Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 7th June 2026
2026-05-31 23:18 UTC
Replies (40)
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@lurker@awful.systems 2026-06-01 00:05
Porting this over: Hinton believes LLMs have gained consciousness Bonus: This Emile Torres article on how Bernie Sanders and Neil DeGrasse Tyson have gotten mixed up with Yud and co.
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@Architeuthis@awful.systems 2026-06-01 07:48
There’s a Basilisk reference in the new 007 game, I guess the robot devil is firmly mainstream now.
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@BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 2026-06-01 16:40
Amnesty International has officially called for an outright ban on gen-AI
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@blakestacey@awful.systems 2026-06-01 17:33
A keynote talk suggested, “Do away with a physics midterm, ask students to converse with AI Isaac Newton.” In the quotes, we find the useful suggestion that the program could be ELIZA-sized. — Hi, AIsaac! Can you tell me about physics? — Go away. — What? — You’re a moron and you’re TRYING TO STEAL MY IDEAS. — Look, AIsaac, I don’t think— — DID LEIBNIZ PUT YOU UP TO THIS? — — just GO AWAY I have MERCURY FUMES TO BREATHE.
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@anise@awful.systems 2026-06-01 20:45
OT: Finally had to break with a long-time friend after he started sliding more and more into fascism. Feeling quite overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted right now.
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@nfultz@awful.systems 2026-06-01 21:23
My old job had a last minute investor call - “startpage is benefiting significantly from AIO backlash” did not expect that and pretty mixed feelings. Like yeah AIO is bad but don’t run into the open arms of the long tail adtech industrial complex marketing monetization engine either :|
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@fiat_lux@lemmy.zip 2026-06-01 23:02
Time for me to eat a hat: Anthropic confidentially submits draft S-1 to the SEC
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@Soyweiser@awful.systems 2026-06-01 23:19
Today from the ‘you have got to be fucking kidding me’- dept Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked
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@antifuchs@awful.systems 2026-06-02 10:59
Here’s a pretty extensive rant/critique of how specifically GitHub is awful to use (and compares it to gitlab and also forgejo/codeberg). Code forges render an empty repository using less than a million bytes challenge level impossible, etc etc
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@o7___o7@awful.systems 2026-06-02 21:46
So here in Nashville, Elon and our state government have conspired to attempt a Tesla tunnel that starts at the state capitol, goes under the Cumberland River, and exits our airport (BNA) whether the city wants it or not. (It’s “not”). Setting aside the race to determine whether a void in the local limestone fills with water or radon first, I wanted to help come up with a catchy title for the as yet unnamed car hole: BNA Underground Transit Tunnel
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@schnoopy@awful.systems 2026-06-03 00:03
Dunno if it’s been posted yet but apparently microsoft is starting to get sick of losing money and changed billing for copilot. The subreddit is melting down old.reddit.com/r/GithubCopilot/ Very funny to watch
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@CinnasVerses@awful.systems 2026-06-03 05:02
Major investment analysis firm Morningstar is looking for words on the SpaceX IPO and picked “We think the company has been significantly overvalued and investors will have opportunities to buy the stock at more attractive levels after the IPO” (Independent UK). Even something as simple as picking a Total US Stock Market index fund instead of a S&P500 fund or NASDAQ-100 fund would reduce your exposure. If you control your investments, disinvesting is not that hard.
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@YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 2026-06-03 06:42
So apparently Trump’s National Design Bureau has been busy. I think the substack here may be slightly too conspiratorial. A lot of the staging environment stuff indicates (imo) a desire to replace or create something that may or may not actually include the capability to do so, especially when it requires working with other federal agencies or otherwise establishing human and organizational infrastructure in addition to the digital. That being said there’s something very bad about the US government taking the same attitude to privacy, accountability, and information security that silicon valley normally does, especially when doing so is actively violating several laws.
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@rook@awful.systems 2026-06-03 07:21
This seems like it is probably a good thing. leidendeclaration.ai It does feel a bit “art of war” though… someone patiently explaining to a bunch of people who really should know better that they shouldn’t do obviously bad and wrong things.
