Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid!

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.

  • PMMeYourJerkyRecipes@awful.systemsEnglish
    13·
    7 months ago

    Scott Aaronson: “Open Letter to Anti-Zionists on Twitter”

    Posting here rather than in a separate thread because I’m probably the only one who rememembers him from the old /r/sneerclub days, but he’s an endlessly fascinating figure to me - his ability to view literally every possible scenario through the lens of “poor innocent little smol-bean Scott just wants to discuss things rationally, but is persecuted by his ontologically evil foes and their self-righteous dupes” - doesn’t matter if it’s feminists objecting to his older incel-y posts, Sneer Club dunking on him, cops arresting him for stealing from an airport store or leftists not being fans of the genocide he supports… He must always be the victim. His enemies must always be unreasonable and motivated by hatred of him, specifically.

    • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPMEnglish
      9·
      7 months ago

      And now, maybe, I can at last go back to happier topics, like how to prevent the destruction of the world by AI.

      • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPMEnglish
        14·
        7 months ago

        my god, you missed out on that?

        here is way too much background reading!

        • commenter on Shtetl-Optimized talks about the rapey “nice guys” she suffered at college
        • Scott Aa takes this as a brutal personal attack on him
        • Laurie Penny tries to be nice about it
        • Amanda Marcotte? not so nice about it
        • Scott Alexander weighs in with one zillion words, unreadable, so relentlessly awful that Scott demands readers not form an opinion of him based on a thousands of words essay he worked hard on and chose to publish
        • Elizabeth Sandifer with the correct and readable opinion of this bilge (also long, but worth it)
        • maol@awful.systemsEnglish
          6·
          7 months ago

          commenter on Shtetl-Optimized talks about the rapey “nice guys” she suffered at college

          Not just that, but one of very few feminist commenters in an aggressively anti-feminist comments section on a blogpost about how it’s wrong that MIT pulled Walter Lewin’s online lecture videos after he was accused of sexually harrassing a student. Scott Aaronson, Friend To All Women, felt no need to intervene as his fans trashed the very notion of online sexual harrassment - only when a woman made an uncharitable remark about nerd men.

        • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          6·
          7 months ago

          Holy shit you just sent me down a rabbit hole. How can these people be so terrible. Existing in their spaces must be like constantly smelling faintly a rotting corpse but not being able to quite place where it’s coming from.

        • sinedpick@awful.systemsEnglish
          6·
          7 months ago

          just looked the guy up. He’s handsome. He literally looks like Jerry Seinfeld (actually, he looks even more like Pablo Schreiber who played Nicky Sobotka in The Wire). What a god damned twat. (Not that being attractive makes any of his arguments any worse than they already are)

          • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
            9·
            7 months ago

            The title of the blog (“Shtetl-Optimized”) refers to his belief that he would have been happier in a traditional shtetl where the kindly village elders would assign a wife for him.

            • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
              3·
              7 months ago

              Yeah that always gets me, and he picked that name fully knowing what it meant. It isn’t like the meaning of it has changed over time. (Like my now unfortunate nickname, which prob gets me tagged nowadays as a rightwinger, due to the weird shit they had with budweiser, and before that it got me tagged at a rabid leftwinger because of ‘soy’. Nevermind that it predates all that, and even the bodybuilders/weightlifters misreading the science and causing the whole anti-soy mania, and it is just a reference to 90’s shadowrun. I feel this a lot and then I ignore it because I figure most people are not this online to even notice).

    • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
      12·
      7 months ago

      Okay, but apart from YouTube, Google Search, Gmail, YT Studio, Chrome, Google Keep and Nest, what have the Romans ever done for us?

    • self@awful.systemsEnglish
      10·
      7 months ago

      I haven’t been bitten by Google killing an app or service since Google Reader, because I never again trusted them. I suppose this might be a lot more difficult for Android users, but I honestly don’t even remember the last time I added a new Google app or service to the set of tools I rely upon.

      yeah he sure as fuck won’t be bitten by trusting anything Google made after Reader, like say their thermostats that are embedded into his house (which he says don’t count because ???)

      also:

      YouTube, Google Search, Gmail, Chrome

      when your Google-free life includes all of their major products plus shit you can absolutely do without like Keep and Nest

      also also, because I keep fucking looking at it and getting mad:

      I suppose this might be a lot more difficult for Android users

      imagine being this fucking shitty about having bought an iPhone and being above the age of 13

      • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
        8·
        7 months ago

        I have a couple of Android devices and even with Android added to my list of Google products, I’m pretty sure I use fewer than Gruber.

