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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.

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

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[-] saucerwizard@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago
[-] misterbngo@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago

Glad i did not go with these guys when i was e-reader shopping, the lack of gpl sources was enough for me.

Went with a pinenote because the timing was good, and while it has some corners I dont except the debian install to become a ccp mouthpiece 🙃

[-] saucerwizard@awful.systems 5 points 2 days ago

Man I’ve never heard of the pinenote. Does it have anything like send to kindle?

[-] misterbngo@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago

Its a full linux os, so you can do literally anything that can be done with existing tooling. For example, I have syncthing installed on mine so i just have to drop files into a folder on another computer of mine and they show up.

The software folks have put together a decent experience in the last few years and its rather nice out of the box.

Oh hey we got all the way to Pacific time without anyone wishing a generic Merry Christmas. May your family's Wi-Fi work for everyone with minimal support required.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago

Generics greetings and happy s

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 10 points 2 days ago

it’s the holidays, it’s okay: you don’t have to go near the c++ right now

[-] sc_griffith@awful.systems 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

so openai is claimed to be doing great on the FrontierMath dataset. I've already seen the usual sort of dipshits using this to pump ai on reddit, and here's a post that went to the frontpage on HN:

https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/2024/12/22/can-ai-do-maths-yet-thoughts-from-a-mathematician/

(tl;dr only a few problems from the dataset are public but if representative the problems are about 25% survivable by an undergrad; coincidentally this is the % openai says their models are completing.)

this post is by kevin buzzard. he has a let's say not easily beloved personality, but I don't think of him as credulous or grifty, and people in his area regard him as an excellent mathematician.

he points out but I think does not focus enough on how discrediting the secretive nature of the dataset is. the fact that you can't make it public is necessary to run such experiments in a scientifically reasonable way, but also makes it totally impossible to run the experiment in a scientifically reasonable way. an experiment which cannot be examined or reproduced is actually the opposite of science. it's pure grift fuel

[-] sinedpick@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago

If you release the test set, all models magically jump to 87.3% accuracy.

[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 3 days ago

four thieves collective goes on 38C3 and i groan in anticipation of whatever stupid trick will they pull now https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2024/fahrplan/talk/ASBXWW/ why they even are there

[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

update: it's out and recorded https://streaming.media.ccc.de/38c3/relive/316 also update on intentionally bricked trains story from year ago https://streaming.media.ccc.de/38c3/relive/336

update 2: oh no. oh no no no no

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 2 points 7 hours ago

I look forward to your reactions why this is all quite a bad idea (and not just a bit cringe).

[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

so i figured out what their naloxone synthesis is, it's based on this paper https://sci-hub.se/10.1002/adsc.201300284 they say it's two step, it's not two step, it's 6 steps in two critical one-pot sequences. paper starts with oxymorphone and they start with oxycodone for some reason, that's one step extra. that transformation requires handling BBr3 which is nasty but clean or NaSEt which is also nasty but safer, but also requires column chromatography for purification. it still can fail in a way that gives products of activity opposite than intended. requires hard to get and rather more on expensive side reagents like vinylmagnesium bromide and burgess reagent, both require strictly anhydrous conditions to work. vinylmagnesium bromide and even solvent used with it (THF) will destroy that shitty PLA lid. final purification in paper requires column chromatography as well. not to mention elephant in the room, that if counterfeit oxy pills are used that contain fentanyl instead it gets you either nothing or fentanyl

what is in paper

what they have shown

this synthesis is fucking garbled and it's only one of many steps

same with cabotegravir

they're also using advanced intermediates that could be very hard to source, because this kind of stuff is made internally in company only, particularly that pyridone on left

and that's just naloxone. nothing particularly hard if you know what are you doing and have right starting materials. commercial synthesis is entirely different btw, and this is partially to make purifications easier and to use robust, high yielding chemistry using cheaper starting materials. they also want to make cabotegravir, mifepristone and fucking gene therapy, and diy hrt (they never cared about it before??) which was already a thing wayy before they got to it, it involved shipping steroids out of Ukraine iirc and it worked because no garage synthesis was involved at all. at least they admitted that making monoclonal antibodies is probably out of their reach, how merciful of them. and that's just first 15min

