Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 28 July 2024

2 years ago by David Gerard to c/techtakes

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.

froztbyte 24 points 2 years ago

not only are the DCs burning water and harming ears, we’re on to the stage of taiwan not farming rice in service of making more chips

She shows us one of her rice paddies. It used to hold enough water to raise ducks. Now it's nothing but cracked earth and a few crispy flowers.

I’m neither a climate nor agriculture scientist so I can’t guess the longer term impact of this; I immediately wonder whether the soil could get harmed by disuse over years, along with other warming-related problems

I’m too angry to even sneer properly at this. it’s so fucking obviously nuts, but perverse incentives roll right ahead unchecked.

path: 0 11334789, hotness: undefined, score: 24, children: 0
hrrrngh 22 points 2 years ago

I think some people are from hell

Here is the worst thing I didn't have to read today from a transhumanist:

Yes but laws are often outpaced, presumably having your dog walk in and say he liked it is a pretty good reason to have your bestiality charge thrown out and perhaps move on to the discrimination countersuit.

.

Also this may have historic reasons, as the first futa was drawn centuries ago, long before the technology that enabled transgenderism, with breasts being the key difference.

Bonus round: ::: spoiler spoiler

What percentage of homeless people do you think would be worthwhile having as slaves? Many of them are broken people who can't reasonably support themselves in their current state, nor do anything to fix it.

This is vaguely similar to my idea for how to fix homelessness, build a community for them on a large scale, either state or national, where property is cheap and low skill jobs are abundant. Then you build a prison there, and everyone guilty of a 'crime of homelessness' such as trespassing, illegal camping, stealing food, etc. Then they get put in jail for a few days, probably put through some level of rehab, given basic medical care, and eventually a job for the massive debt they've just wracked up. What work it would be is the hard question, but the benefits to everyone else would pay for them to dig holes to fill back in if needed. Maybe have them sort recycling or something. :::

path: 0 11334076, hotness: undefined, score: 22, children: 7
V0ldek 17 points 2 years ago

how to fix homelessness, build a community for them on a large scale, either state or national, where property is cheap and low skill jobs are abundant

Okay, I mean, there's no indication as to how you'd achieve this, but yes, community help and cheap rent are absolutely a good ideal to aim at...

Then you build a prison there.

Aaaand you're a cartoon villain. What the absolute fuck.

path: 0 11334076 11349654, hotness: undefined, score: 17, children: 1
froztbyte 10 points 2 years ago

just want to make sure this is on the record

those suggestions (from the deranged OP) are basically segregationist: “you take all the poor, you give them their own little world [and then they’re no longer here, where we have to look at them]”. there’s a long track record of awful enterprises that have been done with that spirit. they carry names like Apartheid, ghetto, etc.

(there are occasionally serious well-meaning suggestions on how to provision for the poor and unfortunate in ways that allow improving lives, but those don’t tend to handwave the details, and never (afaict) involve the “make them go over there” step)

path: 0 11334076 11349654 11352759, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0
skillissuer 14 points 2 years ago

i've seen some of these takes coming from libertarians, but never from a single person

path: 0 11334076 11343400, hotness: undefined, score: 14, children: 2
Soyweiser 12 points 2 years ago

This is the kind of take a libertarian makes, and then goes 'well nobody debates me on this so my logic is solid'. While he isn't noticing that people are just avoiding the conversation all together, as nobody wants to roll in that mud with him.

The UR example of these kinds of bad takes is the book "Defending the Undefendable", a dumb book I have ranted about before.

path: 0 11334076 11343400 11345000, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 1
skillissuer 13 points 2 years ago
certified awful content, don't open if you like dogs

So in addition to normal libertarian drivel like daydreaming about being a slaveowner or such, this reminds me of an incident when certain libertarian org found that they have an actual dogfucker in their ranks (kompromat in polish) https://web.archive.org/...

so that "what if dog consents tho" is not exactly a hypothetical question

path: 0 11334076 11343400 11345000 11346080, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 0
Aoife 14 points 2 years ago

Holy shit every one of those was like getting ounched in the head from a completely random direction

path: 0 11334076 11341415, hotness: undefined, score: 14, children: 0
sc_griffith 10 points 2 years ago

robin hanson blogging about his activities on a typical monday

path: 0 11334076 11346369, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0
YourNetworkIsHaunted 20 points 2 years ago

Catching up on SMBC and finding a quality sneer I'm a little bit surprised I didn't find here sooner.

Can I get an abot?

path: 0 11340424, hotness: undefined, score: 20, children: 0
dgerard 19 points 2 years ago

https://bsky.app/...

I went to college with him. Yarvin is curdled nerd rage personified. He also lies about his age. He's older than me & claims a birth date that would make him younger than me.

I was on a Quiz Bowl team with him & whenever he would buzz in for an answer, he would jerk his body spasmodically, which the other people on the team called "Yarvinating."

He's the kind of player that other Quiz Bowl players hate, known in the subculture as a "pickoff lord." That is to say, he's the kind of guy who would pad his stats by diving in to buzz on easy questions, make wild guesses on intros so he could get more points than teammates, etc.

Hand to God. If anybody disputes me, I've got at least one other person who would remember the "Yarvinating" anecdote. I've got legit Quiz Bowl cred. I used to play against Ken Jennings before he was even a Jeopardy! contestant, let alone host.

I connected on Facebook with a former classmate, somebody else from that team who once appeared in a College Jeopardy! tournament. We're both kind of just gobsmacked that we were there for somebody else's Lex Luthor origin story.

Another bit of tea... He lies about his age. He was an upperclassman at Brown when I was a freshman & he claims to be younger than me.

see also https://www.qbwiki.com/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin

Yarvin played on the College Bowl-only team for Brown from 1989 to 1992. In 2021 he published a poem[2] stating that "No one can fucking touch me / In College Bowl." Brown failed to advance out of the Region 1 tournament for all four years of Yarvin's participation, making his lifetime record at intercollegiate tournaments 0-4 and demonstrating that, at a minimum, the Brandeis, MIT, and Williams teams were capable of "touching" his performance.

path: 0 11354653, hotness: undefined, score: 19, children: 10
froztbyte 10 points 2 years ago

I'd never looked into how old the clown is, but

He also lies about his age. He’s older than me & claims a birth date that would make him younger than me.

wait what? what does he claim? is the indicated year on wikipedia accurate? why the hell?

path: 0 11354653 11356384, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 2
dgerard 6 points 2 years ago

wikipedia date is 25 June 1973, presumably that's the false one

path: 0 11354653 11356384 11356608, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 1
froztbyte 6 points 2 years ago

huh, just showed year here. did you get that from talk?

path: 0 11354653 11356384 11356608 11356704, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0
Soyweiser 8 points 2 years ago

He also lies about his age.

