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submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

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.

Last week's thread

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

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[-] swlabr@awful.systems 26 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Kicking off the sack with something light.

[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 16 points 2 weeks ago

I see RicksCEO.eth has since quietly removed the ".eth" part of his name. Presumably it was way more embarrassing than being a strip club tycoon.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 14 points 2 weeks ago

Headcanon: he changed it as a result of this epic bonnie slam

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[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 25 points 1 week ago

eigenrobot:

almost every smart person I talk to in tech is in favor of mandatory eugenic polygynous marriages in order to deal with the fertility crisis. people are absolutely fed up with the lefty approach of using generational insolvency as a pretextual cudgel to install socialism.

[-] corbin@awful.systems 22 points 1 week ago

Every person I talk to — well, every smart person I talk to — no, wait, every smart person in tech — okay, almost every smart person I talk to in tech is a eugenicist. Ha, see, everybody agrees with me! Well, almost everybody…

Man, I didn't even know how to react to this nonsense. The obvious sneer is to point out that if the alternative is to interact with people like ER here we really shouldn't be surprised to see a declining birth rate. But I think the more important takeaway that this hints at is that these people are dumb and fundamentally incurious.

Like, there's plenty of surveys and research into why people are having fewer kids than they used to, and it's not because toddlers are little hellions more so than in the past. And "generational insolvency" is a pretty big fucking part of the explanation actually, as is empowering families to choose whether or not to have children rather than leaving it entirely up to the vicissitudes of biological processes and horniness. The latter part cuts both ways, in that people who want families are (theoretically; see above re: financial factors) able to take advantage of fertility treatments or IVF or whatever and have kids where they historically would have been unable to do so.

But no, rather than actually engage with any of that or otherwise treat the world like other people have agency they have identified what they believe to be the problem and have decided that the brute application of state power is the solution, so long as that power is being applied to other people. For all that we acknowledge the horrors of fascism, I think the stupidity of these people is also worth acknowledging, if for no other reason than to reinforce why this shit shouldn't be taken seriously.

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 15 points 1 week ago

Man, I didn’t even know how to react to this nonsense

same way as other nazis - boop 'em on the nose

I'd be willing to wager a guess that this fragile little flower has never had a "physical altercation" in their life and would walk away with fucking ~ptsd from a single "hey that shit is not okay" boop

this hints at is that these people are dumb and fundamentally incurious

if you're talking about eigenrowboat, I don't think I agree. they're quite curious, but they "just" go in with a particular viewpoint and a desire to "prove their point" in the most prevaricating way possible. it's no accident that the entire sphere of "how do we make scientific racism and nazism more socially palatable" gravitates around these fuckers. if you're instead talking about them making these comments in a "see the poor are dumb and useless and thus deserve what they get", well, see aforementioned shitty opinions

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[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 15 points 1 week ago

aww, is the poor baby missing that maybe there's people who don't want to talk to them because of how much of a piece of shit they are? how sad

lefty approach of using generational insolvency as a pretextual cudgel to install socialism

this dipshit continues to make the most astounding not-even-wrong posts. guess they're angling for a job as the next Noahpinion or Yglesias

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Cue the scene where Buck Turgidson finds out that Dr. Strangelove proposes humanity survive deep inside mineshafts, with multiple women for every man.

Anyway I like how the options presented are "socialism" - vaguely defined so as to be something anyone can project their fears on - on the one hand, and state-ordered sexual slavery on the other. True freedom, amirite?

I had to doublecheck what "polygynous" means, and I "love" this Google-generated Wiki excerpt. It's technichally correct in some parts of the world.

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[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 23 points 2 weeks ago

I wonder if the OpenAI habit of naming their models after the previous ones' embarrassing failures is meant as an SEO trick. Google "chatgpt strawberry" and the top result is about o1. It may mention the origin of the codename, but ultimately you're still streered to marketing material.

Either way, I'm looking forward to their upcoming AI models Malpractice, Forgery, KiddieSmut, ClassAction, SecuritiesFraud and Lemonparty.

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 18 points 2 weeks ago

i used to be the sysadmin for lemonparty

it was quite a surprise when i found out i can tell you

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[-] dgerard@awful.systems 20 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Sundar Pichal, Google Q3 2024 earnings call:

We're also using AI internally to improve our coding processes, which is boosting productivity and efficiency. Today, more than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers. This helps our engineers do more and move faster.