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@Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 2026-06-03 09:33
A second vibecoded Aella website has hit the building www.knockrup.com
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@gerikson@awful.systems 2026-06-03 09:54
George Santos got reported(!) for insider trading on Kalshi: www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/…/prodigal-son
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@BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 2026-06-02 22:34
Martin Scorsese’s jumped on the AI train, seemingly believing the plagiarism machine can help with storyboarding. Obligatory meme (yoinked off Discord’s GIF search, AI extruded itself, ironically enough):
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@blakestacey@awful.systems 2026-06-03 18:27
“I personally worry that the EA community has over-learned the lessons of FTX” lesswrong.com/…/lighthaven-east-a-feasibility-stu…
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@istewart@awful.systems 2026-06-03 20:17
Speaking of Aella (I really shouldn’t), many have probably already seen this Liberal Currents article that leans heavily on her web-survey sex research dataset: liberalcurrents.com/the-interracial-cuck-porn-the… The publication seems to have plenty of traction on Bluesky, for what that’s worth, but I think this particular example needs to be retained as an exhibit of the hazards of rehabilitating American liberalism. A low-level affinity for the existing tech industry is always there, as its growth underlaid the benefits that make liberalism appealing. And that means the doorway for entryism by the tech-fascist freaks is always open, and then you’re never more than a couple fundraising cycles (whether electoral or investment) away from being right back in this exact same mess.
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@o7___o7@awful.systems 2026-06-03 22:19
CW: USA Politics That suppressed Democratic National Committe 2024 “postmortem” report turns out to have been pure slop, with essentially no references and entirely made-up charts and plots. Looks like the DNC chairman appointed his beat buddy to the job with zero oversight, and this was the result. The podcast “It Could Happen Here” does a good job of analysis (disgusted), but long-time sneerers will feel the futility of getting into the weeds on an extruded textual artifact: iheart.com/…/whats-in-the-dncs-2024-autopsy-33569… Absolutely peak shitlib stuff.
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@scruiser@awful.systems 2026-06-03 23:41
lesswrong continues to mix sinophobia in with its AI crithype: lesswrong.com/…/china-won-t-win-the-ai-race-but-w… Previously, on awful.system: awful.systems/post/4103825 This article has the highlight of identifying the horrible cynical dystopian move of China’s government in response to AI and LLMs of… checks notes… protecting worker rights and workers from mass firings “An arbitration panel ruled in favor of a map data collector whose entire department was laid off and replaced with artificial intelligence. The panel found that the company’s adoption of A.I. was a voluntary move to remain competitive and did not warrant the employee’s firing. Companies that benefit from technology must, at the same time, adopt “social responsibilities” and protect worker rights, the panel ruled.” The author feels the need to emphasize how bad China is. There are quite a few examples of the Chinese state punishing people for speaking out about true problems. There is Li Wenliang, a doctor who posted to a group chat about COVID before it was officially acknowledged and was forced to sign a police document admitting he had broken a law by spreading false rumours. His reprimand was later withdrawn. The advantage of the US system appears to be a greater ability to be transparent, in particular for a concerned person in the know to blow the whistle publicly. Hahaha, no… For example, in Florida, DeSantis has the home of a fired state worker raided for her accessing her old work email (trying to collect accurate COVID numbers, iirc). This lesswronger is so close to getting it but doesn’t quite make the leap to ‘are we the baddies’. They list out some bad ways the US has used AI and they do acknowledge But I’m very aware that I’ve been inculcated in a media and cultural environment that says, in its most kind form, be suspicious of non-Western states. But somehow hold out on actually changing there mind or overcoming their biases.
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@lurker@awful.systems 2026-06-04 05:41
On Anthropic (and some other AI companies) and AI consciousness the final paragraph is the best part: ”Moreover, we should be skeptical when most of the noise on this topic is coming from the industry itself. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has repeatedly dangled the possibility of AI consciousness in interviews. And his company’s research frequently makes bold claims about their models showing humanlike behavior, such as supposedly harboring “emotions.” Just remember that it’s easier for AI companies to string us along with wild Skynet doomsday scenarios instead of confronting the tech’s far mundane consequences currently playing out before our eyes.”