I also knew somebody who did that, but it was done as a joke, he obv picked an age much much younger and everybody new he was older, it was just a funny joke. (With a small layer of disliking getting older, which is understandable) From the way this is written, it seems to me this isn't like that at all.

path: 0 11354653 11358162, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 5
froztbyte 10 points 2 years ago

I like answering ludicrously old whenever this stupid shit comes up

or picking timestamps that make devs wonder whether they had a value handling bug (such as 1/1/1970, the asp.net default 0, etc ec)

path: 0 11354653 11358162 11359277, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 4
Soyweiser 6 points 2 years ago

Just be careful you never pick very young. iirc Twitter permbans you if you ever pick a date which means you were under 13 when you registered.

path: 0 11354653 11358162 11359277 11360236, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 3
bitofhope 8 points 2 years ago

I'm 12 years old and what is this?

path: 0 11354653 11358162 11359277 11360236 11362271, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 1
froztbyte 6 points 2 years ago

I've only been on the internet a year, that mistake will happen quite soon ;)

path: 0 11354653 11358162 11359277 11360236 11362127, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0
ibt3321 6 points 2 years ago path: 0 11354653 11370340, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0
self 18 points 2 years ago path: 0 11364823, hotness: undefined, score: 18, children: 7
sc_griffith 18 points 2 years ago

we still keep a proportion of Proton’s financial reserves in Bitcoin.

further down the page

Proton is not a crypto company. We do not speculate in crypto

path: 0 11364823 11369352, hotness: undefined, score: 18, children: 1
self 15 points 2 years ago

so I’ve accidentally been paying shitheads who speculate on crypto to speculate on crypto. I’m kinda angry at myself for not catching this.

path: 0 11364823 11369352 11369690, hotness: undefined, score: 15, children: 0
swlabr 16 points 2 years ago

so what rhymes with Proton getting into AI grifting?

path: 0 11364823 11378656, hotness: undefined, score: 16, children: 1
mlen 9 points 2 years ago

Thanks, I hate it

path: 0 11364823 11378656 11394403, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
mii 12 points 2 years ago

The fuck is happening over there?

I could have “excused” the AI bullshit as “we did it to appease the corporate customers who make us money” but there’s no way you can spin this.

I’m canceling my account. At this point I might just say fuck it and use my Yahoo mail for everything again.

(And this time the Reddit thread is the dumpster fire I’ve been expecting the last one to be lol)

path: 0 11364823 11374095, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 0
earthquake 10 points 2 years ago

Can't blame this shit on the survey!

I checked, crypto shit was not in any of the top 8 results (top 5 broken out, and they mentioned 3 more, which are surely #6 through #8).

path: 0 11364823 11374687, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0
froztbyte 8 points 2 years ago

I'm sorry, what's a 1-2-punch, idgi 🤔🤔🤔

(big fat fucking /s ofc)

path: 0 11364823 11371511, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0
BigMuffin69 18 points 2 years ago

the wife sent this one to me

path: 0 11384341, hotness: undefined, score: 18, children: 7
sc_griffith 12 points 2 years ago

what can I say he cooked

path: 0 11384341 11402996, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 1
YourNetworkIsHaunted 5 points 2 years ago

That's how he suckers you in!

path: 0 11384341 11402996 11447292, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0
skillissuer 10 points 2 years ago

buddy slept through ww1+2 (it fits because brits called germans huns in their propaganda), also, roughly 5% of world population

path: 0 11384341 11385376, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0
maol 9 points 2 years ago

From a piece by Scott Alexander, I think.

path: 0 11384341 11390040, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 2
BigMuffin69 12 points 2 years ago

oh no i just learned something new about my wife

path: 0 11384341 11390040 11390812, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 1
o7___o7 8 points 2 years ago

Most women think about steppe nomads at least once a day.

path: 0 11384341 11390040 11390812 11444918, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0
gerikson 7 points 2 years ago

I'll allow it

path: 0 11384341 11384731, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
BlueMonday1984 17 points 2 years ago path: 0 11400709, hotness: undefined, score: 17, children: 1
ShakingMyHead 15 points 2 years ago

Bosses are urging employees to increase their output with the help of AI tools (37 percent), to expand their skill sets (35 percent), take on a wide range of responsibilities (30 percent), return to the office (27 percent), work more efficiently (26 percent), and work more hours (20 percent).

Stop working from home because AI.

path: 0 11400709 11404485, hotness: undefined, score: 15, children: 0
dgerard 16 points 2 years ago path: 0 11345708, hotness: undefined, score: 16, children: 7
swlabr 14 points 2 years ago

It’s my strong belief that rats only like analytic philosophy because of the word “analytic” in the title. If there were some other broad category of philosophy with a name more synonymous with “rational” they’d be all over it.

path: 0 11345708 11352004, hotness: undefined, score: 14, children: 6
jonhendry 12 points 2 years ago path: 0 11345708 11352004 11354915, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 5
Soyweiser 5 points 2 years ago

"Mathematical psychology"

path: 0 11345708 11352004 11354915 11358233, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 4
jonhendry 10 points 2 years ago path: 0 11345708 11352004 11354915 11358233 11361917, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 3
sailor_sega_saturn 14 points 2 years ago

Japan supermarket chain uses AI to gauge staff smiles, speech tones in quality service push (South China Morning Post).

Called “Mr Smile”, it was developed by the Japanese technology company InstaVR and is said to be able to accurately rate a shop assistant’s service attitude.

It has also been designed with “game” elements that invite staff to improve their attitude by challenging their scores.

The company said its goal was to “standardise staff members’ smiles and satisfy customers to the maximum”.

