this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2024
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TechTakes

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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

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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)

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[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 11 points 8 months ago

from this article

Amazon asked Chun to dismiss the case in December, saying the FTC had raised no evidence of harm to consumers.

ah yes, the company that's massively monopolized nearly all markets, destroyed choice, constantly ships bad products (whose existence is incentivised by programs of its own devising), and that has directly invested in enhanced price exploitation technologies? that one? yeah, totes no harm to consumers there

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Many thanks to @blakestacey and @YourNetworkIsHaunted for your guidance with the NSF grant situation. I've sent an analysis of the two weird reviews to our project manager and we have a list of personnel to escalate with if we can't get any traction at that level. Fingers crossed that we can be the pebble that gets an avalanche rolling. I'd really rather not become a character in this story (it's much more fun to hurl rotten fruit with the rest of the groundlings), but what else can we do when the bullshit comes and finds us in real life, eh?

It WAS fun to reference Emily Bender and On Bullshit in the references of a serious work document, though.

Edit: So...the email server says that all the messages are bouncing back. DKIM failure?

Edit2: Yep, you're right, our company email provider coincidentally fell over. When it rains, it pours (lol).

Edit3: PM got back and said that he's passed it along for internal review.

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Online art school Schoolism publicly sneers at AI art, gets standing ovation

Schoolism sneer

And now, a quick sidenote:

This is gut instinct, but I'm starting to get the feeling this AI bubble's gonna destroy the concept of artificial intelligence as we know it.

Mainly because of the slop-nami and the AI industry's repeated failures to solve hallucinations - both of those, I feel, have built an image of AI as inherently incapable of humanlike intelligence/creativity (let alone Superintelligence^tm^), no matter how many server farms you build or oceans of water you boil.

Additionally, I suspect that working on/with AI, or supporting it in any capacity, is becoming increasingly viewed as a major red flag - a "tech asshole signifier" to quote Baldur Bjarnason for the bajillionth time.

For a specific example, the major controversy that swirled around "Scooby Doo, Where Are You? In... SPRINGTRAPPED!" over its use of AI voices would be my pick.

Eagan Tilghman, the man behind the ~~slaughter~~ animation, may have been a random indie animator, who made Springtrapped on a shoestring budget and with zero intention of making even a cent off it, but all those mitigating circumstances didn't save the poor bastard from getting raked over the coals anyway. If that isn't a bad sign for the future of AI as a concept, I don't know what is.

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I think a couple of people noted it at the start, but this is truly a paradigm shift.

We've had so many science fiction stories, works, derivatives, musing about AI in so many ways, what if it were malevolent, what if it rebelled, what if it took all jobs... But I don't think our collective consciousness was aware of the "what if it was just utterly stupid and incompetent" possibility.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I don’t think our collective consciousness was aware of the “what if it was just utterly stupid and incompetent” possibility.

Its a possibility which doesn't make for good sci-fi (unless you're writing an outright dystopia (e.g. Paranoia)), so sci-fi writers were unlikely to touch it.

The tech industry had enjoyed a lengthy period of unvarnished success and conformist press up to this point, so Joe Public probably wasn't gonna entertain the idea that this shiny new tech could drop the ball until they saw something like the glue pizza sprawl.

And the tech press isn't gonna push back against AI, for obvious reasons.

So, I'm not shocked this revelation completely blindsided the public.

I think a couple of people noted it at the start, but this is truly a paradigm shift.

Yeah, this is very much a paradigm shift - I don't know how wide-ranging the consequences will be, but I expect we're in for one hell of a ride.

Paranoia is the only one I can think of that's actually pretty well on the money because the dystopian elements come from the fact that the wildly incompetent friend computer has been given total power despite everyone on some level knowing that fact, even if they can't admit it (anymore) without being terminated. The secret societies all think they can work the situation to their advantage and it provides a convenient scapegoat for terrible things they probably want to do anyways.

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[–] dgerard@awful.systems 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

fix the year! we're back in the present! out of the time traveling cybertruck!

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Tried to get out, door cut my leg off. Now I have to go back to the future to get it reattached.

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[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 10 points 8 months ago (6 children)

check out this jumpscare suckerpunch mashup

some of the details are so on point I’m almost left pointing and mouthing “art”

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[–] swlabr@awful.systems 9 points 8 months ago

Just remembering this banger from back in the day.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 8 months ago (3 children)
[–] mii@awful.systems 10 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Earlier today, the Internet Archive suffered a DDoS attack, which has now been claimed by the BlackMeta hacktivist group, who says they will be conducting additional attacks.

Hacktivist group? The fuck can you claim to be an activist for if your target is the Internet Archive?

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[–] hrrrngh@awful.systems 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I feel like the Internet Archive is a prime target for techfashy groups. Both for the amount of culture you can destroy, and because backed up webpages often make people with an ego the size of the sun look stupid.

Also, I can't remember but didn't Yudkowsky or someone else pretty plainly admit to taking a bunch of money during the FTX scandal? I swear he let slip that the funds were mostly dried up. I don't think it was ever deleted, but that's the sort of thing you might want to delete and could get really angry about being backed up in the Internet Archive. I think Siskind has edited a couple articles until all the fashy points were rounded off and that could fall in a similar boat. Maybe not him specifically, but there's content like that that people would rather not be remembered and the Internet Archive falling apart would be good news to them.

Also (again), it scares me a little that their servers are on public tours. Like it'd take one crazy person to do serious damage to it. I don't know but I'm hoping their >100PB of storage is including backups, even if it's not 3-2-1. I'm only mildly paranoid about it lol.

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Not a sneer, but I saw an article that was basically an extremely goddamn long list of forum recommendations and it gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

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[–] hrrrngh@awful.systems 9 points 8 months ago

Oh look! Human horrors ~~beyond~~ regrettably within my comprehension

https://x.com/haveibeenpwned/status/1843780415175438817

Tweet descriptionNew sensitive breach: "AI girlfriend" site Muah[.]ai had 1.9M email addresses breached last month. Data included AI prompts describing desired images, many sexual in nature and many describing child exploitation. 24% were already in @haveibeenpwned . More: https://404media.co/hacked-ai-girlfriend-data-shows-prompts-describing-child-sexual-abuse-2/

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