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.

Last week’s thread

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

  • Mii@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    14 days ago

    Personal rant: in my ongoing search for a replacement for ProtonMail after they pivoted to AI had me almost sign up with Tuta because, hey, they looked good and were on my radar originally anyway, when I found out that they do not offer any IMAP/SMTP access at all.

    I mean, I get it, their whole thing is privacy and, yes, storing mail locally on my machine kinda undermines the idea of strong and impenetrable E2E encryption, but I should at least have the choice like I do with Proton Bridge. Because without SMTP Tuta is completely unusable for git send-email. I mean, yes, technically I could copy-paste the output of format-patch into the web client but, first, I am lazy and don’t wanna do that, and second, from my experience it rarely works anyway because the clients do some encoding crap so that git am doesn’t eat it without cleanup.

    Meh. I guess I have to keep looking.

    • self@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      huh, I just switched to Tuta and that’s a very good point — there isn’t even a command line mail client, much less an IMAP bridge. the official word from a couple years ago is “write it yourself but we don’t support automated email” which is several kinds of wrong

      so far I’m not hating Tuta but it’s definitely much jankier than Proton. I’m kinda surprised I’ve heard good things about Tuta’a UI compared with Proton — it’s faster, but functionality so far varies from somewhat barebones to mildly broken

      no regrets on the switch on my end so far though, but this might come to bite me at some point. I wonder if a dedicated transactional mail provider could alleviate some of the pain? I can DM you a recommendation for a good one if that seems like it’d be handy

      • Mii@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        14 days ago

        Thanks, I thought about something like that as well, but figured it’d be more hassle in the long run. I like to keep my mail in one basket.

        But honestly, I feel like there just isn’t a good solution anyway. Email comes from simpler times and any encryption is bolted on and either awkward to use or has some problems with functionality. Hell, even Proton’s bridge was a pain to get running properly with send-email because for some reason it insisted on reformatting outgoing mails. I honestly wonder if I should even bother at this point, because most of the stuff I use email for isn’t even private. It’s mostly corporate communication and mailing lists which are public anyway. All private communication goes over other channels (and some of which are arguably even worse than email, like Discord).

        Not saying that this is the conclusion everyone should come to and YMMV, but spending the last weeks combing through the email landscape this feels like the realization I’m starting to arrive at, because I want my email to just work.

        • self@awful.systemsEnglish
          0·
          14 days ago

          that’s absolutely valid, and I’ve come to effectively the same conclusion: good encrypted email is effectively a different protocol (one which, as of now, is proton-to-proton and tuta-to-tuta only) and should be treated as one. daily unencrypted email is a legacy protocol that can effectively be handled client-side as a different account.

          encrypted mail should be federated, possibly with something like activitypub (though I don’t have a good solution for attachments), but every time I float this I get a lot of very angry feedback about how I shouldn’t propose a new email standard without solving spam first, whatever solving spam means. some of the people giving feedback then float solutions that are basically warmed-over hashcash and then I stop listening.

          the difference between modern webmail and what activitypub already does is very thin — a lot of it is intent, UI (email’s focused on long messages and potentially long threads), and features like attachments going from best-effort priority to crucial. there’s absolutely room in the world for better email — I just believe that internally, it’ll look closer to e2e ActivityPub with something like Soatok’s federated keyserver concept on top, rather than the shitty half baked shit we do now to make PGP work with email

  • o7___o7@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    17 days ago

    In Arizona’s U.S. Senate race, Republican Kari Lake told Politico why she feels confident in her chances, despite recent polling showing her behind Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego: “Our polling is a little different. We take polling, but we also combine it with AI, which reads all of what’s happening on social media and across the Internet.”

    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/mondays-campaign-11424-kari-lake-adds-ai-polls-rcna178681?icid=latestpost_bot

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      Looks like she lost despite the polls legitimately being pretty left-biased this year. Even when it’s right the hallucination machine is still wrong.

  • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    16 days ago

    Bitcoin peaks as Trump is elected

    (Article encrypted in Finnish, see spoiler for translation)

    lightly fixed machine translation

    The cryptocurrency Bitcoin climbed to a new high record on Wednesday as Republican Donald Trump seemed to be taking the lead in the US presidential election. Bitcoin went up by almost $6,000 and traded above $75,000. The previous record from March, when the rate settled slightly below $73,800?

    Trump has previously branded cryptocurrencies a scam, but he changed his line and during his campaign has praised them and promised to make the United States the world’s centers for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

    “The price of Bitcoin has followed Trump’s position in opinion polls and the betting market. Investors estimate that the victory of the Republicans would increase the demand for digital currencies", says Russ Mold, an analyst at the financial company AJ Bell, to the AFP news agency.

