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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.

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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 8th February 2026 (awful.systems)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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Want to wade into the snowy 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 so 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. A lot of people didn't survive January, but at least we did. This also ended up going up on my account's cake day, too, so that's cool.)

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[–] nightsky@awful.systems 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Very impressed with this comment from the creator of the Zig programming language, regarding dealing with AI slop submissions, and generally about LLMs for coding.

I should look into Zig again! Technically, I've always leaned more towards Rust, because I like its more uncompromising approach to safety, while Zig always seemed to me a bit more middle-of-the-road on that. But I've been disappointed about how wide-spread LLM usage has become in Rust circles, I fear that its culture might tip over in favor of slop. (But it's not there yet and I hope it won't happen!)

Anyway, I'm ordering the "Introduction to Zig" book...

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 3 points 1 day ago

I was taught to take off every Zig, not install them! Clearly it was a more innocent time.

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Wow, I also now found the migrating to codeberg post. I should revisit Zig.

[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

OT: paying the cat tax…again. Please ignore the ash on Hector’s head, its an ongoing mystery where thats been coming from.

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

You can basically tell their personalities from the photo.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

patio11 and tptacek are experts on daycares in Minnesota. This is very on topic for a technology website that eschews politics.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46915587

It's a real fuckin scum scrum over there(1). Between these dorks and Mozilla Jake, it seems like every nerd-ass fash clown in tech got the memo to talk like an emotionally abusive ex with dying wizard characteristics.

(1) even more so than ususal

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

I miss when Patrick McKenzie was just sharing an American's view on Japanese culture and reminding devs that names are not always Firstname Lastname in the Latin alphabet and 'just' paying yourself twice the average local income from your business is not a failure. The following is deep twitter pundit brain for a rich white man in Chicago who has lived most of his adult life in Japan and SoCal referring to social programs for poor brown people in Minnesota:

I think journalism and civil society should do some genuine soul-searching on how we knew—knew—the state of that pond, but didn’t consider it particularly important or newsworthy until someone started fishing on camera.

Edit. I also like the HN response which explains that private companies have few responses to fraud except refusing service, but the State of Minnesota can arrest fraudsters, command third parties to provide evidence about them, and send them to prison, so the People of Minnesota require strong evidence before it uses those powers.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I knew nothing about, and had no opinion on, daycare facilities in Minnesota run by Somali immigrants, before Trump-supporting media entities decided to make the topic an astroturf issue. On the other hand, I had plenty of experience with people whose worldviews had been severely warped by such coordinated media campaigns. Mr. McKenzie should take some time to reflect on this.

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yes, I think the people who should have opinions beyond "the state government found some fraud and is investigating further cases" are people who live in Minnesota and have connections to daycare or immigrant communities. Its notorious that the NYT repackages stories by reporters in smaller orgs (or randos on social media) and puts its own spin on them! They don't have a specific editorial line on social services in the Midwest, just instincts.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 3 points 2 days ago

Btw, been appreciating your posts lately!

[–] macroplastic@sh.itjust.works 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

Enjoyed this piece from Mission Local on San Francisco's "March for Billionaires" yesterday.

Choice excerpts:

Despite the San Francisco locale, a participant said the event had “grassroots” origins at a “little rationalist restaurant get together” in a “group house” on Shattuck Avenue, subverting any assumptions that Berkeley is all radical hippies.

Mission Local contributor Benjamin Wachs coined a term for an event in which media observers outnumber participants: a panopticonference. This was close to that. Those in attendance did their best to field questions from the barrage of journalists that backed them into a tree.

This is where Annie, a young transgender woman who attended the protest in a T-shirt that said “I’m in a polycule with Aella,” first met Kauffman. An impromptu debate ensued, with Annie “aggressively defending billionaires.” It was, participants concluded, worthy of a larger forum.