        • self@awful.systemsEnglish
          8·
          7 months ago

          it’s very inconvenient but I’ve managed to mostly de-google my couple of Android devices where practical — and there is a noticeable performance benefit to running without google play services, using Firefox, and installing simpler open source odroid apps instead of ad-filled play store ones, at least for the older tablets I recycle into purpose-specific computing devices

          gruber, meanwhile, goes out of his way to replace safari with chrome on his Apple devices and then brags about being google-free on his blog

          • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
            5·
            7 months ago

            I’m currently in the position of both having gotten as much google shit out of my life as possible, and also needing to track it fairly extensively for a work context (because 95%+ of our userbase is low- and midrange android)

            I cannot say “fuck google and all they do” enough times to emphasise how this experience really makes me feel

            • self@awful.systemsEnglish
              6·
              7 months ago

              it absolutely sucks to be forced to use and develop for Google software at work (seriously, what in the fuck is wrong with Google’s docs and APIs?)

              if there’s a silver lining, it’s that being forced to be intimately familiar with google’s garbage for work has made me a lot more eager to eliminate as much of it from my personal life as I can

      • self@awful.systemsEnglish
        7·
        7 months ago

        when you’re such a Daring Fireball that you continue to use all of google’s products even when good alternatives are available, but insist you’re making a point by boycotting google

    • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
      6·
      7 months ago

      While I love a good Gruber-sneer, he does qualify each existing choice extensively. I don’t find the post as hypocritical as the edited extract would imply.

      His gratuitous dumping on Android users is sneer-worthy though.

      • self@awful.systemsEnglish
        6·
        7 months ago

        I have got to be honest, the justifications in the full post are half the reason why I’m sneering so hard. it’s possible I’ve got some anger left over from how much it fucking sucks to degoogle

        • earthquake@lemm.eeEnglish
          3·
          7 months ago

          Ugh, I keep waiting for Florisboard or AnySoftKey to get good enough that I can replace google keyboard on my phone, it’s very frustrating. I’ve basically given up on dropping gmail. I think that’s all that’s left of google for me.

    • flere-imsaho@awful.systemsEnglish
      5·
      7 months ago

      lol. the only google services i use are search , youtube, gmail (in the isolated browser containers), and the android phone. seems the apple licker is not degoogled at all.

    • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      5·
      7 months ago

      That’s the markdown guy, right? Goddamn what’s with these nerdbros who got popular of one thing and then becoming insufferable, if not actively reactionary shits?

    • Architeuthis@awful.systemsEnglish
      9·
      7 months ago

      Surely an April Fools’ thing?

      Still, if it’s just a parody someone seems to have gone above and beyond in generating content for it.

      • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
        9·
        7 months ago

        you may be right:

           Registrar URL: http://squarespace.domains
   Updated Date: 2024-04-01T06:39:18Z
   Creation Date: 2024-01-14T00:27:20Z
   Registry Expiry Date: 2025-01-14T00:27:20Z
   Registrar: Squarespace Domains LLC

        but even then, the choices of content are … telling

      • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
        11·
        7 months ago

        with good coverage in all the major categories: sub, masochist, and victim

        …

        …

        these people truly are the worst

        (e: I want to be very clear here: this isn’t meant to be kinkshaming, but as a particular highlight of their specific focuses being of a really particular slant)

  • blakestacey@awful.systemsEnglish
    12·
    7 months ago

    So, a lesswrong suggests gathering “The Best Tacit Knowledge Videos on Every Subject,” where “tacit knowledge” is defined as “knowledge that can’t properly be transmitted via verbal or written instruction”. The low-hanging fruit is that the recommendations under “Finance” are Keith “Roaring Kitty” Gill of GameStop fame… and Martin Shkreli.

    The higher-hanging fruit is the seeming conviction that just because a lesswrong saw somebody drone on about a thing in a YouTube video, it can’t be explained in written words.

        • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
          5·
          7 months ago

          it strikes me that there’s quite a similarity in how the lesswrongs have this continuous drive for so-called “secret knowledge” to how others are about sacred geometry and “hidden universe secrets”. anyone else pick up on something like that?