Firstly, if this is literally true they're completely fucking cooked.

Secondly, if it isn't, what version of it is?

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 18 points 2 weeks ago

from someone on Mastodon:

Google has a gigantic code generation culture, because the engineers there strongly prefer complexity to drudgery.

If you asked them to write fizzbuzz and left them in a room for twelve hours they would deliver a new programming language that generalized repetitive string printing, with an extension language for potential non-string-printing actions.

I left in ‘22 but feel fairly confident that “25% of code generated by AI” is going to be more of the same.

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[-] swlabr@awful.systems 14 points 2 weeks ago

Best case scenario they are using a loose definition of AI to mean any code generated by other code in order to signal to investors that google isn’t the hulking, sluggish monolith that it is and is agile enough to use AI.

Worst case scenario: “hey chatgpt pls write me new search algorithm to print money, thanks, sundar”

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[-] fasterandworse@awful.systems 19 points 2 weeks ago

NASB, I had a jarring experience this morning watching Patrick Boyle's latest video "Big Tech is Going Nuclear!" (not gonna link it) where 5 mins in he introduces the sponsor and it's an AI presentation slide generator, which he said he used for the images in his video. This after he mentioned the data on generating one image using the same amount of energy as charging a smartphone. The thing is he seems careful to not mention that it is a gen ai product–he never says AI–rather a piece of software that helps making presentations.

It kinda made me panic stop the video, like an instant "well, done with you" - not sure if he continued to make a joke of it or anything. I mean, I'm sure (I hope) he was given a lot of money for the spot, but damn! Just when I thought I had a foundational understanding of people

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 15 points 2 weeks ago

The thing is he seems careful to not mention that it is a gen ai product–he never says AI–rather a piece of software that helps making presentations.

The term "AI" damages sales when used in advertising - whatever script Boyle got was definitely written by people who knew that fact.

I also predicted something like this would happen (though within a very specific context) a while ago - seems my prediction's coming true.

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[-] nightsky@awful.systems 19 points 1 week ago

Was browsing ebay, looking for some piece of older used consumer electronics. Found a listing where the description text was written like crappy ad copy. Cheap over-the-top praising the thing. But zero words about the condition of the used item, i.e. the actually important part was completely missing. And then at the end of the description it said... this description text was generated by AI.

AI slop is like mold, it really gets everywhere and ruins everything.

[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 18 points 1 week ago

A woman was scheduled to give a talk at an AI conference. The organizers run her photo through an AI image expansion program to get the aspect-ratio right (how did we ever manage to show photos of speakers before AI existed?).

The AI image expansion invents a bra / undershirt which wasn't visible in the original photo.

https://xcancel.com/elizlaraki/status/1846252781851890026

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[-] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 18 points 2 weeks ago

Had a first-hand AI encounter today at the grocery store. The self-checkout now has a script that monitors an overhead video feed to make sure you're not getting tricky about what scanned and what got put into the bagging area, and if it thinks you're shady it will stop you from proceeding and summon an employee with no notification that something is wrong.

The new self-checkout process is as follows:

  1. Scan your item
  2. Hold the item plainly before you so the overhead camera doesn't get confused, looking like a Catholic priest about to deliver communion.
  3. Place item in bagging area. Try not to have to shift things around to find a place.
  4. Swear as the nom-mutable voice instructions tell you to bag "your... Item." Legitimately feels like they got as far as assembling the voice lines before anyone realised that having the compu-checker read every purchase out loud would lead to at best an unworkable cacophony if not several immediate lawsuits.
  5. GOTO 1

Even as antisocial and impatient as I am I've found self-checkout to be a UX disaster, but somehow it keeps getting worse.

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[-] o7___o7@awful.systems 17 points 2 weeks ago

Talk with PM went nowhere. Very nice guy, but was insistent on giving the reviewer the benefit of the doubt. I just wanna die.

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[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 17 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Alternative headline for this Washington Post opinion piece from Jeff Bezos: We're all trying to find the guy who did this!

