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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this.)
So, the Wikipedia article about āprompt engineeringā is pretty terrible. First source: OpenAI. Second: a blog. Third: OpenAI. Fourth: OpenAIās blog. ArXiv, arXiv, arXivā¦ 43 times. Hop on over to the Talk page, and we find this gem:
It is sometimes necessary to make assumptions to write an article (see WP:MNA).
Spoiler alert: that link doesnāt justify anything. It basically advises against going off on tangents: Thereās no need to rehash the fact that evolution is a fact on every damn biology page. It does not say that Wikipedia should have an article on some creationist fantasy, like baraminology or flood geology, based entirely on creationist screeds that all cite each other.
I have spent the last half-hour in the angry dome
hells yeah itās time for some action - Drew DeVault is organizing a sit-in protest of Jack Dorseyās keynote at FOSDEM 2025.
eh? I donāt see Jackie Dās keynote in the schedule, did the threat of a sit-in make them delete it? https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/ edit: oh, itās linked from Drewās post.
The people of Muskogee will have their revenge on Jack Dorsey
okay so Iāve just found a new shirt I want
there it is, sammy has gone and said people are just prompting the model wrong (I recall weāve had that bit said here earlier)
but in true sammy grift: you just need to be asking the right questions to trump intelligence. āwhy do you want to suck, as a human?ā sammy asks, not understanding a moment of humanity
how do you even define āraw, intellectual horsepowerā and how does it differ from knowing how to formulate questions mother fucker
Pretty sure thereās gonna be a contract somewhere that defines raw intelligence as āthe amount of money you make for OpenAI.ā
āRaw, intellectual horsepowerā means fucking an intellectual horse without a condom.
Oh, wait, thatās rawdogging intellectual horsepower, my mistake.
shot:
Von Neumann arguably had the highest processor-type āhorsepowerā we know of plus his breadth of intellectual achievements is unparalleled.
chaser:
But imo Grothendieck is a better comparison point for ASI as his intelligence, while being strangely similar to LLMs in some dimensions
I never thought Iād say this butā¦ donāt slander category theory like that, compared to LLMs itās downright useful
oh my god
the bit about it that I find subtly glorious (in how remarkably fuckwitted it is) is the baseline idea of āintellectual horsepowerā
Iām not surprised that this is a view they (of the company thatās effectively going ājust 12 more DCs bro itāll be enough compute bro I promise bro just watchā) hold and consider in such a simple mechanism-rating scale
but it is funny as fuck
What they promise: intelligence systems, revolutionary agent which can take over tasks!
What we get: https://youtu.be/izazdBpraC8
This is extremely tangential to the areas of sneer interest, but seeing as this is the only technology related community I am in, Iām putting it here.
This song has been making the rounds on the charts/social media and I refuse to believe that it isnāt about the package management tool apt
I hope Toni Basil and the Ting Tings get big royalty cheques.
the writers of hey mickey have a writing credit on it, but the ting tings got shafted.
A shame. Seems like they were clearly inspired by it ā¦ I guess you canāt copyright a vibe.
yoooooooooooooo
of course it is one in a long tradition of tech-tangential songs, including this banger about the inevitable collapse of tech bubbles
I remember boten anna as a tech song example
a couple weeks back, I was (bc reasons) looking around to see how to turn off googās annoying gemini bullshit in an account, and you can!
except then even after doing that, accounts in that org still got prompts (in the form of in-app banners, and sparklebuttons in shit like gmail) to Try The Model
it looks like people arenāt biting enough, because now you get it whether you like it or not, for the low low price of pushing up your base account fee! and I checked in one org - āGemini Appā is disabled org-wide, but the fucking prompt is immediately in the UI (and you get a modal popover opening gmail)
fuck these people so much
Oh well. Nothing screams healthy business like force-feeding your product to every customer who canāt hammer the conveniently hidden opt-out button fast enough. Iām sure Gemini is doing great.
oh, no no
nooooo no no no
there isnāt an opt-out button
there is only:
- āContinueā,
- āLearn Moreā
Hello, Iād like to punch you in the groin. Will you accept ~or would you like to learn more~?
Sorry, I didnāt quite catch that. Did you say you accept?
Ah, you donāt want to be punched in the groin. Thatās OK, I understand. We value your painless existence very much.
Now, obviously we cannot let you opt out of the Strictly Necessary punches in the groin. Surely you understand that if itās necessary to punch you in the groin, your permission or lackthereof is irrelevant. Rest assured, this applies only when we really have to punch you in the groin.