“People are just jealous that they are poorer and weaker and uglier,” she said. “We are beautiful. We’re smart. We’re strong… We are supporting the billionaires, here.”

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 15 points 2 days ago

A polycule with Aella, otherwise known as a nightmare fuck rotation

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

“People are just jealous that they are poorer and weaker and uglier,”

Remember when Rationalists pretended to care about truth, steelmanning, ideological turning tests etc.

(Also implying that billionaires are strong and attractive is funny)

subverting any assumptions that Berkeley is all radical hippies

Yall still are radical hippies. Some hippies just love the boot.

California is, I believe, the only state to give health insurance to people who come into the country illegally,” Kauffman said nervously. “I think we probably should not be providing that.

Rationalism, the empathy removal training center.

“It is the intention of journalists to lie, which is why we need to not do anything to the journalists themselves, but we need to simply remove them as a class,” Annie said. “Just like Germany does to the extremist organizations.”

Well, Germany certainly did excel at removing classes of people from society

lol.

Her political awakening, she added, was watching the press “constantly pump out obviously fake information” against Trump during the 2016 election instead of reporting on the “actual abhorrent views he holds.”

Converted by Scott. (That 'people are saying I was wrong but actually I was right' disclaimer aged worse than the post).

[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Scum.

edit: reasonably certain annie is annieposting from tpot.

[–] TinyTimmyTokyo@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

annieposting

She's admitted it's her.

[–] fiat_lux@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

I assumed billionaires could afford better signs. Were all her EAs on leave that week?

[–] lurker@awful.systems 3 points 2 days ago

gag. going full mask off now

[–] istewart@awful.systems 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Did any actual billionaires show up to press their case, or was it all just cronies?

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 4 points 2 days ago

from bsky photos looks like entire gathering was 30 people. t h i r t y p e o p l e i might have counted some reporter or someone passing by randomly by accident

[–] mirrorwitch@awful.systems 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I see that Silicon Valley has transcended AGI technology* and can now execute NP-complete** problems.

* A Guy in India
** Nationals from the Philippines, Completely

WAYMO exec admits under oath cars in the US have "human operators" based in Philippines
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClPDbwql34o

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

recently learned about electrofuels. it's a hypothetical rube goldberg scheme where you put enough energy to propel 5-7 EVs in, and pull out enough gasoline to fuel one car. it's sold as a green technology, because now gasoline is green somehow. this spin ignores that it would require massive buildout of renewables + nuclear, and just by doing this electrification of many energy end uses just makes sense, including transportation. (what the fuck is train??) it's also sold as a long term storage for renewables, but i struggle to see how scheme that has less than 30% roundtrip efficiency can be considered "storage". just build more renewables and don't use them all if needed

cui bono?it's a complicated pr campaign by volkswagen group (and some other usual suspects). this is a nonexistent magic solution to a real problem, so it fits a common pattern (and also makes it stubsack material) that also attempts to shank electric vehicles adoption.

if anything, it's backwards because EVs are adopted faster than renewables buildout happens (cars last less than powerplants). if realized, this allows volkswagen group to manufacture regular cars for a long, long time even after oil refining stops. originally, it was proposed as a hypothetical luxury product for antique car owners, because it's physically possible, but doesn't make sense in energy or cost terms. but then someone spun it into potential regular retail good, and also maybe this pr campaign was a part of reason why internal combustion car ban was axed at eu level recently. now that it happened, they don't need to push it so hard

it is something ironic in there that last time this process made sense was in nazi germany, just this time source of syngas is different

[–] rook@awful.systems 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So, the idea isn’t entirely as stupid as it initially sounds. There are two things that you gain from this approach:

  • You can more easily separate your energy generation and consumption. Power lines are lossy, and there are a lot of very sunny and very windy places that are a long way away from where people actually want to live. Massive HVDC infrastructure buildout isn’t cheap or easy.
  • Energy density of chemical fuels is higher than batteries. Being able to travel long distances without convenient nearby power sources is useful… long distance high speed rail isn’t always convenient to electrify, but also long haul flights and rocketry are Quite Difficult to run on batteries.

