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.)
Sam Altman got subpoena’d live on stage.
https://bsky.app/profile/walkingtaako.bsky.social/post/3m52utxcmls26
It’s everyone’s favourite alternate browser developer back again, lamenting how mean some tech folk are and how cruelly they threaten and oppress certain groups of people.
Which groups? Oh, you know the ones 😉
spoiler
A screenshot of a twitter post by Andreas Kling, reading:
In recent years l’ve attended multiple software conference talks that had unrelated extreme political rhetoric in slides, such as “fuck [name]” and “punch [group]”.
Whenever this happened, some of the audience would clap and cheer, l’d roll my eyes, and the talk would get back on topic.
Fast-forward to today, and look at how many people in our industry are openly celebrating the murder of someone they decided was a “nazi” and “fascist”. Turns out these people were more serious than I thought.
As someone who’s repeatedly been called a “nazi” and “fascist” myself for disagreements with far-left ideology, I know how easily those labels get thrown around. And honestly, this is making me seriously reconsider which conferences I attend.
There’s a hateful rot within our industry. It shouldn’t be socially acceptable to cheer for murder. We need to do more than roll our eyes.
“I think the AI slop is great. I think culturally, it’s a good thing that it happened, because one of the things that drove people to start really caring about artists again in 2024 was the AI slop. I think everything happens for a reason,” she said in a recent interview with Time. “Most of the album is sort of about me being a bit of a Diogenes about the ills of modernity while still celebrating them.”
https://www.salon.com/2025/11/07/grimes-ushers-in-a-new-era-of-internet-infestation/
JFC what world does she live in
Grimes was married to Elon Musk and performs at events for ‘heretical truth-tellers’ sponsored by Peter Thiel
Living a life as if it was able to bear a “I bought one before I knew he was a jerk” bumper sticker.
When she’s not attending the weddings of people like Curtis Yarvin.
Given that this is the person who composed the ode with the hook “we appreciate power”, let’s just say that my take re their opinion in this post is rather minimal
as someone who identifies greatly with diogenes, i say: do not trust anyone who compares themself to diogenes
if you meet the Bhudda on the road, give him a high five i think
– grimes, probably
I’m too tired to read this properly but it looks like MIT’s suggestion for better vibe coding is just… repackaged software design? Anyway, article.
It sounds a little like “natural language is an awful way to unambiguously specify systems… but what if there was a special computer language that you could use to create computer programs in? 🤯” combined with a something that sounds a lot like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choreographic_programming which already exists, but I guess represents a new frontier for vibe coding distributed systems, which are famously amenable to yolo development.
KeepassXC (my password manager of choice) are “experimenting” with ai code assistants
https://www.reddit.com/r/KeePass/comments/1lnvw6q/comment/n0jg8ae/
I’m a KeePassXC maintainer. The Copilot PRs are a test drive to speed up the development process. For now, it’s just a playground and most of the PRs are simple fixes for existing issues with very limited reach. None of the PRs are merged without being reviewed, tested, and, if necessary, amended by a human developer. This is how it is now and how it will continue to be should we choose to go on with this. We prefer to be transparent about the use of AI, so we chose to go the PR route. We could have also done it locally and nobody would ever know. That’s probably how most projects work these days. We might publish a blog article soon with some more details.
The trace of petulance in the response… “we could have done it secretly, that’s how most projects do it” is not the kind of attitude I’m happy to see attached to a security critical piece of software.
sigh
anyone got a good replacement?
Kinda, but nothing I’m entirely happy with. We use bitwarden at work, at my suggestion, but I don’t like the tools as much as I do keepassxc, and even though you can self-host the network service that stores the data, you still have to host something whereas keepassxc is standalone and you can sync the password vault over some file sharing service, or carry it on a usb stick, etc. there have been a couple of incidents whereby user license data wasn’t processed correctly and people got locked out of bitwarden vaults, which is pretty serious even if it was only temporary. That can’t happen with easily-backed-up-and-restored local databases.
