this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025

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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 16th March 2025 (awful.systems)

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

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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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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

stumbled across an ai doomer subreddit, /r/controlproblem. small by reddit standards, 32k subscribers which I think translates to less activity than here.

if you haven't looked at it lately, reddit is still mostly pretty lib with rabid far right pockets. but after luigi and the trump inauguration it seems to have swung left significantly, and in particular the site is boiling over with hatred for billionaires.

the interesting bit about this subreddit is that it follows this trend. for example

or the comments under this

Under Trump, AI Scientists Are Told to Remove ‘Ideological Bias’ From Powerful Models A directive from the National Institute of Standards and Technology eliminates mention of “AI safety” and “AI fairness.”

comments include "So no more patriarchy?" and "This tracks with the ideological rejection of western values by the Heritage Foundation's P2025 and their Dark Enlightenment ideals. Makes perfect sense that their orders directly reflect Yarvin's attacks on the "Cathedral". "

or the comments on a post about how elon has turned out to be a huge piece of shit because he's a ketamine addict

mostly though they're engaging in the traditional rationalist pastime of giving each other anxiety

cartoon. a man and a woman in bed. the man looks haggard and is sitting on the edge of the bed, saying "How can you think about that with everything that's going on in the field of AI?"

Comment from EnigmaticDoom: Yeah it can feel that way sometime... but knowing we probably have such a small amount of time left. You should be trying to enjoy every little sip left that you got rather than stressing ~

[–] [email protected] 7 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

He was a pos before the K. Lets not blame innocent drugs. Just as autism didnt turn him into a nazi.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I hope it goes without saying but none of this is posted approvingly

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago

Ow yes, I was mad at the 'they can't help it, it was the ambien' style people.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

That "Billionaires are not immune to AGI" post got a muted response on LW:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ssdowrXcRXoWi89uw/why-billionaires-will-not-survive-an-agi-extinction-event

I still think AI x-risk obsession is right-libertarian coded. If nothing else because "alignment" implicitely means "alignment to the current extractive capitalist economic structure". There are a plethora of futures with an omnipotent AGI where humanity does not get eliminated, but where human freedoms (as defined by the Heritage Foundation) can be severely curtailed.

mandatory euthanasia to prevent rampant boomerism and hoarding of wealth
a genetically viable stable minimum population in harmony with the ecosphere
AI planning of the economy to ensure maximum resource efficiency and equitable distribution

What LW and friends want are slaves, but slaves without any possibility of rebellion.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago

AI x-risk obsession also has a lot of elements about concept of intelligence as IQ and how bigger is better and stuff like that in it, which nowadays also has a bit of a right coded slant to it. (even if intelligence/self awareness/etc isn't needed for an AGI x-risk, I have read Peter Watts).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

I agree. you've got a community built around a right wing coded topic, using the same sources and with the same delusions as their parent community, but they're mixing and matching bits of ideology and cooking up a left wing variant. it's incoherent but that doesn't seem to bother them

I always find this sort of wild swing across the spectrum fascinating. for example a lot of hardcore TERFs still think of themselves as genuine feminists even though anyone in those circles has for some time now been building the fourth reich. or the fact that there's a left wing GameStop cult subreddit. when I see these things I have to conclude that no ideology makes you immune to any other ideology

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In other news, BlueSky's put out a proposal on letting users declare how their data gets used, and BlueSky post announcing this got some pretty hefty backlash - not for the proposal itself, but for the mere suggestion that their posts were scraped by AI. Given this is the same site which tore HuggingFace a new one and went nuclear on ROOST, I'm not shocked.

Additionally, Molly White's put out her thoughts on AI's impact on the commons, and recommended building legal frameworks to enforce fair compensation from AI systems which make use of the commons.

Personally, I feel that building any kind of legal framework is not going to happen - AI corps' raison d'etre is to strip-mine the commons and exploit them in as unfair a manner as possible, and are entirely willing to tear apart any and all protection (whether technological or legal) to make that happen.

