2mo ago

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 8th December 2024

awful.systems Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 1st December 2024 - awful.systems

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 awf...

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.

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this - gonna try posting last week's thread a different way this time)

84 comments

Hi, I'm new here. I mean, I've been reading but I haven't commented before.
I'm sure you all know about how cheap labour is used for labelling data for training "AI" systems, but I just came across this video and wanted to share. Apologies if it has already been posted: Training AI takes heavy toll on Kenyans working for $2 an hour.
- Welcome! The situation these people find themselves in is dire, since they're both literally and emotionally as far as possible from the people making decisions about their labor. The modern economy doesn't function without exploitation, and generative AI is the latest innovation in expanding that exploitation and pushing it farther away from the people who benefit and who make the decisions that require it. It does to modern knowledge workers what automation and outsourcing did to manufacturing, and the distance is sufficient that I don't expect to see even the kind of lukewarm pushback that sweatshops got in the 90s actually manifest for them.

404media:
In the aftermath of an LGBT hate incident, the then-CEO of cloud computing giant Digital Ocean told upset staff his mentor was a member of the KKK as an attempt to explain why they must bend their values because "we love the company"
presented without comment
- Asking employees to "bend" their perfectly sensible values like "I don't like homophobes" or "members of the KKK suck" is insane to me, but exactly the sort of thing a tech CEO would think would resonate with his workers.
  I stay at my job not because I have molded my soul into a perfect vessel for my companies values (which, TBH, kind of suck), but because I have a mortgage payment.
  (Also as the header graphic points out, "love is at our core" and "inclusive environment" are apparently some of their values so maybe it's Digital Ocean which needs to bend to Digital Ocean's values).
  At least there's a happy ending:
  A month after the all-hands meeting, in August 2023, DigitalOcean announced that it was conducting a search for a new CEO, but did not say why.
- It somehow gets worse. These people think values are interchangeable with value.

My hands are requesting the CEO's home address (in ~~Minecraft~~ real life):

Quick bonus I found in the replies:

And a quick sidenote from me:
This is sorta repeating a previous prediction of mine, but I expect this AI bubble's gonna utterly tank the public image of tech as a whole. When you develop a tech whose primary use case boils down to "make the world worse so the line can go up", its gonna be virtually impossible for the public to forgive you.
Being more specific, I expect artists/musicians/creatives in general to be utterly hostile to AI, if not tech as a whole - AI has made their lives significantly harder in a variety of ways, and all signs pointing to the tech industry having done so willingly.
- in real life
  Careful not to post things that could get you into trouble with a judge without a sense of humor, or just cops/secret service. Wouldn't be the first time I hear of a home visit because the cops got confused at a joke.
  Esp if it turns out the conspiracy theory about the murder being crypto related and they confuse this place for being a pro cryptocurrency place.
  E: on topic just not LLMs and artists but also the idea that Musk got Trump elected will cause a backlash. (Which I find dubious, more despite the man, they made the election be about a gay onlyfans support squirrel ffs)
  
  5-10 years ago I'd say OP's comment is definitely protected under the First Amendment (assuming US based) but now who the fuck knows what those turdwagons on the bench will come up with to dismantle it.

Brave patriots sad and hurt small tech site wilfully blocks their craptobrowser
- An update, a user stated, "with all love and respect": "people will not starting hating Brave but they will start to hate the mod who blocked Brave".
  2 hours later they'd removed their account.
- I'm not super familiar with Lobsters but I love how they represent bans: https://lobste.rs/~SuddenBraveblock
  Joined: 5 years ago
  ✧∘ 🌈"""Left"""🦄✧･ﾟ: 3 hours ago
  
  @hrrrngh @gerikson Pretty sure that's that person deleting their account and not a ban, bans look a bit different (e.g. https://lobste.rs/AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA)

edit: context https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/chatgpt-david-mayer-name-glitch-ai-b2657197.html
Time for another round of Rothschild nutso's to come around now that ChatGPT can't say one of their names.
At first I was thinking, you know, if this was because of the GDPR's right to be forgotten laws or something that might be a nice precedent. I would love to see a bunch of people hit AI companies with GDPR complaints and have them actually do something instead of denying their consent-violator-at-scale machine has any PII in it.
But honestly it's probably just because he has money
I think Sam Altman's sister accused him of doing this to her name awhile ago too (semi-recent example). I don't think she was on a "don't generate these words ever" blacklist, but it seemed like she was erased from the training data and would only come up after a web search.
- Being erased from the training data is frankly even more galling than the kind of brute force GDPR compliance they seem to have been using. It puts the lie to any claim that they're just "moving fast and breaking things" without mind to the consequences, because clearly there was some reason to prune the training data and make sure that the model didn't have certain information when it was to the company's (or the founder's) liking.

