this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2025
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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.

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

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[–] rook@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago

One to watch from a safe distance: dafdef, an “ai browser” aimed at founders and “UCG creators”, named using the traditional amazon-keysmash naming technique and and following the ai-companies-must-have-a-logo-suggestive-of-an-anus style guide.

Dafdef learns your browsing patterns and suggests what you'd do next After watching you fill out similar forms a few times, Dafdef starts autocompleting them. Apply with your startup to YC, HF0 and A16z without wasting your time.

So… spicy autocomplete.

But that’s not all! Tired of your chatbot being unable to control everything on your iphone, due to irksome security features implemented by those control freaks at apple? There’s a way around that!

Introducing the “ai key”!

A tiny USB-C key that turns your phone into a trusted AI assistant. It sees your screen, acts on your behalf, and remembers — all while staying under your control.

I’m sure you can absolutely trust an ai browser connected to a tool that has nearly full control over your phone to not do anything bad, because prompt injection isn’t a thing, right?

(I say nearly full, because I think Apple Pay requires physical interaction with a phone button or face id, but if dafdef can automate the boring and repetitive parts of using your banking app then having full control of the phone might not matter)

h/t to ian coldwater

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago

one horse laugh is of greater utilitarian impact across the quantum waveform of the universe than ten thousand syllogisms

[–] ShakingMyHead@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Anthropic to pay 1.5 billion to authors

That's... quite a bit. I wonder if we'll start to see more complaints about people reaching their token limit "prematurely" or if Anthropic will release a $1000/month "unlimited" plan or something like that.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

given the run rates all these fuckers have, I half expect they feel glad it’s “as low as it is”. couple of the authors I’ve seen speak about it reckon pay out better to them (once off) than they tend to get from book royalties (I saw chisnall and some others post around it earlier). precedent from this is probably a good thing, even if I wish it went harder (esp given how likely “a fine you can afford is just a tax” is to develop as a normal situation)

re burn rates: openai confirmed in the last day or so that it expects a $118b burn through 2028. fucking obscene

[–] ShakingMyHead@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

According to the article, it could be higher than 1.5 billion, though by how much they don't really say. But they're estimating about $3000 per book. For a class action that actually seems extremely high.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago

yep, I was seeing some folks reckon it might be 20~30x what they’d make in later royalties. I’m not knocking the suit or the value to authors - mostly just wishing it were more so it might cause an even sharper effect

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

But compared to the anti piracy fines for sharing music from decades ago it is pretty low.

Saw people suggest it was because the judge doesnt want to kill the goose that is laying pyrite eggs.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago

New premium column from Ed Zitron: Why Everybody Is Losing Money On AI

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago

in which business continues cosying up to fash

[–] antifuchs@awful.systems 4 points 1 week ago

There’s not a whole lot of clear info out there but it looks like the Tesla “dog mode” (the feature you’re supposed to rely on when you leave a dog in the car so the dog doesn’t overheat and die) is prone to failure and has recently killed a dog.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 4 points 1 week ago

Nice and lengthy sneer against AI in academia came out a couple days ago - highly recommend reading.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago (4 children)
[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Small point, but I heard nitter is run by chuds, xcancel is better.

E: I always get clowdstrike and cloudflare confused, which were the ones who protected the nazis again and which ones were the ones who took down the internet for a day? ;) (Ha, the last page even leaves out this incident)

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Are you thinking of nitter.poast.org? That's run by the same guy behind poa[.]st, a really awful pleroma instance.

iirc, xcancel.com became popular before nitter.net was revived.

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