They’ve also had some “license controversies” which should also give you pause for thought if you were interested in a free and open system: https://www.techradar.com/pro/bitwarden-clarifies-open-source-commitment-amid-user-concerns
The original keepass project is still alive, and maybe I’ll have a look at that. The current maintainer is a bit odd, and the project has had some historical security issues, but I suspect that all password managers (at least on windows) will have the exact same problems. It is unlikely to have the same range of features, but it is written in a memory safe language (C#) rather than in C++, which keepassxc uses (and I’ve never been entirely happy with).
In short, everything is awful, and I will probably stick with xc for my own purposes for now, as there isn’t quite a replacement for me yet. I’d buy a mooltipass (https://www.mymooltipass.com/) except I’d want a backup, and that means an outlay of a good £300 which is a bit painful. And they’re often out of stock 😕
KeepArseNX
lead dev: Jia Tan
I also learned Bitwarden bought into AI reading this. They don’t appear to have let vulnerability extruders ruin their code as of this writing, but any willingness to entertain the fascism machines is enough for me to consider jumping ship.
It definitely feels like the first draft said for the longest time we had to use AI in secret because of Woke.
We regret to inform you that one of Google’s "AI leader"s is a transphobe:
https://bsky.app/profile/alexhanna.bsky.social/post/3m52bffg2222x (screenshot of relevant section)
Hey it’s the character.ai guy, a.k.a. first confirmed AI assisted kid suicide guy.
I do not believe G-d puts people in the wrong bodies.
Shazeer also said people who criticized the removal of the AI Principles were anti-Semitic.
Kind of feel the transphobia is barely scratching the surface of all the things wrong with this person.
‘I don’t believe people have an attribute called gender’
That must be one of the more dumber things I have read in a while.
I think he is stating that people don’t have an invisible eternal Gender like a Christian thinks people have an invisible eternal Soul. I am a materialist so I don’t think either exists. Shazeer goes on to complain about “sterilizing children” which is a red flag of transphobia (ie. people who post a lot about that tend to have a screw loose).
There is no need to give transphobes the benefit of the doubt really.
You don’t believe in gender? I mean you’re wrong IMO but we’re cool. But if someone says the words “I don’t believe have an attribute called gender” as part of a bunch of totally obvious anti-trans dog-whistles when butting into a discussion about transgender day of remembrance? Now it’s a problem.
People who get angry about trans people and trans theory remind me of Dawkins and friends, because what starts as a factual/philosophical concern (there are probably no gods / the idea that people have a true gender inside them sounds mystical) gets twisted in a reactionary direction. I don’t have to understand why trans or nonbinary people feel the way they do to support them as they explore ways of being humans in the world.
BTW the official way to support trans people as they “explore ways of being humans” is to punch Nazis in the face and dunk on techbros. Go forth and tell all your cis friends!
(If anyone finds some ways of not being human to explore do let me know, I’m holding out for Magical Girl)
I’d go for Motoko Kusanagi’s prosthetic body, myself, as long as I could afford the upkeep. That whole “don’t darken your Soul Gem” thing would go terribly for me.
Speaking this into existence. In an interview, Saltman suggests soul gems as the next phase in energy production for LLMs
I think that gender is a collection of roles in a specific society which people perform and have performed on them. Its not something which exists outside that context, any more than “being the king” exists outside of a legal system. Of the three statements on BlueSky, its the third (the statement about sterilizing children) which makes me think he has been consuming angry things about trans people online.
@CinnasVerses @sailor_sega_saturn two bits, the one about god and the one about sterilizing children. The second is obvious, straight from transphobic material. The first is directly against what I’ve seen some people say, “god put me in the wrong body”, as their explanation why they seek gender reassignment treatment.
At that point, what he thinks about attributes people might or might not have is of little relevance.
Sure, saying that about being in the wrong body was a dick move. You don’t have to accept all the theory to see that many people are in bodies that feel wrong to them, and many people are expected to present in ways that feel wrong to them. The quote implies that they should just try harder to perform the gender they were assigned at birth.
@CinnasVerses one would guess that they should work harder so his beliefs are not inconvenienced, or some similar egocentric drivel.