^more^ ^US^ ^politics^ ^I^ ^know.^ ^There^ ^is^ ^sadly^ ^no^ ^escape^ ^from^ ^the^ ^fiery^ ^vortex^ ^that^ ^is^ ^the^ ^U.S.^ ^election.^

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[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 2 weeks ago

russian dude generates botslop on dating apps, makes 5000+ girls talk to bot, chooses the one that stayed with chatgpt: https://xcancel.com/biblikz/status/1752335415812501757#m

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[-] mii@awful.systems 16 points 1 week ago

For anyone who wants a belated Halloween scare:

Mental diarrhea from Donald Trump

https://xcancel.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1852033244729860397

Spoiler: The real kicker is in the hash tags.

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 14 points 1 week ago

Electric Wizard 🤝Donald Trump
"Legalize Drugs & Murder"

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[-] istewart@awful.systems 16 points 2 weeks ago

Two of the major donors pushing to recall the mayor of Oakland, CA are cryptocurrency "executives."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/27/billionaires-oakland-mayor-sheng-thao-recall

Over the summer, Jesse Pollak, a cryptocurrency investor and executive at Coinbase, launched Abundant Oakland, an advocacy organization that funds “moderate” candidates running in Oakland races. The organization is explicitly linked to similarly named entities in San Francisco and Santa Monica.

Abundant Oakland has a related political action committee, Vibrant Oakland, which, campaign filings show, has received donations from Pollak ($115,000), the Oakland police officers association ($50,000), cryptocurrency executive Konstantin Richter ($60,000), the northern California carpenters regional council ($150,000) and a Pac controlled by Piedmont landlord Chris Moore ($100,000).

[-] o7___o7@awful.systems 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Go home Coursera, you're drunk.

Want to get even better results with GenAI? The new Google Prompting Essentials course will teach you 5 easy steps to write effective prompts for consistent, useful results.

Note: Got an email ad from Coursera. I had to highlight the message because the email's text was white-on-white.

How the chicken fried fuck does anyone make a course about "prompt engineering"? It's like seeing a weird sports guy systematize his pregame rituals and then sell a course on it.

Step 1: Grow a beard, preferably one like that Leonidas guy in 300.

Step 2: If your team wins, never wash those clothes, and be sure to wear those clothes every game day. That's not stank, that's the luck diffusing out into the universe.

Step 3: Use the force to make the ball go where it needs to go. Also use it to scatter and confuse the opposition.

Step 4: Ask God(s) to intervene, he/she/they love(s) your team more!

Step 5: Change allegiance to a better team if things go downhill, because that means your current team has lost the Mandate of Heaven.

That will be $200 please.

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[-] swlabr@awful.systems 15 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

My enshittification story*: Instagram has been suggesting people for me to follow. It markets them to me by saying “friend X follows this person!” But friend X does not follow this person. Friend X has no tenable connection to this person. Why are you bullshitting me, Zuck? Is the autoplag outflow drain hooked up to Insta?

*orig JP title: 僕のエンシット化ストーリー

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[-] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 2 weeks ago

Dead internet? At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within the job hunting process?

Yes

(Github project supposedly for AI assisted mass job application, including using the AI to cater resume to job posting. God I'm terrified of ever having to return to the job market this is fucking insane.)

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[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 15 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Adobe execs say artists need to embrace AI or get left behind [Jess Weatherbed, The Verge]

Adobe is going all in on generative AI models and tools, even if that means turning away creators who dislike the technology. Artists who refuse to embrace AI in their work are “not going to be successful in this new world without using it,” says Alexandru Costin, vice president of generative AI at Adobe.

Personally, I think this is gonna backfire pretty damn hard on Adobe - artists' already distrust and hate them as it is, and Procreate, their chief competition, earned a lot of artists' goodwill by publicly rejecting gen-AI some time ago. All this will likely do is push artists to jump ship, viewing Adobe as actively hostile to their continued existence.

On a wider note, it seems pretty clear to me Alexandru Costin's drank the technological determinist Kool-Aid and has come to believe autoplag's dominance is inevitable. He's not the first person I've seen drink that particular Kool-Aid, he's almost certainly not the last, and I suspect that the mass-drinking of that Kool-Aid's fueling the tech industry's relentless doubling-down on gen-AI. A doubling-down I expect will bite them in the ass quite spectacularly.

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[-] sc_griffith@awful.systems 14 points 2 weeks ago
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[-] o7___o7@awful.systems 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Cursed .gov link:

https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-the-advancing-sustainable-development-through-safe-secure-and-trustworthy-ai-event/

TL;DR: Our main characters have bilked a very credulous US State Department. 100 Million tax dollars will now be converted into entropy. There will also be committees.

