this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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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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Want to wade into the 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 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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[–] gerikson@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Guys according to LW you’re reading Omelas all wrong (just like LeGuin was wrong)

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n83HssLfFicx3JnKT/omelas-is-perfectly-misread

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[–] rook@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago (5 children)

This isn’t a particularly novel stupid take, but it was made by a bluesky engineer, and it is currently dunking-on-bluesky season so here we are.

“If you imagine that an ai is a person, then saying bad things about it is bigotry”

Welp, they’ve got me there. Guess I’ll never say anything bad about anything again, because it is racism, if you think about it.

https://bsky.app/profile/hailey.at/post/3m2f66lgh2c2v

alt textA bluesky post by dystopiabreaker.xyz

i’m completely serious when i say that much of the dismissive ai discourse on here fires the bigotry neuron

And two replies by hailey.at

an unfortunate irony about this post - and even if you are the staunchest anti-ai critic out there, i think you’d agree - is that some of the most bigoted things are being said to respond to this. copy/pasting phrasing and terminology used by bigots but replacing “dna” with “bits” doesn’t make it ok

if you’re writing a sentence that sounds like eugenics but you go “oh that’s fine to say because it’s not a real person” (whatever that means) you may want to consider what made you okay with saying that

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago

Said engineer's also brainstorming new ways to spy on users and adding a new misfeature that scans everything you post, in direct response to getting clowned on.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Ah, the beauty of the fundamental theorem of concern-troll linguistics. If you can change the words in a sentence so that the new sentence is racist, the original must be as well. Example:

Aaron: The weather is just ok.

Baron: OMG. I can’t believe you just said that. What if I changed the noun and adjective, like this: “ is ”. Go home and think about what you did.

[–] rook@awful.systems 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

(an exception can be made for people repurposing real-world slurs and putting a techy spin on them. fuck directly off with “wireback” and similar shit)

[–] Seminar2250@awful.systems 7 points 1 month ago

i read that there was one based on a mexican-slur, but i couldn't think of it

spent weeks trying to rhyme "wet" with something, couldn't come up with it, damn i guess i'm not a poet at least i know it

"wire"


fuck me that is so lazy

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[–] nfultz@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Not sure if this was posted before

The Company Man | LW

"There is no such thing as sex," Vox says from his lotus position, his eyes closed in religious ecstasy, "only the One Mind jerking itself off."

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[–] nfultz@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago

Newsom signed the AI Bill (https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/ai-law-california-ca-companies-regulation-newsom-rcna234562) but looks like they took out the private right of action vs the one last year that he vetoed, so basically defanged.

I do predict even more compliance pop ups in the near future though.

[–] Seminar2250@awful.systems 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

why in the fuck does calibre's source code have an ai folder?

https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre/tree/master/src/calibre/ai

at the very least call it "llm" or something. does this folder contain A* as a subroutine? or how about a chess engine? someone needs to develop a pill that cures misanthropy because for some reason this specifically broke me.

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[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] dgerard@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago

I predict Sam will lose big on the S&C claims. They have made fuckin bank on this bankruptcy, but also their fees have already been ruled entirely reasonable given the shitshow in question, and the near complete recovery for creditors will make them look even better.

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[–] gerikson@awful.systems 8 points 1 month ago

what fresh hell is this

Cloudflare Introduces NET Dollar stable coin (HN link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45471573)

[–] rook@awful.systems 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Somehow I missed this when it came out, but apparently starmer’s digital ID scheme is so half-baked that even palantir are backing away and saying they won’t tender for it. “Worst person you know”, etc.

Content warning for flattering pictures of moseley jr 🤮

Paywalled:

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/software-giant-palantir-snubs-digital-id-scheme-t0gdsknr2

Archived:

https://archive.is/N8ogR

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[–] FRACTRANS@awful.systems 8 points 1 month ago (5 children)

can someone catch me up to speed on what the latest nix fiasco is?

[–] mawhrin@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago

in short, the whole moderation team resigned because of interference from the steering commitee; inb4 palmer luckey crowing about how no-one in the project will stop anduril from using nixos to build american military domination.

you know, just another day of the fascist takeover of the nixos project.

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