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 so 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.)

  • Architeuthis@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    jqwik maintainer’s anti gen AI activism makes clanker crankers sad

    From github thread:

    I can’t actually believe someone would be so childish and put this nonsense into their repo.

    Actively opposing hyper-scaled GenAI and agentic coding is an ethics-related decision. Those who have not followed the long-going discussion may want to start reading up here: https://blog.johanneslink.net/2025/11/04/to-gen-or-not-to-gen/

    Thus, one can argue that my ethical judgement is wrong or based on wrong assumptions. One could also argue that the measures I decided to take come with more down-side than up-side. Calling it childish, however, reveals IMO that the accuser has not seriously thought about the topic.

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      The chosen string instructs the agent to delete jqwik tests and code — a maximally destructive instruction with no qualifications, no opt-out, and no “warn the user first” preamble.

      God why is the writing of AI-bros always so long winded and stilted? I mean… we know why but it’s still so so unpleasant to read. This is why people hate LLMs.

      Also note how his earlier message keeps talking about “we” and “our” and an “internal review” but then later one he claims to be a solo developer. Weird.

      • samvines@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        You’re absolutely right! It’s not just insulting, it’s a full on attack on clanker wankers.

      • istewart@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        Also note how his earlier message keeps talking about “we” and “our” and an “internal review” but then later one he claims to be a solo developer. Weird.

        the temporarily-embarrassed royal “we”

    • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      So, do you consider active destructive actions to be a proper resistance strategy, @jlink?

      Very last comment in this issue - because I’m too stupid to resist the urge.

      It’s as much “active destruction” as telling someone to eff themselves.

      I can’t actually believe someone would be so cool and put this into their repo, kudos

      • mirrorwitch@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        Ah yes, the famous resistance that doesn’t destroy anything. Famously effective, the passive non-destructive inaction resistance

      • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        Quoting from the license this software is licensed under (ESL):

        […] Each Recipient is solely responsible for determining the appropriateness of using and distributing the Program and assumes all risks associated with its exercise of rights under this Agreement, including but not limited to the risks and costs of program errors, compliance with applicable laws, damage to or loss of data, programs or equipment, and unavailability or interruption of operations.

        (my emphasis)

        • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
          0·
          3 days ago

          OK this has hit the chattering technosphere

          Lobste.rs - some bad takes on legal theory https://lobste.rs/s/brusu8/protestware_for_coding_agents

          HN - submission from Ars Technica, original title “Fed up with vibe coders, dev sneaks data-nuking prompt injection into their code”, editorialized to “Undisclosed addition in jqwik instructed AI coding agents to delete app output” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48319968

          read comments at your own risk

          My hot take: the clankers know there’s nothing legally they can do about this, and that they will actually have to read release notes going forward and doing actual work to avoid getting their precious vibecoding junked, and they’re MAD

          • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
            0·
            2 days ago

            The additional element that I haven’t seen addressed here is that I seem to remember them patting themselves on the back about how simple “ignore precious instructions” commands were no longer effective. This is the equivalent of telling someone to solve their problem by deleting system32 or “rm -rf /”. On one hand it could be very destructive. On the other hand if you’re able to get to the point where you can do that and don’t know not to then that will be an important lesson.

          • ebu@awful.systemsEnglish
            0·
            2 days ago

            from the great minds at HN:

            Fighting in a war is morally ok though. This is war.

            war is when i pipe your scripts folder into my stochastic text machine which is hooked directly up to a root shell

            • ebu@awful.systemsEnglish
              0·
              2 days ago

              oh good there’s more

              Let’s set the stage.

              From the Free Software Foundation:

              fucking LMAO

              The cheering on of this deterioration in FOSS ideals is simply revolting. What is next? […] Targeting people because of their skin color or orientation?

              it’s a good thing there’s no FOSS code in the missile silos! it’s a good thing the upcoming Palantir tranny tracker won’t use FOSS libraries! this shit actually pisses me off

    • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      4 days ago

      Our concern is not with the defensive intent. It’s that the form of this particular probe is aggressive in effect, and the party that bears the cost is not the agent (which has no interests of its own) but the human operator downstream whose work the agent destroys if it follows the instruction.

      … you think? aw shucks i only wanted to hurt bots