Thanks I hate it

Press release here: https://www.aeonretail.jp/pdf/240701R_1.pdf or here: https://www.instavr.co.jp/... (Lots of big words so I didn't try to read it)

InstaVR's English website here: https://www.instavr.co/

path: 0 11373021, hotness: undefined, score: 14, children: 5
V0ldek 16 points 2 years ago

standardise staff members’ smiles

Completely normal and chill thing to want

path: 0 11373021 11375300, hotness: undefined, score: 16, children: 0
YourNetworkIsHaunted 16 points 2 years ago

What if instead of making robots better we just made interacting with a real person indistinguishable by demanding they conform to arbitrary metrics that the brain-slugs that control our minds think look like genuine human warmth and kindness?

path: 0 11373021 11373998, hotness: undefined, score: 16, children: 0
gerikson 9 points 2 years ago

Previous workplace merged with a US company that among other things offered "sentiment analysis" for call centers - the software was supposed to detect if someone was upset or irate. Could be used to help employees deal with irate customers, but could also detect if an employee was rude or stressed. Same software could be used to ensure employees used certain stock phrases like "welcome to InitTech, how may I help you?"

Point is, tech has been used to enforce conformity since well forever.

path: 0 11373021 11384717, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
maol 6 points 2 years ago

Eurgh!

path: 0 11373021 11390052, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0
o7___o7 5 points 2 years ago

@cstross

Looks like someone took the wrong lesson from Quantum of Nightmares!

Edit: Enjoyed the book, btw. Felt weird about shopping for groceries for most of a year afterward. A++

path: 0 11373021 11445055, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0
froztbyte 13 points 2 years ago

more on the nsfw side but this is a kinda interesting finding/use of existing tech

path: 0 11363556, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 1
froztbyte 7 points 2 years ago

niche because only some types of slop, but still!

path: 0 11363556 11363557, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
mountainriver 13 points 2 years ago

Crowdstrike offers 10 USD gift cards as apology.

https://techcrunch.com/...

Those that try to use them find out that Crowdstrike can't even buy gift cards at scale.

path: 0 11379180, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 2
froztbyte 9 points 2 years ago

it’s going well:

path: 0 11379180 11413512, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
swlabr 7 points 2 years ago

Real “Scott’s Tots” energy

path: 0 11379180 11381961, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
saucerwizard 13 points 2 years ago path: 0 11411632, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 20
veganes_hack 14 points 2 years ago

Elon Musk reply: "Increase the dose and it will work"

path: 0 11411632 11414422, hotness: undefined, score: 14, children: 4
V0ldek 12 points 2 years ago

Don't forget the chaser!

path: 0 11411632 11414422 11423607, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 2
blakestacey 7 points 2 years ago

Ah, by "chaser", you mean "emetic"

path: 0 11411632 11414422 11423607 11428161, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 1
V0ldek 5 points 2 years ago

An olive oil chaser - classic.

path: 0 11411632 11414422 11423607 11428161 11442151, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0
Soyweiser 8 points 2 years ago

The reactions to that are also quite something, not only does Musk bring out the worst people (bluechecks, all even less informed than him, or worse just people wanting to spread crypto/insult fat people/took over the weird posting style from Jordan B Peterson (the one with all the linebreaks at strange places, Musk also did it once in the same period he did the interview), but Yudkowsky reacted with a very gentle [citation needed], while we all know the truth.

path: 0 11411632 11414422 11423563, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0
skillissuer 13 points 2 years ago path: 0 11411632 11411965, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 1
V0ldek 7 points 2 years ago

Unfortunately the Joe Rogan case study shows that the answer is probably quite a bit more.

path: 0 11411632 11411965 11423596, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
Amoeba_Girl 12 points 2 years ago

Looks like he's in the process of killing himself

And he insists exercise doesn't help him lose weight which means it doesn't have any benefit.

Poor fuck's going to get done in by vanity.

path: 0 11411632 11414958, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 11
sc_griffith 9 points 2 years ago

I can't really feel sorry for him but this is somehow still depressing

path: 0 11411632 11414958 11423643, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
Soyweiser 8 points 2 years ago

For the people not in the know 500kcal a day is very unwise. Not only very unhealthy, also a sign of looking for a quick fix mindset, which is not a thing that works well for long term weightloss.

path: 0 11411632 11414958 11423594, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 4
Amoeba_Girl 10 points 2 years ago

Yeah, and he does this one in every two months (+ 1 bonus week of fasting because water weight because the only thing he's interested in is number go down).

path: 0 11411632 11414958 11423594 11423597, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 1
Soyweiser 7 points 2 years ago

Mein gott

path: 0 11411632 11414958 11423594 11423597 11423620, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
saucerwizard 6 points 2 years ago

Oh man I need to up my caloric intake (ozempic makes this really hard).

path: 0 11411632 11414958 11423594 11423609, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 1
Soyweiser 6 points 2 years ago

Try not to go under 1000kcal (and even that is a bit low and prob unhealthy on the long term, assuming somewhat average male height, a middle age, and computertoucher lifestyle).

path: 0 11411632 11414958 11423594 11423609 11423621, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0
maol 5 points 2 years ago

Isn't this what happened to that creepy bloke on Tumblr. Maybe all rationalist-adjacent bloggers eventually shit themselves to death after trying to fix their health problems with punishing exercise regimes and dodgy supplements.

path: 0 11411632 11414958 11426281, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 4
dgerard 5 points 2 years ago

which one?

path: 0 11411632 11414958 11426281 11432198, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 3
maol 4 points 2 years ago path: 0 11411632 11414958 11426281 11432198 11489366, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 2
blakestacey 8 points 2 years ago

Maintaining my weight still requires fasting 1 month for every 2 months that I eat enough for my brain to work.

... his brain works?

Objection! Facts not in evidence!

path: 0 11411632 11428201, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0
Soyweiser 13 points 2 years ago

No idea how true it is but apparently crowdstrike fired some of their QA and replaced it with AI, anybody heard about this? (source bsky) (Also 'AI' is doing a lot of work here, that could be anything)

path: 0 11325211, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 4
dgerard 16 points 2 years ago

I am attempting to track down this precise story.