          • self@awful.systemsEnglish
            7·
            7 months ago

            I think of it as an evolved version of what a lot of the new age cults did with quantum woo — it’s a thin veneer of knowledge designed to trick folks who think they’re too smart for religion into a religious mindset. the Rationalist version of the veneer is particularly thick, but the end goal is the same: Magic is Real and You Can Be The Gandalf

  • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPMEnglish
    11·
    7 months ago

    afab boyfriend on Bluesky:

    ME READING WARHAMMER 40K BOOKS IN 2018: this setting is so fucking dumb. No way a society would let their entire technological infrastructure be controlled by a handful of fanatics that have convinced themselves that computer code is literally God

    ME NOW: Ah,

  • self@awful.systemsEnglish
    9·
    7 months ago

    we’re looking for a sneerious name for a collaborative design/programming community for non-dickheads, like hacker news but not shit. thread your suggestions here!

  • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPMEnglish
    9·
    7 months ago

    this ape is a message
    we considered ourselves to be a powerful yacht club
    this ape is not an ape of honor
    no highly esteemed juice is slurped here

    – more falafel please, SA

  • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
    9·
    7 months ago

    Esperanto-pushing F-droid forum poster goes ballistic when maintainer explains the language can’t be added:

    Why you simple don’t start learning Esperanto? Why should the whole world learn your stupid and illogical* language? Is F-Droid project international or only for english people?

    (via this 404 media post)

    I honestly did not know there were axe-crazy Esperanto fans online.

    • senloke@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      5·
      7 months ago

      I honestly did not know there were axe-crazy Esperanto fans online.

      Oh, there are always those.

      These kind of speakers can be found also offline. It’s funny they are the result on one hand of the fondness to our little language and the reactions towards it by speakers of other languages. Esperanto gets a shitload of bad reputation and the resistance to it then creates such personalities.

      In some sense they rightfully act like they act.

      Funny that this thread re-appeared during the xz “scandal”. I had a little bit of fun regarding it, when it initially appeared in the f-droid forum.

      • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
        6·
        7 months ago

        Yeah I mean I shouldn’t be surprised really. I’m more surprised it took me so long to realize they were around. If nothing else Esperanto seems to have been losing mindshare to other conlangs like Toki Pona.

        • senloke@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          4·
          7 months ago

          I don’t know if it really is losing mindshare. Toki Pona is really popular among a very loud minority.

          On one hand these people just may be learning it, because it’s an interesting conlang, nothing against that. Learn whatever language you like.

          Then the loud part of the Toki Pona community learn it partially because they think it’s morally superior to other eurocentric conlangs like Esperanto. And those will eagerly say to you, that Toki Pona is the best language ever. So maybe is the perception that Esperanto is losing mindshare, because of Toki Pona, just a result of working propaganda by that very loud minority.

          Esperanto is also in general not a very popular language, as its normally compared to English for its audacity to become a lingua franca. Still, to my knowledge it’s still the largest constructed language community. Toki Pona or other languages need to get to that level of sophistication which Esperanto already aquired during 136 years of its existence.

          • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
            4·
            7 months ago

            I could barely learn a 3rd language (French) so the idea of trying to learn one more is daunting, even if Esperanto is designed to be easy to learn.

            • senloke@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              3·
              7 months ago

              so the idea of trying to learn one more is daunting, even if Esperanto is designed to be easy to learn.

              Even that would people contest. For me it was easier to learn and I think there things in the language, which make it easier to learn. BUT that idea that it’s truly universal “easier” is often criticized and doubted. Which leaves me with a disappointing “maybe” with a slight tilt to “it’s easier”, so “maybe it’s easier?”.

              I could barely learn a 3rd language (French) so the idea

              If we keep in the idea set of how Esperanto came about, then the idea was to learn two to three languages and be a world citizen afterwards. Two languages, because that would be your mother tongue and Esperanto and for three languages that would be your mother tongue, the language of your region like for cultural heritage reasons and Esperanto to be a world citizen.

              I learnt Esperanto after i learnt English in school. It’s my third language and I belong to those who got afterwards more confident, that I could acquire another language by myself. So for some people it’s easier to learn and it brings them then the confidence, that when they find motivation to learn a specific new language, that they could do that.

