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gerikson gerikson @awful.systems
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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 2nd February 2025
  • yellowstone caldera erupting during Trump II would be fitting somehow

  • DeepSeek slaps OpenAI, tech stocks crash
  • What? You don't have a spare $6,000 to run nonsense generators at home? Peasant...

    https://xcancel.com/carrigmat/status/1884244369907278106?mx=2

  • elon musk's obsession with the tic tac toe of video games
  • white always wins

    this is the method Elon prefers

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 2nd February 2025
  • this was mentioned in last week's thread

    what I don't get is why the admins chose to both backdate the entries and re-use poster's handles. If they'd just tried to "close" open questions using GenAI with the current date and a robot user it would still be shit but not quite as deceptive

  • DeepSeek slaps OpenAI, tech stocks crash
  • SoftBank, one of the big backers behind Stargate, is notorious for WeWork-level funding disasters — but five days from floating the idea to the crash might be a new record.

    I LOLd

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 2nd February 2025
  • well I guess the NYT is auditioning the Völkisher Beobachter rôle so that tracks

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 2nd February 2025
  • dude missed that Trump won and the people in power are Nazi pedophiles

  • How to promote AI: make the ‘AI illiterate’ think it’s magic
  • This conclusion isn't flattering for the LessWrong community...

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 2nd February 2025
  • is it a real quote from Orwell or just something someone made up?

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 2nd February 2025
  • scoot asking if anyone can put him in contact with someone from a major news publication

    how about the New York Times

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 26th January 2025 - awful.systems - awful.systems
  • Agree with space travel being retro-futurist fluff. It's very rich men badly remembering mediocre science fiction.

    The US could lead the world in innovation in green technology but that's now tainted by wokeness.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 26th January 2025 - awful.systems - awful.systems
  • Not really sure if he thought he was smart or got bad legal advice from coiners who figured he could get off scot-free because "crypto" and "harm reduction"

  • did scoot at one time have the mask on, cos if so that must be the *distant* past
  • Lies, damn lies, racist statisticians, but P-VALUES ARE THE TRUTH I TELL YOU

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 19th January 2025 - awful.systems
  • Free SFnal short story idea, came to me literally in a dream:

    Dude is living his best life, beatiful house, beatiful wife, gets a job doing computer stuff "improving the world". But his big fancy work computer is wasting a lot of space so he reformats it/installs Nix, and suddenly everythings gone, all grey wireframe, no way out. Turns out he was given root to his own simulation and there's no backup.

    Feels I should have read this somehwere but haven't read short SF in ages so...

  • Advent of Code 2024 - the home stretch - it's been an aMAZEing year

    current difficulties

    1. Day 21 - Keypad Conundrum: 01h01m23s
    2. Day 17 - Chronospatial Computer: 44m39s
    3. Day 15 - Warehouse Woes: 30m00s
    4. Day 12 - Garden Groups: 17m42s
    5. Day 20 - Race Condition: 15m58s
    6. Day 14 - Restroom Redoubt: 15m48s
    7. Day 09 - Disk Fragmenter: 14m05s
    8. Day 16 - Reindeer Maze: 13m47s
    9. Day 22 - Monkey Market: 12m15s
    10. Day 13 - Claw Contraption: 11m04s
    11. Day 06 - Guard Gallivant: 08m53s
    12. Day 08 - Resonant Collinearity: 07m12s
    13. Day 11 - Plutonian Pebbles: 06m24s
    14. Day 18 - RAM Run: 05m55s
    15. Day 04 - Ceres Search: 05m41s
    16. Day 23 - LAN Party: 05m07s
    17. Day 02 - Red Nosed Reports: 04m42s
    18. Day 10 - Hoof It: 04m14s
    19. Day 07 - Bridge Repair: 03m47s
    20. Day 05 - Print Queue: 03m43s
    21. Day 03 - Mull It Over: 03m22s
    22. Day 19 - Linen Layout: 03m16s
    23. Day 01 - Historian Hysteria: 02m31s
    13

    Advent of Code Week 3 - you're lost in a maze of twisty mazes, all alike

    Problem difficulty so far (up to day 16)

