Need to make a primal scream without gathering 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!

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 cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

  • Mii@awful.systems
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    7 months ago

    Oh look, Elon openly snuggling up to Nazis and ā€œjust asking questionsā€. As if I didnā€™t hate this clown enough.

    (For anyone out of the loop: the AfD is a far-right political party in Germany and the spiritual successor to the NSDAP. Theyā€™re praising the SS, advocate for legalization of holocaust denial and historical revisionism, removal of hate crimes from the code of law, and more. Theyā€™re so openly Nazis that they got kicked out of the EU parliamentā€™s far-right ID coalition for being too fucking Nazi. Thereā€™s no leeway. Theyā€™re literal card-carrying national socialists.)

    • deborah@awful.systems
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      7 months ago

      They want to ban kosher food and circumcision, but love the Israeli government and the war on Gaza, which saysā€¦ so many things, about so many people.

    • sc_griffith@awful.systems
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      7 months ago

      heā€™s been openly a nazi propagandist pretty much since he took over twitter. they are hiding black crime stats from you.png, ā€œthis is the actual truth,ā€ etc. without saying ā€œI am literally a Naziā€ or ā€œwe should do holocaustā€ I genuinely donā€™t know how much more open he can be about it

        • froztbyte@awful.systems
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          6 months ago

          oh huh. I didnā€™t actually know about that bit. TIL!

          christ every little bit of history I read which had some power-hungry rich fucker going ā€œmmmm maybe we should hear them outā€, and then watching whatā€™s happening in popular media coverage and shit. le sigh.

    • null@slrpnk.net
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      7 months ago

      Notice that he, of course, does not list any of those ā€œpoliciesā€ that heā€™s ā€œreadā€.

      • deborah@awful.systems
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        7 months ago

        Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views. Me: Holy shit! You were censored for
wanting lower taxes? Con: LOL no...no not those views. Me: So....deregulation? Con: Haha no not those views either. Me: Which views, exactly? Con: Oh, you know the ones

        (for mastodon users who donā€™t get the image: itā€™s Andrew Lawrenceā€™s ā€œyou know the onesā€ tweet)

    • johne@denvr.social
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      7 months ago

      @mii
      I really didnā€™t think the second part of ā€œThose who donā€™t learn historyā€ was going to be so literal.

    • ebu@awful.systems
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      7 months ago

      Maybe Iā€™m missing something.

      translation: thinking about this too much, or at all really, would be disastrous for my political ideology and ego, so someone else please waste their time and energy typing up a reply i wonā€™t read, so i can continue having the image of an intellectual engaged in vigorous debate without actually having to do anything

      • deborah@awful.systems
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        7 months ago

        I suspect Elonā€™s pretty comfortable with his political ideology and ego, tbh. But I agree with the second part.

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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        7 months ago

        Imho that is just plausible deniability, just asking questions style shit. So news papers can keep writing ā€˜his politics are so vague, we donā€™t knowā€™ while he keeps unbanning fascists on twitter.

    • William B Peckham@techhub.social
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      7 months ago

      @mii @blakestacey I cannot and will not argue about your points, theyā€™re absolutely valid. The words youā€™re using however are not correct. Nazis are fascists, as are these right wing monsters. They are antisocialist, not socialists. They are against socialism and against democracy and only for their own brand of autocracy.

      • mountainriver@awful.systems
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        7 months ago

        ā€œNational socialismā€ is the term the Nazis invented to describe themselves. ā€œNaziā€ is the abbreviation of the term ā€œnational socialismā€. Could be good to know.

        • sc_griffith@awful.systems
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          7 months ago

          also good to point out for someone just finding out about this:

          (1) The name is a lie in the same way ā€œthe democratic peopleā€™s republic of north koreaā€ is. So Peckham is absolutely correct that the Nazis hated socialists and were not socialists, as evidenced by the fact that they tried to kill all of them.

          (2) The modern version of this lie is pretending the Nazis were socialists, and itā€™s a very common tactic in the far right. So Peckham is correct that we should not call them socialists, itā€™s just that using the term ā€œnational socialistā€ doesnā€™t actually imply you think they are socialists.