What, do you want me to list all the possible circumstances in which one might be obligated to punch you in the groin? Donāt be unreasonable, now. Iām sure you know it when you see it.
That aside, I presume we can punch you in the groin for functional purposes? The kind that may not be strictly necessary, but serve a purpose in the functioning of our service.
Oh, we canāt? Itās OK, you have the right to make that choice. We donāt judge. Anyway, we take it that youāre probably at least cool with us punching you in the groin for the purposes of analyzing your behavior to improve our groin punching. Let me know if you decide you donāt want us to do that anymore.
Oh, I thought you were cooler than that. Alright, if you hate the working class and want to make it harder for the poor, overworked developers to improve your experience, weāll do it your way. I guess weāll have to make do with just the groin punches that are strictly necessary or for marketing purposes.
Ah, arenāt you observant. Have you ever noticed that all the adverts you get are really terrible? Thatās because advertisers need to be able to punch you in the groin to find out what you like and to make their ads more appealing to you. Just food for thought. But if you really insistā¦
Fine, fine. Marketing groin punches are out. As for your question, no we donāt identify as an advertising company per se. But we are partnered with other companies that are in fact advertising companies. Would you like to adjust your preferences for our groin punching partners?
Well maybe to you it looks like the opt-out process we just went through should also cover this part but can we really know if we donāt look?
Whoās a good puppy? Youāre a good puppy, yes you are! ā¤ļø
Will you deny us permission to punch you in the groin on behalf of AAAAAAAAAAA Inc. or will you not?
OK, so we can only punch you in the groin on behalf of AAAAAAAAAAA Inc. for the purposes of Legitimate Interest?
It means the kinds of purposes where there is a legitimate interest to punch you in the groin.
Why would you ask if you didnāt want me to answer? Fine, thatās a no for Legitimate Interest based groin punching on behalf of AAAAAAAAAAA Inc.
Will you deny us permission to punch you in the groin on behalf of AAAAAAAAAAB Inc. or will you not?
Oh, we have a total of six hundred and sixteen thousand six hundred and sixty-six partners in our crotch impactizing network.
Indeed, we are proud to have such a wide network of trusted allies.
Ugh, fine. I guess I can check the end of the list to see if thereās a way to make a selection for all of them at once. Honestly, this form is starting to make me a bit dizzy as well.
Wow, who knew flipping through all those pages would take so long. Thereās a line in here that says ādisagree to allā, but thereās no checkbox or anything. Itās just there. Clicking it doesnāt seem to change anything. You can probably assume it worked.
Please calm down, weāre almost done. Would you like to accept and save?
Well it sounds like I mean āaccept and save the options you just setā, not the ones we offered initially, doesnāt it?
Your groin punching settings have been applied. I donāt think there were any mistakes, but if you need to change the settings, you can find the form hidden somewhere in this house, assuming we remembered to put it there.
this is so wildly on point
yours?
(it should become an internet copypasta and drift into mass consciousness)
Thanks. I wrote this last night not expecting it to become so long, but I like to think the real work was done by thousands of very clever people with highly sophisticated moral compasses pretending not to understand privacy legislation.
Im gonna build a special circle in hell for these people, together with the āyesā or āask me again laterā people. On this circle all the software your stack depends on will break your build and releases a new release every friday at 5. Whohahhahah
Google+ but worse
little known historical fact: G+ was actually the mark that service got on its popularity exam
some of the first research science on promptfondlers and model-affine dipshits is starting to see the light of day and, in what will surprise probably 0% of our regulars, it confirms some things
(I have grumped about their desire for outsourced thinking in the past myself)
Thanks for sharing this. Also
using your own head must weigh far too heavy
absolute chefās kiss
being absolutely incensed at blithely rambunctious imbeciles seems to be (one of?) my wordsmithing balmer peaks
(I have mixed feelings about that)
haha thanks
Some news on the people who own/run protonmail. They are pro Trump
mv protonmail protrumpmail
fucking hell. well i guess moving all my shit elsewhere has become my midweek project instead of my procrastinate-project.
EDIT: [rereads and comprehends the tuta addendum] well. cool. i think iām going to reschedule that āmove everythingā to after my āscream and cry into a pillowā. anyone have any other recs?I am also in the āscream and cryā phase of this. However, I have already decided on the following replacements for non-email:
- Mullvad VPN
- Ente for photos and photo backup
2a. their authenticator also slaps - Filen for cloud storage[1]
- Bitwarden for password management
4a.Keyguard is great if you are on Android. I am looking into[2] other (non CLI) Bitwarden-compatible password managers for DesktopI should not have suggested Keyguard, since I am not aware if it has been audited. It was probably a mistake for me to use it at all. Sorry everyone.
edit: Should mention that I am also looking into a calendar replacement.
edit2: maybe mailbox.org? They are recommended on PrivacyGuides.org.
