this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2025
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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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Want to wade into the sandy surf of the abyss? 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.)

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 10 points 6 days ago

To provide some good news for this week, the Fediverse is reporting a spike in users (thanks to David Gerard for finding this):

Whilst accurate fedi stats are pretty difficult to get, I'm inclined to believe the influx is genuine - after the CEO Meltdown on Bluesky, its clear people are jumping ship.

[–] self@awful.systems 8 points 6 days ago (3 children)

fresh openwashed proprietary license hell just (well as of 2 years ago, but I’m sneering at it now) dropped:

Harmful free-riding is the sort of free-riding that leads to the free-rider problem

[…]

Examples of such goods are public roads or public libraries or services or other goods of a communal nature. Free riders are a problem for common pool resources because they may overuse it by not paying for the good (either directly through fees or tolls or indirectly through taxes).

from the fucking asshats who made Sentry proprietary under the BUSL but wanted an even more nonsensical license:

Sentry started life in 2008 as an unlicensed, 71-line Django plugin. The next year we began publishing it under BSD-3, and ten years later we switched to the Business Source License (BSL or BUSL)

[–] misterbngo@awful.systems 7 points 6 days ago

fyi: some fellow forked all of the sentry stuff from when it was bsd and made it less shit to run yourself. I'd been running sentry as self hosted since it came out effectively and they made some real ~~questionable~~ outright bad architecture decisions over the years that made running sentry super annoying to get you to use the saas product. Like yes I want to use Cassandra and elastic search for my one user error logging

regardless https://glitchtip.com/

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Examples of such goods are public roads or public libraries or services or other goods of a communal nature.

This is literally railing against the concept of altruism, kill this license with hammers (and sickles)

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

That Wikipedia article is cursed:

For instance, in discussions on climate change mitigation, countries with lesser contributions to greenhouse gas emissions might still benefit from global efforts to reduce emissions, enjoying a stable climate without proportionally shouldering the costs of emission reductions.

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[–] UltimateNoob@programming.dev 7 points 6 days ago

I did not know how much right-wing media is outrage-farming wikipedia. With AI slop invasion, UK Safety Act nonsense and US government probing I'm getting worried

[–] fnix@awful.systems 5 points 6 days ago

Aaron Bastani Meets Will MacAskill

🤮

Bastani just laps everything up without any pushback

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

hi peeps! just put up the first episode of the podcast that i posted about in last week's thread. it's called odium symposium and it's about historical misogynist or otherwise bigoted texts

the first episode is about stephen leacock:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/pilot-misogynist-141164947

rss:

https://feeds.zencastr.com/f/-mzEK14C.rss

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And in related news, worldwide ecosystems are already getting perma-fucked by billionaires' repeated and relentless wrecking of our planet for personal gain.

I mention billionaires specifically because the average Joe, the 99% of humanity being told to cut down their carbon footprint and delete emails to save water, is completely fucking blameless in this.

They didn't choose to have car-centric architecture forced on them for the past goddamn century, they didn't choose to have planet-wrecking crypto farms/NFTs forced on them a few years ago, and they sure as hell didn't choose to have planet-killing AI slop extruders forced on them, either.

(Anyways, unrelated hot take of the day: taking responsibility for something you're not responsible for is a moral failing, and needs to be treated as such)

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 7 points 6 days ago

(Anyways, unrelated hot take of the day: taking responsibility for something you're not responsible for is a moral failing, and needs to be treated as such)

wat

[–] corbin@awful.systems 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Obituaries are being run for John Searle. Most obituaries will focus on the Chinese Room thought experiment, an important bikeshed in AI research noted for the ease with which freshmen can incorrectly interpret it. I'm glad to see that Wikipedia puts above the Chinese Room the fact that he was a landlord who sued the city of Berkeley and caused massive rent increases in the 1990s; I'm also happy that Wikipedia documents his political activity and sexual-assault allegations.

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

AI slop has been discovered in an anatomy textbook (the news originally broke on TikTok, but I discovered this through Bluesky):

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Tag your favorite name for a Star Wars background character. Mine is enodopmisch reticulum.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 6 points 6 days ago

Scal-Palin Skywalker, was that the guy 100 years in the future who kept smoking death sticks so Luke's Force ghost would stop bothering him?

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[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 13 points 1 week ago

I see that wedging Copilot into Excel is going just swimmingly:

Honey, I invested $100 billion in AI, and all I got was 1 + 2 + 3 = 15

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 13 points 1 week ago (9 children)

and apparently spotify has found a new low

I killed my sub years ago because of the rogan shit along with disliking what they were forcing the product to become (and clearly indicated all of this in the why-leaving input field) but this makes me wish I could kill it even harder

[–] yellowcake@awful.systems 8 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I’ve been wanting to go back to some sort of DAP full time but I’m not a huge fan of Android being the experience. Anyone got recommendations of a non-Android based DAP so I can cut the streaming services out for good?

I miss my Creative Zen back in 2008.

[–] mirrorwitch@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I just got a cheap-ass Sandisk MP3 player, as part of my efforts to both stop streaming and stop depending on a phone so much when I'm outside. It has an audiobook function which didn't work but after a firmware update it does, mostly. It's not a good device by any stretch but it cost me 20€ and I consume a lot of audiobooks, and it's extremely calming to not be exposed to a smartphone when I read.

