TechTakes

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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

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AI resorts to robot blackmail! — because Anthropic asked for a story of robot blackmail (pivot-to-ai.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

6 comments fedilink

video version

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AI coding bot allows prompt injection with a pull request (pivot-to-ai.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

3 comments fedilink

video version

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AI power and water use is through the roof, and 80–90% is each query (pivot-to-ai.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

4 comments fedilink

video version

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Google: “after billions of dollars spent, we found a brilliant and innovative way to monetize AI! You’ll never guess what it is!!!” (techcrunch.com)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

14 comments fedilink

Take that, Saltman! Bet you never thought it was possible!

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ChatGPT guessed this guys Dad's name. (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

11 comments fedilink

Transcript

A news.ycombinator.com screenshot. It has two comments. The first reads: "I told ChatGPT my mom's name the day my account got persistent memory, last april. I also told it to figure out my dad's name. Once a month or so I would ask it my mom and dad's name. By november it had figured out my dad's name. https://x.com/kenwarner/status/1859637611595214888" It has a reply saying "Unfortunately I feel like the fact that your dad's name is the same as yours somewhat diminishes that accomplishment.".

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You can’t feed generative AI on ‘bad’ data then filter it for only ‘good’ data (pivot-to-ai.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

57 comments fedilink

video version

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UK AI unicorn Builder.ai is dead — the downfall of “AGI”: A Guy Instead (pivot-to-ai.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

7 comments fedilink

video version

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eating our own dogshit (old.reddit.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

37 comments fedilink

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GitHub wants to spam open source projects with AI slop (pivot-to-ai.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

27 comments fedilink

Video version

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Chicago Sun-Times prints summer reading list full of fake books (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

9 comments fedilink

This is peak laziness. It seems that the reading list's author used autoplag to extrude the entire 60 page supplemental insert. The author also super-promises this has never happened before.

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DEFRA and Natural England creates unusably wrong peat map — with AI! (pivot-to-ai.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

1 comments fedilink

video version

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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 25th May 2025 (awful.systems)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

167 comments fedilink

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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

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Latest AI-hallucinated legal filing, from AI vendor Anthropic (pivot-to-ai.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

14 comments fedilink

Video version

Podcast version if you hate pictures

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How to make a splash in AI economics: fake your data (pivot-to-ai.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

1 comments fedilink

Video version

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Does AI make researchers more productive? What? Why would it? Apparently you can just say that and almost get published! (thebsdetector.substack.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink

This is a nice post, but it has such an annoying sentence right in the intro:

At the time I saw the press coverage, I didn’t bother to click on the actual preprint and read the work. The results seemed unsurprising: when researchers were given access to AI tools, they became more productive. That sounds reasonable and expected.

What? What about it sounds reasonable? What about it sounds expected given all we know about AI??

I see this all the time. Why do otherwise skeptical voices always have the need to put in a weakening statement like this. "For sure, there are some legitimate uses of AI" or "Of course, I'm not claiming AI is useless" like why are you not claiming that. You probably should be claiming that. All of this garbage is useless until proven otherwise! "AI does not increase productivity" is the null hypothesis! It's the only correct skeptical position! Why do you seem to need to extend benefit of the doubt here, like seriously, I cannot explain this in any way.

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Trump announces vaporware AI data centres in the United Arab Emirates (pivot-to-ai.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

3 comments fedilink

Video version

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Musk ("xAI") now claims grok was hacked (xcancel.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink

I couldn't stop fucking laughing. I'm wheezing. It's unhealthy.