this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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TechTakes

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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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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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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago (3 children)

True believers at Vox' Future Perfect "vertical" let out a hearfelt REEEEEE as Saltman makes the obvious move to secure all the profits

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/374275/openai-just-sold-you-out

[–] [email protected] 2 points 51 minutes ago* (last edited 51 minutes ago) (1 children)

After years of sweet-talking the press, the public, and the policymakers in Congress, assuring all that OpenAI wants regulation and cares more about safety than about money, Altman is not even bothering to play games anymore. He’s showing everyone his true colors. Governor Newsom, are you seeing this? Congress, are you seeing this? World, are you seeing this?

this is so fucking funny. bro nobody but you is surprised

[–] [email protected] 2 points 37 minutes ago* (last edited 37 minutes ago)

capitalist: does capitalism

liberal: Ah fuck, I can't believe you've done this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 40 minutes ago

I'm feeling a weird mix of emotions about this. It's not the cash grab by ol' salty dog; capitalism is doing its thing. I'm both elated that these idiot liberals feel betrayed by this turn of events and enraged that these liberal idiots exist to launder the reputation of techbros in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

a most shockedpikachu article, I love it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

But the move has some observers ­— including Musk himself — asking: How could this possibly be legal?

Because the nonprofit is there to represent the public, this would effectively mean shifting billions away from people like you and me. As some are noting, it feels a lot like theft.

it continues to be astounding how gullible some people can be (/choose to stay?)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Not a sneer, but ~~Kendrick~~ Ed Zitron just dropped.

Its damn good as usual, with Zitron taking aim at the current state of SaaS and tying it into his previous sneers on AI.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 17 hours ago

a nsfw found in the wild

[–] [email protected] 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Sam Altman says taking psychedelics ‘significantly changed’ his mindset

Altman being a druggie would go some way to explaining his utter disconnect from reality and utter lack of moral fibre

[–] [email protected] 5 points 17 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

ya know that inane SITUATIONAL AWARENESS paper that the ex-OpenAI guy posted, which is basically a window into what the most fully committed OpenAI doom cultists actually believe?

yeah, Ivanka Trump just tweeted it

But right now, there are perhaps a few hundred people, most of them in San Francisco and the AI labs, that have situational awareness. Through whatever peculiar forces of fate, I have found myself amongst them.

oh boy

[–] [email protected] 6 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

barron: shows ivanka the minecraft speedrun

ivanka: I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT, BROTHER

edit: accidentally read ivanka as melania, now corrected

[–] [email protected] 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Personally, I was radicalized by 'watch for rolling rocks' in .5 A presses

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago

parallel universes were the inspiration behind urbit, it all makes sense

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

From that blog post:

You can see the future first in San Francisco.

"And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

This was the woman who took over during Sam Altman's temporary removal as CEO, which we're pretty sure happened because the AI doom cultists weren't satisfied that Altman was enough of an AI doom cultist.

Yudkowsky was solidly in favor of her ascension. I take no joy in saying this as someone who wants this AI nonsense to stop soon, but OpenAI is probably better off financially with fewer AI doom cultists in high positions.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Do you think they still say all that bullshit even when they're not screenshooting it for twitter? Probably, right

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

Do you think when the Trumps get paperclipped it will look something like this?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I might not be a huge fan of his work, but I'll take it any day over AI slop. At least it's a creative vision.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

You don't have to agree with someone to recognize that they care.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not a sneer, but a pretty solid piece on the slop-nami: Drowning in Slop, by Max Read

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

Twitter — Elon Musk’s X — may be the most fruitful platform for this kind of search thanks to its sub-competent moderation services.

Zing.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

Turns out trump really does understand cryptocurrency perfectly. Who’d have thought? Some folk seems surprisingly unhappy about this, though.

Maybe we’ll pay off the $35 trillion US debt in Crypto. I’ll write on a little piece of paper ‘$35T crypto we have no debt.’ That’s what I like.

https://xcancel.com/mattyglesias/status/1838331688931266694

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

I mean there are definitely some brain rotted crypto bros who would buy shares at face value because it's totally gonna go to the moon guys

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The question (which doesn't matter) now is, does he really understand crypto? Or did he get at the right conclusion because he thinks that everybody else, like him, is just scamming all the time?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

Given the kinds of crowds he hangs out with (i.e. mostly other rich people and political elite) is that not an understandable conclusion?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

anything that makes yglesias have a bad day is generally a good thing

but it sounds like the orange man understands the crypto market perfectly: the numbers are all made up and everyone's lying

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

(at least I think it's that one? one of them's quite the bootlicker. I'm bad at names tho)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I am sure this is totally not sketchy in the slightest and the people behind it have no nefarious agenda whatsoever.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Ah yes the advertisement which causes T&S people (who have seen some things) to go on long rants on why you should never put pictures of your kids online publically.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

fuck that's gross

where'd you find/run across that? can't tell if it's a normal ad or some gig-site thing or what

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Saw it posted on Reddit. It's apparently from clickworker.com which is a weird-ass website by itself at first glance, with great pitches like this:

People are happier if they are more financially independent. We can help you achieve this.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

ah, doman name sounds like it’s one of the microwork farms

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

Somehow I managed to mention the wordpress lawsuit on last week’s thread instead of this one, so let’s try again.

Matt Mullenweg, the wordpress(.)com guy and current owner of tumblr, tried to shakedown competing blog product WP engine (which builds on the same open source software that his company does) for 8% of their revenue (https://goblin.band/notes/9yjrc2logimd1tr3 h/t to froztbyte who was also on the old thread for some mysterious reason) or he’d say mean things about them at a conference where they were one of the sponsors. And they didn’t pay up, so he compared them to cancer.

And now they’re suing him.

https://notes.ghed.in/posts/2024/matt-mullenweg-wp-engine-debacle/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Hello Matt this is your lawer speaking

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

lol holy shit, he was barely getting started

shortly after the first posts, he (most likely personally, although remains to be seen) had the trademark usage page updated specifically to take aim at wpengine

and started making his employees do an astroturfing campaign on their private socials

and blocked wpengine from interacting with wordpress.org at all, by both blocking accounts and IPs

dude’s lost it. coming up soon, mass migrations off wordpress?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

@froztbyte

Sounds like someone under a lot of pressure to raise revenue and not having much success.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Mullenweg's the same guy who publicly harassed a random transwoman on Tumblr and had a general meltdown to the point where Tumblr staff had to distance himself from him, so I'm not shocked.

(That its Tumblr is the only thing that shocks me - you'd think he'd have realised its queer-friendly rep was one of the main things going for it)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

wait are there non-queer people on Tumblr even??

I mean, it's the same company that didn't realize that half its traffic was porn, so it's on brand

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

I mean, it’s the same company that didn’t realize that half its traffic was porn, so it’s on brand

Granted, Apple's banhammer forced Tumblr's hand on that front (though Tumblr's complete failure on moderation did give Apple that golden opportunity).

(The whole debacle did lead to Newgrounds getting hit by two separate waves of new users - a minor wave in November after the NSFW purges kicked in, then a major wave in December after the porn ban was officially announced. I have nothing more to add, I think it was pretty funny Tumblr shat the bed that hard)

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