On the music side of things the biggest change wasn't so much the devices but getting more into bandcamp, with a healthy supplementation of stuff downloaded from soulseek, torrents, and on a pinch, youtube. I make wishlists of small bands I like and buy full albums on bandcamp friday. Listening to these offline made me able to listen to entire albums again, like in the physical media days, which again I find to be incredibly calming compared to hopping between the same favourites on shuffle.

Spotify actually helped me discover music, both through user-created playlists and algorithmic suggestions. I hear it's all full of "AI"-generated music and lists, though, and I found a much more powerful algorithm to discover music, called "asking people".

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[–] self@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Tangara is an open source project made by a fediverse hardware hacker with contributions from other fediverse personalities. it’s reputedly pretty good, though all the reviews I’ve seen are from other fediverse posters so it may be worth looking at some independent reviews to confirm it’s not just homegrown optimism.

at the risk of going open source reply guy and making a recommendation you can’t follow up on, I’ve had a lot of success with Jellyfin as a media library/local streaming host and the beta version of Jellyfin as an app that lets me stream FLACs on my local network and seamlessly download them onto my phone. a VPN or a Jellyfin library on a VPS can let you stream your stuff almost anywhere in much higher quality than Spotify.

I don’t own a Tangara though I do want one, and I’m fairly sure they don’t support the Jellyfin API yet, but if you end up missing a more Spotify-style listening experience then it might be worth inquiring if there’s any Jellyfin client projects in progress.

[–] misterbngo@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I can speak for the tangara, lovely hardware but it is an mp3 player first and foremost. the hardware is technically capable of network stuff but their software stack is mostly focused on recreating that iPod experience and keeping the battery life to days of playback. It does take some getting used to if you've been living in musical algoworld for a minute

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 3 points 6 days ago

I miss my old Sansa Fuze running rockbox and absolutely wouldn’t mind a new device in that class

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I miss mp3s being widely available. The lack of easy piracy also coincided with me just spending less money on music at all. (Lot of other factors as well).

However I think some of those other streaming services provide lot better rates per song for the artists than Spotify.

[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

If you buy from BandCamp, you get lossless and lower quality audio files. Only really good for smaller newer artists though. Also you can get a seedbox for like 10 dollars a month and then pirating is easier than ever.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 6 points 6 days ago

also Bandcamp Friday (which somehow thank fuck has not yet been killed by the Epic acquisition juggle) exists, and is a further boon to artists

I try to stick to bc a lot but it also has downsides - one of the most notable issues for me is that discovery on it isn’t nearly as good as other things, and I really wish they’d work on it some more, even as I know the impacts and drivers that make it hard to do well

the various kinds of corporate culture capture everywhere just results in a pretty fucking frustrating experience in multiple dimensions in the current year :|

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 6 days ago

last analysis I saw (which, admittedly, was almost ~2y back now I think) said Apple Music was the best by a pretty wide margin, with the rest falling with lower marks after

probably need to look around for updated data soon

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago

I fell off Spotify years ago and never subbed, nice to see I made the right call.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago

This has been a problem for a while esp with podcast providers, who put ice ads in podcasts and then the podcasts get blamed. (Despite having very little control over it, and the control also often being ignored).

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[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago

a very “oh no. anyway,” kind of post

turns out the rest of the owl is the hard part! what a surprise!

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The $10K Existential Hope Meme Prize: A celebration of creativity, optimism, and big-picture thinking.

And none other than friend-of-the-pod Steven Pinker is a judge!

(Via)

[–] sinedpick@awful.systems 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Nothing screams "celebration of creativity" like a nice heaping tablespoon of AI slop images.

[–] nfultz@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Apologies in advance for the infohazard

Tucker - Every Tech Billionaire Is Having the Same Haunting Vision. Demonologist Explains Why

Nick Land Responds to Tucker Carlson

WTF. how is he going mainstream.

e

LAND: I mean, I'm obviously skeptical of the fact that large chunks of Silicon Valley are engaged in occult rituals involving involving a numogram. But I mean, it's not something I guess I have any authority to to talk about. Well, I mean, I can only say that they they certainly aren't in contact with me if if that is happening. They're they're doing it very, you know, if not privately at least. It's my involvement is is actually zero in that.

[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago

Insert gif of lemurs here.

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

this has been previously sneered on, but only now i've clocked this: AI2027 is another name for, or elaboration* of "san francisco consensus", from april this year or so, "named so because everyone who believes in it is in san francisco", more precisely timeline roughly matches and it hinges on iterative self-improvement

* which might just mean it was laundered through chatbots to bulk it up initially. what i mean to say is even openai's dooming might not be original

so if anyone's counting then this thing is a couple of months older

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

"Everyone who believes this lives in San Francisco" is the pure poetry of self-owns.

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 2 points 6 days ago

i'm not sure at this point if it was some (then) ea-er inside belief that eric schmidt (they guy who said that, formerly google) was exposed to, and he sneered at it immediately, then it was shown to the world in length proper to rationalists

[–] e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 week ago
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