              I myself am still stuck with three languages, because I did not had a strong motivation to learn an additional language. There are too much languages and there are too much conflicting incentives to learn one over another. Wanna understand China? Learn Mandarin! Learn one of the other big languages in the world for financial progress! Then learn Spanish! Be supportive of the deaf community! Then learn one of the many dialects of sign language!

    • self@awful.systemsEnglish
      4·
      7 months ago

      that 404 media link is gonna be so handy to keep in my back pocket for when the worst people I know in open source inevitably start pushing back against the idea that the toxic ecosystems they created are a gigantic source of problems

  • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    8·
    7 months ago

    with advent of HapsburgGPT inevitable, what’s the next overhyped dumb thing cryptobros turned promptfondlers will turn to?

    • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPMEnglish
      7·
      7 months ago

      they’ve been trying quantum but as awesome as quantum computing will be when it arrives, it’ll be a bit obvious that in 2024, these expensive lab toys can’t quite factor numbers so high as 35

      • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        7·
        7 months ago

        nanomaterials got worn out already? i mean these are real but quite underwhelming, it’s always some sensor or shiny powder, not nanomachines

  • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
    8·
    7 months ago

    (PDF) The Role of Blockchain in 6G: Challenges, Opportunities, and Research Directions.

    So this buzzword laden document was published by the IEEE. As far as I can tell it doesn’t actually say much besides a breathless stream-of-consciousness about how blockchain and AI will make everything amazing and is terribly relevant to wireless communication protocols because reasons.

    But… just read it. If you can make it to the end without your brain oozing out of your ears then you win the grand prize!

    “Extreme edge”: 6G networks need to facilitate the spatial translation of many core services from the cloud to the edge networks for achieving extremely low latency communications and instant networks. The trustworthy coordination and transparent resource bookkeeping can be attained with blockchains in these systems [20].

    In 4G, AI was not yet applied, while in 5G there is already a limited partial use. We expect a much deeper integration of AI on all levels of the 6G network communications with the ultimate goal to make our society super smart, super efficient and more green.

    • self@awful.systemsEnglish
      11·
      7 months ago

      boy oh boy the IEEE has fallen pretty fucking far hasn’t it

      Internet of Everything (IoE)

      The IoE is more general than IoT and has the purpose to seamlessly connect in an intelligent way people, processes, data and things [27]. It is expected that the IoE will re- invent business processes and business models. First, processes are optimized and automatized thanks to digital technology. Second, due to the usage of digital technology, new business models in different industries become possible. For instance, Nike is now also entering the market of healthcare via the introduction of its smart cloths and shoes.

      the IoE is defined as the internet of things but more so. fucking brilliant. I can’t wait to use digital technology in my industry. also I can’t wait for Nike to deny my insurance claim because my shoes decided I was too active to be sick.

      The role of the blockchain in this domain will mainly be to make the decision process of the machine learning methods more understandable and coherent as all the underlying elements on which the decisions are made can be traced back.

      something tells me the only reason this piece of shit was published was to reputation wash uncited claims like this one. this one specifically is a horseshit claim we’ve seen before, earlier in the generative AI hype cycle — it’s the nonsensical idea that a blockchain could somehow be used to add a verification and attribution layer to an LLM’s training data set

      Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV): UAVs or drones will also present an important part in 6G as high-data-rate wireless connectivity will be required. Here, blockchain can play a major role to contribute to the protection of the security and privacy of the drones and the thereby collected information [32]. Li et al. [33] also illustrate the significance of 5G in UAV context. IBM has even filed a blockchain patent to address drone fleet security.

      There are several blockchain based application for drones. First of all, the blockchain technology can help to arrange identity management. Next, also air traffic management can be arranged in a secure, accurate and efficient way. Finally, insurance companies can use the stored records in case of events or disputes.

      there’s a bunch of points in this document where the writing goes from the style of a confused undergrad assistant to what’s almost definitely an LLM fabricating shit. fucking behold: the blockchain will somehow secure the communication link with your UAV and authenticate it with air traffic control (what? also, these are things that existing cryptosystems are good at that blockchains specifically are fucking worthless for) and it’ll also help with your… drone insurance…?

      all of this is almost certainly an LLM generating bullshit that sounds drone-related

      finally, they didn’t even finish the conclusion paragraph:

      An exponential growth of demand anticipated for the 6G telecommunication in the information era, by 2030. The role of blockchain to eliminate limitations foreseen with the future massive demands and the the contribution to escalate the service values in telecommunication identified in the paper. The future research directions also presented in the paper.

      what do these words mean? is this what research is now?

