this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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TechTakes

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (5 children)

let's see how things are going on twitter

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

friend looked at this and said "ah race science geoguesser guy"

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

Genomeguesser

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

"Inexplicable Cimmerian Vibes" is the name of my next band.

Bonus points if this turns out to be the output of an LLM trained by phrenologists.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

“Inexplicable Cimmerian Vibes”

But all the band members have the Homer Simpson bodytype. Sadly Okilly Dokilly stopped.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

omg, next time my wife asks me how she looks, I'm definitely dropping that "legible magyar admixture"

Edit: Didn't work. She started talking about how in the old country, the Hungarians chased her family out of the village for being religious minorities. I give this approach 0 bags of popcorn and a magen david.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

"Babe, you're looking Haplogroup I-M437 tonight. No. Not M-437. Damn, girl, you're an M-438."

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

When you really want to confuse your astronomy post-doc partner.

EDIT: I've been reliably informed that that's too many Messier objects.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

That's certainly one approach to commenting on someone's picture. Pretty sure it's better to stick with the standard "Wow! 😍😍😍" but this certainly sticks out from the crowd?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

the original is one of the new approach from the Dimes Square nazis, isn't it?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

In another forum I'm in, someone posted this article and asked if someone, anyone could understand it. I kept schtum.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

jfc what did I just spend 20m reading

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

In particular she felt like Anna, whom she’d been closest with, was being dishonest about what they hoped to achieve with this whole project. Sanje further alleged that Anna’s good standing largely stemmed from her incomprehensibility, because people don’t have a clue what this is actually all about. Possibly Anna doesn’t, either.

most straightforward hegelian

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This came up in a podcast I listen to:

WaPo: "OpenAI illegally barred staff from airing safety risks, whistleblowers say "

archive link https://archive.is/E3M2p

OpenAI whistleblowers have filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging the artificial intelligence company illegally prohibited its employees from warning regulators about the grave risks its technology may pose to humanity, calling for an investigation.

While I'm not prepared to defend OpenAI here I suspect this is just to shut up the most hysterical employees who still actually believe they're building the P(doom) machine.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

I mean, if you play on the doom to hype yourself, dealing with employees that take that seriously feel like a deserved outcome.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The wikipedia page for TESCREAL is "disputed", always a good sign when the online right launches skirmish actions against front-line trenches

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TESCREAL

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

'TESCREAL' refers to a nonsense conspiracy theory that disparages people such as Nick Bostrom without citing any sources that are credible on the question of whether Nick Bostrom is an 'evil eugenicist' or whatever.

WP:LOL. WP:LMAO even.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I'm ok with this because everytime Nick Bostrom's name is used publicly to defend anything, and then I show people what Nick Bostrom believes and writes, I robustly get a, "What the fuck is this shit? And these people are associated with him? Fuck that."

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

A credible source on whether Nick Bostrom is a weirdo is Nick Bostrom cited verbatim

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

WP:YEAHOK, WP:IWILLALLOWIT

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (5 children)

The once and future king + ol' muskrat give their most sensible total nuclear annihilation takes. Fellas, are we cooked?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

This has to be hands down the absolute dumbest take I’ve seen from Musk ever. Dude has the mental capacity of a boiled pear.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

I cannot get over the fact that this man child who is so concerned with "the future of humanity" is both out right trying to buy the presidency and downplaying the very real weapons that can easily wipe out 70% of the Earth's population in 2 hours. Remember ya'll, the cost of microwaving the world is negligible compared to the power of spicy autocomplete.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

They are both stupid men who repeat stuff they hear to make them look good. So the question is who are this time the "very smart people" that are telling numbnuts like these two that nuclear war is survivable - and by extension winnable? Because if that is the US defense establishment, then yeah we might be cooked.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Watching this election has been amazing! LIKE WOAH what a fucking obviously self destructive end to delusion. Can I be optimistic and hope that with EA leaning explicitly heavier into the hard right Trump position, when it collapses and Harris takes it, maybe some of them will self reflective on what the hell they think "Effective" means anyways.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

The Bismarck Analysis crew were sneering at Sagan being a filthy peace activist so I would hazard that the era of ‘survivable nuclear war’ rides again.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Who had Trump accusing the Harris campaign of using AI to inflate crowd size photos on their Election ‘24 bingo card? Anyway, I’m sure that being associated with fraud and fakes is Good For AI.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

it going co-evolution on the same path as cybercoins did is chefskiss.bmp

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterAI/comments/1eqsoom/guys_we_have_to_do_somthing_about_this_fi%D3%8Ft%D0%B5r/

This community pops up on /r/all every so often and each time it scares me.

