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submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

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[-] [email protected] 9 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

A hackernews muses about vibe coding a chatbot to provide therapy for people in crisis. Soon, an actual health care professional shows up to butcher the offender and defile the corpse. This causes much tut-tutting and consternation among the locals.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44535197

Edit: a shower thought: have any of yall noticed the way that prompt enjoyers describe using Cursor, tab completions, and such are a repackaging of the psychology of loot boxes? In particular, they share the variable-interval reward schedule that serves as the hook in your typical recreational gambling machines.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago

the psychology of loot boxes?

yep! https://awful.systems/post/4568900

the book is "Hooked" and it's Don't Build The Torment Nexus I'm Now Providing You A Detailed Blueprint Of

[-] [email protected] 1 points 56 minutes ago* (last edited 18 minutes ago)

Ye gods! Also, great write-up!

Do you reckon that Altman recognized the gacha potential from the get-go? That Big LLM has always been FanDuel for dorks, but on purpose?

[-] [email protected] 7 points 10 hours ago

I’ve been making casual observation how a number of the adhd people I know to have addiction tendencies tend to get real into prompts, but hadn’t observed the lootbox thing

that’s going into the ponder bucket.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago

you should be read up on the gospel of @fasterandworse never shutting up about "Hooked"

[-] [email protected] 9 points 22 hours ago

Musk objects to the "stochastic parrot" labelling of LLMs. Mostly just the stochastic part.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 17 hours ago

Wake up babe, new alignment technique just dropped: Reinforcement Learning Elon Feedback

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

I have become aware that there is a very right wing Catholic podcaster who has a Catholicism AI chatbot app. It's called Truthly.

Your Trusted Catholic AI Conversation Companion Deepen your understanding, explore ideas, and engage in meaningful dialogue—anytime, anywhere.

If someone could call up Pope Leo and get him to excommunicate the guys who invented this, that would be great.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 19 hours ago

Nah, we just need to make sure they properly baptise whatever servers it's running on.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago

really, really thoroughly baptise. not just drops but fistfuls of water. the more water the more holy. the servers will love being really holy!

[-] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago

Just throw the whole unit into the font, just to be safe. Or better yet, a river!

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago

https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/

When developers are allowed to use AI tools, they take 19% longer to complete issues—a significant slowdown that goes against developer beliefs and expert forecasts. This gap between perception and reality is striking: developers expected AI to speed them up by 24%, and even after experiencing the slowdown, they still believed AI had sped them up by 20%.

womp, hold on let me finish, womp

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

had a quick scan over the blogposts earlier, keen to read the paper

would be nice to see some more studies with more numbers under study, but with the cohort they picked the self-reported vs actual numbers are already quite spicy

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

and n=16 handily beats the usual promptfondler n=1

[-] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago

Also the attempt to actually measure productivity instead of just saying "they felt like it helped" - of course it did!

[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JspxcjkvBmye4cW4v/asking-for-a-friend-ai-research-protocols

Multiple people are quietly wondering if their AI systems might be conscious. What's the standard advice to give them?

Touch grass. Touch all the grass.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

Username called "The Dao of Bayes". Bayes's theorem is when you pull the probabilities out of your posterior.

知者不言,言者不知。 He who knows (the Dao) does not (care to) speak (about it); he who is (ever ready to) speak about it does not know it.

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[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

LessWrong's descent into right-wing tradwife territory continues

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tdQuoXsbW6LnxYqHx/annapurna-s-shortform?commentId=ueRbTvnB2DJ5fJcdH

Annapurna (member for 5 years, 946 karma):

Why is there so little discussion about the loss of status of stay at home parenting?

First comment is from user Shankar Sivarajan, member for 6 years, 1227 karma

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tdQuoXsbW6LnxYqHx/annapurna-s-shortform?commentId=opzGgbqGxHrr8gvxT

Well, you could make it so the only plausible path to career advancement for women beyond, say, receptionist, is the provision of sexual favors. I expect that will lower the status of women in high-level positions sufficiently to elevate stay-at-home motherhood.

[...]

EDIT: From the downvotes, I gather people want magical thinking instead of actual implementable solutions.

Granted, this got a strong disagree from the others and a tut-tut from Habryka, but it's still there as of now and not yeeted into the sun. And rats wonder why people don't want to date them.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

Dorkus malorkus alert:

When my grandmother quit being a nurse to become a stay at home mother, it was seen like a great thing. She gained status over her sisters, who stayed single and in their careers.

Fitting into your societal pigeonhole is not the same as gaining status, ya doofus.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago
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[-] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago
[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It's possible we may be catching sight of the first shy movements towards a pivot to robotics:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/autonomous-machines/embedded-systems/jetson-orin/nano-super-developer-kit/

https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/09/hugging-face-opens-up-orders-for-its-reachy-mini-desktop-robots/

Both developer kits, because it's always a maybe the clients will figure something out type of business model these days.

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[-] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago

trying to explain why a philosophy background is especially useful for computer scientists now, so i googled "physiognomy ai" and now i hate myself

https://www.physiognomy.ai/

Discover Yourself with Physiognomy.ai

Explore personal insights and self-awareness through the art of face reading, powered by cutting-edge AI technology.

At Physiognomy.ai, we bring together the ancient wisdom of face reading with the power of artificial intelligence to offer personalized insights into your character, strengths, and areas for growth. Our mission is to help you explore the deeper aspects of yourself through a modern lens, combining tradition with cutting-edge technology.

Whether you're seeking personal reflection, self-awareness, or simply curious about the art of physiognomy, our AI-driven analysis provides a unique, objective perspective that helps you better understand your personality and life journey.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The web is often Dead Dove in a Bag as a Service innit?

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago
[-] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

Prices ranging from 18 to 168 USD (why not 19 to 199? Number magic?) But then you get integrated approach of both Western and Chinese physiognomy. Two for one!

Thanks, I hate it!

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Number magic?

they use numerology.ai as a backend

"we encode shit as numbers in an arbitrary way and then copy-paste it into chatgpt"

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[-] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

trying to explain why a philosophy background is especially useful for computer scientists now, so i googled “physiognomy ai” and now i hate myself

Well, I guess there's your answer - "philosophy teaches you how to avoid falling for hucksters"

[-] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

A Supabase employee pleads with his software to not leak its SQL database like a parent pleads with a cranky toddler in a toy store.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502318

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this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
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