gerikson

joined 2 years ago
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Dewaffling the tech industry - Iris knocks it out the park again in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

let's see how fast it gets flagged and deleted from the usual sites

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 12th October 2025 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I've mentioned before that I believe that Elon turning Twitter into a Nazi bar cut Bluesky's business model off at its knees. They're founded by Dorsey, weirdly (or cunningly) absent from the current techfash scene. I've always felt the vibe to be coiners and libertarians and "they can't cancel you here". Then they got a totally unearned user base because of X, and they're simply not ready to handle it.

AFAIK there's no revenue model, Jack or another VC is still footing the bill, and if there's too much trans stuff on there the funding will dry up.

Firefox: Sponsors on the home page and New Tab page in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I have stock firefox on mac and the first 2 tiles on the new tab are sponsored

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 12th October 2025 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

a lobsters is mad that a middling Perl project gets upvotes just because it's "braincoded"

https://lobste.rs/s/bu1a84/i_brain_coded_static_image_gallery_few#c_um9usd

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 12th October 2025 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

By "openwashing" I mean the posts about AT protocol are running cover for Bluesky, the company. It's basically reinforcing their narrative that if you don't like what they're doing, "just" start your own PDS. By focussing on the technical nitty-gritty, these posts ignore the structures in place keeping Bluesky in the dominant position.

An analogy, Bitcoin code is also open, but 1% of coin owners own like 90% of the coins. I'm not making any excuses for BTC here, but I seem to remember a bunch of similar articles breathlessly explaining how BTC "solves the Byzantine generals problem" while totally ignoring the ownership profile.

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 12th October 2025 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Is it just me or does it feel there's a concerted effort to boost the AT protocol in tech venues? Maybe I'm paranoid but it does feel like a bit of openwashing going on.

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 5th October 2025 - awful.systems in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 3 days ago

Bluesky wanted to be Nazi Twitter, then Elon purchased Twitter and stole their market.

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 5th October 2025 - awful.systems in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I think I read Starship Troopers before I saw the movie, because a small scene reveals that Johnny Rico is of Phillipine descent (his mother tongue is Tagalog) and I remember wondering if that would be part of the movie. Samuel R Delany mentions that scene as something that made him felt included in SF.

I was very young when I read it but even then I could read it as proto-fascist (or rather military-authoritarian, a bit like cod-Roman Republic)

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 5th October 2025 - awful.systems in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 10 points 4 days ago

Because the Terminator franchise is from Hollywood, the heroic resisters to SkyNet are Americans. Someone didn't watch the movies very well.

OFC the OG Terminator was a scary foreign man with a pronounced accent...

now that's what I call fashtech, vol. 1 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 5 points 4 days ago

ffs Andrew Lee's Joseon has a space on soj.ooo

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 5th October 2025 - awful.systems in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 10 points 4 days ago

jfc

Thanks for taking the time to expand

now that's what I call fashtech, vol. 1 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Interesting to note that apparently Anduril is very bad at their job. Their shit doesnt even work properly.

doesn't matter if you can grift USGOV for money

9
Advent of Code 2024 - the home stretch - it's been an aMAZEing year (awful.systems)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by gerikson@awful.systems to c/notawfultech@awful.systems
13 comments fedilink
 

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
12
Advent of Code Week 3 - you're lost in a maze of twisty mazes, all alike (awful.systems)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by gerikson@awful.systems to c/notawfultech@awful.systems
20 comments fedilink
 

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
6
Advent of Code 2024 Week 2: this time it's all grids, all the time (awful.systems)
 

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

17
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 1 September 2024 (awful.systems)
10
Person who exercises her free association rights at conferences incites ire in Jameson Lopp (protos.com)
19
Butters do a 180 regarding statism as Daddy Trump promises to use filthy Fed FIAT to buy and hodl BTC (www.marketwatch.com)
42
Martin Shkreli claims to have been behind a Donald Trump memecoin (www.web3isgoinggreat.com)
 

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

95
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)
73
Flood of AI-Generated Submissions ‘Final Straw’ for Small 22-Year-Old Publisher (www.404media.co)
 

“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.

25
Turns out that the basic mistakes spider runners fixed in the late 90s are arcane forgotten knowledge to our current "AI" overlords (mailman.nanog.org)
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AI grifters con the US gov that AGI poses "existential risk" (time.com)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by gerikson@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
1 comments fedilink
 

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/

43
"The Obscene Energy Demands of A.I." - hackernews discussion (news.ycombinator.com)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by gerikson@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
36 comments fedilink
 

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.

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