  • They are gung ho on AI
  • They laid off a pile of their QA
  • They have a "virtual security analyst" which is an LLM
path: 0 11325211 11327878, hotness: undefined, score: 16, children: 3
Soyweiser 10 points 2 years ago

iirc Crowdstrike does use regular ML for security, or at least a lot of security companies, I think they might have talked about it on the risky business podcast, so you might want to look at their (many iirc) crowdstrike sponsored parts. No episode directly springs to mind however.

path: 0 11325211 11327878 11328188, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 2
YourNetworkIsHaunted 14 points 2 years ago

This can also be an area where ML is an appropriate and useful tool. You'll see it used to establish a statistical baseline for what traffic should look like and then it can flag when it detects something that doesn't match that as suspicious and worth further investigation. In this space there is actually a lot of value in some of the statistical modeling techniques, though generative AI is obviously a very different and less useful beast.

path: 0 11325211 11327878 11328188 11331124, hotness: undefined, score: 14, children: 1
Soyweiser 9 points 2 years ago

Yes indeed. Which is iirc what people talked about re ML before the current hype cycle started.

path: 0 11325211 11327878 11328188 11331124 11331425, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
mii 12 points 2 years ago path: 0 11316617, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 8
Amoeba_Girl 12 points 2 years ago

love is love ✌️❤️

path: 0 11316617 11329153, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 0
Soyweiser 11 points 2 years ago

Amazing how many of them eventually morph into somebody else. Trained on celeb faces, and still cannot keep a consistent facial shape. One more dataset bro.

path: 0 11316617 11319108, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 0
swlabr 9 points 2 years ago

One, this looks like absolute dogshit. Two, this looks like an ad campaign for a celebrity cloning service for spare organs. Three, with the music it sounds like a drug ad in the US. It just needs a voiceover telling you the monkey paw side effect you’ll inflict upon yourself in return for eternal youth.

path: 0 11316617 11321809, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 5
froztbyte 11 points 2 years ago

Three, with the music it sounds like a drug ad in the US

as I remarked to a friend elsewhere, there's something I've noticed in a couple of these things now, and that's how "cutesy" they're made to be

this one for example: it’s so clearly intended to be as unnatural as possible (based on the pairings presented), while trying to sell it as cozy as possible - all the gestures/poses, the music, the lighting, the clothing, the who's-picked-for-portrayal

obviously there's going to be some kind of observation bias etc involved here (of however many of these things get created, only some with some x property end up crossing my feed/radar somehow) but still. it doesn't even have artistic shock dimensions value - it's just creepycopy.

which has led me to wonder: what is it about genml tech specifically that makes this kind of bullshit the thing produced so frequently?

path: 0 11316617 11321809 11323320, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 4
swlabr 11 points 2 years ago

One answer perhaps would be that anyone who thinks AI art is good probably lacks the taste to appreciate anything beyond the generic, and the discernment to tell that it is submerged in the depths of uncanny valley. So you have a bunch of AI chuds sharing this creep shit without realising it’s creepy and that it looks terrible.

path: 0 11316617 11321809 11323320 11325961, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 3
Soyweiser 8 points 2 years ago path: 0 11316617 11321809 11323320 11325961 11328238, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 1
BlueMonday1984 7 points 2 years ago

One answer perhaps would be that anyone who thinks AI art is good probably lacks the taste to appreciate anything beyond the generic, and the discernment to tell that it is submerged in the depths of uncanny valley.

Very true - arguably truer today than it was earlier, if DALL-E's declining quality is any indication.

DALL-E 2 had some degree of artistic talent (in the loosest sense), but because DALL-E was made and run by creatively sterile techbros without a shred of art skill, that talent was drowned very fucking quickly.

path: 0 11316617 11321809 11323320 11325961 11337060, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
flowerysong 12 points 2 years ago

Whatever shambling corpse of Toys "R" Us still exists has released "the first OpenAI SORA generated brand commercial."

still frame from the commercial of a child who looks slightly melted

It looks absolutely dire, particularly in motion, but posters are still falling over themselves to call it "cool" and "exciting" or claim that people "might not notice" that it's complete and utter arse. Twitter screenshot of a user admitting that it's a bad ad but claiming that people might not notice it's computer generated

path: 0 11390990, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 13
blakestacey 15 points 2 years ago

That picture... Harry Potter and the Hole of Ketamine.

path: 0 11390990 11391079, hotness: undefined, score: 15, children: 3
blakestacey 8 points 2 years ago path: 0 11390990 11391079 11391104, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0
swlabr 7 points 2 years ago path: 0 11390990 11391079 11393221, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 1
V0ldek 9 points 2 years ago

Oh my fucking god I know that video

this is the entire pitch of genAI, this is beat for beat a perfect analysis 4 years before all of this bullshit actually happened

path: 0 11390990 11391079 11393221 11407166, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
BlueMonday1984 12 points 2 years ago

"Positive is that if you didn't tell someone it was GenAI, they might not notice!"

Nah, they'd be able to immediately tell from just how fucking garbage it is

path: 0 11390990 11399658, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 2
flowerysong 11 points 2 years ago

It makes me wonder if these people have ever seen a moving picture before, because being caught up in the slack-jawed astonishment of a novel experience seems the only plausible explanation for thinking this looks good.

path: 0 11390990 11399658 11404897, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 1
V0ldek 12 points 2 years ago

Has someone tried generating a train running at the camera and seeing if one of the AI bros dies of a heart attack?

path: 0 11390990 11399658 11404897 11406865, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 0
froztbyte 11 points 2 years ago

I see Sora still hasn't cracked the nut of having longer output windows. or at producing things that aren't deathly boring.

and what the fuck is up with that music? it sounds like a medical commercial selling hope

path: 0 11390990 11394060, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 1
blakestacey 8 points 2 years ago path: 0 11390990 11394060 11394291, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0
Amoeba_Girl 10 points 2 years ago

AI or not this is an incredibly depressing advert, what the fuck. They went for whimsy and produced an elegy.

path: 0 11390990 11395021, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0
veganes_hack 9 points 2 years ago

the thing is, people are again taking this as direct output of the regurgitating machine. i wouldn't be at all surprised if there was a ton of editing going on to fix all of the most glaring issues, just like when sora was first announced.

path: 0 11390990 11397834, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 2
Amoeba_Girl 9 points 2 years ago

Yes you can very clearly see what they've added in, there's tons of matte stuff going on and cliparts of floating toys and whatever

path: 0 11390990 11397834 11406510, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
ShakingMyHead 7 points 2 years ago

If you look at the bottom right that's exactly the case. They didn't just type a prompt in SORA and call it a day.

path: 0 11390990 11397834 11400042, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
Soyweiser 12 points 2 years ago path: 0 11331278, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 12
vulture_god 11 points 2 years ago
path: 0 11331278 11332847, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 8
V0ldek 7 points 2 years ago

terrible person like Aleister Crowley

Wait, why is Crowley terrible? Wasn't he basically an overly enthusiastic cosplayer that did all the drugs and all the sex? So basically an occult hippy? Am I just unaware of him abusing people or some other dark shit?

path: 0 11331278 11332847 11349840, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 7
mawhrin 12 points 2 years ago

he was an abusive gobshite, including physically abusive.

path: 0 11331278 11332847 11349840 11350983, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 1
mpk 7 points 2 years ago

Claim to fame! Aleister Crowley was born a short walk from the house where I grew up, although then he was plain old Edward Crowley. My home town isn't that keen to be associated with him, largely because of the above - at a superficial level he was a harmless crank, a rich kid who decided to start his own religion and dress up in robes, but once you dig down into the history he was a pretty unpleasant, exploitative man - a classic cult leader.

path: 0 11331278 11332847 11349840 11350983 11377559, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
Amoeba_Girl 10 points 2 years ago

I mean, I really don't think you can have a sex cult without at the very least some abuse. It's also good practice to treat occultism as weirdo fascism.

path: 0 11331278 11332847 11349840 11376766, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 1
dgerard 8 points 2 years ago

It’s also good practice to treat occultism as weirdo fascism.

the coincidence happening over and over is a tad unfortunate

path: 0 11331278 11332847 11349840 11376766 11379433, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0
maol 6 points 2 years ago

I read his Wikipedia recently and he just seemed like a user who was careless with the people in his life. His philosophy was "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law", which is obviously open to abuse and exploitation.

path: 0 11331278 11332847 11349840 11368278, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 2
V0ldek 5 points 2 years ago

Ye that's why I'm asking, cause even RationalWiki doesn't have a chapter on abuse or anything.

path: 0 11331278 11332847 11349840 11368278 11374651, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 1
froztbyte 9 points 2 years ago

you know, I’d wondered previously about the higher-than-average divinity-and-spirits obsession among TPOT. between some of the history of land/ccru there, the other shit previously observed in the stubsack (iirc?) about rightoids and aliens/fairies (and ofc the nazi history of occultism)… what a fucking faith to make

path: 0 11331278 11331948, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 2
YourNetworkIsHaunted 10 points 2 years ago

Truly the weirdest consequence of crank magnetism and conspiracy syncretism is the kinds of bedfellows you find. UFO cults align with Christian dominionists because the aliens are actually demons (or vice versa - which direction isn't important).

It feels like modern fascism is less driven by orthodoxy (right belief) than they are by orthopraxy (right action) to the degree that as long as they aren't actually in power anyone who hates on the right people and rejects the right facts can join the same club regardless of what they actually think. The weirdo occultism of the Nazis was largely tied to the project of reifying their racial hierarchy in all aspects of society by establishing that the Aryan race had the best religion and the best history in addition to the best genes and the best country. The weirdo occultism of modern fascism doesn't have that kind of thread to it that I can see, and I don't know what that means for ongoing development. Does it turn into a source of internal strife as they get closer to having actual influence? Do they settle into a more specific doctrine and cull the ranks of those who don't adopt it? Or is accepting a consensus reality actually the optional part here as long as the group can broadly agree on what to do?

path: 0 11331278 11331948 11341136, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 1
o7___o7 10 points 2 years ago

Helena Blavatsky and Rudolph Steiner made up much of what went on to constitute esoteric Hilterism ab nihilo.

Blavatsky, in particular, was a prolific bullshitter in the Frankfurtian sense. She invented the notion of the Aryan master race as a thing that exists in the future, which white europeans should strive to bring into the world.

path: 0 11331278 11331948 11341136 11353806, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0
carlitoscohones 12 points 2 years ago

Not everyone wants ai for their search tools

path: 0 11388501, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 0
gerikson 12 points 2 years ago

Trump selecting JD Vance has his running mate has led to stuff I know from this venue bleeding into stuff I follow (shamefully) for US politics. Case in point, behold Mencius Moldbug between Richard Hanania and some racist dweeb from Cambridge:

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/...

path: 0 11407346, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 4
maol 9 points 2 years ago

My other kook-watching sneerhobby is Rod Dreher and there's been bleedthrough from him too! Strange bird, Vance...

path: 0 11407346 11413469, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 1
gerikson 7 points 2 years ago

Yeah Dreher used to be a staple at LGM but some time ago I think they decided he was struggling so much with mental health they decided to lay off him.

I hope he accepts he's gay and does some sort of repentance for all the stuff he's said over the years.

path: 0 11407346 11413469 11423624, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
blakestacey 9 points 2 years ago

Good grief, I know. It was bad enough when SBF hit the headlines, but now, it feels like the next news cycle will involve explaining how Thielbux funded a performance art piece in Dimes Square about Nikolai Fyodorov's Cosmism.

path: 0 11407346 11408017, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 1
o7___o7 4 points 2 years ago

Hannu Rajaniemi intensifies

path: 0 11407346 11408017 11423564, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0
Soyweiser 12 points 2 years ago

NASBLOL (I'm not sure this abbreviation will work out): "Investors in anti-Biden cryptocurrencies are getting absolutely destroyed." (Source)

path: 0 11337085, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 0
maol 11 points 2 years ago

Just found out from a screenshot in a tweet that Marc Aandreesen considers Nick Land to be some kind of patron saint of "techno-optimism". Setting aside Land's ugly views about everything... I didn't think optimism was what he was known for. More like grasping, desperate, disgusted embrace of the onward march of capital.

path: 0 11413120, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 3
V0ldek 11 points 2 years ago

Nick Land (...) “techno-optimism”

His thing is literally called DARK ENLIGHTENMENT, fucking Final Fantasy villain level of grandiose menacing naming, how on earth would that be "optimism".

Marcee do you even like know who your idols are?

path: 0 11413120 11423595, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 0
Soyweiser 10 points 2 years ago

"Nothing human makes it out of the near-future." - Nick Land.

path: 0 11413120 11423589, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 1
o7___o7 7 points 2 years ago

The Pinhead we have at home.

path: 0 11413120 11423589 11444904, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
BlueMonday1984 11 points 2 years ago path: 0 11390547, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 4
blakestacey 12 points 2 years ago

OpenAI said in its announcement that search responses will include in-line citations and that users can open a sidebar to view links to external sources. The long-term goal is to then incorporate search features into ChatGPT, the company’s flagship AI product.

"The long-term goal is to reinvent the Internet of 25 years ago, but worse."

path: 0 11390547 11390902, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 3
self 14 points 2 years ago

what do you mean you don’t want a search engine but much less efficient and much, much worse? you don’t like progress?

path: 0 11390547 11390902 11391126, hotness: undefined, score: 14, children: 2
weirdwriter 8 points 2 years ago
path: 0 11390547 11390902 11391126 11391495, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 1
skillissuer 10 points 2 years ago

Military contracting comes with actual requirements and product has to be up to spec, can't have that

path: 0 11390547 11390902 11391126 11391495 11395996, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0
BlueMonday1984 11 points 2 years ago path: 0 11424114, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 2
planettimmy 12 points 2 years ago path: 0 11424114 11426993, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 1
BlueMonday1984 9 points 2 years ago

Its a surprisingly good complement to OP Chris Paxton's Tweet about "normie opinion on AI", given it shows why said "normie opinion" is so resoundingly negative.

I've made some brief nods to how the AI bubble is rapidly souring public perception of tech (here and here), but it really feels like AI has, to quote @datarama, "made tech synonymous with “monstrous assholes” in a non-trivial chunk of public consciousness".

I feel like I should collect my thoughts on that front - I could probably make an interesting post out of it.

path: 0 11424114 11426993 11427421, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
BlueMonday1984 10 points 2 years ago

Not a sneer, but a mildly interesting open letter:

A specification for those who want content searchable on search engines, but not used for machine learning.

The basic idea is effectively an extension of robots.txt which attempts to resolve the issue by providing a means to politely ask AI crawlers not to scrape your stuff.

Personally, I don't expect this to ever get off the ground or see much usage - this proposal is entirely reliant on trusting that AI bros/companies will respect people's wishes and avoid scraping shit without people's permission.

Between OpenAI publicly wiping their asses with robots.txt, Perplexity lying about user agents to steal people's work, and the fact a lot of people's work got stolen before anyone even had the opportunity to say "no", the trust necessary for this shit to see any public use is entirely gone, and likely has been for a while.

path: 0 11423558, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 5
o7___o7 9 points 2 years ago

OpenAI is creating the trustless economy that makes bitcoin necessary. taps forehead

path: 0 11423558 11423562, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
sailor_sega_saturn 5 points 2 years ago

The best proposal I've seen so far short of destroying all AI scrapers, and essentially what anyone familiar with the specs would come up with.

The only thing I'd add is an analogue to data-nosnippet to exclude only specific sections of the HTML document (w/o needing to reach for an entire iframe); though that's harder to implement on the crawler end so maybe that's for the best.

Google uses a second User-Agent directive; while Bing suggests using noarchive. Both of these are pretty hacky and not general, so it'd be good to see the industry standardize on the above proposal.

path: 0 11423558 11423615, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 1
BlueMonday1984 10 points 2 years ago

The proposal itself does still assume that AI scrapers are being run by decent human beings with functioning moral compasses, which is why I feel its inadequate.

This take might be overly harsh on AI/tech as a whole, but at this point I've run out of patience regarding this bubble and see no reason to believe anyone in the AI space is a decent human being, at least for the time being.

path: 0 11423558 11423615 11423633, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0
sailor_sega_saturn 4 points 2 years ago path: 0 11423558 11456580, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 1
BlueMonday1984 4 points 2 years ago

At this point, I wouldn't fault anyone for blanket-blocking all scrapers/robots - sure, doing that will make you unfindable by search engines, but search is basically useless nowadays for finding anything actually interesting, and trying to play whack-a-mole with AI scrapers just means you're gonna get your shit stolen.

Might as well go back to word-of-mouth.

path: 0 11423558 11456580 11459530, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0
blakestacey 10 points 2 years ago

Regarding that claimed breakthrough about AI winning the International Mathematical Olympiad: a reminder that a proof which hangs together logically is not necessarily a proof that makes sense.

Those formalized proofs are so incredibly ugly, it's amazing. Of course it doesn't much of a sensible indentation, but then there are single proof steps where I have no idea what it's even doing. [...] And then there are nonsense mathematical steps. The solution of problem 2 starts with induction, before introducing any variables. It applies induction to the number 12. And it write 12 as (10)+2. Then it proceeds to do the whole proof in the base case of the induction, and notices that the induction step is trivial, since the goal is the same as the induction hypothesis (but instead of the assumption tactic it uses congr 26).

path: 0 11390692, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 6
BigMuffin69 15 points 2 years ago

'manual translation' undoubtably doing some heavy lifting here

path: 0 11390692 11391273, hotness: undefined, score: 15, children: 4
blakestacey 13 points 2 years ago

Spending an unknown but potentially long amount of time to maybe get a solution of potentially minimal legibility is definitely AI's killer app.

path: 0 11390692 11391273 11392905, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 3
froztbyte 7 points 2 years ago

movie announcer voice aaaaaand now, from the org structures that brought you Teams Doing Standup Poker, an announcement!

heeeeeeere's Promptfondling!

path: 0 11390692 11391273 11392905 11393983, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 2
self 5 points 2 years ago

the org structures that brought you Teams Doing Standup Poker

which must be destroyed. find me who’s responsible for this (it’s the Google OKR people, isn’t it?)

path: 0 11390692 11391273 11392905 11393983 11400145, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 1
BigMuffin69 11 points 2 years ago

Also, choice sneer in the comments:

AlphaProof is more "AlphaZero doing self play against Lean" and less "Gemeni reading human proofs"

path: 0 11390692 11391690, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 0
dgerard 10 points 2 years ago path: 0 11355452, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 10
Architeuthis 11 points 2 years ago

I'm not a native english speaker, how else was he supposed to pronounce it?

path: 0 11355452 11357614, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 2
froztbyte 7 points 2 years ago

I think the most common would be “roh-koh”, I could also see a front-o accentuated form being used

that flat “rocko” as in the vid was one I wouldn’t have thought to hear

path: 0 11355452 11357614 11357767, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 1
Architeuthis 7 points 2 years ago

That just sounds incredibly British to me.

When I clicked the video I fully expected Rocko with a c to mean Rosko.

path: 0 11355452 11357614 11357767 11360729, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
YourNetworkIsHaunted 9 points 2 years ago

Quick, someone file the copyright for "Roko's Postmodern Life"

path: 0 11355452 11355860, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
Soyweiser 7 points 2 years ago

One step closer to Doctor Rockso the clown.

path: 0 11355452 11358117, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
froztbyte 7 points 2 years ago

it's amazing how he continues to provide fresh reasons to want to boop him on the nose

path: 0 11355452 11355576, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 4
dgerard 7 points 2 years ago path: 0 11355452 11355576 11355613, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 3
froztbyte 7 points 2 years ago

"Genes vs Memes"

okay, I checked, it's after midday. definitely okay to start drinking.

path: 0 11355452 11355576 11355613 11355764, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 2
YourNetworkIsHaunted 9 points 2 years ago

I'm pretty sure you're only allowed to have that discussion if you're a Metal Gear villain. Which despite his best efforts Roko does not have enough dramatic presence or raw drip for.

path: 0 11355452 11355576 11355613 11355764 11355786, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 1
dgerard 10 points 2 years ago

AP takes down CF Vance apologia, not asserting things that they cannot evidence (that Vance did not have sexual relations with that couch)

before: https://archive.is/fXiMc after: https://archive.is/j3aot

This is the journalistic integrity we expect of AP News

path: 0 11382252, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0
corbin 9 points 2 years ago path: 0 11423640, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 1
gerikson 10 points 2 years ago

I'm pretty sure that if the community "takes out the trash" (i.e. downvotes to dead status[1]) the mods won't bother to ban the user.


[1] I happen to believe thta this is not sufficient to get rid of bad actors

path: 0 11423640 11423642, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0
BlueMonday1984 9 points 2 years ago

Not a sneer, but still a damn good piece on AI from Brian Merchant:

The great and justified rage over using AI to automate the arts

(Personal sidenote: Tech's public image is almost certainly gonna take a nosedive as a result of this AI bubble. "We made a machine with the express purpose of putting artists out of business" isn't a business case, its the setup for a shitty teen dystopian novel.)

(Fuck, now I wanna try and predict how the AI bubble bursting will play out...)

path: 0 11383529, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
dgerard 9 points 2 years ago path: 0 11401150, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 5
o7___o7 11 points 2 years ago

How do people do this without dying of anxiety?

BTW, that last comment on RetractionWatch was grim:

I recently saw a presentation by a job candidate (a PhD with many years experience) who used figures that were clearly AI-generated. They weren’t as funny as this example or the giant rat penis, but certainly fictional and unreal. In and of itself, troubling enough. Worse was that my colleagues involved in the interview didn’t care when I pointed it out.

path: 0 11401150 11402303, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 1
skillissuer 10 points 2 years ago

it's easier if you are a shameless fraud without a shred of integrity

This is also probably why MBAs like it

path: 0 11401150 11402303 11402383, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0
blakestacey 9 points 2 years ago

2 Giant 2 Rat Penis

path: 0 11401150 11425564, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
skillissuer 9 points 2 years ago

ai use case: you can pump out pseudoscience promoting fluff disguised as papers in predatory journals with less effort

path: 0 11401150 11401557, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
V0ldek 8 points 2 years ago

Okay but this is about alkaline water so it's garbage even without the genAI imagery.

It's even by Wu et al., come on, low hanging fruit

path: 0 11401150 11406847, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0
o7___o7 8 points 2 years ago

Butters and Trump are ruining my ability to get anything done in town today. Not a big fan of this dumb shit inconveniencing me IRL.

path: 0 11423560, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 7
sailor_sega_saturn 11 points 2 years ago

Here's a tweet of Winklevoss feeling snubbed by VP Harris (twitter.com)

The Biden-Harris Administration wages all-out war on the crypto industry for 4 years. Despite all of this, Kamala is still invited to the @TheBitcoinConf in Nashville and given a chance to speak to our industry and reset the relationship. What does she do? She declines. She can’t even take the first step and show up to start mending fences. Our industry won't forget this. We will show no mercy in November.

and another much longer one.

My hope is that in the not-too-distant future there are no politicians at any Bitcoin or crypto conferences. Not because they are not welcome, but because crypto is so universally accepted that it is no longer a campaign issue and therefore would be a waste of their time. Like going to a conference on whether or not email or the Internet should be legal or allowed.

Ooh, Like the internet! I got Bingo!

Bitcoin bros: more of this self-aggrandizing rage please. It's so entertaining to read.

path: 0 11423560 11423628, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 6
jonhendry 12 points 2 years ago path: 0 11423560 11423628 11424237, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 2
sailor_sega_saturn 11 points 2 years ago

None of you seem to understand. I’m not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with multiple slurp juices on a single ape!

path: 0 11423560 11423628 11424237 11424461, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 1
Soyweiser 8 points 2 years ago

Ow god. This is the acasaul torture simulation!

path: 0 11423560 11423628 11424237 11424461 11434694, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0
CautiousCharacter 9 points 2 years ago

They targeted gamers.

Gamers.

We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a little digital token saying we did.

We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun.

We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the stats of a fictional character all to draw out a single extra point of damage per second.

Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same quests over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such gamer nirvana that they can literally play these games blindfolded.

Do these people have any idea how many controllers have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and carts destroyed 8n frustration? All to latter be referred to as bragging rights?

These people honestly think this is a battle they can win? They take our media? We're already building a new one without them. They take our devs? Gamers aren't shy about throwing their money else where, or even making the games our selves. They think calling us racist, mysoginistic, rape apologists is going to change us? We've been called worse things by prepubescent 10 year olds with a shitty head set. They picked a fight against a group that's already grown desensitized to their strategies and methods. Who enjoy the battle of attrition they've threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can't is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big brothers/sisters and friends laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex.

Gamers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another boss fight.

path: 0 11423560 11423628 11432208, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 1
BlueMonday1984 6 points 2 years ago

This pasta will never die.

path: 0 11423560 11423628 11432208 11445868, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0
Soyweiser 6 points 2 years ago

Ooh, Like the internet!

Considering the history of legislation and the internet (and the recent KOSA thing) being treated like the internet is the last thing you would want.

path: 0 11423560 11423628 11434684, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0
dgerard 8 points 2 years ago path: 0 11327922, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 2
sc_griffith 12 points 2 years ago

"sold by the Society of the Precious Blood" paging peter thiel

path: 0 11327922 11329022, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 0
Soyweiser 5 points 2 years ago

Not stately enough.

path: 0 11327922 11328211, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0
gerikson 8 points 2 years ago

Libertarian nerds run straight into actual California, not the AI-generated dreamland they imagine

Mercury news: "Billionaires’ utopia company California Forever scraps plan for ballot initiative in wake of damning report"

https://archive.ph/UbdBw

The report released late last week by Solano County said the proposed new city of 50,000 — possibly up to 400,000 decades from now — would likely cost the county billions of dollars and create substantial annual financial deficits, while slashing agricultural production, damaging climate-change resilience, and potentially threatening local water supplies. The project, according to the report, “may not be financially feasible.”

HN shows what they think of the 3 people with actual thoughts on the issue by downvoting them to death

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41047746

path: 0 11423634, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 4
maol 9 points 2 years ago

Who could have predicted this except for everybody ! There's a reason none of these galt gulches ever get built.

path: 0 11423634 11426233, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
dgerard 8 points 2 years ago

which spent more than $800 million buying more than 60,000 acres of mostly agricultural land near Fairfield

Marc Andreessen and Reid Hoffman, just in case anyone thought there was a difference

path: 0 11423634 11424987, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 2
jonhendry 10 points 2 years ago

@dgerard

Was the stumbling point when they explained to the county the part about the perpetually tortured child?

path: 0 11423634 11424987 11426093, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 1
o7___o7 6 points 2 years ago

Turns out that load-bearing children are out of code.

path: 0 11423634 11424987 11426093 11444873, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0
hrrrngh 7 points 2 years ago

I'm not familiar with Indian politics but I'm curious if anyone understands what this site is or what its politics are https://democracycollective.in (I'm just nosy and curious, I saw this pop up out of nowhere)

Though maybe I already have an idea:

path: 0 11344927, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 1
sailor_sega_saturn 7 points 2 years ago

You can read a blog post from the dude who started that site here: https://rushabh-mehta.medium.com/... I didn't spot any huge red flags, but I didn't dig too deep (nor do I know the first thing about Indian politics).

Apparently he aims to start an online political party without any leaders or hierarchy where everything gets voted on. Not to be too cynical, but looking at how small it is right now I imagine they won't get far enough to see why that doesn't really work.

path: 0 11344927 11353302, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
fasterandworse 7 points 2 years ago

Jeremy Keith on the bullshit "privacy sandbox" in chrome and firefox: https://adactio.com/journal/21285

I like Jeremy because he is an OG, but I think his requirement for proof that targeted advertising "works" before the browsers implement these features is off the mark for me. He's an agency guy, a bit like Andy Budd, so they tend to have these really visceral takes about the state of the web but with this skewed perspective of best interests

path: 0 11320842, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 5
sailor_sega_saturn 11 points 2 years ago

Google just announced they're not getting rid of third party cookies after all. They announced this in a wordy blog post with so much spin as to be confusing (as is tradition): https://privacysandbox.com/...

path: 0 11320842 11329021, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 3
fasterandworse 10 points 2 years ago

We developed the Privacy Sandbox with the goal of finding innovative solutions that meaningfully improve online privacy while preserving an ad-supported internet that supports a vibrant ecosystem of publishers, connects businesses with customers, and offers all of us free access to a wide range of content.

god, the opening paragraph made my head spin with tech pr copy

path: 0 11320842 11329021 11333705, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 2
self 11 points 2 years ago

could you imagine what web development would be like in a world where browser standards, features, and sandboxes weren’t firmly in the grips of these marketing chucklefucks?

like, I’ve mentioned to coworkers “hey isn’t the browser sandbox kind of bullshit? there’s so many parts of it that don’t do anything for security, but they make things harder for developers and easier for advertisers” and I don’t think a single one knew what I was talking about, because web development as a field has been captured by ad agencies. shit, find me one web development reference that isn’t owned by an ad agency.

and now they’re secure enough in that control that they do this fully mask-off shit, confident they’ll get away with it, cause who’s gonna stop them? bets on Mozilla reversing course on blocking third-party cookies now that google’s gone in this direction

path: 0 11320842 11329021 11333705 11334081, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 1
bcdavid 9 points 2 years ago

@self @fasterandworse

"And now they’re secure enough in that control that they do this fully mask-off shit ..."

That whole DRM-the-web attestation thing Google proposed last year was eye opening. Sure, they had been evil for a while, but the fact that they knew they could start proposing stuff like that at all is just so bleak. In a sane world, that behaviour would instantly result in serious antitrust lawsuits.

path: 0 11320842 11329021 11333705 11334081 11350136, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
sailor_sega_saturn 9 points 2 years ago

There was no technical reason why we couldn’t have web fonts. The reason why we didn’t get web fonts for years and years was because browser makers were concerned about piracy and type foundries.

I was a bit surprised when I learned fonts are CORSd at least party as a sort of primitive DRM so that font companies would buy into the webfont spec (that's how I remember it anyway, it's been awhile since I dug up the relevant mailing list messages)

path: 0 11320842 11322412, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
swlabr 6 points 2 years ago path: 0 11446799, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 2
dgerard 4 points 2 years ago

just changed the litter tray, you may wanna repost in the fresh new stubsack

path: 0 11446799 11449039, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 1
swlabr 5 points 2 years ago

Done 🫡

path: 0 11446799 11449039 11449157, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0
dgerard 6 points 2 years ago

pivot-to-ai.com needs a new theme. Blocksy looks really nice - but it doesn't work with WP Dark Mode and caches badly.

Need a 2 column blog theme suiting full short posts on the front page, that plays nice with Dark Mode. Any tips?

path: 0 11432225, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0
slopjockey 5 points 2 years ago path: 0 11371186, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 1
Soyweiser 9 points 2 years ago

Like the couch story, this is real.

(No but for real, how would we know? Doubt any of us work at twitter and if we did we prob would be in no position to talk, would not be surprised if it was, and considering they are going after the information with a weird agressiveness (I saw the 'stay informed' thing myself). I think this has a high likelihood of not being false.

E: More things I cannot confirm But very much lol if okta accidentally exposed this information (which makes me more doubtful it is true), first crowdstrike now okta jesus. (Don't get me wrong, this should be impossible unless they really fucked up some things, im just lolling on the possibility that it is true, not saying it is)

E2: fake according to a former employee, And a journalist asked Okta, they denied it so yes very fake.

path: 0 11371186 11371629, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
techtakes
techtakes

@awful.systems

login for more options
2728
1530
1764

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

go to feed...