Sometimes I see kids games (and all games really) have ultra-niche, super-online protests that are like "STOP Zooshacorp from DESTROYING K-Smog vs. Batboy Online", and when I look closer it's either even more confusing or it's about something people didn't like in the latest update. This is like that, but with an awful twist where it's about people getting really attached to these AI girlfriend/sex roleplay apps. The spelling and sentences make it seem like it's mostly kids, too.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yesterday I saw a link to some podcast/post float by, of an interview with some genml company “discussing people falling in love with, having relations with, and even wanting to marry”, where the ceo is “okay with it”. didn’t click because ugh, but will see if I can find it

and ofc all these weird fucking things will pop the moment their vc runs out or openai raises prices or whatever. bet you they don’t have any therapy contingency for helping people with their ai partners suddenly getting vc-raptured

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I remember 15 years ago when I read about a Japanese man marrying a character from a dating sim game (source, archive link).

The internet clowned on him, but he was very serious, and it was the first time when I realized that these “anime waifu” people probably aren’t all just taking the piss.

There’s a whole socio-economic angle there, of course, which I don’t think I wanna get into here, but to me this whole “AI girlfriend” market really seems like a low-effort take on “dating sim as a service” with as much game removed as possible but the exploitative nature turned up to fucking eleven.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

The weird thing, is. From my perspective. Nearly every, weird, cringy, niche internet addiction I've ever seen or partaken in myself, has produced both two things: people who live through it and their perspective widens, and people who don't.

Like, I look back at my days of spending 2 days at a time binge playing World of Warcraft with a deep sense of cringe but also a smirk because I survived and I self regulated, and honestly. Made a couple of lifetime friends. Like whatever response we have to anime waifus, I hope we still recognize the humanity in being a thing that wants to be entertained or satisfied.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

It's really funny that this was probably the closest thing to a killer app powered by genAI to exist.

Wonder if they're getting rid of this stuff because they realized it's actually a liability to mine these ERP convos for data and they're burning money on every conversation as it is.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Archive link? The post was removed

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

post still seems up here. try old.reddit if attempting to view from mobile (the "new" reddit site is remarkably rabid on mobile)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There's a link to what appears to have been a picture (reddit.com/gallery) but it's dead. If you go through "new" Reddit it just says "removed by moderators".

I can't really tell what this is about from "we HAVE to do something about this" when "this" is an empty space :/

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Oh whoops, I should have archived it.

There were about 7 images posted of users roleplaying with bots, all ending with a bot response that cut off halfway with an error message that read "This content may violate our policies; blablabla; please use the report button if you believe this is a false positive and we will investigate." The last one was some kind of parody image making fun of the warning.

Most of them were some kind of romantic roleplay with bad spelling. One was like, "i run my hand down your arm and kiss you", and the bots response triggered the warning. Another one was like, "*is slapped in the face* it's okay, I still love you" and the rest of the message generated a warning. There wasn't enough context for that one, so the person might have been writing it playfully (?), but that subreddit has a lot of blatant sexual violence regardless.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Babe, new AI doom vector just dropped: AGI will corrupt knitting sites so crafters make Langford visual hack patterns![1]

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-ai-scams-are-infiltrating-the-knitting-and-crochet-world/


[1] doom scenario is my interpretation, not actually included in ZDnet article.

Sadly, Langford hacks seem to have never achieved memetic takeoff. Having an internet legally enforced on pain of death to be text-only would probably be a good thing.

comp.basilisk.faq

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Jimmy Buffet fans in shambles.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

ah, jeez, AI bros are trying to make deepfakes even fucking worse:

Deep-Live-Cam is trending #1 on github. It enables anyone to convert a single image into a LIVE stream deepfake, instant and immediately

Most of the replies are openly lambasting this shit like it deserves, thankfully

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

"help artists with tasks such as animating a custom character or using the character as a model for clothing etc"

The "deepfake" and "(uncensored)" in the repo description have me questioning that ever so slightly

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Audacious and Absurd Defender of Humanity

Your honor, I'd rather plea guilty than abide by my audacious counsel.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

you see, altman is playing both sides so he'll always win

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Post from July, tweet from today:

It’s easy to forget that Scottstar Codex just makes shit up, but what the fuck “dynamic” is he talking about? He’s describing this like a recurring pattern and not an addled fever dream

There’s a dynamic in gun control debates, where the anti-gun side says “YOU NEED TO BAN THE BAD ASSAULT GUNS, YOU KNOW, THE ONES THAT COMMIT ALL THE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS”. Then Congress wants to look tough, so they ban some poorly-defined set of guns. Then the Supreme Court strikes it down, which Congress could easily have predicted but they were so fixated on looking tough that they didn’t bother double-checking it was constitutional. Then they pass some much weaker bill, and a hobbyist discovers that if you add such-and-such a 3D printed part to a legal gun, it becomes exactly like whatever category of guns they banned. Then someone commits another school shooting, and the anti-gun people come back with “WHY DIDN’T YOU BAN THE BAD ASSAULT GUNS? I THOUGHT WE TOLD YOU TO BE TOUGH! WHY CAN’T ANYONE EVER BE TOUGH ON GUNS?”

Embarrassing to be this uninformed about such a high profile issue, no less that you're choosing to write about derisively.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago