this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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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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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 6 October 2025 (awful.systems)
submitted 1 month ago by blakestacey@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
307 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? 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.

Last week's thread

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

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[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (8 children)

nasb, fedi is for losers

been feeling this for a while too and wondering how to put it into words. especially in light of all the techfash, pressing climate and general market problems, etc

one of the things I've been holding onto (hoping in?) is my estimation/belief that I don't think the current state of all the deeply-fucked systems is inherently stable, or viable. as I've said here before, that very instability is part of why so many of them are engaged in trying to set things up to protect those self-same systems, as they know the swingback is coming and they want to make it as hard as possible to claw things back from them

but how long until it breaks, and with how much splash damage, are things I haven't really been able to estimate

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Im reminded of the "Rationalism is systematized winning". Post for some reason. This post and the recent musk chess post just makes me wonder about "what does winning" even mean. But in the spirit of wargames, i have not thought about it much more than that.

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

I got this AMAZING OPPORTUNITY in my inbox, because once your email appears on a single published paper you're forever doomed to garbage like this (transcript at the end):

Highlights:

  • Addresses me as Dr. I'm not a doctor. I checked, and apparently Dr. Muhhamad Imran Qureshi indeed has a PhD and is a lecturer at Teesside University International Business School (link to profile). His recent papers include a bunch of blockchain bullshit. Tesside University appears to be a legit UK university, although I'm not sure how legit the Business School is (or how legit any Business School can be, really).
  • Tells us their research is so shit that using wisdom woodchippers actually increases their accuracy.
  • One of the features is "publication support", so this might be one of those scams where you pay an exorbitant fee to get "published" in some sketchy non-peer-reviewed journal.
  • One of the covered AI tools is Microsoft Excel. If you were wondering if "AI" had any meaning.
  • Also, by god, are there so many different ChatGPT clones now? I haven't heard most of those names. I kinda hope they're as AI as Excel is.

I'm not sure which would be worse, this being a scam, or them legit thinking this brings value to the world and believing they're helping anyone.

transcriptEmail titled Revolutionize Your Research: AI-Powered Systematic Literature Review Master Class

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  • Asynchronous learning
  • Video tutorials
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[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Folks, I need some expert advice.

Our NSF grant reviews came in, and two of the four reviews (an Excellent AND a Fair, lol) have confabulations and [insert text here brackets like this] that indicate that they are LLM generated by lazy people. Just absolutely gutted. It's like an alien reviewed a version of our grant application from an parallel dimension.

Who do I need to contact to get eyes on the situation, other than the program director?

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