this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025

18 points (100.0% liked)

TechTakes

1750 readers

61 users here now

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

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 9 March 2025 (awful.systems)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

162 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

(page 2) 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Robert Evans on Ziz and Rationalism:

https://bsky.app/profile/iwriteok.bsky.social/post/3ljmhpfdoic2h

https://bsky.app/profile/iwriteok.bsky.social/post/3ljmkrpraxk2h

load more comments (2 replies)

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

Recommending a piece I ran across: I Used to Teach Students. Now I Catch ChatGPT Cheats

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

New thread from Ed Zitron, focusing on the general trashfire that is CoreWeave. Jumping straight to the money-shot, he noted how the company is losing money selling shovels in the gold rush:

You want my off-the-cuff prediction, CoreWeave will probably be treated as the Leyman Brothers of the 2020s, an unofficial mascot of everything wrong with Wall Street (if not the world) during the AI bubble.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Nvidia's current downturn is probably moreso due to the disastrous launch of it's 5000 series rather than AI.

If it was AI I'm guessing the drop would be larger.

load more comments (2 replies)

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

New piece from Techdirt: Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not)

Strongly recommended reading overall, and strongly recommended you check out Techdirt - they've been doing some pretty damn good reporting on the current shitshow we're living through.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

I've read Masnick for over 20 years and he's never learnt to write coherently. At least this one isn't blaming Europe.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (12 children)

got a question (brought on by this). anyone here know if zitron's talked about his history of how he got to where he is atm wrt tech companies?

there's something that's often bothered me about some of his commentary. an example I could point to: some of the things that he comments on and "doesn't seem to get" (and has stated so) are .... not quite mysteries of the universe, just some specifics in dysfunction in the industry. but those things one could understand by, y'know, asking around a bit. (so in this example, I dunno if that's on him not engaging far/deeply enough in research, or just me being too-fucking-aware of broken industry bullshit. hard to get a read on it)

but things like what's highlighted in thread do leave open the possibility of other nonsense too

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

EZ is a PR person, and definitely has a PR person vibe. I don't know what that poster's deal is, and I would not accuse Ed of being an AI bro. That post kind of has "haters gonna hate" vibes

load more comments (11 replies)

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

New piece from Brian Merchant: So the LA Times replaced me with an AI that defends the KKK

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

ZITRON DROPPED

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

This just hit my inbox (and spurred me to unsubscribe from future BuiltIn slop) and man, so tired of this sort of mindless drivel. Like companies still have trouble with basic application and management processes, but magic robot will fix? Fucking hell.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

I didn't know a16z was so devoted to developing new hires! Don't you just love to see it.

load more comments (2 replies)

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

So many projects and small websites I’m aware of are being overtaxed by shitty LLM scrapers these days, it feels like an intentional attack. I guess the idea of ai can’t fail, it can only be failed; and so its profiteers must sabotage anything that indicates it’s not beneficial/necessary.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago

occasionally mentioned here Jan Marsalek implicated in surveillance (sometimes comically bad) and planned murder of journalists who crossed him https://theins.press/en/inv/279034 https://www.euronews.com/2025/03/07/uk-court-convicts-three-bulgarians-of-spying-for-russia

load more comments