          (3) They did spring originally from the fusing of former socialist idealogues with the far right. So as with many massively successful lies there is a distant evolutionary relationship to something true.

          • self@awful.systems
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            7 months ago

            no, nobody here is particularly shocked that fascists would lie about being socialists

          • flere-imsaho@awful.systems
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            6 months ago

            donā€™t be the annoying pedant; weā€™re fully capable of understanding that the ā€œnational socialist german workersā€™ partyā€ was not a socialist party (and that a ā€œnaziā€ is a pejorative and was from the start), that the phrase ā€œmarxist-leninistā€ is generally used to mean ā€œleft-authoritarian but want to pretend it isnā€™tā€, that the ā€œcommunist party of the soviet unionā€ was actually presiding over a project of building an authoritarian state capitalism, and that the ā€œrepublicanā€ party in the united states is trying to make the united states a theocratic dictatorship.

  • e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 months ago

    This fucking thread on HN right now.

    OP is an enlightened freelance webdeveloper who is very scared about ghosts from their computer.

    ā€œI find myself in a unique position here, as my diverse background and experiences have given me a perspective that allows me to see the potential impact of AI more clearly than large parts of the society Iā€™m living inā€

    Another poster is also very scared about ghosts from the computer and converted their entire net-worth into NVidia shares. Now that they are heavily invested in a company deeply entangled with ghosts from the computer the apocalypse basically has to happen. After all it couldnā€™t be that they overreacted.

    • Mii@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      Proof that pasta doesnā€™t exist:

      • An atom isnā€™t pasta.
      • Adding an atom to something that isnā€™t pasta doesnā€™t make it pasta.
      • Therefore nothing is pasta.
    • deborah@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      I wonder if we can start requiring history of science, philosophy, and literary & artistic theory classes in secondary school (or at least before giving out doctorates), just to limit incredibly annoying adults who think theyā€™re geniuses. I also thought I invented brain-in-a-vat thought experiments when I was ten, but I donā€™t opine on them reinvented from first principles.

          • froztbyte@awful.systems
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            6 months ago

            new thing for the next little while: anytime a promptfondler claims a prompt has intelligence, ā€œoh yeah so why do you have to ask it things? why isnā€™t it here having a beer with us?ā€ for the 3 minutes of entertainment it may provide

  • o7___o7@awful.systems
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    7 months ago

    CW:

    spoiler

    Dongs, Blood and Thunder, Victory at Sea, Child birth, Scented Candles


    So yeahā€¦remember that manly Roko post from last week where he manplained how much men donā€™t need women? Oglaf did it first.

    This is Rokoā€™s ideal future; Rokoā€™s Modern Life, if you like.

    (NSFW)

    https://www.oglaf.com/dark-miasma/ (part 1 of 24 lol)

    https://www.oglaf.com/burningjewels/

    But nature finds a way:

    https://www.oglaf.com/honor/

    https://www.oglaf.com/son-of-kronar/

    https://www.oglaf.com/son-of-kronar/2/

    • V0ldek@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      Blood and Thunder, Victory at Sea, (ā€¦), Scented Candles

      Iā€™m sorry what is any of this. Iā€™m scared to click any of the things since I canā€™t even comprehend the content warning.

      • o7___o7@awful.systems
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        Sorry! I leaned too hard on the inside jokes. Oglaf is a pretty successful fantasy-themed web comic with adult humor. Itā€™s nothing youā€™d need therapy to get over, though it has more nudity than youā€™d want your boss to notice if they walked by your desk.

        ā€œBlood and Thunderā€ was heavily memed around a dozen years ago.

        • V0ldek@awful.systems
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          6 months ago

          Iā€™ve been around internet enough to expect ā€œScented Candlesā€ to be some insanely disgusting psychosexual performance art, notā€¦ literal fucking candles.