    1. Day 15 - Warehouse Woes: 30m00s
    2. Day 12 - Garden Groups: 17m42s
    3. Day 14 - Restroom Redoubt: 15m48s
    4. Day 09 - Disk Fragmenter: 14m05s
    5. Day 16 - Reindeer Maze: 13m47s
    6. Day 13 - Claw Contraption: 11m04s
    7. Day 06 - Guard Gallivant: 08m53s
    8. Day 08 - Resonant Collinearity: 07m12s
    9. Day 11 - Plutonian Pebbles: 06m24s
    10. Day 04 - Ceres Search: 05m41s
    11. Day 02 - Red Nosed Reports: 04m42s
    12. Day 10 - Hoof It: 04m14s
    13. Day 07 - Bridge Repair: 03m47s
    14. Day 05 - Print Queue: 03m43s
    15. Day 03 - Mull It Over: 03m22s
    16. Day 01 - Historian Hysteria: 02m31s
    20

    Advent of Code 2024 Week 2: this time it's all grids, all the time

    The previous thread has fallen off the front page, feel free to use this for discussions on current problems

    Rules: no spoilers, use the handy dandy spoiler preset to mark discussions as spoilers

    24

    Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 1 September 2024

    167

    Person who exercises her free association rights at conferences incites ire in Jameson Lopp

    protos.com Bitfinex hacker Razzlekhan was job hunting at Bitcoin 2024

    Razzlekhan, who conspired to launder tens of thousands of bitcoin, told attendees she was searching for work as a crypto consultant.

    Bitfinex hacker Razzlekhan was job hunting at Bitcoin 2024
    1

    Butters do a 180 regarding statism as Daddy Trump promises to use filthy Fed FIAT to buy and hodl BTC

    1
    www.web3isgoinggreat.com Martin Shkreli claims to have been behind a Donald Trump memecoin

    After Arkham Intelligence announced a $150,000 bounty for anyone who could prove the identity of the person behind a Donald Trump memecoin called $DJT, blockchain sleuth zachxbt quickly rose to the occasion. He submitted evidence that Martin Shkreli, the "pharma bro" who spent years in federal priso...

    Martin Shkreli claims to have been behind a Donald Trump memecoin

    This season's showrunners are so lazy, just re-using the same old plots and antagonists.

    8

    In an attempt to secure the libertarian vote, Trump promises to pardon Dread Pirate Roberts (while calling for the death penalty for other drug dealers)

    www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com Ross Ulbricht - Lawyers, Guns & Money

    Trump: Donald Trump promised to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the online illegal drug marketplace Silk Road, in a raucous speech before the Libertarian National Convention on Saturday night. “And if you vote for me, on Day One, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht,” t...

    Ross Ulbricht - Lawyers, Guns & Money
    6
    www.404media.co Flood of AI-Generated Submissions ‘Final Straw’ for Small 22-Year-Old Publisher

    “The problem with AI is the people who use AI. They don't respect the written word,” the founder of Bards and Sages said.

    Flood of AI-Generated Submissions ‘Final Straw’ for Small 22-Year-Old Publisher

    > “It is soulless. There is no personality to it. There is no voice. Read a bunch of dialogue in an AI generated story and all the dialogue reads the same. No character personality comes through,” she said. Generated text also tends to lack a strong sense of place, she’s observed; the settings of the stories are either overly-detailed for popular locations, or too vague, because large language models can’t imagine new worlds and can only draw from existing works that have been scraped into its training data.

    1

    Turns out that the basic mistakes spider runners fixed in the late 90s are arcane forgotten knowledge to our current "AI" overlords

    1

    AI grifters con the US gov that AGI poses "existential risk"

    time.com U.S. Must Act Quickly to Avoid Risks From AI, Report Says

    The U.S. government must move “decisively” to avert an “extinction-level threat" to humanity from AI, says a government-commissioned report

    U.S. Must Act Quickly to Avoid Risks From AI, Report Says

    The grifters in question:

    > Jeremie and Edouard Harris, the CEO and CTO of Gladstone respectively, have been briefing the U.S. government on the risks of AI since 2021. The duo, who are brothers [...]