    In the United States, the stock exchanges in New York were on the plus side at the end of the trading day on Tuesday after the previous day’s declines.

    The technology-focused Nasdaq closed up by a percent 1.4, while the more general S&P 500 was up 1.2 percent. The Industrial-oriented Dow Jones, on the other hand, ended the day with a 1.0 percent increase.

    The dollar is initially weakened against the euro, but began to rise in Asian markets against both the euro and the Japanese yen as Trump’s lead. Stock exchange rates were also rising in various parts of Asia. In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 index ended by a percent 2.4.

    The presidential race is a struggle between Democrats Kamala Harris and Republican Trump.

    Trump has proposed a combination of low corporate tax rates and looser regulation that would be boosted by corporate profits and tighten the stock market, experts told ABC News.

    Dry heaving at the shameless public fellatio Trump performed on Musk in his speech.

  • corbin@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    14 days ago

    Orange site envrionmentalism:

    Lawns are functional though, they aren’t just a status symbol.

    I grew up with a mossy front yard, and I have clover and ferns in my current yards to compete with grasses; there are better options, my dude.

    • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsOPEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      They can be, but they can also be a social and recreational space.

      Your mum’s a social and recreational space, but I don’t see you going to bat for her despite being more useful

    • self@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      I was going to call them friendless losers who never had company over to play cornhole, have a bonfire, or lounge around on a hot summer day getting doused by a sprinkler while drinking beers because they are repugnant socially awkward cave trolls who are bitter and jealous of people who use their picturesque lawns.

      But I would never do that because that is neither civil nor polite.

      dang hates this one weird trick you can use to be an asshole in spite of the orange site’s civility rules

      also what is that list of activities? did ChatGPT generate this? grass is required to play beep boop normal human games like cornhole now? you’re “having a bonfire” on grass and not in something normal like a firepit that’s safer on rocks or concrete? you’re just laying down on the grass, where the dog shits, slowly getting drunk and incredibly itchy from the grass as a sprinkler douses you?

      picturesque lawns

      oh maybe that’s it, the only people I’ve ever met with picturesque lawns are wealthy and wealthy people ain’t fucking normal

      Or you could just not water it, not fertilize it, not pesticide it and simply run the mower over it whenever the assorted vegetation (which will be mostly grass) exceeds a certain height.

      It won’t look “nice neighborhood” nice but it’ll still be fine.

      i love when my yard is a giant mud patch rimmed by yellow with an occasional glimmer of green when the crabgrass blooms

      the orange site is absolutely populated by the type of shithead who’s proud to be on their HOA’s board

      • self@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        14 days ago

        having a lawn is so easy first just hire a gardener to come every week, second live in a place where tap water’s inexpensive

        motherfuckers

    • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      We’re anti-grass lawns now? Fuck yes. I knew this place had potential.

      I’m no landscaper so don’t quiz me on the options, but grass is in the lowest tier option for things to fill outdoor space with.

      • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        14 days ago

        lawns in addition to other things are fine, but also all the stuff self said applies pretty hard

        we’re lucky in ZA that we’re pretty good with getting a lot of this stuff out, which I’m often pretty happy about, but that’s an incident of geography (and personal location)

  • slopjockey@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    15 days ago

    The worst part about Trump being president is Trump being president for a year. The second worst part is Vance being president for the next three (after Trump dies of heart failure). The third worst part is the fact that I’ve been owned in a way I can’t even explain to my closest friends.

    • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      15 days ago

      The third worst part is the fact that I’ve been owned in a way I can’t even explain to my closest friends.

      Oh god, this so much. Well, third worst for me personally, as a non-American white guy. I suppose Palestinians, Ukrainians, and marginalized groups in the US might have a few issues they’d rank higher.

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        15 days ago

        Most likely. Backing out of international obligations and supporting fellow authoritarians seem to be pretty consistent aspects of what passes for MAGA ideology.

        • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          0·
          15 days ago

          i guess this depends on how much vested interest (monetary) he has in MIC

          trump seems to treat nato as america’s weapons shop buyers club

      • corbin@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        13 days ago

        I haven’t done a headcount yet and the election’s not fully tallied, but I think that the Senate still has around 70% support for NATO, and historically we can expect to see a “blue dog” phenomenon in the House as a reaction to Republicans gaining seats. Effectively, both the Democrats and Republicans will function as big tents of two distinct parties, and there is usually tripartisan support (everybody but the far-right Republicans) for imperialism. We may well see votes where the legislators override presidential vetoes to force weapons sales and otherwise fulfill NATO obligations.