Now I’m wondering if that was written by gemini or grok.
Its also one of the authors of “Attention Is All You Need”, one of the founding texts of the AI ideology.
As far as I can tell there’s absolutely no ideology in the original transformers paper, what a baffling way to describe it.
James Watson was also a cunt, but calling “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid” one of the founding texts of eugenicist ideology or whatever would be just dumb.
what a baffling way to describe it
this is a recurring problem with them/their posts; if you look across history you can see a continual pattern of “de jour grumpword a la $somecommunity” leak forth
I have on occasion asked them to try to make better posts. they don’t seem to give a fuck to do so tho
to the latter part of my comment: both my own and also other peoples’ criticisms just turn into a dead avenue. the applicable poster just ghosts that subthread while happily posting elsewhere
guess there’s no desire to do better!
Some changes to adventofcode this year, will only have 12-days of puzzles, and no longer have global leaderboard according to the faq:
Why did the number of days per event change?
It takes a ton of my free time every year to run Advent of Code, and building the puzzles accounts for the majority of that time. After keeping a consistent schedule for ten years(!), I needed a change. The puzzles still start on December 1st so that the day numbers make sense (Day 1 = Dec 1), and puzzles come out every day (ending mid-December).
Scaling it a bit down rather than completely burning out is nice i think.
What happened to the global leaderboard?
The global leaderboard was one of the largest sources of stress for me, for the infrastructure, and for many users. People took things too seriously, going way outside the spirit of the contest; some people even resorted to things like DDoS attacks. Many people incorrectly concluded that they were somehow worse programmers because their own times didn’t compare. What started as a fun feature in 2015 became an ever-growing problem, and so, after ten years of Advent of Code, I removed the global leaderboard. (However, I’ve made it so you can share a read-only view of your private leaderboard. Please don’t use this feature or data to create a “new” global leaderboard.)
While trying to get a fast time on a private leaderboard, may I use AI / watch streamers / check the solution threads / ask a friend for help / etc?
If you are a member of any private leaderboards, you should ask the people that run them what their expectations are of their members. If you don’t agree with those expectations, you should find a new private leaderboard or start your own! Private leaderboards might have rules like maximum runtime, allowed programming language, what time you can first open the puzzle, what tools you can use, or whether you have to wear a silly hat while working.
Probably the most positive change here, it’s a bit of shame we can’t have nice things, a no real way to police stuff like people using AI for leaderboard times. Still keeping the private one, for smaller groups of people, that can set expectations is unfortunately the only pragmatic thing to do.
Should I use AI to solve Advent of Code puzzles?
No. If you send a friend to the gym on your behalf, would you expect to get stronger? Advent of Code puzzles are designed to be interesting for humans to solve - no consideration is made for whether AI can or cannot solve a puzzle. If you want practice prompting an AI, there are almost certainly better exercises elsewhere designed with that in mind.
It’s nice to know the creator (Eric Wastl) has a good head on his shoulders.
only have 12-days of puzzles
Obligatory oh good I might actually get something job-related done this December comment.
I feel like the private leaderboards are also more in keeping with the spirit of the thing. You can’t really have a friendly competition with a legion of complete strangers that you have no interaction with outside of comparing final times. Even when there’s nothing on the line the consequences for cheating or being a dick are nonexistent, whereas in a a private group you have to deal with all your friends knowing you’re an asshole going forward.
More bias-laundering through AI, phrenology edition! https://www.economist.com/business/2025/11/06/should-facial-analysis-help-determine-whom-companies-hire
I couldn’t actually read the article because paywall, but here’s a paper that the article is probably about: AI Personality Extraction from Faces: Labor Market Implications
Saying the quiet part out loud:
First, an individual’s genetic profile significantly influences both their facial features and personality. Certain variations in DNA correlate with specific facial features, such as nose shape, jawline, and overall facial symmetry, defined broadly as craniofacial characteristics
Second, a person’s pre- and post-natal environment, especially hormone exposure, has been shown to affect both facial characteristics and personality
To their credit the paper does say that this is a terrible idea, though I don’t know how much benefit of the doubt to give them (I don’t have time to take a closer look):
This research is not intended, and should not viewed, as advocacy for the usage of Photo Big 5 or similar technologies in labor market screening.