1: This is more like a stopgap for me until I confirm they are worth sticking with or find someone better. The 29.99ā¬ 100GB lifetime storage may be worthwhile for this (though I cannot say whether I am confident they will be around in 5 years, this can at least serve as a short-term solution).
2: lassitudeThis might be a good basis for a sticky post in NotAwfulTech!
Iām all for stickying a post if one appears!
Thanks! I actually plan on putting a couple of things on Mataroa:
- āHere is a list of shit you can do to make your computer suck less (would contain the above)ā
- āHere is how to make your Pixel phone less frustrating in 2024 (basically, how to use user profiles to create a dumb phone without the massive security issues or headache of āoh, actually I do need that app occasionallyā)ā
(Aside: if anyone can recommend a better blogging platform, I would appreciate it. I like Mataroa for its privacy focus, minimalism, and low cost-of-leaving. The only issue I have is lack of KaTeX/MathML/however-the-fuck-omg-why-is-TeX-still-trying-to-hurt-me-in-2025 support.)Aside: if anyone can recommend a better blogging platform, I would appreciate it.
so I canāt promise better, but youāre eligible for an account on the awful.systems blogging platform if you want one. it has MathML! it has jank! you can modify the frontend by PRing into a repo!
it hasnāt seen much use yet, but I was planning on posting a short story Iām writing there when itās done. I can also say that as much as I donāt like WriteFreely on the web, its phone app is surprisingly ok
I have the outline of a write-up about about category errors and measuring proxies (e.g. reported sexual orientation). I think I am a poor writer but the only critique Iāve ever gotten was from a ācolleagueā who writes like he gets paid by the word1. I will consider sharing the post once it is finished. ā¤
1: one rejection on a collaboration with this guy was essentially āhave you nerds heard of ābrevityā or āwitā?ā ā from computer scientists š
Filen does photos too, so you could consolidate 2 and 3 into one. I went and bought 500 GB lifetime storage on their Black Friday offer. Letās see if they stick around. So far the experience has been smooth.
And if you mention mailbox.org, let me throw Posteo.com into the mix. Basically the same offer, but where mailbox presents itself a bit more business-like, Posteo seems to market itself towards individuals. I moved my mails there and are quite happy with it, but you have to roll encryption yourself. No auto solutions like Proton or Tuta.
Last time this came up, I considered Posteo but decided to hold off (I think it was actually you who suggested it ā¤). There was a concern I had about deleting an account due to inactivity, but I think I just misunderstood or misremembered something on PrivacyGuides. This might be a good choice.
As far as Filen for photos, I am reasonably confident that Ente will stick around (they seem to take sustainability seriously). Stuff like this worries me about Filen (emphasis mine):
What else is planned for Black Friday this year?
As every year, weāve planned a special surprise to give back to our loyal users this Black Friday. Just like in previous years, we wonāt be revealing any details just yet. All I can suggest is to check in with us around November 18thāyou wonāt want to miss it!Are lifetime plans stackable?
Yes, weād like to emphasize once again that all types of our plans can be easily combined. Subscription plans only expire based on their individual purchase dates.
protonās ceo is, at this moment, trying to post through it on multiple official company accounts
thank fuck I switched to tuta
[I hold up a hand to my earpiece and make a horrified face]
a second milkshake has hit the duck (cw: fetishized racism, you know the one)
Iām waiting to hear back from tuta about what the fuck but this might be the reason why I hop providers again
image description (but see cw)
so somebody at tuta had the idea to write this post on their official account on Twitter:
Donāt get cucked by Big Techās invasive policies. Keep your private data safe and secure with state of the art end-to-end encryption with Tutanota.
and then the image attached to the post is a cuckold porn meme I started to describe here but wonāt??? because describing the image put me in a really terrible mood??? itās SFW but trust me you donāt want it. the Black men in the picture have had their faces covered by logos for Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook in that order. the white woman in the picture does not have her face covered. impact font bottom text: āYOUR PERSONAL DATAā
Well, this Andy dipshit gave an absolute dogshit apology on reddit.