        And yes, you read that correctly; Democrats move right as a reaction to Republicans doing well. Go back to bed, America…

        • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          0·
          13 days ago

          there is usually tripartisan support (everybody but the far-right Republicans) for imperialism

          i’m not sure how thoroughly trumpists have purged the party of noncompliants, so maybe this non-far-right republicans block is smaller than it used to be

          And yes, you read that correctly; Democrats move right as a reaction to Republicans doing well

          i’m not surprised by small to medium number of spineless MPs effectively changing sides, i have seen that previously. it is surprising to me that it keeps happening and dems don’t boot these people without notice, or at least deny them places on ballot

  • hrrrngh@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    12 days ago

    I know this shouldn’t be surprising, but I still cannot believe people really bounce questions off LLMs like they’re talking to a real person. https://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/47183/are-llms-unlikely-to-be-useful-to-generate-any-scientific-discovery

    I have just read this paper: Ziwei Xu, Sanjay Jain, Mohan Kankanhalli, “Hallucination is Inevitable: An Innate Limitation of Large Language Models”, submitted on 22 Jan 2024.

    It says there is a ground truth ideal function that gives every possible true output/fact to any given input/question, and no matter how you train your model, there is always space for misapproximations coming from missing data to formulate, and the more complex the data, the larger the space for the model to hallucinate.

    Then he immediately follows up with:

    Then I started to discuss with o1. [ . . . ] It says yes.

    Then I asked o1 [ . . . ], to which o1 says yes [ . . . ]. Then it says [ . . . ].

    Then I asked o1 [ . . . ], to which it says yes too.

    I’m not a teacher but I feel like my brain would explode if a student asked me to answer a question they arrived at after an LLM misled them on like 10 of their previous questions.

    • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      12 days ago

      I’m not a teacher but I feel like my brain would explode if a student asked me to answer a question they arrived at after an LLM misled them on like 10 of their previous questions.

      When I was a lab demonstrator in university, one of the lab exercises was somewhat hard to get right, and our team noticed a huge raft of plagiarisation. Not only were multiple students using the exact same code, but it was code that didn’t even work! The course had a policy of instant failure with evidence of plagiarism, which was made clear at the start of the course, and yet this just kept happening. To top it all off, the lab exercises didn’t change from year to year, so the same code kept showing up! This plus a number of other incidents broke me and made me realise I didn’t have it in me to be this kind of educator.

      It would be great if this was all a big psyop by big tech to gaslight educators into ending their careers for some kind of mass brainwashing conspiracy, because at least there would be some intention behind it. Instead, we’re poisoning collective consciousness with cyberslop because we think one day the virtual dumbass will reach enlightenment. We don’t actually have a way for that to happen, so you’re just going to metaphorically bash our own heads against rocks in hopes we glitch ourselves into the singularity.

      So yeah in short my head would explode too.

  • self@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    17 days ago

    Ubisoft’s NFT game is going great:

    Ubisoft’s NFT game, which has about 6 active players, has a game breaking exploit where one player is winning every match.

    “One player pointed out that the Paulstar111 account was top of the rankings with over 56,000 matches played. It’s not yet clear how the player has been able to connect to so many games and automatically win them”

  • David Gerard@awful.systemsMEnglish
    0·
    14 days ago

    “brb going to make an AI blockbuster called ‘Zennos Parhadox’ starring Dwynne Johnson and Rebeca Fernugson and then we’ll see who’s laughing.” – Dick Trauma, SA

    • o7___o7@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      1. Buy a defense ai system with a cool GUI but that absolutely doesn’t fucking work

      2. PRESS RELEASES

      3. Leave the source code+model weights somewhere that your enemies will find it, preferably next to a big data pipe

      4. Watch them copy it and try to use it on the battlefield

      5. lol

      Just have to avoid naming it something that would give the game away like WIM-PLOW or whatever

    • Mii@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      Wild that “We left OpenAI and founded out own company with alignment and safety”-Anthropic decides to get into bed with Palantir of all companies.

      It’s almost as if their whole safety shtick is complete bullshit. Hmm.

  • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsOPEnglish
    0·
    15 days ago

    Fuck it, off-the-cuff prediction: I expect resistance to Silicon Valley is gonna turn violent during Trump’s term.

  • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    14 days ago

    today’s a fucking trip and a half

    in a mall I saw some Honor laptop[0] ads with “AI” pitch sauce slathered all over it

    later walking between art galleries I saw a roadsign ad for a property sales company promising “more effective strategies using AI” (more effective strategies for… selling… houses…? I guess…? (x up for doubt))

    and now I get this shit in my mailbox from someone who absolutely purchased a dataset with this address in it:

    From: Ai Everything GLOBAL <newsletter@event.aieverythingglobal.com>
Subject: Join the AI Elite—G42, TII, DIEZ, Dell & More!

    [0] - I didn’t even know they were in ZA, but nope, 2-floor hanging banners and ads allllll over elevator doors and shit