gerikson

joined 2 years ago
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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 29th March 2026 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 5 points 8 hours ago

Depriving the steel beams of oxygen would help too...

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd March 2026 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 3 points 1 day ago

followup, here's a real substack interview with one of the originators of the collab novel

https://afraw.substack.com/p/first-dig-the-latrines

to be honest sounds like semi-fascist shit to me.

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd March 2026 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

A LWer is super-impressed by the time travel fantasy Illumine Lingao (an example of Chuanyue)

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YiRsCfkJ2ERGpRpen/leogao-s-shortform?commentId=J4YGrY26Ezt5oMsot

Listen to this pitch:

the vast majority of the book is devoted to discussing every single technical aspect in excruciating well-researched detail. you don't simply have a paragraph about them deciding to buy guns, you get an entire chapter of different gun experts arguing back and forth about exactly which gun to buy based on maintainability, range, differences between civilian and military models, semi automatic vs fully automatic.

Apparently they're quite unaware of the extensive number of works in Russian with similar themes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_travel#In_Russian_fiction

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd March 2026 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 4 days ago

maybe someone with a camera in SF can pop downtown and document this gathering

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HZ7CWfo4tGDAS3wEg/michael-trazzi-s-shortform?commentId=yq38DLKfe7EMciyAB

apply exposure comp b/c everyone will be pasty white

The Effective Altruism community inherits the problems of the economics profession in c/sneerclub@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 9 points 5 days ago

Rats: our ideals are universal and rooted in pure reason, discoverable through intense study and thought

Also rats: only males have the brains to understand this.

The Effective Altruism community inherits the problems of the economics profession in c/sneerclub@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 15 points 5 days ago

EA as a whole are apologetics for eugenicist billionaires, so them not giving a shit about what eugenicist billionaires don't care about is just goal-fitting behavior.

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd March 2026 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I think it's a specific genre of reportage where you objectively[1] report what you observe and let the reader draw their own conclusions.

[1] problematic term, engage!

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd March 2026 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 5 points 5 days ago

"Judges love this one weird trick!"

Aella's Influence on Rationalist Kink Practices (cursed phrase) in c/sneerclub@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Come now, we all want to be the Rat's Enemy #1, and are secretly mad you got the top spot.

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd March 2026 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 6 days ago

Don't knock scaffolding, at least it has everyday uses.

Aella's Influence on Rationalist Kink Practices (cursed phrase) in c/sneerclub@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 5 points 6 days ago (6 children)

Computer-Numerical Control controlled Consensual-Non-Consensual sex, for max brain damage

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd March 2026 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 8 points 6 days ago (5 children)

cue a thriller where a disgraced techbro billionaire is hunted by the surveillance system he gleefully created

scratch that, that will be a popular reality TV show enjoyed by millions

9
Advent of Code 2024 - the home stretch - it's been an aMAZEing year (awful.systems)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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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