            • froztbyte@awful.systems
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              6 months ago

              and itā€™s remarkably wholesome, in a way. itā€™s never particularly gross or over the line, itā€™s always oglaf

    • Architeuthis@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      This has got to be some sort of sucker filter, like itā€™s not that he particularly means it, itā€™s that he is after the exact type of rube who is unfazed by naked contrarianism and the categorically preposterous so long as itā€™s said with a straight face,.

      Maybe thereā€™s something to the whole pick up artistry but for nailing VCs thing.

      • sinedpick@awful.systems
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        6 months ago

        It really is as simple as that. The dude got a fair bit of attention from his LSTM blog post and got addicted. Turns out, you canā€™t churn out awesome blog posts that often so you gotta switch to the harder stuff.

    • Mii@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      I bet that guy watches anime on 2x speed and skips parts without dialog to feel more ā€œproductiveā€.

    • self@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      according to modern film scholars, this cultural shift was brought about by the lasting audience impact of that scene in Speed (1994) where the bus fucking noclips across a gap while pretending thereā€™s a ramp itā€™s using to jump (or Keanu made it pop a wheelie?)

      • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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        6 months ago

        ā€œAre you telling me I can jump a bus across a 50 foot gap at 67 miles per hour?ā€

        ā€œNo Neo, Iā€™m telling you that when youā€™re ready, you wonā€™t have to.ā€

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      I also hate movies where I can see the actual action going on and it isnā€™t all shaky cam and cuts cuts cuts.

    • V0ldek@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      Who? Is that some indie movie director?

      Andrej Karpathy is a former director of AI at Tesla and a founding member of OpenAI

      So just a rando with a stupid opinion. Go back to your totally-not-naive AGI vision board.

    • swlabr@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      Can you gaslight people into thinking burnout is good, actually? HN gives it the olā€™ college try

    • V0ldek@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      I mean, it is a ā€œlearning experienceā€ in the same way a car crash is technically both an experience and something you probably didnā€™t know first hand before.

  • froztbyte@awful.systems
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    6 months ago

    iterm2 update, moving the shit out of the core application (like it probably shouldā€™ve been in the first place):

    3.5.1
    
    This release adds some safety valves to eliminate
    the risk of private information leaving the
    terminal via the AI endpoints. While an API key
    and explicit user action were always needed to use
    AI features, some users asked for an impenetrable
    firewall for safety and regulatory purposes.
    
    To that end, there are three relevant changes:
    
    1. Code that communicates with AI providers such
    as OpenAI has been moved into a plugin that you
    must install separately. Enterprise system admins
    can block bundle id com.googlecode.iterm2.iTermAI
    to prevent it from being installed in the first
    place.
    
    See here for details:
    https://iterm2.com/ai-plugin.html
    
    2. In addition, you must manually enable AI
    features in Settings. Doing so requires admin
    access.
    
    3. Enterprise administrators who wish to disable
    iTerm2's AI access may set the user default
    GenerativeAIAllowed to False in their MDM systems.
    

    still never received a reply email from the author to my mail. wonder what they think/have learned of this experience tho

    • Steve@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      Iā€™m afraid their character has been exposed

      I uninstalled when they announced it but this weekā€™s news says itā€™s time to uninstall macos too

      • froztbyte@awful.systems
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        6 months ago

        For the moment, Iā€™m choosing to believe the following: 1) that itermdev was operating under hyped-engineer mode and choosing cluelessly as a result (and I sorely hope they learned something through this), 2) that Apple is too selfish to go hard on openai (because it means less money for them)

        #2 Iā€™m a smidge more certain about

        But both of them are deeply ā€œugh, fuckā€ kinda feelings for me.