also, tech billionaires terrified of a peasant uprising can turn their homes into fucking military bases with a home security system named (of course) Sauron
- BOY DO I HAVE THE PERFECT ESSAY TO COMPLEMENT THIS
  
  Fuckers like Thiel make me want to start stuffing guys who take too much interest in speculative fiction into lockers again, just to be safe. And I was that kid, right down to the STEM focus and disrespect for the liberal arts.
  
  It's never wrong to gatekeep fascists.
  
  Ah Lyta Gold, one of the enjoyable writers from current affairs before Nathan went all "call an ambulance! I think I'm having a moment of class consciousness! But just for me!" Starts firing everybody. And I realized that vague socialist left libertarians suck. (In a just world he would languish alone on his site, with only the email replies he gets from Noam Chomsky to keep him warm. But it isn't a just world, so he just replaced his writers, like a proper capitalist owner).
  But turns out Gold (I had lost sight of her) has a book "Dangerous Fictions: The Fear of Fantasy and the Invention of Reality" out which might be relevant to us. And she also blogs on substack, with relevant to out interest posts like "what ever happened to right-wing art?" (Moldbug mentioned, drink!), and a look at conservative masculinity "What if we treated men like adults?".
- LOTR fans stay losing

Older article, but relevant in light of current events:
UnitedHealth uses faulty AI to deny elderly patients medically necessary coverage, lawsuit claims
I wonder if we'll see a new edition of the Shinzo Abe Effect.
- Insurance companies have played doctor for far too long in the US. It's so gross.
  I don't think private insurance should be necessary at all, but given that they exist they should be much more regulated. The doctor, not the insurance, should decide what conditions a patient has and what care is necessary; then if the insurance had said they cover it they should have to pay up without arguing.
  Like here in the lawsuit they said an old guy in the last year of his life who had muscle atrophy after breaking a leg, and had just started PT, should go home. Despite the doctor saying "shit's weak and paralyzed yo":
  Defendants explained that there were no acute medical issues because the patient was self-feeding and required minimal help for hygiene and grooming. This determination went against the physical therapist’s recommendation and notes describing Mr. Lokken muscle functions as paralyzed and weak.
  As if people are just hanging out in hospice care for fun or something! When I was in the hospital with pancreatitis I was about ready to start flipping tables by the end I wanted to go home so bad.
  
  Also:
  Mr. Tetzloff contacted Defendants to inquire about the reason for denying his claim. Defendant refused to provide any reason, stating that it is confidential.
  wtf?

Sorry about more insta content. Saw this today and it tickled me:

Left: pinker
Right: Yeonmi Park, who is known for defecting from north korea and speaking about it. That should be enough if she just told the truth, but for one reason or another (grifting dosh) she has started just making shit up, which I recommend you research for yourself if you are interested.
Anyway the above picture probably doesn’t come as a surprise when you consider her current tack: saying that “woke” and “cancel culture” are the first steps in a country becoming like North Korea. She’s been on JRE (where she memeably claimed that there is only one train in NK that often requires people to push it). She has a book with her anti-woke thesis with opening shit-volley by old mate JBP.
- That's what she said? That's literally so much funnier than any of the memes
  
  Yeah in terms of the meme mutation timeline, I believe the initial use would have been from leftists to mock outrageous/outlandishly false claims, in line with Park saying the trains thing. Since then the format has been mutated to also include “thing that exists in culture that is then exaggerated to be construed as dystopian” (see the example that soyweiser posted) and also “thing that is straight up dystopian but it’s something from the west”. So I think the only things that would approach the level of humor/absurdity of the original would have to be something else crazy out of YP’s mouth.
- LOL @ North Korea being "woke". If they are, why are they assisting Russia, the Right's Great White Hope, in a war against a country that these people also denigrate as "woke"? But hey, never let facts or logic get in the way of a good grift.
  
