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.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)
Folks, huge W today. I was hanging out with my parents today and my mother was scrolling her feed, commenting out loud about everything she saw when she came across some autoplag content. “This is fake!” she said, and I could not be prouder. Not just because she IDed the slop, but because it meant she at least has a better brain than my trumper family members that habitually repost trumper slop.
Cherry on top: she showed me a text chain where she was trolling a “my phone died, this is my new number” scammer.
I know we’re trying to cut back on the US politics for the sake of everyone’s sanity, but Musk getting sneered by his own confabulator is still pretty good.
Four Passengers Die in Burning Tesla After Electronic Doors Seemingly Won’t Open
I always had a hunch Teslas were death traps but Jesus Christ
Yeah it’s sad. As the article points out similar incidents have happened repeatedly. Anyone who saw the door design could have (and did!) predict something like this would happen. My coworker was trapped in his Tesla in his garage for 15 minutes (and he wasn’t in a panic).
Look at the picture of the manual door release here: It’s pretty well hidden, you reach in and pull up on the door buttons.
… then scroll down and look at the picture of the rear door manual release. You have to pull off some trim from inside the pocket, pull off another panel, and then pull a cable.
… but wait! There’s more!
Note: Not all Model Y vehicles are equipped with a manual release for the rear doors.
Jesus, I hope the engineers who signed off on this think about what they’ve done and do better. I would say I hope someone regulated bad emergency door releases out of existence but… y’know.
Imagine what other flaws these cars have if the tried to ‘innovate’ like this on the solved technology that is fucking doors.
The lack of a speedometer in front of your face is a pretty glaring quality issue. You have to turn your head to look at the massive touchscreen. The one that replaces all other dashboards and most tactile controls
for manufacturing cost savingsto be a cool futuristic vehicle of the future.I won’t even start talking about the whole CyberStuck thing again because that’s too easy; except to point out that it has turn buttons on the steering wheel instead of a turn signal stalk, a shifter on the ceiling, and the steering wheel is not round.
I only recently bought my first car and it’s just old enough that it didn’t even have a backup camera until I got one installed. Honestly half the reason of buying used was so I could have a car without a touchscreen haha.
The job site decided to recommend me an article calling for the removal of most human oversight from military AI on grounds of inefficiency, which is a pressing issue since apparently we’re already living in the Culture.
The Strategic Liability of Human Oversight in AI-Driven Military Operations
Conclusion
As AI technology advances, human oversight in military operations, though rooted in ethics and legality, may emerge as a strategic liability in future AI-dominated warfare.
Oh unknowable genie of the sketchily curated datasetsClaude, come up with an optimal ratio of civilian to enemy combatant deaths that will allow us to bomb that building with the giant red cross that you labeled an enemy stronghold.As AI technology advances, human oversight in military operations, though rooted inethics and legality, may emerge as a strategic liabilityin future AI-dominated warfare.This is awful for sure, but thankfully low impact. Turns out that this Terminator Enjoyer is an unemployed idea guy. Maybe he’s wrangling for an IDF contract?
From jobbie site:
“An accomplished manager, with expertise in developing innovative concepts and ideas into client services operations and streamlining delivery of products/services within Defence / Cyber Security and Information Technology industry.”
and
Technology and Innovation executive , Currently on short sabbatical May 2024 - Present 7 months
Also, the image is perfect. I especially like the Joe Kucan-looking general embedded in the star trek tactical station. The Technology of Peace ain’t what it used to be, is it?
human oversigh :(
and daiquiri nominations :)
Eliminating Mothman is our prime strattgic priority
Private Bbailcy! I see you back there! Cut it out with the oversighing, you’re dragging down morale KPIs for this quarter!
Also, I the image is perfect. I especially like the Joe Kucan-looking general embedded in the star trek tactical station. The Technology of Peace ain’t what it used to be, is it?
Is that a screenshot from Command&Conquer 4?
what if C&4, but in the metaverse?
So, ethics and legality are strategic liabilities? Jesus fucking Christ, that’s not even sneer-worthy. This guy is completely fucking insane.
This is straight up Hague material right there, all he wants is plausible deniability
Computer said so 🥺
e: that’s a shit take for several reasons and we have autonomous killers already. it’s called air defense (in some modes) because how many civilians are going at mach fuck with RCS of 0.1m^2, that’s no civilian that’s ballistic missile. also lmao at speed of decision
perun video on this topic https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tou8ahLZvP4
If you’ve convinced yourself that you’ll mostly be fighting the AIs of a rival always-chaotic-evil alien species or their outgroup equivalent, you probably think they are.
Otherwise I hope shooting first and asking questions later will probably continue to be frowned upon in polite society even if it’s automated agents doing the shooting.
Just a general comment on the state of things. Now that Musk has fused with the ideological flesh chimera of the next US government and is tapping others to be absorbed, any US politics will be TechTakes-adjacent. Perhaps some ground rules must be set so we aren’t drowned in non-procedurally generated slop.
Either way, I’m cutting back on the musk unless it is directly sneerable.
Elon Musk, Ramaswamy land Trump admin roles
President-elect Trump has tapped tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead an advisory group focused on cutting federal spending and reducing the size of the government.
Trump announced Tuesday that Musk and Ramaswamy would lead his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), an initiative meant to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures” and restructure federal agencies.
We live in the dumbest timeline
I wasn’t expecting complete fascist victory to be so… cringe
skibidi purges
This is literally going to be an embezzlement op isn’t it
Its gonna be the largest embezzlement scheme in US history, that much I’m certain. How much damage the pair will do to the federal gov I’m not sure, but I expect there won’t be much left of it once they’re done.
@BlueMonday1984 It’s going to be like Alves dos Reis all over again, isn’t it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alves_dos_Reis
hot sneer from lizzy w:
I voted for Liz in 2020 :( instead they gave me diamond joe
@BlueMonday1984 I am dead. From Fremdschämen
Such meme. Much wow. I see we’re continuing with giving dumb names to everything the Muskrat is involved in. Glad that hasn’t changed.
Kabosu didn’t die for this.
Another proposal for naming our militia: The Cassandra Division
Our Motto: “Sic diximus vobis”
saltman: no better time to be a startup
begins invisible accordion
Then Curtis Marvin, very smart guy, went to MIT like my famous uncle, he said, “but sir, a monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors”
Many such cases, I said.
masterful endofunctor, sir
Have any of the trumps been on the red scare pod yet? Feel like that’s on the timeline.
But Trump can’t explain things, and Urbit defies explanation. So does the statement “Trump explains Urbit” represent undefined behavior in English?
What is worse? Trump explaining urbit and coming close? Or him explaining it so wrong you feel the need to set the record straight about the gravest misconceptions? (“Trump said Elon invented it, but it actually was Yarvin, also as Elon didnt invent it, he certainly didnt say ‘good idea sir’ to Trump”).
I think in this case, the equivalent of a compiler error for undefined behavior would be a swiftly forgotten wire story entitled “Trump promotes cryptocurrency project” published on a Friday afternoon. Just one more scam among the flood, and not one that can be offered for easy monthly payments with a banner ad in the margins of an RSBN broadcast.
Yeah, everyone in the traditional media seems to be even more committed to sane-washing than they were in the lead up to the election.
Though the spike doge got today is definitely in the “laugh to avoid screaming” column.
Heads up, Zitron’s gonna drop
Should’ve probably posted this earlier, but fuck it: South Korea’s ‘4B’ Movement Goes Viral in US After Trump Elected
“4B” is shorthand for a South Korean movement in which women refuse to engage in heterosexual marriage, childbirth, dating, or sex with men. It comes from the words bihon, bichulsan, biyeonae, and bisekseu, all of which start with a Korean prefix for “no.” It originated in 2019 in response to a culture that women felt was patriarchal beyond repair, and has since gained some traction in other countries.
Also, fuck it, quick sidenote:
This is mostly gut instinct, like most of the Trump predictions I’ve made, but I’m expecting a spike in full-blown misandry over Trump’s term. Mainly because Trump managed to win over Gen Z men this election, and because the Trump administration is almost certainly going to town on abortion/women’s rights.
