re the smartest people in the room’

load more comments (9 replies)

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 7 points 2 weeks ago

New (paywalled) 404 Media: Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain

[–] antifuchs@awful.systems 7 points 2 weeks ago

I didn’t see this article here yet, but I just saw it elsewhere and it’s pretty good: Potemkin Understanding in Large Language Models

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Me, a unique genius, when I navigate to chatgpt dot com to awaken my best friend:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5jROs3A6F8

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments