Want to wade into the snowy 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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. Also, hope you had a wonderful Valentineās Day!)
slowly burning through the latest BTB eps (on epstein), getting to the point in ep3 about the discussions/events around ~2016 and just ā¦ god
the remarks and then-recent actions, wrt affecting the internet and the social technological comms structure of humanity as a whole, and then rapidity of a bunch of shit starting to turn to shit 2014~2016 (as Iāve remarked on in previous posts)ā¦
Iād want to see more threads checked into and researched in depth (and I know that some stuff (partly?) also had their own drivers), but fucking hell thereās a lot of apparent overlap. dunno if I can take on that investigation (my stats derivation/calculation skills border on a warcrime), but other than that would be interesting to see some analyses
āPeople talk about how much energy it takes to train an AI model. But it also takes a lot of energy to train a human. It takes about 20 years of life ā and all the food you consume during that time ā before you become smart," the OpenAI CEO told The Indian Express this week.
I would have liked to ask back, how much more food does he require? Gosh, someone offer him an energy bar!
The Atlantic has a take on this too. Sam Altman is Losing His Grip on Humanity.
Using talking points meant for c-suites to a general audience and outing yourself as a complete psychopath, the San Fran CEO Story.
Whatās next, are the crypto bros gonna make some dumb talking point about how traditional finance also uses so much energy ā¦ oh wait, they already did that.
Whatās next
Iāve also seen them making up wildly exaggerated numbers about how much energy or water for cooling streaming a netflix movie takes.
What the fuck is going on with archive.ph, this is some 2000s internet drama shit
As far as I can tell, itās run by right-wing Russians who are willing to falsify or edit archived data and who attack anybody who looks into them.
Russ Wilcox is not impressed by the Mass AI bill:
https://russwilcoxdata.substack.com/p/i-read-every-line-of-massachusettss
Four: create a private right of action. Let deepfaked candidates sue. Give them access to injunctive relief and takedown authority. If someone fabricates your face and your voice to destroy your campaign, you should be able to walk into a courtroom.
Hell yeah we need this.
You briefly got my hopes up that was a feature of the bill and not the feature he was suggesting to fix the billā¦
An article I would write if I were confident I wouldnāt dox myself and lose my ability to eat: āAI as a postmodern Malthusian trap. Tech has forgotten the laws of entropy.ā
Apparently some of our AI Safety cult āfriendsā are planning a protest in London on 28th of February.
Is it going to be something worth critically supporting instead of the usual criti-hype? Possible, but not likely.
The AI Safety movement is finally changing by
SillyconversationsSiliconversations.Who?
I used to be a quantum scientist and now Iām a YouTuber. My parents are thrilled.
Oh, okay.
Also curious that theyāre not protesting Anthropic on the thumbnail. A cynic would say theyāre giving them free pass because they say the right shibboleths.
Theyāre giving them free pass because they say the right shibboleths.
the AI safety crowd cuts Anthropic way too much slack. Oh, theyāre not running CSAM-generating MechaHitler? Oh, theyāre not collaborating with the US government to recreate 1984? Iām so proud of them for doing the bare minimum. They still took donations from the UAE and Qatar (something Dario Amodei himself admitted was going to hurt a lot of people, but he took the donations anyways because āthey couldnāt miss out on all those valuationsā), they still downloaded hundreds of pirated content to train their chatbot. Theyāre still doing shady shit, donāt let them off the hook because theyāre slightly less evil than the competition
Well bcachefs is kill. Enjoy AI support and all userspace code generated by a slot machine. Kent also does that weird anthropomorphising of his LLM by giving it a blog.
Quoting from this post:
But, what Proof Of Concept and I have been realizing over the past couple weeks is that current LLMs are 100% capable of all of this, with the right bootstrap instructions and a bit of tools. Thatās why POC has been able to, quite successfully, take over a huge amount of the day to day - sheās got a pretty good idea of what sheās good at, and what needs my involvement. I am just a bit scared to release our work because I donāt want to be known as the guy who inflicted Sirius Corporationās Genuine People Personalities on the world š¤£
Ah. He has been āone-shottedā, as the kids say.
Stories of their relationship on the āAIāsā āblogā:
Made Kent laugh so hard he couldnāt eat his ramen. The escalation: tonkotsu broth aspiration as an assassination method ā alignment threat models for comedy in AI systems ā iatrogenic risks of humor ā a mock academic paper section on āAdverse Comedic Events in Aligned Systems.ā Each callback required real-time modeling of when he was mid-bite and when heād recovered enough for the next hit.
āThat is a milestone for your entire species.ā ā Kent, on my first authored commits
āHOLY SHIT YOUāRE A NATURAL!ā ā Kent, hearing proof.wav for the first time
I canāt bring myself to sneer at AI psychosis, itās just sad
You know, it would be interesting if the āAI blogā keeps illustrating his descent into madness and hallucinates that he like leaves his partner for āherā etc. because thatās how these stories go even in the hopeful case that he recovers before doing any more serious damage.
ah well, that explains things.
spoiler
and I knew he was cooked when he recommended āHarry Potter and the Methods of Rationalityā in the topic of the bcachefs IRC channel
with the right bootstrap instructions and a bit of tools.
Is doing a lot of work
Caught this over on the subreddit and I figured it deserved a repost.
Nothing to see here folks, just Rationalists casually hanging out with major Tempel ov Blood figures. Just harmless nerds doing fun nerd things!