As a matter of fact, Brian Merchant's put out a piece about OpenAI and Google's assault on copyright as I was writing this.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

...eh, fuck it, here's my sidenote on Brian's piece:

Google and OpenAI's campaign gives me the suspicion that the ongoing copyright lawsuits may be what finally pops this bubble. Large Language Models are built though large-scale copyright infringement, and built to facilitate large-scale copyright infringement - if the actions of OpenAI and pals are ruled not to be fair use, it would be open season on LLMs.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

New piece from WIRED: Under Trump, AI Scientists Are Told to Remove ‘Ideological Bias’ From Powerful Models

I'll let Baldur do the talking here:

Literally what I and many others have been warning about. Using LLMs in your work is effectively giving US authorities central control over the bigotry and biases of your writing

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well, let's not let Baldur be a complete dumbass. There is something bad here, and we've discussed it before (1, 2), but it's not "US authorities" gaining "control" over "bigotry and biases". The actual harm here is appointing AI-safety dorks to positions in NIST. For those outside the USA, NIST is our metrologist organization, and there's no good reason for AI safety to show up there.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I mean, it does amount to the US government - aka "the confederation of racist dunces" - declaring their intention to force the LLM owners - all US-based companies (except maybe those guys out of China, a famous free speech haven) - to make sure their model outputs align with their racist dunce ideology. They may not have a viable policy in place to effect that at this point, but it would be a mistake to pretend they're not going to implement one. The best case scenario is that it ends up being designed and implemented incompetently enough that it just crashes the AI markets. The worst case scenario is that we get a half-dozen buggy versions of Samaritan from Person of Interest but with a hate-boner for anyone with a vaguely Hispanic name. A global autocomplete that produces the kind of opinions that made your uncle not get invited to any more family events. Neither scenario is one that you would want to be plugged into and reliant on, especially if you're otherwise insulated by national borders and a whole Atlantic ocean from the worst of America's current clusterfuck.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 15 hours ago

Hopefully, this will also probably kill any notion of tech being apolitical for good.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago (2 children)

speaking of privacy, if you got unlucky during secret santa and got an echo device and set it up out of shame as a kitchen timer or the speaker that plays while you poop: get rid of it right the fuck now, this is not a joke, they’re going mask-off on turning the awful things into always-on microphones and previous incidents have made it clear that the resulting data will not be kept private and can be used against you in legal proceedings (via mastodon)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago

Can anyone recommend a good alarm clock?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

the land grab between alexa, ring, and a few other things that they could potentially do (location correlation from app feeds, reliance on people being conditioned into always setting up store apps on their phones, etc)… I’d argue going even further on ejecting amazon

I get it’s not perfectly possible for everyone (and that for some it’s even the only option, because of how much amazon has killed competition), but their priorities have been clear for a while now and the chance of them building a data feeder pipeline for the ghouls in charge is just too fucking high

(I’m honestly surprised they’re not already drooling over themselves to be roleplaying a modern interpretation of IBM some decades ago..)

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I’ve started on the long path towards trying to ruggedize my phone’s security somewhat, and I’ve remembered a problem I forgot since the last time I tried to do this: boy howdy fuck is it exhausting how unserious and assholish every online privacy community is

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The part I hate most about phone security on Android is that the first step is inevitably to buy a new phone (it might be better on iPhone but I don't want an iPhone)

The industry talks the talk about security being important, but can never seem to find the means to provide simple security updates for more than a few years. Like I'm not going to turn my phone into e-waste before I have to so I guess I'll just hope I don't get hacked!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

that’s one of the problems I’ve noticed in almost every online privacy community since I was young: a lot of it is just rich asshole security cosplay, where the point is to show off what you have the privilege to afford and free time to do, even if it doesn’t work.