    • Mii@awful.systemsEnglish
      8·
      7 months ago

      I smell bullshit written by spicy autocomplete, or at the very least it has LLM drivel pasted into it in various places.

      In Europe, GDPR directives are important drivers which will become more stringent in the coming years. Better decentralization will enable higher security especially in terms of availability for this critical domain.

      Lol what? The EPRS has quite unambiguously stated that there are multiple points of tension between blockchain tech and the GDPR, and that “decentralization == security” is a false assumption for various reasons. There’s also the elephant in the room that every person maintains the right to all copies of their data at all times (mainly articles 16 and 17 GDPR), which is a problem if it exists in an uneditable distributed ledger.

      The conclusion of that study was, and I quote, “that it is not possible to assess the compatibility between ‘the blockchain’ and EU data protection law”, and the only reason why it even might be compatible is mainly because of “the uncertain definition of ‘erasure’ in Article 17 GDPR”. But even then they only admit that there could by hypothetical beneficial use cases but fail to find any with current blockchain tech.

      Source: Blockchain and the General Data Protection

      • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPMEnglish
        10·
        7 months ago

        those bits of the GDPR were not written with blockchain in mind at all. However, I am reliably informed that the authors were quite delighted to find they’d preemptively made it actionably pretty much illegal to put PD on a blockchain

    • jonhendry@awful.systemsEnglish
      5·
      7 months ago

      I hate ‘edge’ in its new form as pseudotechnical marketing guff. Frex, “AI-driven MCU market surge sparks innovation in global and Chinese firms for edge AI”

    • Mii@awful.systemsEnglish
      6·
      7 months ago

      Jesus Christ, this guy read A Modest Proposal and took it as fucking inspiration.

      Why is it always eugenics and euthanasia with these chucklefucks? The idea of exterminating large amounts of humans seems to tickle something in some people’s brains.

    • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
      5·
      7 months ago

      Never heard of the dude, but despite writing a 6 part series entitled “Imagining Elon Musk’s Million-Person Mars Colony – The greatest thought experiment of all time” has has not gotten the new party line from Dear Leader that the most pressing issue is the catastrophic lack of (white) babies rather than too many people.

      OTOH porque no los dos? Force women in the “first world” to have kids, euthanize all the brown people.

      edit people killed at or around 60 is a minor plot point in the pretty terrible Asimov novel Pebble in the Sky, where it is not seen as a Good Thing.

      • earthquake@lemm.eeEnglish
        6·
        7 months ago

        It’s bizarre to me that the articles starts out arguing that this is necessary for environmental reasons, then shifts to egalitarianism (spread wealth from the global north to the south), before landing on productivity. A complete scattershot argument whose only constant is a desire to euthanize the old, with only the EO Wilson connection for any clue as to why he came to this conclusion.

        As for fiction, I think you could name probably quite a few stories that feature this kind of mandatory maximum lifespan, almost always as an obvious signpost that the government is cruel. (I am trying to remember one in particular, I think it was a short story called “Hop for Jubilee”? Ring any bells for anyone?)

  • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPMEnglish
    6·
    7 months ago

    from HN:

    I got frustrated with ChatGPT for hallucinating sometimes, and my friend said “could be worse, could hallucinate all the time.” And I thought it’d be fun to make that, and then we came up with a few more, and now we have this: https://cap-gpt.onrender.com/

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
      13·
      7 months ago

      I’ve just been staring off into space for the last half-hour trying to process this. This is legitimately a nightmare scenario. The ML and automation systems here are being used in conjunction with human policy decisions to turn a military intelligence function into an accountability sink. This is how you square the circle and turn a self-defense force into an agent of ethnic cleansing without needing to change the low-level organization to effect that goal. Everybody gets to maintain plausible deniability just enough that they can answer any uncomfortable questions and justify their actions to themselves, and by the time anyone starts to really question or investigate those justifications the job is largely done. I don’t know that I could construct a clearer example of how this technology can be used to the worst possible effect.