OpenAI’s financials are putrid, but they want everyone’s retirement money. What would stop them avoiding scrutiny of an IPO by going public via the SPAC route? Sorry if this is a dumb question!
I would assume nothing stops them but I would love to get an analysis of why they may not be looking into this from someone who actually knows what they’re talking about. Best I can come up with from a complete layman’s perspective is that they’re concerned about the valuation they’d end up with. Not sure if the retail market had enough juice to actually pay for a company that is hypothetically one of the most valuable companies in the world, and puncturing that narrative might bring the whole bubble down (in a way that costs a lot of normal investors their shirts, of course).
Mozilla destroys the 20-year-old volunteer community that handled Japanese localization and replaces it with a chatbot. It compounds this by deleting years of work with zero warning. Adding insult to insult, Mozilla then rolls a critical failure on “reading the room.”
Would you be interested to hop on a call with us to talk about this further?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors/717446
Jesus fucking Christ.
I did paid work in Japanese translation once, I stopped because the ungodly amount of work wasn’t worth what they pay you. The tech people really have no idea what they’re breaking by moving fast here.
Oh what the fuck why can Mozilla not just STOP. Just… STOP. Honestly sick of this shit.
Sounds exactly like what happened at iNaturalist.
That was terrible, wasnt it?
There’s a Charles Stross novel from 2018 where cultists take over the US government and begin a project to build enough computational capacity to summon horrors from beyond space-time (in space). It’s called The Labyrinth Index and it’s very good!
So anyway, this happened:
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-isnt-yet-working-toward-an-ipo-cfo-says-58037472
Also, this:
What’s a government backstop, and does it happen often? It sounds like they’re asking for a preemptive bail-out.
I checked the rest of Zitron’s feed before posting and its weirder in context:
Interview:
She also hinted at a role for the US government “to backstop the guarantee that allows the financing to happen”, but did not elaborate on how this would work.
Later at the jobsite:
I want to clarify my comments earlier today. OpenAI is not seeking a government backstop for our infrastructure commitments. I used the word “backstop” and it mudlled the point.
She then proceeds to explain she just meant that the government ‘should play its part’.
Zitron says she might have been testing the waters, or its just the cherry on top of an interview where she said plenty of bizzare shit
Sounnds like she used her internal voice externally
Between this and the IPO talk it seems like we’re looking at some combination of trying to feel out exit strategies for the bubble they’ve created, trying to say whatever stuff keeps the “OpenAI is really big” narrative in the headlines, and good old fashioned business idiocy.
“I don’t think there’s enough exuberance about AI”
Tinkerbell needs you all to wish harder, boys and girls
Every horrible person in my life “tests the waters” like that before going mask-off 100% asshole.
It gives that feeling, doesn’t it?
exuberance
Truly a rightwing tech, after getting all the attention, money and data they now are mad people dont love it enough.
What’s a government backstop, and does it happen often? It sounds like they’re asking for a preemptive bail-out.
Zitron’s stated multiple times a bailout isn’t coming, but I’m not ruling it out myself - AI has proven highly useful as a propaganda tool and an accountability sink, the oligarchs in office have good reason to keep it alive.
@Architeuthis @o7___o7
“I don’t think there’s enough exuberance about AI"? Wow.
Another deep-dive into DHH’s decline has popped up online: DHH and Omarchy: Midlife crisis:
What do you mean by decline? Years ago I’ve been involved in a local ruby community in Poland and even back then his takes were considered unhinged.
This looks like a rebranding of Urbit: Radiant Computer
Has AI in its guts but not something they mention on the front page. Slop images throughout tho
https://radiant.computer/system/os/ - “It’s an AI-native operating system. Artificial neural networks are built in and run locally. The OS understands what applications can do, what they expose, and how they fit together. It can integrate features automatically, without extra code. AI is used to extend your ability, help you understand the system and be your creative aid.”
https://radiant.computer/system/network/ - “Radiant rejects the Web as a general purpose software platform, while embracing the Internet protocols as the powerful substrate on which sovereign technologies like Tor, BitTorrent, Gemini and Bitcoin are built.”