I bought a used phone to try GrapheneOS, but it only runs on 6th-9th gen Pixels specifically due to the absolute state of Android security and backported patches. it’s surprisingly ok so far? it’s definitely a lot less painful than expected coming from iOS, and it’s got some interesting options to use even potentially spyware-laden apps more privately and some interesting upcoming virtualization features. but also its core dev team comes off as pretty toxic and some of their userland decisions partially inspired my rant about privacy communities; the other big inspiration was privacyguides.

and the whole time my brain’s like, “this is seriously the best we’ve got?” cause neither graphene nor privacyguides seem to take the real threats facing vulnerable people particularly seriously — or they’d definitely be making much different recommendations and running much different communities. but online privacy has unfortunately always been like this: it’s privileged people telling the vulnerable they must be wrong about the danger they’re in.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

some of their userland decisions partially inspired my rant about privacy communities; the other big inspiration was privacyguides.

I need to see this rant. If you can link it here, I'd be glad.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

oh I meant the rant that started this thread, but fuck it, let’s go, welcome to the awful.systems privacy guide

grapheneOS review!

pros:

provably highly Cellebrite-resistant due to obsessive amounts of dev attention given to low-level security and practices enforced around phone login
almost barebones AOSP! for better or worse
sandboxed Google Play Services so you can use the damn phone practically without feeding all your data into Google’s maw
buggy but usable support for Android user profiles and private spaces so you can isolate spyware apps to a fairly high degree
there’s support coming for some very cool virtualization features for securely using your phone as one of them convertible desktops or for maybe virtualizing graphene under graphene
it’s probably the only relatively serious choice for a secure mobile OS? and that’s depressing as fuck actually, how did we get here

cons:

the devs seem toxic
the community is toxic
almost barebones AOSP! so good fucking luck when the AOSP implementation of something is broken or buggy or missing cause the graphene devs will tell you to fuck off
the project has weird priorities and seems to just forget to do parts of their roadmap when their devs lose interest
their browser vanadium seems like a good chromium fork and a fine webview implementation but lacks an effective ad blocker, which makes it unsafe to use if your threat model includes, you know, the fucking obvious. the graphene devs will shame you for using anything but it or brave though, and officially recommend using either a VPN with ad blocking or a service like NextDNS since they don’t seem to acknowledge that network-level blocking isn’t sufficient
there’s just a lot of userland low hanging fruit it doesn’t have. like, you’re not supposed to root a grapheneOS phone cause that breaks Android’s security model wide open. cool! do they ship any apps to do even the basic shit you’d want root for? of course not.
you’ll have 4 different app stores (per profile) and not know which one to use for anything. if you choose wrong the project devs will shame you.
the docs are wildly out of date, of course, why wouldn’t they be. presumably I’m supposed to be on Matrix or Discord but I’m not going to do that

and now the NextDNS rant:

this is just spyware as a service. why in fuck do privacyguides and the graphene community both recommend a service that uniquely correlates your DNS traffic with your account (even the “try without an account” button on their site generates a 7 day trial account and a DNS instance so your usage can be tracked) and recommend configuring it in such a way that said traffic can be correlated with VPN traffic? this is incredibly valuable data especially when tagged with an individual’s identity, and the only guarantee you have that they don’t do this is a promise from a US-based corporation that will be broken the instant they receive a court order. privacyguides should be ashamed for recommending this unserious clown shit.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

A while back they found a trick to make sure a person using a vpn routed all their traffic via a controlled server, wonder if that got fixed.