[-] corbin@awful.systems 14 points 2 weeks ago

Bezos' open interference in the Washington Post's editorial section has pushed Walter Bright into a very funny series of public admissions that he did not have to make. See the orange site here for his ongoing libertarian meltdown.

[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 14 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

His comment history is a weird mix of programming language discussion, terrible takes, simping for Musk, simping for Musk even harder (just in case you didn't realize how much he liked Musk the first time).

Musk is the sane one. It's the rest of us that are insane.

Holy hell.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 16 points 2 weeks ago

I really hope Harris wins by a landslide just so all these weird nerds eat shit. If even just one goes "wow I really let myself get swept up into believing trump/musk was great by my echo chamber it would be worth it. But i doubt we will get such self awareness. The various betting prediction markets also then have been wrong (or manipulated) would also be fun.

[-] self@awful.systems 16 points 2 weeks ago

I don't think you want to hear my opinions on what the left wing thinks is obvious :-)

Also, I am neither left nor right wing, as I'm a libertarian. I believe in the principles in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the system of checks and balances set up by the Constitution.

it’s just really surprising to see the political takes of a 13 year old come out of the 65 year old who created the least successful C variant

[-] V0ldek@awful.systems 17 points 2 weeks ago

I don’t think you want to hear my opinions

You're right there, buddy!

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 15 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

A libertarian who glamorizes the state as set up by old people in the past. The libertarian to reactionary funnel.

E:

HN: Since you believe in checks and balances, do you believe Trump should be disqualified for running for office, for using violence, intimidation and lies to attempt to change the results of the last election? As a principled libertarian I'm sure the peaceful transfer of power is at the height of your concerns.

WalterBright: I think I'll spare everyone from yet another Trump vs Harris debate.

Weichei!

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[-] JFranek@awful.systems 15 points 2 weeks ago

I am neither left nor right wing, as I’m a libertarian

Ah, yes, the classic "I'm not like the other girls" of politics.

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[-] veganes_hack@feddit.org 14 points 1 week ago

Zuck says lots more slop coming your way soon

"I think were going to add a whole new category of content which is AI generated or AI summarized content, or existing content pulled together by AI in some way,” the Meta CEO said. “And I think that that’s gonna be very exciting for Facebook and Instagram and maybe Threads, or other kinds of feed experiences over time."

Facebook is already one Meta platform where AI generated content, sometimes referred to as “AI slop,” is increasingly common.

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[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 14 points 1 week ago

Jingna Zhang found an AI corp saying the quiet part out loud:

In a previous post of mine, I noted how the public generally feels that the jobs people want to do (mainly creative jobs) are the ones being chiefly threatened by AI, with the dangerous, boring and generally garbage jobs being left relatively untouched.

Looking at this, I suspect the public views anyone working on/boosting AI as someone who knows full well their actions are threatening people's livelihoods/dream jobs, and is actively, willingly and intentionally threatening them, either out of jealousy for those who took the time to develop the skills, or out of simple capitalist greed.

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[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 14 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Amazon used an AI-generated image as a cover for 1922's Nosferatu, and it got publicly torn apart on Twitter:

On a personal note, it feels to me like any use of AI, regardless of context, is gonna be treated as a public slight against artists, if not art as a concept going forward. Arguably, it already has been treated that way for a while.

You want me to point to a high-profile example of this kinda thing, I'd say Eagan Tilghman provided a textbook example a year ago, after his Scooby Doo/FNAF fan crossover (a VA redub came out a year later BTW) accidentally ignited a major controversy over AI and nearly got him blacklisted from animation.

I specifically bring this up because Tilghman wasn't some random CEO or big-name animator - he was just some random college student making a non-profit passion project with basically zero budget or connections. It speaks volumes about how artists view AI that even someone like him got raked over the coals for using it.

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[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 14 points 2 weeks ago

Fortune magazine reports:

In separate investigations completed by the blockchain firms Chaos Labs and Inca Digital and shared exclusively with Fortune, analysts found that Polymarket activity exhibited signs of wash trading, a form of market manipulation where shares are bought and sold, often simultaneously and repeatedly, to create a false impression of volume and activity. Chaos Labs found that wash trading constituted around one-third of trading volume on Polymarket’s presidential market, while Inca Digital found that a “significant portion of the volume” on the market could be attributed to potential wash trading, according to its report.

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this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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