this post was submitted on 09 Dec 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.

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

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Ed Zitron found this post about a WIlly-Wonka-Experience-style cheese injection facility in Toronto:

https://xcancel.com/i_zzzzzz/status/1865956680481354184#m

This is what it was like to live in Chasm City during the Melding Plague.

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

"The Fancy Induced Burger" is what you nickname your baby if your pregnancy goes past the due date

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

On the flip side, this gives American doctors a new way to explain child birth in terms of hamburgers.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

yet another whistleblower is dead; this time, it’s the OpenAI copyright whistleblower Suchir Balaji

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

found a new movie plot threat https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads9158

funded by open philanthropy, but not only and also got some other biologists onboard. 10 out of 39 authors had open philanthropy funding in the last 5 years so they're likely EAs. highly speculative as of now and not anywhere close to being made, as in we'll be dead from global warming before this gets anywhere close from my understanding. also starting materials would be hideously expensive because all of this has to be synthetic and enantiopure, and every technique has to be remade from scratch in unnatural enantiomer form. it even has LW thread by now hxxps://www.lesswrong.com/posts/87pTGnHAvqk3FC7Zk/the-dangers-of-mirrored-life

it hit news https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/science/a-second-tree-of-life-could-wreak-havoc-scientists-warn.html https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/12/unprecedented-risk-to-life-on-earth-scientists-call-for-halt-on-mirror-life-microbe-research

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

Mirror bacteria? Boring! I want an evil twin from the negaverse who looks exactly like me except right hande-- oh heck. What if I'm the mirror twin?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I read the headline yesterday and thought, "This is 100% fundraising bullshit."

This strikes me as being exact same class of thing OpenAI does when they pronounce that their product will murder us all.

What do we call this? Marketerrorism?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (4 children)

i see how it's critihype but i don't understand where's money in this one

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Baldur Bjarnason just put out his interim notes on tech

Reading through his notes, I get the feeling my off-the-cuff predictions from two months ago are very likely to come true - much more likely than I had anticipated. I'm gonna focus on Predictions 2 and 3:

  1. A Decline in Tech/STEM Students/Graduates

Whether or not tech crashes like I expect, AI's likely did some serious damage to the notion of "tech/STEM = high-paying job" as it sent the job industry into turmoil (with junior positions being particularly affected).

  1. Tech/STEM’s Public Image Changes - For The Worse

Whilst my original post focused on AI turning the public against the tech industry, one thing I didn't account for was the tech industry directly aligning itself with Trump. As such, tech/STEM's public image is now firmly intertwined with Trump's public image - with predictable results.

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

Just received a newsletter from Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 about their book The AI Con - How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want being available for preorder. I'm looking forward to it!

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