Trump managed to win over Gen Z men
…in the sense that more Gen Z men voted for him than in the last election. I am seeing this spin a lot and it honestly seems like a deliberate scapegoating ploy.
The exit poll stats seem to tell a different story.
Data from NBC News considering “key states” (apparently Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin)
Yes, young men favored Trump. So did all other men (and even Gen X women, if narrowly). Among both genders included in the data, Gen Z was the least likely to vote for Trump and the most likely to vote for Harris.
Granted, these stats are only from the aforementioned states and can’t represent the full picture, but they are the only relevant statistics I have seen posted on the matter and the best data I could quickly find. If anyone can show me the data that the darn kids these days are to blame, I’d like to see sime data.
Serious data might not be available for months. For comparison, the Pew Research Center didn’t come out with their numbers for the 2020 election until June 2021. Who knows? The country might burn down before next summer.
a spike in full-blown misandry
Misandry as in something equal to misogyny? If so, then I have to disagree, since men have historically been absolute pieces of shit towards women throughout history and misandry has never really manifested significantly.
E: I noticed I have a downvote. Hello to our sole MRA lurker!
Misandry as a concrete power structure that advantages women and disadvantages men? Unlikely, though with the likely resurgence of active patriarchy we should expect to see the negative consequences this has for men, especially non-normative men. Patriarchal masculinity is a game that necessarily has more losers than winners. I’d go so far as to say that some of the more politically-minded incels and MRAs are going to get even louder because while they blame feminism the actual source of the problems they’re feeling is patriarchy.
Misandry as a vague cultural meme about men being terrible and the friction that this causes, particularly for men struggling to find a healthy way to exist under patriarchal masculinity as discussed above? Very likely. At the same time while this won’t feel good for men it’s worth noting that these men are going to be complaining about losing a game where women are game pieces rather than players, which is pretty crappy. Like a king complaining to a pawn about how cruel it is to only move one square at a time without acknowledging that the entire game revolves around them.
I actually have no idea how to navigate this in a healthy way since I’ve definitely been on the losing end of patriarchal masculinity in ways that while deeply hurtful are very different in kind even if not in scope from the ways that system hurts women.
Misandry as a vague cultural meme about men being terrible and the friction that this causes, particularly for men struggling to find a healthy way to exist under patriarchal masculinity as discussed above?
Looking back, that’s definitely the kind of thing I was expecting to spike. I was just too deeply peeved about vaguely gestures at everything to see that clearly.
is this a possible thing: all the AI assistant stuff being forced onto us in the next gen hardware is gonna need significant computing power bumps to support it, is this creating a potential surplus of computing power in all devices that could time very well with an excessive skeuomorphic UI design response to the decade of bland flatness we’ve endured that’s gonna cook the cpus on the devices of everyone else?
Just chiming in to say to hell with skeuomorphism, I still want Apple Platinum back. Bonus points if it comes with an option for Dark Platinum that was only present in the early releases of OS X Server.
is this creating a potential surplus of computing power in all devices
Haha, no. Flat UI was done for reasons of fashion, not efficiency. UI will always expand to consume the available memory and compute, regardless of how boring it looks. Exhibit A: Electron!
yeah but I didn’t say that flat ui was created for efficiency. Any efficiency of a flat ui is cancelled out by the excesses of client-side JS. I know it is fashion, I was there. But I also know that there is a sense that it is efficient by the designers that design with it.
The ongoing trend of “flat UI” is largely not due to processing power though. Even inexpensive computers have CPUs and GPUs that could push very fancy graphics without problems, see what the same machines can do in game graphics (and I don’t mean high-end gaming, I mean the kind of simple gaming that can run on a low-end laptop these days). Some of the early GUIs in the 1980s had “flat design” due to performance limitations, but that went away in the 1990s. Today it could still be a reason in some embedded system scenarios with simple microcontrollers, but not in a desktop or laptop computer, and also not in smartphones or tablets.
The reason we have the bland flat design is the same why we still have things like “all surfaces are ugly glossy black plastic” (luckily this one is on its way out) or “war on physical buttons” aka “touchscreens everywhere”… it’s simply a design trend.