Snippets below:
sophistry and bullshitting
First, while the X post was not intended to be a political statement, I can understand how it can be interpreted as such, and it therefore should not have been made. While we will not prohibit all employees from expressing personal political opinions publicly, it is something I will personally avoid in the future. I lean left on some issues, and right on other issues, but it doesnāt serve our mission to publicly debate this. It should be obvious, but I will say that it is a false equivalence to say that agreeing with Republicans on one specific issue (antitrust enforcement to protect small companies) is equal to endorsing the entire Republican party platform.
andy doesn't know his head from the DNC mascot
Second, officially Proton must always be politically neutral, and while we may share facts and analysis, our policy going forward will be to share no opinions of a political nature. The line between facts, analysis, and opinions can be blurry at times, but we will seek to better clarify this over time through your feedback and input.
The exception to these rules is on the topics of privacy, security, and freedom. These are necessarily political topics, where influencing public policy to defend these values, often requires engaging politically.
The operations of Proton have always reflected our neutrality. For example, recently we refused pressure to deplatform both Palestinian student groups and Zionist student groups, not because we necessarily agreed with their views, but because we believe more strongly in their right to have their own views.
Going from, i will not make any more political statements to
I lean left on some issues, and right on other issues
Is funny, also which issues, come on be specific.
also which issues
I know this one!
- lefty on weed or sex work or w/e
- but fuck identity politics and what is this ladder doing here
Here is their response:
@mav Yes, this was bad. I did not take a screenshot back then (the post was deleted after 30 minutes), but I scrolled all my way through Mastodon to find our apology:
https://mastodon.social/@Tutanota/108910936764865962
https://mastodon.social/@Tutanota/108910937813834878
This was a mistake, we apologized & we made sure that we would never post something similar again.
At Tuta, we foster honesty, respect & diversity.
We are here to fight for privacy & against Big Tech surveillance. We want everyone to get the respect they deserve.and this:
@shalf We set up guidelines that all team members on social media duty need to adhere to. We also created a social media review group where we post & discuss every proposal before actually publishing. And it has worked fine ever since. :)
Content of Apology
Dear Privacy Fans,
Last week, on Friday, a post was made on our social media profiles which goes against our core values as team members and as a company. This post was made in poor judgement, without stopping and examining the underlying racist and sexist problems posed by this meme template, and it does not represent the culture and environment of the Tutanota Team. After a period of approximately 30 minutes the offensive post was removed from all platforms and a ābriefā apology was posted.
This brief apology does not go far enough to address this mistake and we would like to update everyone on how we are working to address this issue internally and how we will make sure that this does not happen again. As a company we are working with all of our team members to foster a culture that respects diversity in all forms. This is both on a personal level between colleagues, but also at an institutional level by working to create structures which allow diversity to flourish.
I meanā¦ itās an apology, I donāt know what I was expecting. this still feels like a bigger, redder flag than the one cop who called them a honeypot (and at the same time didnāt seem to know what tuta is) ā is this really a service I feel safe recommending marginalized people use? probably not, they should use signal. is it even suitable for the āgrandma & drug dealerā use case? that questionās a bit more difficult.
could they really have said or done anything to fix this? shit, I donāt know. maybe I need to dig a lot more into who and what tuta actually is. I ran into one of their (former?) developers on mastodon and they seem to outwardly be marginalized and antifascist. if thatās what tutaās composed of internally, then Iām a lot more able to trust them. until I do that checking though, I donāt think Iāll recommend tuta to anyone who might need it ā the opsec risk of trusting your keypair to a company run by assholes is very high, especially in the current climate.
I agree. Currently I canāt recommend any email providers. Hopefully Posteo works out, but at this point I am strongly considering just starting my own competitor in the vein of Signal messenger. Basically āwe think of email as a public good.ā
Iād love to work on something like that. have you checked out any of soatokās work on federated key infrastructure? I can dig up some links if you havenāt and it seems interesting; I understand soatok is developing it with the possibility that it could be an enabling technology for federated end-to-end encrypted email in mind.
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deleted this because i realized i canāt even explain how email works, why am i proposing anything
jfc
Someone should write a dissertation about that porn video and the memes.
Shitās so diseased its a sequel to Tuskegee. They cooked this cack with CIA-grade crack.
(I have no rational way to respond to this - Iām just trying some Dracula Flow-type shit and hoping it lands.)
