this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2026
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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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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 so 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 - both for starting this, and for covering the previous week. We should get a bot to automate this...)

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[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

It sure is a zany coincidence that all the major American AI companies have come out either for or against open weight AI models with grand ethical and/or patriotic concerns all at the same time isn't it?

Most recently our pal Zuck! https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-ai-future-is-for-everyone-a0c24e20

I'm just imagining a WSJ reader reading this and thinking "what the heck is this man talking about". At some point you need a little structure or text to balance out the subtext.

Edit: did I miss any?

OpenAI (discussed here the other week): https://nitter.net/deanwball/status/2078133895766114412 / https://xcancel.com/deanwball/status/2078619513575137330

Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/topics/open-weight/

Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/news/position-open-weights-models

Nvidia: https://images.nvidia.com/pdf/Open-Weights-and-American-AI-Leadership.pdf

Google: https://xcancel.com/sundarpichai/status/2081026488158040181

~~Amazon~~ The Washington Post who I'm sure wrote this for reasons completely unrelated to Mr. Bezos: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/07/02/right-answer-chinas-open-weight-ai-models-is-build-our-own/

That one guy I hate: https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/2080672505660834163

[–] Evinceo@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's going to be really interesting to see if the foss zealots who switched over to the AI side will handle heavy handed regulation taking away their local models.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 2 points 1 day ago

they're all getting stiffies from the idea of black market models

[–] mirrorwitch@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

As intelligence becomes abundant, the most important question will be how we direct it. Some argue that superintelligence itself, or a small set of experts who control it, should decide what is best for humanity. I disagree. The history of democracy and economics has shown that there is no single objective answer to how people define the best life, and therefore the best approach is letting people decide what matters to them. Rather than centralizing this power, we believe that delivering personal superintelligence to everyone is the way to answer this question.

Healthy societies also recognize that safety requires checks and balances. If only a handful of institutions have superintelligence, they will inevitably exercise a controlling influence over economics, science and politics. Even with the best intentions, that concentration would limit people’s ability to choose their own future.

Famous enemy of software monopolies and tech oligarchies that have an outsized influence over politics, champion of distributed ownership of the means of computation Mark Zuckerberg