@nightsky “touchscreens everywhere” isn’t an aesthetic choice, it’s a cost-of-goods choice: which adds more to the cost of a physical product, a bunch of bespoke embossed buttons/keys for specific tasks, or a single mass-produced touchscreen?
It’s the same reason modern electronics uses embedded microcontrollers rather than actual properly designed task-specific gate arrays.
I hear you, but I didn’t say flat ui is due to processing power. My line of thought is that a sudden bump in available processing power might prompt designers to feel that elaborate uis are fine now because despite flat ui not being an efficiency thing, it is definitely perceived as one by the average designer who doesn’t know how much of the css used to render it is generated client-side via js
to the computing side, and with the proviso that in my own estimation of my skills I am at best slightly less than “dangerously clueless”: unfortunately not as much as may be desired because the kind of chips being added are fairly specialised silicon
it’s not impossible that people may find other uses for it over time but to the best of my knowledge as it stands right now much of this shit is dead weight the moment this bubble pops
(I don’t think it will all go entirely away; there are some ML uses that are not complete trash. but that’s a long different arc)
I’m not sure I follow the skeu side of your comment?
My baseline understanding is that “NPUs,” as such, are vector accelerators with perhaps lower precision and definitely lower peak TDP. I say this because much of the incremental ML research I’ve skimmed over seems to be around getting away with lower precision, dropping down to FP8 or even FP4 from FP16 when they can get away with it.
I’m still confused as to why and how this is an acceptable tradeoff to firing up an iGPU with precise power/TDP stepping. Perhaps one of those situations where the power budget and latency to fire up the whole GPU block or burst it to max power ends up costing as much as the actual calculation. I think for purposes of this discussion, we also need a source that sheds light on the architectural differences between NPUs and GPU shader/execution units.
@istewart @froztbyte some of this stuff is not easy to reuse for other purposes because of the drivers and APIs.
that;s exactly the catch I was hoping wouldn’t be the case. When the AI shit is abandoned, is the hardware useful for regular stuff…
So, from what you’re saying: Generative AI is fucking up in the past, present, and future
broad brush strokes, yes largely that
there’s some extremely fucking interesting details in the weeds, but that’s beyond the scope of merely a comment (and also I don’t feel equipped to make a goodpost about it as yet)
More election shit, unfortunately. This time it’s hot tea from SRD:
funnily enough I had posted in that thread and some neolib guy enthusiastically recommended tracingwoodgrains on David Gerard (?!) in my replies
here’s a matt yglesias article on the ordeal that i think is pretty even-handed
eat a dick
How cute, look at that wild rat trying to appear neutral and unbiased and not-at-all a rat and Just Leaving This Here for you to read where “this” refers to the entire fucking canon of rationalist writings.
it’s so practiced too — “so I guess you could read Wikipedia but also! this tracingwoodgrains guy might have some points worth considering!” and from there you’re meant to ping-pong off the Wikipedia article into trace’s long-winded literal horseshit and the rest of the inane crap that’s linked after that, til you can no longer remember the non-rationalist sources you’ve read because your mind’s overwhelmed with the worst shit ever written, but you feel like you thoroughly researched both sides (and that’s only part of why centrism is a fucking trap)
how do I know? because this:
finally, i’m going to link to some posts from slatestarcodex and astral codex ten, its sucessor blog, some classic ones just to give you a feel for what people appreciate about it at its best
is exactly how Joe Rogan fans get you listening to his stupid shit daily, til you’re no longer listening to his podcast (supposedly) “at its best” and instead you’re just listening to an overwhelming volume of right-wing horseshit with an occasional nod to both sides centrism so you don’t feel your world get smaller and darker as you embrace fascism
Just trying to be helpful! I’m definitely not trying to introduce you to this cult that was called out as a cult a few comments earlier! Which you would agree with me if you read all the things I posted and realised that we are the reasonablists.
look, they are just neutral and balanced, and pretend awful.systems and sneerclub don’t exist because they don’t even mention it.
