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.)
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)
Its also one of the authors of “Attention Is All You Need”, one of the founding texts of the AI ideology.
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.
It definitely feels like the first draft said for the longest time we had to use AI in secret because of Woke.
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 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.
Sounds exactly like what happened at iNaturalist.
That was terrible, wasnt it?
Oh what the fuck why can Mozilla not just STOP. Just… STOP. Honestly sick of this shit.
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.)
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.
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
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.
Every horrible person in my life “tests the waters” like that before going mask-off 100% asshole.
It gives that feeling, doesn’t it?
“I don’t think there’s enough exuberance about AI”
Tinkerbell needs you all to wish harder, boys and girls
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.
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.
in terms of zitron fallout, there used to be a comment section at his blog, it’s not there anymore
Huh, what happened? Would you mind linking some more details?
previous stubsack https://awful.systems/comment/9235549 i don’t think too hard about it, because to a degree all pr people are professional liars in the first place, but bluesky didn’t like it
fyi over the last couple of days firefox added perplexity as search engine, must have been as an update
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.
A redditor posted the latest Pivot to AI propaganda to r/betteroffline, where it currently has around 560 votes. This upset and confused a great many prompt enthusiasts in the comments, which goes to show that a kicked dog yelps.
Pls dont kick dogs 😭
ITT: new synonym for promptfondler: “brain cuck”
Eh, cuck is kind of the right-winger’s word, it’s tied to their inceldom and their mix of moral-panic and fetishization of minorities’ sexualities.
Sure. Not advocating for its usage. Just got a kick out of seeing it.
Google is space data-center curious, too:
https://research.google/blog/exploring-a-space-based-scalable-ai-infrastructure-system-design/
Part of me wants to see Google actually try this and get publicly humiliated by their nonexistent understanding of physics, part of me dreads the fact it’ll dump even more fucking junk into space.
how do you want to get butlerian jihad without kessler syndrome?
Considering we’ve already got a burgeoning Luddite movement that’s been kicked into high gear by the AI bubble, I’d personally like to see an outgrowth of that movement be what ultimately kicks it off.
There were already some signs of this back in August, when anti-AI protesters vandalised cars and left “Butlerian Jihad” leaflets outside a pro-AI business meetup in Portland.
Alternatively, I can see the Jihad kicking off as part of an environmentalist movement - to directly quote Baldur Bjarnason:
[AI has] turned the tech industry from a potential political ally to environmentalism to an outright adversary. Water consumption of individual queries is irrelevant because now companies like Google and Microsoft are explicitly lined up against the fight against climate disaster. For that alone the tech should be burned to the ground.
I wouldn’t rule out an artist-led movement being how the Jihad starts, either - between the AI industry “directly promising to destroy their industry, their work, and their communities” (to quote Baldur again), and the open and unrelenting contempt AI boosters have shown for art and artists, artists in general have plenty of reason to see AI as an existential threat to their craft and/or a show of hatred for who they are.
i think you need to be a little bit more specific unless sounding a little like an unhinged cleric from memritv is what you’re going for
but yeah nah i don’t think it’s gonna last this way, people want to go back to just doing their jobs like it used to be, and i think it may be that bubble burst wipes out companies that subsidized and provided cheap genai, so that promptfondlers hammering image generators won’t be as much of a problem. propaganda use and scams will remain i guess
i think you need to be a little bit more specific unless sounding a little like an unhinged cleric from memritv is what you’re going for
I’ll admit to taking your previous comment too literally here - I tend to assume people are completely serious unless I can clearly tell otherwise.
but yeah nah i don’t think it’s gonna last this way, people want to go back to just doing their jobs like it used to be, and i think it may be that bubble burst wipes out companies that subsidized and provided cheap genai, so that promptfondlers hammering image generators won’t be as much of a problem. propaganda use and scams will remain i guess
Scams and propaganda will absolutely remain a problem going forward - LLMs are tailor-made to flood the zone with shit (good news for propagandists), and AI tools will provide scammers with plenty of useful tools for deception.
The “daylight as a space-based service” bullshit is even worse.