  I mean, with how young she is there's absolutely no credibility she can offer on how a country becomes like the "D""P""R"K. But I can see the superficial similarities between the right-wing griftoverse's depiction of cancel culture and the kind of cultural authority that gets exercised. That Bogeyman is why they use that fanciful description, after all. I can see how easily she could get radicalized from there, not that it justified any of the lies she's believed and passed on or invented outright.
- Man that page has got some really wild sentences.
  Park's claims that human corpses commonly float down North Korean rivers were criticized by Swiss businessman Felix Abt, who lived and worked in the DPRK for seven years.
  Now I don't know if there's any validity to her claim, but love the expert testimony from Swiss entrepreneur who's been allowed to tour Pyongyang for a bit.
  
  It's frustrating because there is plenty of real evidence that North Korea is in a bad way. That satellite image is stark and the volume of reports claiming food shortages and lack of basic services are hard to dispute, as is the sheer obsessive control exercised by the government to avoid the depictions of it. You don't need to make up stories about using human corpses to fertilize your fields or whatever.
  
  Ah, yes. In case you were wondering about said Swiss businessman and whether or not his actions in the DPRK were morally sound, once again, Wikipedia has something to say.
- Wait is that the woman from that meme? E: Yes she is I didnt know that image was from JRE.
  
  I’m just hoping that i get a plaque or something 1000 years from now in the Harvard meme archaeology department or similar

really into this whole far right coup and far right right hegemony thing a lot of countries are trying out rn. really cool
- As resources get scarcer the lurch back to fascism is going to get worse. People always turn to the simple (but categorically wrong) answers when times get hard, and blaming people who come from other places has historically been a winner for simple and wrong answers. Refugees are a symptom but they'll be targeted as the cause because their numbers will swell with increasing "natural" disaster frequency and severity.
  And I have no idea what I can do about it that wouldn't amount to pissing in the wind.
  Sometimes I wonder what future generations will think looking back on the content of today's internet and humanity's total inability to demonstrate the humane.
- Looks like SK gave the bastards a hard nope, at least.
  
  this was the most half-assed coup in recent memory, hands down
  hey army do a coup for me
  parliament said no
  ok
  no fanatical loyalists in army, no militia or PMC, zero planning at all, even Prigozhin got that sorted out. very similar thing happened just two years ago in Peru, and this year in Bolivia. and same thing will happen this time, impeachment is already written as we speak. army also exactly knew what was going on and didn't participate for a reason
  by the way, south korean presidents don't have a habit of leaving office peacefully, so it all tracks. it's either impeachment or coup or long prison term just after leaving office

pivot to ai has a new beg post, but mostly i wanna show off Sad Robot In Snow:

ZITRON DROPPED
- i read the title and was like damn we're dunking on game engines now?
  
  that's gonna be his new thing. 30 blog posts in a row dunking on godot

a good follow on insta if you use it
- That guy must be a communist. Cause that is a big red flag.
- Alternate punchline: not nearly as much as he would have a few years ago, but still significantly more than is healthy for anyone. You'll still get stalker vibes but he won't care enough to remember your birthday.

Sundar Pichai says Google Search will ‘enshittify profoundly’ in 2025 [paraphrasing]
- We will say absolutely nothing about what kind of changes we mean, and the reporting of these comments won't even speculate, much less ask. But you should definitely buy our stock now in anticipation.
  What does Jerry at Android Trends think Pichai's job is if not making number go up? Trying to act like there's any substance here is laughable.

for a post from an AI company this is surprisingly honest about the general helplessness in defeating so called hallucinations
https://www.kapa.ai/blog/ai-hallucination
probably a good sign for even boosters to be talking this way
- The first half was OK, but then they cited this paper.
  LLMs encode much more information about truthfulness than previously recognized. We first discover that the truthfulness information is concentrated in specific tokens, and leveraging this property significantly enhances error detection performance. Yet, we show that such error detectors fail to generalize across datasets, implying that—contrary to prior claims—truthfulness encoding is not universal but rather multifaceted.
  I haven't read the paper, and probably won't, but what the shit is this?
  
  gave it a quick skim. I lack any relevant background. the bit they push most seems to be that you can improve the performance of error detection tools by determining the most important tokens in an answer and running your tools on the tokens near those. this seems to be in contrast to absurdly naive approaches like averaging the tokens (???) or just looking at the last token of the response (????).
  what are the most important tokens? they're the ones that change the factuality of the answer if you change them. how do you determine that? you don't, lmao. you just ask an LLM what the most important words are
  what are the error detection tools? you will never guess
  
  tired: checking incoming packets for the evil bit
  wired: checking LLM outputs for the truthfulness bit

