this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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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 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. Also, hope you had a wonderful Valentine's Day!)

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[–] gerikson@awful.systems 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 1 points 1 hour ago

I mean it's presumably still standing, just with a slightly cheaper set of owners ;)

[–] antifuchs@awful.systems 3 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

Good news, everyone’s favorite emacs is using AI now: https://www.vim.org/vim-9.2-released.php

[–] mirrorwitch@awful.systems 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

can somebody tell me whether neovim is selling out to LLMs or led by transphobes or getting money from Anduril or something, so I decide whether to switch before getting disappointed again

[–] mirrorwitch@awful.systems 1 points 45 minutes ago* (last edited 45 minutes ago)

somebody showed me neovim's AI-assisted PR tag. nice, I can get disappointed all in one go instead of once per day

[–] cstross@wandering.shop 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

@antifuchs @techtakes Oh goodie they enshittified vim IS NOTHING SACRED?!? HAVE WE LIVED AND FOUGHT IN VAIN?!?!?

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 2 points 1 hour ago

It looks more like they used an LLM (Copilot) to construct programs using the new features in the language.

So more "hop on the bandwagon using LLMs to advertise" rather than "we used LLMs to develop"

OTOH "these new features are so advanced you need AI to use them" is a bit of a weird sell

[–] lurker@awful.systems 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

New “AI is not a bubble” video just dropped https://youtu.be/wDBy2bUICQY a lot of skeptical comments pointing out the flaws in this argument while the creator tries to defend themselves with mostly mediocre lines

[–] nfultz@awful.systems 10 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

AI Jobs Apocalypse is Here | UnHerd h/t naked capitalism

feels a bit critihype, idk

So, what happens to American politics when the script is flipped, and we enter a new era of white-collar precarity? We can look back to the recent past and recall that, after the 2008 recession, it was young men who got especially angry. Downwardly mobile urban millennials drifted toward radical Left-wing politics, including the Occupy Wall Street movement and both Sanders campaigns, myself included. In the current decade, the Gen-Z men shut out by elite institutions often join their grandfathers and turn toward MAGA, or worse, into Groypers. But an AI-driven white-collar apocalypse has no equivalent of the American Rescue Plan around the corner, and it will move faster through institutions because the people experiencing it — journalists, lawyers, policy staffers — are the ones who produce political legitimacy itself. When that class loses faith in the system’s stability, the political climate may quickly become volatile.

As I get older I am more and more disturbed by the selective memory of the GFC; no mention of the tea party or the fallout from the austerity measures they pushed in the middle of the country; no mention how the bailout saved banks not homes. The Tea Party won, not Occupy, and the current government is doing things beyond the Koch's wildest dreams.

If and when there is a crash, these dumbass CEOs deserve /nothing/. Let them lose their vacation houses. And, maybe grow some balls and send the fraudsters to jail where they belong.

sigh

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

the Gen-Z men shut out by elite institutions often join their grandfathers and turn toward MAGA, or worse, into Groypers.

Iirc that is not as often true as people claim it is. But yeah, not gonna click unherd to see if they have a source. Because blergh unherd.

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 12 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

unherd is a fash publication. to me this comes across as an AI take-ified rewrite of a 1994 luttwak essay i read recently, an endorsement of a revival of italian style fascism: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n07/edward-luttwak/why-fascism-is-the-wave-of-the-future

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

One ray of sunahine: when the bubble pops, there will be quite a few "billionaires" will become millionaires, and they will find that their friends in government and the media will suddenly be much less interested in being around them at all.

[–] lurker@awful.systems 9 points 19 hours ago (4 children)
[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Most expensive number 2 generator

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 2 points 1 hour ago

Hey, at least it’s efficiently making number 2 on the side while spitting out user prompted number 2s.

Apparently this sort of machine learning training pitfall I learned about a decade go in an undergraduate level class that I was like halfway paying attention to in a party school is now evidence of the impending AI apocalypse.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 7 hours ago

rolls 1, 1

I behold the paperclip calculator, and tremble in fear

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 6 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Wow, that highlighting really emphasises the insidious, nefarious behaviour. This is only a hop, skip, and jump away from, what was it again? Rhomboid? Rheumatoid bactothefuture?

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 6 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

diamondoid. None of the derivatives I can come up with sound anywhere near as dumb as the actual word.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 5 points 8 hours ago

Derpadoid Burpateria

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

slop "fact checking" is coming to LW:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hhbibJGt2aQqKJLb7/shortform-1?commentId=fE5cg6pmWrChW8Rtu

wonder what model/prompt they will use. Prolly Grok

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 3 points 2 hours ago

Time to say 'Sneerclub was correct' a lot, so we can frontload the 'factcheckers'.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago
[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I regret to inform you that the promptfans have a new fucked up way to thotpost: transcript below

transcriptscreenshot from twitter. the search bar has the following search terms in it: "BC" "before claude" a tweet body by @Jason_Dean reads: "I was born in 23 BC (Before"

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 12 points 1 day ago

Not beating the 'this is just Christianity with the labels removed' allegations.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

We're doing revolutionary calendars, huh?

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 1 day ago

the only revolutions these people are capable of is spinning their office chairs

.....when it's one on a swivel instead of some fixed-position ergo thing they acquired after reading a thotleader blogpost

[–] mirrorwitch@awful.systems 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Semi-OT but a blog post where I'm just kinda gawking at the technology that saved my daughter's life and the absurdity of comparing it to what now first comes to mind when we talk of "tech".

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Beautiful. As a dad, thank you for sharing!

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (2 children)

Posting for archival and indexing purposes: u/GorillasAreForEating found an Urbit post titled "Quis cancellat ipsos cancellores?" which complains that Aella takes it on herself to exclude people and movements from the broader LessWrong/Effective Altruist community. The poster says that Aella was the anonymous person who pushed CFAR to finally do something about Brent Dill, because she was roommates with "Persephone." He or she does not quite say that any of the accusations were untrue, just that "an anonymous, unverified report" says that some details were changed by an editor, and that her Medium post was of "dramatically lower fidelity, but higher memetic virulence" than Brent's buddies investigating him behind closed doors (Dill posted about domming a 16-year-old who he met when she was 15 and he was ~27). The poster accuses Aella of using substances and BDSM games to blur the line of consent.

The post names Joscha Bach as someone Aella tried to exclude. We recently talked abut Bach's attempt to get Jeffrey Epstein to fund an event where our friends would speak.

Often, people in messed-up situations point at a very similar situation and say "at least we are not like that." I hope that all of these people find friends who can give them perspective that none of these communities are healthy or just. Whether you are in to bull sessions or polyamory, there are healthy communities to explore in any medium-sized city!

[–] BigMuffN69@awful.systems 2 points 6 hours ago

At least we’re not like that

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

The post names Joscha Bach as someone Aella tried to exclude.

You do not under any circumstances have to hand it to Aella

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 5 points 23 hours ago

Its prudent to be skeptical of anonymous Internet posts, but its also prudent to read a Leverage staffer on how her boss "had three long-term consensual relationships with women employed by Leverage Research or affiliated organizations", close the tab, and make a note to never have anything to do with anyone from that organization in the future.

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