Scooter pulls out Richard Lynnās national IQ figures. https://archive.is/BJ6bd
Iām sure Iām not the first to note it, but there is a kind of irony in Scott and the gang using such a clear example of a motte-and-bailey argument (got to find a better phrase for that. Maybe some pithy reference to Patton at Calais to maintain the history theme? Inflatable Tank Defense?) in regards to IQ. When talking among friends they treat IQ tests like they are a strong correlate with innate intelligence, no caveats. As such IQ test scores are a reason to ignore environmental factors and not bother investing in equity-minded interventions. But when someone makes the obviously racist conclusion too visible, the argument shifts to be about how actually the correlations between IQ and environmental factors are obvious and really this supports anti racism. Itās a straightforward form of decontextualization that relies on completely ignoring the entire history and contemporary arguments around IQ to defends a single data point. Of course once everyone agrees with that data point they can go right back to the wildly racist nonsense that they were doing in the first place.
Only got a paragraph in because of the cheerful citation of aporia (the big Nazi website)
I love how he goes on and on about how it actually totally makes sense for the average IQ in Malawi to be 60 because most people donāt graduate school, ignoring that Lynnās methodology wasnāt up to any basic standard
And by love I mean I fucking hate it
oh my god i didnāt catch that this was astro slate star and thought i was reading some overtly racist piece of shit instead of a covert racist piece of shit. i havenāt kept up with him lately but this this seems very fucked up even by scottās standards.
isnāt it racist / dumb to say they have 60 IQ?
no according to Kirkegaard
Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu (pause to catch breath) uh.
A well at least the mask is totally off now.
E: and a thing that has been bothering me, it is quite fucked up for somebody with Scotts education to go along with this argument about disabled people that easily.
content warning for this paragraph
(Not that this is the first time he forgets he has an official education, and cant just ignore that (yes im still mad about the time he said āwell she had mental health issues and was a liarā or something about the woman who tragically ended her life after accusing parts of the community of sexual abuse, and didnt mention that a reputation like that would increase the risk of abuse)).
āIsnāt this a racist thing to say? Not according to Hitler!ā
1000 out of 1000 mengeles agree
jesus fucking christ
bonus steve sailer in the comments
That isnāt a bonus. He is always in the comments. <include OkayButThatsWorseYouDoGetHowThatsWorseRight.gif>
This is what I get for not following these people!
It remains one of those small !!fun!! facts that while Marxbro got permad for being annoying and correct about Marx, Sailer only got a temp ban while being wrong, racist but nice (he has been banned at least once, but racists play by the Tusken Raider rules if not permad)
I donāt understand this comment (largely for not knowing where any of these things happened) and since itās the tail end of a Friday at the tail end of a long and stupid week
I think thatās okay. I think Iām just not going to ask this once. Just not know a thing, as a bit. Itāll be novel!
It was all a long time ago. In the time of myth and legend. When the mastodons roamed reddit.
new developments in things understanding by promptfondlers https://feddit.uk/post/22751391
Underlying original post: a Twitter bluecheck says,
Sometimes in the process of writing a good enough prompt for ChatGPT, I end up solving my own problem, without even needing to submit it.
Matt Novak on Bluesky screenshots this and comments,
AI folks have now discovered āthinkingā
Possibly Iām the last to hear about this one, but seeing as proton mail has come up here a few times before: the founder and ceo Andy Yen is apparently a Trump fan.
Great pick by @realDonaldTrump. 10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned. People forget that the current antitrust actions against Big Tech were started under the first Trump admin.
(from the beginning of december, on the nomination of trump staffer Gail Slater to antitrust post at the doj)
Sorry I and some others missed this post talking about the tweet so we have two top level ones atm. My more sensational post about the subject got a bit more attention. So you were not late but early.
Free SFnal short story idea, came to me literally in a dream:
Dude is living his best life, beatiful house, beatiful wife, gets a job doing computer stuff āimproving the worldā. But his big fancy work computer is wasting a lot of space so he reformats it/installs Nix, and suddenly everythings gone, all grey wireframe, no way out. Turns out he was given root to his own simulation and thereās no backup.
Feels I should have read this somehwere but havenāt read short SF in ages soā¦
Did my regular check in of a q-pilled family memberās facebook page. Zuckerbergās new fash turn is not being received well as he is being read as the worm that he is. i.e. they are still mad about the anti-vax fact checking.
I am sorry you have this family member.
Itās ok, itās not your fault!
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Looks like LW/Lightcone managed to convince enough people to give then $2M, which will totally not be used to settle sexual assault lawsuits in the future.
It will instead be used to purchase another castle in which to perform SA
Crying in LW
It was a stately home goddammit! Stop weakmanning meeeeeeeeee
But how are we supposed to grift our absurd ideology into respectability without having a stately English manor to entertain people in??
Like every other ācharityā, rent a room at some super expensive hotel, hire the most expensive cooks and give all your potential donors a free invite, and massive gifts.
Donāt confuse the Conference Castle with the (Non)Consent Castle!