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@lurker@awful.systems 2026-06-04 05:43
The State of Florida is also the next one in the long line of lawsuits against OpenAI
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@fullsquare@awful.systems 2026-06-04 10:16
ed zitron went on bloomberg podcasts, these might be actual end times
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@gerikson@awful.systems 2026-06-04 20:27
CW M:tG weirdo Zvi’s slobsack + Xhitter references, but he accuses an OpenAI / Palantir-funded PAC boosting a fake “AI doomer” account calling for violence: thezvi.substack.com/p/ai-171-false-flag?open=fals…
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@EponymousBosh@awful.systems 2026-06-05 00:02
Off-topic but this seems like a place that appreciates an insane legal dispute: techdirt.com/…/everyone-in-this-lego-dispute-shou…
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@o7___o7@awful.systems 2026-06-05 00:19
They want to build a Woe Engine next yo our zoo. change.org/…/nashville-zoo-says-no-to-proposed-da…
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@CinnasVerses@awful.systems 2026-06-05 02:31
S&P have decided not to allow SpaceX early entry into the index after all reuters.com/…/sp-global-keeps-fast-entry-proposal… “To be included in the S&P 500, a company must be profitable under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles in its most recent quarter as well as for the sum of its most recent four quarters, according to one of the rules S&P left unchanged.”
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@sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 2026-06-05 04:51
“Claude, draw me a slide to advertise Claude. Make sure to use the word “Claude” 17 times.” “You got it boss” Spoiler for obviously AI generated image because really who wants to see that nonsense anymore source
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@Soyweiser@awful.systems 2026-06-05 21:19
In Buttcoin related news, apparently Michael J. Saylor has sold some of his bitcoins because he was running out of money and we reached sub 60k.
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@antifuchs@awful.systems 2026-06-06 18:36
Today in signs of changing times, “we used to call that a botnet”: blog.includesecurity.com/…/the-smart-tv-in-your-l…
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@lurker@awful.systems 2026-06-06 19:05
Borrowing Gary’s take on this since its the first one I found TLDR: A lot of AI company stocks dropped last night, half a trillion dollars gone. Trump is considering having a government stake in OpenAI and other leading AI companies (aka thinly veiled bailout)
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@BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 2026-06-06 19:47
Found a fun sneer at AI anthromoporphisation in the arXiv: If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II
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@nfultz@awful.systems 2026-06-06 19:56
stackoverflow.com/…/how-can-i-avoid-using-llms-as… For me, the ideal usage case for LLMs are not prompts like “write this app” or “write this functionality” which indeed will often wreck havoc, but instead write simple functions. Sure, I can implement a matrix multiplication algorithm or search for optimised versions of it, but so can the LLM in a matter of seconds. Please, just fucking don’t, BLAS and sparse pack and the netlib exists for a reason. Matrix multiply only sounds simple to you because you don’t actually care that much. The last thing anyone wants or needs is to start a new job and have to debug your awful regurgitated Numerical Recipes In C, incorrectly ported to python, AT SCALE.
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@Soyweiser@awful.systems 2026-06-07 06:52
So i have been using DuckDuckGo a bit more, and really disappointed to see they have basically banned rationalwiki.
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@sinedpick@awful.systems 2026-06-07 15:28
This is OT and reveals how much I interact with the orange website but I still found it very funny. if sneak of all people finds your adoration of Ayn Rand idiotic, then you’ve truly fallen down the wrong path.
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@YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 2026-06-07 17:49
Tom’s hardware is normally pretty boostery imo. For example, they published an article about token costs getting to be enough of a problem that Altman had to address it and somehow managed to reference “tokenmaxxing” without using the meme template of the guy jamming a stick into the wheel of his own bike. Also they notably don’t reference the increases in token pricing as the VC subsidies run out, which is somehow both less surprising than the lack of answering and also a more serious omission.
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@blakestacey@awful.systems 2026-06-07 21:17
A lolsob moment: When the CEO was questioned about “when the $5 Uber rides” end w/r/t token usage, he was confused at the notion the shit was even subsidized. bsky.app/profile/…/3mnq3btjmfc2u
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@blakestacey@awful.systems 2026-06-07 21:10
Is our children learning?! "Failing grades soar as professors see greater AI usage, dwindling math skills in UC Berkeley computer science classes" https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/failing-grades-soar-as-professors-see-greater-ai-usage-dwindling-math-skills-in-uc-berkeley/article_16fad0bf-02cb-4b8c-8d88-888ffd9f8608.html
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@o7___o7@awful.systems 2026-06-04 00:54
Shang Tsung contracting anemia after devouring too many `souls.md`