it looks like they're desperately pivoting for attention left and right, i see there nothing but grift

when you have to consider what this arduino jar is even capable of, just taking a look at that naloxone synthesis makes it absolutely fucking useless. it can't replace sep funnel, rotovap, chromatographic column; it can't provide inert atmosphere, required in steps 3 and 5 of original paper, it can't survive refluxing THF because lid will dissolve or melt and cave in, required in step 6 and whatever refluxing solvent is used in step giving oxymorphone from oxycodone, because they neglected to show it, and even if it did, there's no condenser on top. it really is juicero of backyard chemistry

update: yeah nah what the fuck laminar flow fumehood is wildly out of reach of normal people, making sterile injectables in a garage is not a safe option for 99.99% of people

update 2: analytical techniques included: homemade raman, melting point measurement, dancesafe drug test suite. and fucking taste test, going all the way to 1890s best practices i see. none of these are good at detecting impurities, it will only be good to detect if chinese vendor sent you wrong stuff and it's only if it was pure

update 3: WE'RE MAKING HRT! looks inside: we're buying APIs from India/China and compounding them in garage with zero real qc, also we'll solve HRT with garage gene therapy, promise, maybe, some years from now, donate in meantime

I read through this with my wife who actually did a whole course of organic chemistry, pre-med, etc. Her reaction to your criticisms was largely "of course you would have to do that and that'd be a pain in the ass but it's definitely doable." And I feel like that's probably true but at the same time as a reasonably smart dude this is the first time I've heard the majority of these words.

It feels like they're reacting to the same tendency in tech culture that I've complained about before where specialized knowledge and domain expertise are treated like arcane revelations from beyond. It's not that your average person is incapable of understanding or going through the relevant processes; Cs ,as the saying goes, get degrees and I'm sure many of the labs actually doing this work at scale are staffed largely by those C students. But it's also worth acknowledging that there is a level of investment in time and resources required to actually do it and this kind of "you have nothing to lose but your pharmacological chains" rhetoric is dramatically underselling how difficult those processes are and how bad the consequences can be if you screw it up. Anyone who wants to try should first read The Iliad, the Oedipus cycle, and at least one other epic-sized meditation on hubris. And the once you've forged ahead read the relevant books on actually following the process for the love of God.

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 9 points 2 days ago

Governments have criminalized the practice of managing your own health. Despite the fact that for most of human history bodily autonomy, and self-managed health was the norm, it is now required that most aspects of your health must be mediated by an institution deputized by the state.

JFC

go back 200 years before the "gubmint" got involved in public health and tell me that average life expectancy was better than now

before the pandemic it was possible for people to believe that libertarianism was an answer to everything, turns out if it was a tiny minority would have hoarded all the PPE while the people they were gonna sell it to died of the plague. libertarians have not been able to square this circle since

[-] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago

I think there is value in giving people the tools and knowledge to make more involved decisions about their health, but using that sort of libertarian rhetoric in the covid era is at best really fucking irresponsible.

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 12 points 2 days ago

Governments have criminalized the practice of managing your own health.

I have the feeling that they're not a British trans person talking about the NHS, or an American in a red state panicking about dying of sepsis because the baby they wanted so badly miscarried.

[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 days ago

maybe it's more of a take acceptable for americans

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago

The FDA is a response to people just making shit up and selling cough cures full of opium. "Raw milk" pushers are cut from the same cloth.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 1 day ago

It also prevented the Thalidomide medication from causing much damage in the usa (compared to the rest of the world) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide_scandal and prob countless more, as it is a bit hard to cause problems if the problems are caught before it being brought to market. And I do worry that the "the fda is too cautious" pushers are actually motte baileying for the total removal of the fda.

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 4 points 18 hours ago

And I do worry that the “the fda is too cautious” pushers are actually motte baileying for the total removal of the fda.

they absolutely are, see also Scott Alexander stanning for these guys

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 3 points 17 hours ago

NRx people was what I was thinking about. Every city a city state with bespoke medical experimentation going on. And if you don't like it, just leave and go to a different city state with different crazy medical experiments.