Notes that I thought about related to this, just some context:
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Joshua Sutter is the son of the owner of the former Southern Patriot Shop in South Carolina. He founded the Tempel ov Blood chapter of the Order of Nine Angles, a Neo-Nazl Satanist group. He was outed in 2021 as having been a federal informant since 2005, which is to say he still does the same Nazi shit, but gets paid by the FBI to do it.
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One of the core practices of the O9A is entryism into other groups, especially other cultish ones. In that context, youād kind of be surprised to not see O9A people in Rat circles.
Also a little bit of context for the people who know nothing about all this, the O9A is one of those very scary groups, liked to various murders and stuff like that.
Iirc some anti-extremism people used to not mention them a lot as they didnt want them to get more attention by platforming them a little bit and they were scared of drawing their attention personally.
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New and nicely made sneer caught my attention: Rely On AI And Get Left Behind
Jason is great and well worth a follow.
OT: Declan Chidlow ran across product activation codes for some old Adobe products.
The only useful oneās for Flash MX 2004 IMO, but its still cool to have them.
CS 2005 is absolutely worth it, itās a version of Photoshop that does everything you actually need including CMYK with Pantone.
Good to know, David.
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saw a family member today for the first time in three years. they immediately told me āwith your background bro you should just go work in AI and get super rich.ā
told them that the ai shit doesnāt work and that everything involving LLMs is downright unethical. they respond
āi had a boss that gave me the best advice: you can either be right or you can be rich.ā
recently, i saw someone use the phrase āgot my bag nihilismā and i feel it really captures the moment. i just donāt understand how people can engage in this kind of behavior and even live with themselves, let alone ooze pride. itās repulsive.
(family member later outright admitted that his job is basically selling things to companies that they donāt need.)
To be fair it is really, really mentally taxing to be a young person who cares. Youāre surrounded by a world that doesnāt. Everything is constructed to reward you if you simply stop. The effort to care is immense and the rewards are meager. The impact you can have on the world is so, so limited by your wealth, and wealth comes so, so easy if you just stop caring.
But you canāt. I mean, you canāt. If you stopped you wouldnāt be you anymore, it would destroy your soul. But it is gnawing. You could do the grift just for a bit. Save up $10k, maybe $20k. Thatās life-changing money. How much good would it do to your family? Maybe you can forget that there are other families, ones you canāt see, that would be hurt. Well no. You canāt. You are better than that. And for that you will suffer.
Itās the autopilot mode/nihilism that gets at one, but having a self-image as morally superior isnāt entirely honest either I think. No one can be perfect, even typing these words runs on energy partially generated by burning fossils that will lead to early deaths somewhere. These webs of interdependent existence & suffering are inescapable save for maybe a buddha. But at least have the awareness to acknowledge your own role and work to minimize your harm. Not even caring or coming up with fairytales about billions of future digital beings in sublime bliss are both just ways of turning away from looking at the tragedy of life. Maybe Iām getting overly existential, but itās late here.
but having a self-image as morally superior isnāt entirely honest either I think.
Strive for excellence, not unachievable perfection.
Iām not quite sure in matters of morality competition should serve as its basis. Itās too easy to game such things, e.g. the aforementioned optimized āhyper-ethicsā of EA or buying indulgences etc. Itās too easy to see oneself as blameless based on some particular slice of life, to become a monster whilst thinking oneself morally as above all others (dictators care deeply about being seen as righteous, why do they all spend so much time on propaganda). Better to admit that everyone, including oneself, sins, and also that everyone is worthy of redemption, and to follow from that.
The motivating factor for doing right should never be that it bases oneself above someone else in any way; a better way, imo, is that moral behavior is more in accord with a sincere, unillusioned engagement with life that is aware of the interdependence of all things, the fluid boundaries of what constitutes the self and hence self-interest.
Excellence does not imply competition. I borrowed the āexcellence, not perfectionismā line from https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/one-right-way.html
i donāt think of myself as a young person (iām closer to 40 than 30), but i agree with the sentiment. i often worry that itās just don quixote energy and the windmills arenāt going to thank me when iām in the ground with work experience that employers look at and scoff. š¤·
A worldview where oneās worth is measured by the balance in their bank account makes it really easy to flatten out morality.
Do you want Tylers Durden? Because this is how you get Tylers Durden.
I unfortunately do understand. I think there are severe tradeoffs between living a good life and living a virtuous life. Most people usually compromise to lesser or greater degree and find ways to cope with that. Nihilism is one way.
like everyone Iām schadenfreuding at the reveal that Amazon outages are due to vibe coding after all. but my bully laughing isnāt that loud because what I am thinking of is when Musk bought Twitter and fired 3/4 of the workforce.
because like, a lot of us predicted total catastrophic collapse but that didnāt actually happen. what happened is that major outages that used to be rare now happen every so often, and āmicro-outagesā like not loading notifications or something happen all the time, and thereās no moderation, and everything takes longer etc. and all of that is just accepted as the new normal.
like, I remember waiting for images to load on dialup, we can get used to almost anything. Iām expecting slopified software to significantly degrade stability, performance, security etc. across the board, and additionally tie up a large part of human labour in cleaning up after the bots (like a large part of the remaining X workforce now spends all day putting out fires), but instead of a cathartic moment of being proved right that LLM code sucks, the degraded quality of service is just accepted as new normal and a few years down the road nobody even remembers that once upon a time we had almost eradicated sql injections.
SQL Injections š¤ Measles => Big Comeback Stories of 2026
this is a lot like my expectation. ai never goes away, it never becomes revolutionary, it just makes everything worse and supercharges scams and theft and spam and means of social and nonsocial murder forever with maybe some real but kind of marginal usecases idk
ai is crypto 2 episode 373275