See, if you just learn about this shit when you’re in high school and slowly read and occasionally reread the essays over the course of a decade or so it doesn’t seem overwhelming at all!
Words words words and more words that link to even more words (that you can ctrl-f for the relevant bits!)
Holy shit I had no idea there was a left wing branch of the mad cryptofascist meme stock cult.
Missed opportunity in the headline: superstonkers go super bonkers
damn that is so much better
They made this terrible thing look like a train There's something sweet in the air what I can't say Would I like a drink to calm the brain? Oh, please stay in the chairs But oh, God I don't wanna go to Mars What kind of brainwashed idiot does? It's all a lab rat life in jars They branded the dream of ages I don't wanna go to Mars Be with me here and return to dust– White Lies, I Don’t Want To Go To Mars, 2022
I remember really liking it when I heard it around first release. it holds up.
You ever have that moment where you hear about a song and only then realize that you had liked 2 or 3 from the same band from radio or recommendations over the years without connecting that it was the same group? Because yeah that just hit me.
I first heard Bush’s Chemicals Between Us from a neighbours soundsystem during a party one weekend in the early 00s, and then it took me well over a decade to find it (while still hearing other Bush songs over the years)
yep I know exactly what you’re describing there
Starting off this Stubsack with a solid essay I ran across: Don’t expect the tech platforms to help us this time.
A bit of an aside, but how did everyone decide to use the exact phrase “decisive victory” when congratulating president elect Trump? It keeps jumping out to me and I find it kind of weird. It has almost a militaristic tone.
Also it isn’t? 50.2% to 48.1% of votes is not decisive in any sensible meaning of the word?
If you account for the turnout (around 60%) it means 30% voted for Trump and 28.9% for Harris, so “none of those” won decisively with 40%!
Losing every swing state and failing to even win the consolation trophy of the popular vote after even Hillary fucking Clinton managed that much is something I’d call getting your ass handed to you. The US election system is terrible, but it’s the game they were playing and Trump won hands down.
Also, not that it’s the point but I have to note that technically most election victories are decisive, in the sense that they resolve the winner with little to no ambiguity (which is usually the case, even when the margin is narrow). In that sense, the only way Trump’s victory is not decisive is if you contest the legitimacy of the whole election.
Also, not that it’s the point but I have to note that technically most election victories are decisive, in the sense that they resolve the winner with little to no ambiguity (which is usually the case, even when the margin is narrow). In that sense, the only way Trump’s victory is not decisive is if you contest the legitimacy of the whole election.
This is such pedantry that you might as well say “the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines decisive as…”
Yea I know, had to get that digression out of my system, especially since you said “in any sensible meaning of the word” and all. Sorry, I didn’t mean to nuh-uh you on semantics, just point out something that tickled my pedantry sense.
Edit: I also brought it up because IMO “decisive” is a bit of an odd choice to describe election victory, unless referring to some grander context where the election marks a major historical turning point in national or international politics in favor of the winning side.
I see calling like Raegan’s margin in 1984 “decisive”
considering trump has spent the last four years pretending he won the previous election I actually do wonder if part of the subtext is “we acknowledge you won for real realsies and we cannot talk shit about you as a fake president”
Could be they are sharing a bit of a media bubble. In 2016 there was a bit of a (pre election) “he will win in a landslide” thing due to Scottbert.
IMO, coordinated media strategy. you can send all the people you want to congratulate you a prebaked message or tweet or whatever, saves them the trouble of writing something themselves. That or copy paste
I think that particular talking point also serves an exculpatory purpose: “If it was only a razor-thin victory I might understand being angry with me, but see it’s a decisive victory. He has the mandate
of heavenof the people (this is a Trumpian victory! not a Democrat failure!) ! It would be wrong not to congratulate him!”after this decisive victory, I guess I have no choice but to take this mask off, what a shame…
that+ losing the popular vote in 2016 must have really hurt that ego of his.
LLM Use cases:
- Crime
- Laziness
- Congratulating Donald Trump for anything ever
Maybe it’s one of those cliches like “bus plunge”
That they are posting this on substack, and how important that platform has become in the blogosphere is already a bit of a sign.