[-] cstross@wandering.shop 7 points 1 day ago

@Soyweiser Thalidomide was mostly a British problem (that led to the UK's CSM getting teeth). The FDA in the USA really got rolling after the Elixir Sulfanilamide poisonings in 1937: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elixir_sulfanilamide

[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 day ago

there were also a couple of cases since where DEG replaced glycerine in syrups, either by negligence by manufacturer of syrup, manufacturer of intermediate, or knowingly as a cost cutting measure, last one in 2022

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 1 day ago

Ah right, thanks! Weren't there also a lot of German victims?

[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 2 days ago

idk what went wrong there but village industry of altmed clinics seems to be an actual thing, and from what i understand it's apparently legal in some of red states

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago

why they even are there

(from observation over some years) congress orga more than occasionally fucks up on paradox of tolerance by letting shit like this through

it's been a thing I've noticed and have wanted to actually discuss with some folks, but never really gotten to yet on account of life stuff

there were also the much, much less grey-area instances a couple of years back where they were far too open to a number of abusers (this was around the time the appelbaum shit hit wide daylight), so there is a possibility that the issue runs deeper (in a structural sense, at best; personal sense, at worst) too but I possess insufficient information to know one way or the other what exactly may constitute the problem here

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 2 days ago

I don't wanna pull national stereotypes here but aren't Germans really quite open about stuff like homeopathy? "be your own pharmacist" sounds like right up that alley

[-] mii@awful.systems 3 points 1 day ago

Yes, I can confirm this is true. Homeopathy is really accepted here and is even covered by most health insurances.

There is even a passage in the pharmaceutical law that specifically excludes homeopathic shit from having to prove its effectiveness (they only have to prove it’s not hurting anyone, and the rules for that are much laxer than for other medicine). It’s absolutely baffling.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 3 points 20 hours ago

There also is a lot of homeopathic meds in the Netherlands, dont know about the legal status, do know it didnt help much with my hayfever as a kid.

[-] saucerwizard@awful.systems 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Theres a long rich history of German alt med. also (postwar) witch trials, if I can find the book I read on all this I’ll try to post.

Edit: think it was this one https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/128/2/1015/7204469?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 4 points 2 days ago

whoah that looks interesting, how can I access it (semi-)legally?

[-] saucerwizard@awful.systems 5 points 2 days ago
[-] gerikson@awful.systems 3 points 1 day ago

also on my fav book torrent tracker - even has an audiobook version!

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 2 days ago

I haven't really got enough information about that side of it, the details I have to go on are mostly about things particularly around the values CCC has tried to hold/build (and even there I am absolutely not intimately familiar, for reasons of distance and exposure and such)

[-] veganes_hack@feddit.org 7 points 3 days ago

never heard of them before. from skimming their wikipedia, it seems their grift is glossing over the details in the "science" part?

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

From what I heard: Skimming over science, best practices, risks of contamination, risk of producing horror chemicals, problems of sourcing materials, storing materials, storing the final product etc etc.

Here is a bsky thread from the last time they were in the publics eye (more here if you dont have an account) (the latter articles are clearly working on a diff definition of capitalism than I use so I chose not to be too annoyed with the weird digs about that).

This should be a very big red flag: "Mixæl Swan Laufer worked in mathematics and high energy physics until he decided to use his background in science to tackle problems of global health and human rights." (Ignoring all the other smaller red flags btw, I think I could point one out ever paragraph, if I had not heard about these people before, the final red pill reference would have made me think they were trolling).

[-] veganes_hack@feddit.org 7 points 2 days ago

interesting read, thanks. the red pill reference also had me rolling my eyes. i guess it's more virtue signalling than actually making a change.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It is a bit weird, it has very high EA vibes to me, started and did some good (epipen in 2017 vs EAs malaria nets), but end up to have some crazy plan for which the other things are more of a smokescreen for their real plans (an easy bake chemical oven make chems at home kit vs EAs stopping our lord and saviour the robotgod) using rethoric aimed at a specific subgroup (2000-2010 anarchist libertarian hackers vs nerdy altruists)

E: I really wonder if they were influenced by the dr sleepless series from the disgraced warren ellis, and the stuff around that.

[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 2 days ago

i've complained about them previously https://awful.systems/comment/2754222

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this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2024
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