I regret to inform you that the creator is a coiner
also all-in on AI
Being that and saying stuff like :
Computers today are designed around engagement and surveillance business models rather than user needs.
Is something. Esp as they say the biggest problem is advertising and surveillance online.
Looks like a hobby project of someone who has very particular views about computers.
I’m not sure what kind of neural network are they planning to run on a custom FPGA based GPU with 4GB RAM shared with CPU
Heck the AI/crypto stuff is awful but I would actually be interested in a RISC computer running a low-energy-use minimalistic OS that opts out of the Web by foregrounding Gemini protocol and dedicated apps for traditional, older Internet protocols (email, irc, telnet/ssh etc.)
So, today in AI hype, we are going back to chess engines!
Ethan pumping AI-2027 author Daniel K here, so you know this has been “ThOrOuGHly ReSeARcHeD” ™
Taking it at face value, I thought this was quite shocking! Beating a super GM with queen odds seems impossible for the best engines that I know of!! But the first * here is that the chart presented is not classical format. Still, QRR odds beating 1600 players seems very strange, even if weird time odds shenanigans are happening. So I tried this myself and to my surprise, I went 3-0 against Lc0 in different odds QRR, QR, QN, which now means according to this absolutely laughable chart that I am comparable to a 2200+ player!
(Spoiler: I am very much NOT a 2200 player… or a 2000 player… or a 1600 player)
And to my complete lack of surprise, this chart crime originated in a LW post creator commenting here w/ “pls do not share this without context, I think the data might be flawed” due to small sample size for higher elos and also the fact that people are probably playing until they get their first win and then stopping.
Luckily absolute garbage methodologies will not stop Daniel K from sharing the latest in Chess engine news.
But wait, why are LWers obsessed with the latest Chess engine results? Ofc its because they want to make some point about AI escaping human control even if humans start with a material advantage. We are going back to Legacy Yud posting with this one my friends. Applying RL to chess is a straight shot to applying RL to skynet to checkmate humanity. You have been warned!
LW link below if anyone wants to stare into the abyss.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/eQvNBwaxyqQ5GAdyx/some-data-from-leelapieceodds
One of the core beliefs of rationalism is that Intelligence™ is the sole determinant of outcomes, overriding resource imbalances, structural factors, or even just plain old luck. For example, since Elon Musk is so rich, that must be because he is very Intelligent™, despite all of the demonstrably idiotic things he has said over the years. So, even in an artificial scenario like chess, they cannot accept the fact that no amount of Intelligence™ can make up for a large material imbalance between the players.
There was a sneer two years ago about this exact question. I can’t blame the rationalists though. The concept of using external sources outside of their bubble is quite unfamiliar to them.
two years ago
🪦👨🏼➡️👴🏼
since Elon Musk is so rich, that must be because he is very Intelligent™
Will never be able to understand why these mfs don’t see this as the unga bunga stupid ass caveman belief that it is.
cos it implies that my overvalued salary as an IT monkey fo parasite companies of no social value is not because I sold my soul to capital owners, it’s because I’ve always been a special little boy who got gold stars in school
@swlabr @lagrangeinterpolator Rat calvinism lol
I was wondering why Eliezer picked chess of all things in his latest “parable”. Even among the lesswrong community, chess playing as a useful analogy for general intelligence has been picked apart. But seeing that this is recent half-assed lesswrong research, that would explain the renewed interest in it.
Unstoppable IP enforcers meet unmovable slop generator?
Plus, the authors currently suing OpenAI have gotten their hands on emails and internal Slack messages discussing their deletion of the LibGen dataset - a development which opens the company up to much higher damages and sanctions from the court for destroying evidence.
Still think it is wild they used the libgen dataset(s) and basically gotten away with it apart from some minor damages only for US publishers (who actually registered their copyright). Even more so as my provider blocks libgen etc.