    Edouard's website: https://www.eharr.is/, and on LessWrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/users/edouard-harris

    Jeremie's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremieharris/

    The company website: https://www.gladstone.ai/

    1

    "The Obscene Energy Demands of A.I." - hackernews discussion

    HN reacts to a New Yorker piece on the "obscene energy demands of AI" with exactly the same arguments coiners use when confronted with the energy cost of blockchain - the product is valuable in of itself, demands for more energy will spur investment in energy generation, and what about the energy costs of painting oil on canvas, hmmmmmm??????

    Maybe it's just my newness antennae needing calibrating, but I do feel the extreme energy requirements for what's arguably just a frivolous toy is gonna cause AI boosters big problems, especially as energy demands ramp up in the US in the warmer months. Expect the narrative to adjust to counter it.

    36
    www.theverge.com Elon Musk’s legal case against OpenAI is hilariously bad

    Elon Musk’s greatest legacy will be as a provider of inane law school exam hypotheticals.

    Elon Musk’s legal case against OpenAI is hilariously bad

    Yes, I know it's a Verge link, but I found the explanation of the legal failings quite funny, and I think it's "important" we keep track of which obscenely rich people are mad at each other so we can choose which of their kingdoms to be serfs in.

    3

    Some interesting tidbits in this ElReg story about "AI Dean Phillips"

    www.theregister.com Developer of Dean Phillips bot suspended by OpenAI

    Biden's challenger model shot down despite super PAC support

    Developer of Dean Phillips bot suspended by OpenAI

    Apologies for the link to The Register...

    Dean Phillips is your classic ratfucking candidate, attempting to siphon off support from the incumbent to help their opponent. After a brief flare of hype before the (unofficial) NH primary, he seems to have flamed out by revealing his master plan too early.

    Anyway, apparently some outfit called "Delphi" tried to create an AI version of him via a SuperPAC and got their OpenAI API access banned for their pains.

    Quoth ElReg:

    > Not even the presence of Matt Krisiloff, a founding member of OpenAI, at the head of the PAC made a difference.

    > The pair have reportedly raised millions for We Deserve Better, driven in part by a $1 million donation from hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who described his funding of the super PAC as "the largest investment I have ever made in someone running for office."

    So the same asshole who is combating "woke" and DEI is bankrolling Phillips, supposed to be the new Bernie. Got it.

    1
    bless this jank @awful.systems gerikson @awful.systems

    cannot login using mobile Firefox

    Anyone else have this problem? It’s been bothering me for a while and is the last thing keeping me using mobile Chrome.

    On the login page , after entering username and password, the “login” button does nothing. It might slightly change color but I am not directed to the site logged in, nor do I get an error.

    platform: iOS

    The username and password are entered automatically via either Firefox’s password store, or iOS’.

    9

    Looking for: random raytracing program

    Years ago (we're talking decades) I ran into a small program that randomly generated raytraced images (think transparent orbs, lens flares, reflection etc), suitable for saving as wallpapers. It was a C/C++ program that ran on Linux. I've long since lost the name and the source code, and I wonder if there's anything like that out there now?

    11

    The official awful.systems Advent of Code 2023 thread

    Rules: no spoilers.

    The other rules are made up as we go along.

    Share code by link to a forge, home page, pastebin (Eric Wastl has one here) or code section in a comment.

    121

    Any interest in an Advent of Code thread?

    The wider community is still on Reddit, I wonder if there’s an interest to have a small alternative?

    If not, what’s a good Lemmy instance for these things?

    7

    ScottA is annoyed EA has a bad name now

    www.astralcodexten.com In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism

    "All you do is cause boardroom drama, and maybe some other things I’m forgetting..."

    In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism

    In a since deleted thread on another site, I wrote

    > For the OG effective altruists, it’s imperative to rebrand the kooky ultra-utilitarianists as something else. TESCREAL is the term adopted by their opponents.

    Looks like great minds think alike! The EA's need to up their google juice so people searching for the term find malaria nets, not FTX. Good luck on that, Scott!

    The HN comments are ok, with this hilarious sentence

    > I go to LessWrong, ACX, and sometimes EA meetups. Why? Mainly because it's like the HackerNews comment section but in person.

    What's the German term for a recommendation that's the exact opposite?

    12

    We don't even have Universal Basic Income yet but libertarians are already arguing it's too large

    [this is probably off-topic for this forum, but I found it on HN so...]

    Edit "enjoy" the discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38233810

    30