Want to wade into the rainbow-ridden surf of the abyss? 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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
Today (actually sourced to Perunās video from a few weeks back but I watched it today) in Everything is Connected:
One of the advancements in one-way attack drones in the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been the move to directly-connected fiber optic cables for control. This has proven an effective way to counter electronic warfare, but has also meant that both sides have started using a volume of fiber optic cable that boggles the mind. This made the single fiber optic manufacturer in Russia a substantial strategic target, which Ukraine obligingly took advantage of. In turn, this has forced Russia to rely completely on imports, placing the Russian war effort in direct competition with Chinaās AI datacenter buildout for this now-vital resource.
China being a proudly socialist country, this allowed the fiber optic manufacturers to raise their prices through the roof and absolutely take the Russians (and presumably their AI customers) to the cleaners.
Never let it be said that there are no AI-tangential stories that you canāt feel at least a little bit good about, even if it is just the endless grift nexus capturing an even bigger bastard.
The staggering amount of resources being poured into warehouses of machines that run code that create plausible text is mindblowing. A lot of stuff is ongoing cost too.
For something which ā as far as Iāve seen ā can halfarse busywork nobody cares about, steal code from github/approximate yaasnippet if you donāt mind having to review code made with ducttape and a dream, or sort of act like a DM with alzheimers for very lonely people.
What are we even doing here? Even if governments think āOh well we better trial it a bit because maybe itāll be usefulā why would you expend so much human life on a slim possibility.
Iāll yes-and you, Ukraine faces higher costs also, ie https://dronexl.co/2026/05/11/ukraine-fiber-optic-spool-price-ai-data-center-demand/
China makes money on both sides, plus the data centers you mentioned. Compare/contrast with Iran, who switched from GPS to Chinese nav to also get around jamming because leashes donāt get that longā¦ and China also makes money.
But locally, my BIL who runs fiber for a rural ISP, says basically they still make way more on recycling the copper wire they pull out than they pay for fiber. IDK.
yeah china just makes things, i doubt that iranian military ever had a shot at getting american gnss receivers. any of modern civilian ones allows for use of signals from all 4 constellations anyway, and the jamming resistance comes from either using encrypted signals or by using more sophisticated receivers that have tiny phased array and can cut out a zone where jammer is (to some degree)