FWIW, I suspect the cost will end up being even higher, because you’ll start losing the economies of scale that modern vehicle infrastructure has, because normal people will just use EVs.

It can only ever be an intermediate technology anyway. Artificial photosynthesis and more sophisticated fuel cells seem like much more plausible longer-term futures.

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

i think that business logic goes against your first point. spatially: if you have source of cheap energy and want to make money out of it, instead of making little money (by making fuel) why not make more money? (by setting there energy intensive manufacture) this seems to be current meta, with places like iceland and norway making aluminum and nitrogen fertilizers respectively. this can continue in other places and maybe extended to some other industries.

temporally (because there are also sunny and windy days when regular people won't consume all energy): this scheme requires cheap electricity, which is needed for cheap hydrogen. this requires massive renewables buildout, which means electricity is cheap for regular people, which means that every gas stove/heater and car will get replaced with electric ones, both residential and maybe perhaps faster for industrial users (more available loans). this means you have to reinforce transmission grid anyway. this also means cheap hydrogen, and because main input to its production is electricity, it makes more sense to use electricity when it's cheap. this means it's naturally suited to suck up all excess generation (both daily and seasonal), and also if electricity production is seasonal then so should be price of hydrogen. if price of electricity or hydrogen varies, then some industries can suck it up at greater rates when it's cheap. i'm thinking here of aluminum smelting (electricity input, daily variation, already done), or ammonia synthesis, or direct reduced iron smelting. i bet there's more. the point is, maybe you get to avoid storing hydrogen to some degree, because you can effectively store energy in finished or semi-finished goods. you can, for example, make some direct reduced iron and just store it when hydrogen is available, and then smelt it into steel in arc furnace when it's not. fertilizers are already sold in annual cycle and stored long term, and anyway ammonia is much easier to store than hydrogen. how it plays out will depend on energy/hydrogen costs vs storage costs vs capex for overcapacity costs. all together, i think this means that because of large amount of generation needed, you don't actually need to store energy this way at all, because when generation is low then electrolyzers turn off, and something will work at all times, probably. when you're able to do that, you won't need to

in terms of scale, first your lunch is eaten by EVs of various shapes, then by use of hydrogen for transportation (rocketry fits there), then you have to compete with biofuels (jet engine will take anything that burns without ash and can be pumped). then some of methanol will be used for fuel first, because it just works in engines and fuel cells, and it's a step before hydrocarbon synthesis. only then synthetic petroleum makes sense, this basically leaves some aviation (that won't use methanol) and military uses

[–] rook@awful.systems 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

instead of making little money (by making fuel) why not make more money? (by setting there energy intensive manufacture) this seems to be current meta, with places like iceland and norway making aluminum and nitrogen fertilizers respectively. this can continue in other places and maybe extended to some other industries.

Because now you have to establish a complex supply chain and potentially large worker base in a place that’s potentially quite inconvenient for both, instead of a much simpler supply chain and smaller workforce.

this requires massive renewables buildout, which means electricity is cheap for regular people

Well, not necessarily. Because as I said, there are places which are very sunny and/or windy which are also a long way away from the people and industries which would like to consume the power that could be produced there.

Long distance power transmission is an very expensive infrastructure to build, and unless you’re building even more expensive modern HVCD systems you can get significant transmissions losses to the point where your distant renewables aren’t really much good. If you can convert the power to something transportable, either on-site or nearby, then you can avoid the transmission losses and giant infrastructure projects.

Much as I do not like the oil industry, there is a significant amount of equipment and expertise out there for storing, transporting and converting flavours of hydrocarbons into other flavours. Some use could be made of it.

then you have to compete with biofuels

I’m not so sure about that. They’re a whole ecological catastrophe in and of themselves, and another cash crop that rich nations can extract from the poorer ones, ultimately to everyone’s detriment. They’re also going to be feeling the squeeze from climate change which is going to make them harder to grow economically as time goes on.

