this post was submitted on 02 Feb 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.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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Want to wade into the snowy 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 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 for starting this. A lot of people didn't survive January, but at least we did. This also ended up going up on my account's cake day, too, so that's cool.)

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

In other news, Larry Garfield of GarfieldTech has had enough of the bullshit fountains, and put out a fury-filled sneer in response.

[–] corbin@awful.systems 5 points 5 hours ago

Larry Garfield was ejected from Drupal nearly a decade ago without concrete accusations; at the time, I thought Dries was overreacting, likely because I was in technical disagreement with him, but now I'm more inclined to see Garfield as a misogynist who the community was correct to eject.

I did have a longpost on Lobsters responding to this rant, but here I just want to focus on one thing: Garfield has no solutions. His conclusion is that we should resent people who push or accept AI, and also that we might as well use coding agents:

As I learn how to work with AI coding agents, know that I will be thinking ill of [people who have already shrugged and said "it is what it is"] the entire time.

[–] nfultz@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Don't want to use AI because it's built on copyright infringement and literally destroying the planet? Well, I guess you can't work in software anymore, sorry. It is what it is.

Every time someone like Jeffrey Way says "it is what it is," it makes it so. It is not inevitable just because Sam Altman tells his over-leveraged investors it is so. It becomes inevitable when you, you personally, decide that you just don't want to think about the externalities or put in the work to find better alternatives.

We are making this choice. But really, that means you have already decided for me. And I curse you and the ground you walk on for it. No, I'm not joking or exaggerating. Burn in hell.

10/10 No notes.

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Between this shit and the oncoming tech-inflicted recession, my wife and I are both reskilling out of tech. I'm looking into electrician and she's looking into accounting. Two fields that are, at least in theory, sufficiently motivated by accuracy and reality to be at least somewhat protected from the rise and fall of the confabulatron.

We'll see how it goes, but God if that "Burn in hell" doesn't just hit me right in the soul.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 3 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Good luck. There's a lack of trained electricians here in Sweden, which amazes me, it sounds like a decent job for someone with a technical bent and some handiness. Better than plumbing (no disrespect to plumbers, love them, but not the work I want to do)

[–] Enema_Cowboy@dotnet.social 2 points 2 hours ago

@gerikson @YourNetworkIsHaunted

You have to be a semi-contortionist to be a plumber.

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

there's a couple of amusing hells inside that job, you either have to deal with construction crews and contractors, jump between power poles including in cold and rain, wrangle with paperwork for permits for new lines, or fix horrors left by someone before you, it can be also dirty and people-facing