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.)
How it started: in 2025, the city of dublin, ohio (the latter detail missed by quite a lot of reporting,because there are no other dublins it might get confused with, I guess) gets an autonomous? ai powered police surveillance robot.
How itās going
On the other hand, I bet it didnāt shoot anyoneās dog, so whoās to say that the $64k was wasted.
What I find most interesting in all this is that none of the coverage Iāve seen has said that crimes happened in its vicinity that it failed to detect, only that it didnāt issue any citations or whatever. Which is wild if you consider that they basically had it doing laps of a parking garage or whatever. You would think that if it was encouraging people to not rob those cars or whatever that it was doing its job, much like how ostensibly a speed camera is supposed to discourage people from speeding rather than just issue fines.
Donāt get me wrong, Iām not saying that this obelisk-looking-ass robopig was actually succeeding, I just think that the criteria being used to declare it a failure say some really bad things about the state of policing.
I never understand how these things arenāt simply stolen and dismantled for parts? Where I come from I bet that would happen within a fortnight. yes thereās cameras and GPS locators etc. but thereās ways around that, itās not that hardā¦
I wouldnāt want to do that myselfā¦ personally too much tracking gear in there, and itās easy to make a mistake and not disable it all. Also, you just know that if you get caught, theyāll try and prosecute it like you kidnapped and dismembered a regular officer.
Now, Iām more surprised that they donāt get black bagged and tipped over. Maybe they only ever use them in super thoroughly surveilled areas with nearby human backup, but youād expect at least one successful tipping to make the news somewhere.
Or somebody talking the bot into driving of stairs/into a river. If it ever freezes enough getting it on ice will also be fun.
10 year olds will have so much fun with these things.
Hereās one from the archives: https://spectrum.ieee.org/children-beating-up-robot
tl;dr: small children have no empathy for your robot and will torture it and hound it to death if they can. The safest thing to do is to head for the nearest adult-sized people, who will hopefully be less inclined to kill it simply because it is a robot.