There might be a breakthrough ethanol-brewing algae which might suddenly change everything, but I don’t anyone has the bioengineering chops for that yet.

hydrogen costs

I strongly feel that hydrogen is even more of a dead-end technology than these e-fuels. It is a right pain to store and transport and has rubbish energy density. There’s no future in the hydrogen economy. I’d bet we’re more likely to jump to artificial photosynthesis and fancy fuel cells than we are to see any substantial hydrogen infrastructure.

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 0 points 1 day ago

Because now you have to establish a complex supply chain and potentially large worker base in a place that’s potentially quite inconvenient for both, instead of a much simpler supply chain and smaller workforce.

i'm not sure why you think that it is the case. if you want to make aluminum, you just need a ship to come in and pile up alumina, then take up piled up aluminum. the process is decently automated these days and you avoid making hydrogen. if you want to make ammonia, then all you need is hydrogen that you use as soon as it's made and nitrogen which is separated from air on demand. nitrogen fertilizers account for something like 2% of global primary energy use so it's probably decently scalable. then you can ship out liquid pressurized ammonia, or convert it to ammonium nitrate which again you can pile up*. however with methanol you run into a Problem, because you need carbon dioxide, which means that you have to ship it from somewhere or capture in a massive installation. this immediately makes logistics of this entire enterprise harder. if you want to convert methanol to hydrocarbons then it takes some extra energy for little benefit (2x energy density) and some losses. to some degree, maybe it will make sense, but maybe it'll be easier to just build up renewables where people already live

in that scenario biofuels get to serve much smaller segment than today in the first place so maybe it's less of a problem. there are also things like biogas

I strongly feel that hydrogen is even more of a dead-end technology than these e-fuels. It is a right pain to store and transport and has rubbish energy density. There’s no future in the hydrogen economy. I’d bet we’re more likely to jump to artificial photosynthesis and fancy fuel cells than we are to see any substantial hydrogen infrastructure.

and you base that on what exactly other than vibes? there are applications where you need hydrogen directly as a reagent like ammonia synthesis, and these are probably most adaptable to this approach. methane is also proper PITA in terms of storage, yet we store it anyway because it's cheap as a fuel. if hydrogen is cheaper than that, then it will be used where applicable. it's easier to transport coal than electricity but not lignite; i don't know how it will play out with hydrogen, but either way you can imagine a situation where hydrogen is generated onsite, or within pipeline distance, and used immediately or maybe with some storage worth hours to days. this fits iron smelting (DRI) nicely, today the fuel used for it is methane because it's cheapest (process common in India). if hydrogen is cheaper than that, it will be used instead. other than that, applications where high heat is needed and where no electric heating can be used would be another use of hydrogen, like glassmaking and metal objects manufacture. hydrogen might be not disastrously bad option as fuel for transportation, because every step in manufacturing other fuels introduces losses; there are other tradeoffs

what do you want to fuel these fuel cells with? hydrogen is simplest option and most efficient (60% roundtrip efficiency or so). artificial photosynthesis is not a thing currently and strictly worse than combination of any energy source + conventional electrolyzer, because you have to combine not within single device but within single material something that will work as both. this also is only applicable to solar, not to wind or nuclear. some of these direct light to hydrogen schemes also only use UV only, and hydrogen is mixed with oxygen which is suboptimal, not to mention that main output of that work seems to be grant applications, while both electrolyzers and solar panels or wind turbines are available today, in bulk, straight from factory, and even more efficiently in decarbonization terms, these can replace coal-based electricity generation

regardless, main value of electrofuels today is in propaganda

* regular process starting from gas has carbon dioxide as a byproduct, so urea is another option, but with hydrogen it would have to be provided. it's more expensive even today. maybe liquefied gas carrier could provide carbon dioxide and load ammonia on return leg, with some other dry cargo ship picking up that urea at some other time

[–] istewart@awful.systems 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

if realized, this allows volkswagen group to manufacture regular cars for a long, long time even after oil refining stops. originally, it was proposed as a hypothetical luxury product for antique car owners, because it’s physically possible, but doesn’t make sense in energy or cost terms.