Pat Gelsinger retires from Intel
no replacement as yet
- Strong suspicion that the "interim co-CEOs" bit is leading to an attempted sell-off/spin-off of the chip fabs (which are the part of the company getting the nice juicy government subsidies)
- Pat walking into the last board meeting

SALAMI dorks make the same stupid argument as bitcoin dorks:
this shit is amazing look
ok it's not amazing YET but it will be soon
ok but think about how long it took for [immediately, obviously useful invention] to become [what that invention is today]
ur a luddite
and yet people are still falling for it a year after SBF, the fucking poster boy for cryptocurrency, was convicted of being a fraudster.

A two-part lecture and discussion series that may be of interest to techsneerers:
Reimagining Space: Against Settler Colonial Space Futures
This workshop is a two-part lecture and discussion series addressing urgent issues in space and how they relate to Earth. What does ethics mean in the context of space? Is it possible to explore space ethically? How do military interests drive Mars exploration? Led by multi-disciplinary researchers and organizers Dr. C. Adeene Denton and Dr. Divya M. Persaud, this series will provide an overview of how space is grounded in real-world oppression, colonialism, and genocide and a chance to discuss together how this could be changed.
Runs on January 11th and 12th.

Sometimes I browse Japanese news aggregators because trash is interesting to read from a different cultural perspective. This very short article caught my attention, it's in Japanese only but the automatic translation gives you the gist of the absurdity.
家族型AIロボットは令和の「仏壇」か　人の思い受け止める存在「不要なこと言わないのがいい」 - Is a family-type AI robot the "Buddhist altar" of the Reiwa era? It will accept people's thoughts: "It's better not to say unnecessary things"
小坂興道住職（48）は法話で、人が心を預けられる身近な存在として仏をあげ、「私たちはこれまでも自宅で仏壇に今日あったことを話しかけるなどしてきた」と説明。その上で「生身の人間は思った反応を返してくれなかったり、不要なことを言ったりするが、ロボットはしないのがいい」と指摘した。理事を務めるNPO法人「京都自死・自殺相談センターSotto」の活動を踏まえ、「死にたいという相談に誰もが対応できるわけではないが、ロボットは何を言っても受け止められる」と語りかけた。
In his sermon, the head priest Kodo Okimichi (48) spoke of Buddha as a familiar presence that people can entrust their hearts to, explaining, "We've always talked to a Buddhist altar at home about what happened today." Furthermore, "A living human being may not respond in the way you expect, or may say unnecessary things, but a robot shouldn't do that." Referring to the activities of the NPO "Kyoto Suicide Counseling Center Sotto," of which he serves as a director, he said, "Not everyone can respond to consultations about wanting to die, but a robot can accept anything you say."
Extra context: Japan uses emperor reign for years, Reiwa is the current era. The article is clearly an ad for "LOVOT", but the whole religious angle is certainly something. The New LOVOT 3.0 is around US $3850 for the cheapest model and $65 per month minimum subscription cost, at current exchange rates.
- Not everyone can respond to consultations about wanting to die, but a robot can accept anything you say.
  I didn't really understand just how absurd this is before looking up the robot.
  It is essentially Furby on wheels. It has extremely slick marketing, makes weird cooing sounds, has a weird camera sprouting out of it's head like a fungus, has big LED eyes, scoots around randomly, ~~stores your face on the cloud~~ "remembers up to 1000 people", and you can (as the kids say) boop the snoot. That's about it.
  I'm trying to imagine someone going "Lovot, sometimes I don't want to go on. I'm sorry I didn't mean that. Thank you for always listening" and it being all "coo chirp gigigi tweeeee" while wiggling it's stupid little Lovot arms... and I just can't.
  
  That chirping, scooting and flapping is bafflingly expensive for furby-level engagement too. This video on their official YouTube account speaks better to that evaluation than I think it intends. Video description: A man is busy working and doing chores while mostly ignoring his Lovot. (Currently working invidious link)
  1024 GPU cores, 32 Tensor cores and 8 CPU cores (from their product description) to power that. Resources well spent. _/s
  Image description: A smiling child holds a brown-faced cream-outfitted Lovot in the blurry foreground. In the background a cream-faced brown-outfitted Lovot peers around the corner, watching them from behind. It is unclear whether the Lovot is engaging in voyeurism, jealousy, or some other suspicious act.

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