      • counteractor@pawoo.net
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        6 months ago

        I seem to remember iTerm doing something weird about 10 years ago, like adding telemetry, but I canā€™t find itā€¦

          • Steve@awful.systems
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            iTerm2ā€™s leak issue was first discovered ten months ago. iTerm2ā€™s creator initially reacted by adding an option to iTerm 3.0.13 that allowed users to disable DNS lookups. The feature remained turned on by default for new and existing installations.

            jfc

            • froztbyte@awful.systems
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              6 months ago

              to get on my soapbox for a moment: iterm2 is in objc, which still has a lot of the ancillary problems that C has. testing properly is one of them - I can easily see such kind of fuckups slipping past by simple virtue of human error, possibly helped along by shitty tools/choices[0]. for example, I know of nothing in C-land that enables property-based testing, and from a quick check it seems that XCTest also runs on the human-enumerated-tests philosophy. so if no-one writes the test thatā€™ll catch it, it could at best be caught by accident (through something else maybe triggering it).

              and people are also really fucking bad at thinking in/about side effects. even a lot of systems thinkers seem to fuck that up.

              /soapbox

              [0] - I was recently debugging why a particular piece of Go software wasnā€™t outputting anything I was expecting at the log level I had it set. quickly went to its repo, glanced at the code just to check if my expectation was right, then popped a message to a friend who deals with more Go than I do (which is near-nil, because it is a GARBAGE FUCKING LANGUAGE OF AND CAUSING NIGHTMARES, gah). he reminded me of the fact that Go had fairly recently fixed a bug in its stdlib logging library that had fucked up which levels it would handle things, due to an error in the fucking switch statement. for the stdlib goddamn logger. a bug which had been there for over 2y iirc.

    • ebu@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      NullBulge

      oh you know it was some furries

      edit: their website (now down, but up on the wayback machine) uses ai-generated furry art, which few self-respecting furries (much less hacktivist ones) would touch with a ten-foot pole. or at least, the ones in the furry circles i keep. so it could very well just be opportunists

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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        6 months ago

        re your edit, well furry art could be traced back to the creator of the art/or the person who commissioned it, so using AI shit for opsec isnā€™t totally strange.

        • ebu@awful.systems
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          thatā€™s one possible reason, yeah. just seems like a really odd choice ā€“ much like the fact that they dislike ā€œcrypto promotionā€ but still accept payment for secrets in crypto. doesnā€™t feel like it would be that hard to find a sympathetic furry artist willing to draw in a nondistinct style or keep work under wraps. idk

          the only reason it seems odd to me is that the overwhelming majority of furries either actively dislike or hate ā€œai artā€. maybe theyā€™re the odd ones out, or they just donā€™t care for a throwaway group

  • Steve@awful.systems
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    6 months ago

    need a meme image that represents the way Apple is legitimising openai after all the crypto degens were desperate for apple to legitimise nfts. the jealous hot mess rejected for another hot mess

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      degens

      Not your fault, but I really dislike this word and wish people wouldnā€™t start copying it from the cryptobros. Not a fan of calling people degenerates.

      • Steve@awful.systems
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        6 months ago

        fair shake. I never intended it as a shortened word, just a crypto word in itself. consider this my last use

  • o7___o7@awful.systems
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    6 months ago

    Lawrence Lessig falls victim to the siren song of the blarney engines. Also, lol cnn

    Many people refer to concerns about the technology as a question of ā€œAI safety.ā€ Thatā€™s a terrible term to describe the risks that many people in the field are deeply concerned about. Some of the leading AI researchers, including Turing Prize winner Yoshua Bengio and Sir Geoffrey Hinton, the computer expert and neuroscientist sometimes referred to as ā€œthe godfather of AI,ā€ fear the possibility of runaway systems creating not just ā€œsafety risks,ā€ but catastrophic harm.

    And while the average person canā€™t imagine how anyone could lose control of a computer (ā€œjust unplug the damn thing!ā€), we should also recognize that we donā€™t actually understand the systems that these experts fear.

    Companies operating in the field of AGI ā€” artificial general intelligence, which broadly speaking refers to the theoretical AI research attempting to create software with human-like intelligence, including the ability to perform tasks that it is not trained or developed for ā€” are among the least regulated, inherently dangerous companies in America today. There is no agency that has legal authority to monitor how the companies develop their technology or the precautions they are taking.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/06/opinions/artificial-intelligence-risks-chat-gpt-lessig/index.html