If VW is trying to mainstream this, that tells me they're scrambling to keep milking the premium end of their portfolio that relies on extravagant IC engines (Porsche, Lamborghini, Audi etc.). Very bad sign for them, as the ID Buzz van looks to be a complete failure to the point of "pausing" production, and VW Commercial Vehicles is their backbone in Europe, much like Ford relies on truck sales in the US. I watched a video a few weeks ago that discussed how their European van/utility vehicle portfolio is aging and totally fragmented, to the point that they are selling rebadged Ford Transit vans manufactured in Turkey. I thought it was bad when they were badge-engineering Dodge Caravans for the US market for a few years, but totally bungling the EV van rollout in Europe is seriously bad business for them.

It was also hilarious how the rich guys on the Porsche forums were bad-mouthing the rather sexy Mission X EV supercar concept a couple years ago. No matter how cool a 9,000-rpm flat-six is, letting yourself be driven by the guys who just want you to keep making that forever will not stave off everyone else (now including China and Vietnam!).

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 4 points 2 days ago

i don't know if they started it. what i suspect as their contribution is bold claim that electrofuels might be cheaper than regular petrol in the glorious future, while currently they're much more expensive. (30x?) strict prerequisite for their competitiveness is cheap electricity, but at this point they're not needed. there was also Porsche owned wind power to methanol plant, and while methanol works as petrol replacement, all the plastics in contact with it must be resistant which is not a given. i guess the main value of it for them is propaganda, they're not ready for EV manufacture

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Wait so they figured how to use renewable energy to create something that still generates emissions? Is this a ploy to get Trump on board with renewables?

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

the point is, as always, to continue doing business as usual (in this case, by inhibiting BEV adoption). that fuel is carbon-neutral but also extraordinarily wasteful. trump's deal is something called "clean coal", which isn't (it suggests carbon capture, but it's not a thing, they marketed normal emissions control like we have in europe as some unusually green innovation). i think he was also captured by gulf monarchies for the one hour when their representative talked to him

e: wait it still makes smog so checks out

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

I liked this takedown of METR's task horizon "research": https://arachnemag.substack.com/p/the-metr-graph-is-hot-garbage

In addition to all the complaints I already knew of and had, METR's methodology for human baselining of tasks was even worse than I realized.

And you know... I actually kind of respect METR relative to a lot of boosters and doomers for at least attempting any hard numbers and not just vibes and anecdotes (METR is the ones that did the study showing LLMs actually reduced coders productivity even as it made them think it increased). But the standard for quantifying LLM performance in practical terms is absurdly low.

[–] lurker@awful.systems 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

that one METR graph was also a big part of the AI 2027 “prediction”

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It was basically the only "empirical" (scare quotes well earned) data they actually used in their "model", even then, they decided exponential improvement wasn't good enough, they plugged it into a hyper-exponential model that went to infinity at just a few years regardless of the inputs.

[–] lurker@awful.systems 2 points 2 days ago

yeah lmfao it was bad. I thoroughly enjoyed titotal’s takedown of that graph. I can’t believe the documentary versions of that paper on youtube have millions of views and people eating it up

Those comment sections are gonna be a joy when 2027 and 2028 roll around

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

i thought they were yet another rationalist offshoot

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

They absolutely are. I am just giving them a tiny bit of credit for at least attempting academic research on LLM performance. But only a tiny bit, as they blog post I link discusses, their methodology is really sloppy and not to the level of most academic research and wouldn't get through peer review of most decent journals.

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