this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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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.

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Want to wade into the ~~snowy~~ sandy surf of the abyss? 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 so 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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[–] istewart@awful.systems 11 points 1 day ago (7 children)

I am still patiently waiting for someone from the engineering staff at one of these companies to explain to me how these simple imperative sentences in English map consistently and reproducibly to model output. Yes, I understand that's a complex topic. I'll continue to wait.

[–] fiat_lux@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I don't work at one of those companies, just somewhere mainlining AI, so this answer might not satisfy your requirements. But the answer is very simple. The first thing anyone working in AI will tell you (maybe only internally?) is that the output is probabilistic not deterministic. By definition, that means it's not entirely consistent or reproducible, just... maybe close enough. I'm sure you already knew that though.

However, from my perspective, even if it was deterministic, it wouldn't make a substantial difference here.

For example, this file says I can't ask it to build a DoS script. Fine. But if I ask it to write a script that sends a request to a server, and then later I ask it to add a loop... I get a DoS script. It's a trivial hurdle at best, and doesn't even approach basic risk mitigation.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

DoS script

Part of me reads that and still thinks, "Oh, you mean like AUTOEXEC.BAT?"

[–] JFranek@awful.systems 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 2 points 3 hours ago

Truly a tool for the .COM era

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