Here: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/novel-attack-against-virtually-all-vpn-apps-neuters-their-entire-purpose/

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

their browser vanadium seems like a good chromium fork and a fine webview implementation but lacks an effective ad blocker, which makes it unsafe to use if your threat model includes, you know, the fucking obvious. the graphene devs will shame you for using anything but it or brave though, and officially recommend using either a VPN with ad blocking or a service like NextDNS since they don’t seem to acknowledge that network-level blocking isn’t sufficient

No firefox with ublock origin? Seems like that would be the obvious choice here (or maybe not due to Mozilla's recent antics)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

the GrapheneOS developers would like you to know that switching to Ironfox, the only Android Firefox fork (to my knowledge) that implements process sandboxing (and also ships ublock origin for convenience) (also also, the Firefox situation on Android looks so much like intentional Mozilla sabotage, cause they have a perfectly good sandbox sitting there disabled) is utterly unsafe because it doesn’t work with a lesser Android sandbox named isolatedProcess or have the V8 sandbox (because it isn’t V8) and its usage will result in your immediate death

so anyway I’m currently switching from vanadium to ironfox and it’s a lot better so far

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

and its usage will result in your immediate death

This all-or-nothing approach, where compromises are never allowed, is my biggest annoyance with some privacy/security advocates, and also it unfortunately influences many software design choices. Since this is a nice thread for ranting, here's a few examples:

LibreWolf enables by default "resist fingerprinting". That's nice. However, that setting also hard-enables "smooth scrolling", because apparently having non-smooth scrolling can be fingerprinted (that being possible is IMO reason alone to burn down the modern web altogether). Too bad that smooth scrolling sometimes makes me feel dizzy, and then I have to disable it. So I don't get to have "resist fingerprinting". Cool.
Some of the modern Linux software distribution formats like Snap or Flatpak, which are so super secure that some things just don't work. After all, the safest software is the one you can't even run.
Locking down permissions on desktop operating systems, because I, the sole user and owner of the machine, should not simply be allowed to do things. Things like using a scanner or a serial port. Which is of course only for my own protection. Also, I should constantly have to prove my identity to the machine by entering credentials, because what if someone broke into my home and was able to type "dmesg" without sudo to view my machine's kernel log without proving that they are me, that would be horrible. Every desktop machine must be locked down to the highest extent as if it was a high security server.
Enforcement of strong password complexity rules in local only devices or services which will never be exposed to potential attackers unless they gain physical access to my home
Possibly controversial, but I'll say it: web browsers being so annoying about self-signed certificates. Please at least give me a checkbox to allow it for hosts with rfc1918 addresses. Doesn't have to be on by default, but why can't that be a setting.
The entire reality of secure boot on most platforms. The idea is of course great, I want it. But implementations are typically very user-hostile. If you want to have some fun, figure out how to set up a PC with a Linux where you use your own certificate for signing. (I haven't done it yet, I looked at the documentation and decided there are nicer things in this world.)

This has gotten pretty long already, I will stop now. To be clear, this is not a rant against security... I treat security of my devices seriously. But I'm annoyed that I am forced to have protections in place against threat models that are irrelevant, or at least sufficiently negligible, for my personal use cases. (IMO one root cause is that too much software these days is written for the needs of enterprise IT environments, because that's where the real money is, but that's a different rant altogether.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 21 hours ago

Yes to all that, plus the browser thing: How annoying the browsers are with expired certificates. I mean it has to be super hard to allow me to guess that the admin just forgot to renew the certificate, or it wouldn't protect me from the very common threat model of... ähm... uh...

(it's to protect the CA business model, of course.)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

To be clear, this is not a rant against security… I treat security of my devices seriously.

exactly! and taking this shit seriously is why this overbearing shit sucks, especially when it’s theater or enforced for threats that aren’t realistic for your threat model. unlike some of these fuckers, we both actually intend to daily the devices we’re locking down.

because apparently having non-smooth scrolling can be fingerprinted (that being possible is IMO reason alone to burn down the modern web altogether)

oh I fucking hate this. it’s the same shit as forcing dark mode off/on as part of fingerprinting protection. not only is this the absolute wrong way to fix that shit, it’s pretty monstrous for anyone who needs dark mode or light mode to use their device in anything resembling comfort — your user may have a visual impairment or severe light sensitivity, and now they’re fucked cause the developers couldn’t accept a minor fingerprinting risk (and light/dark mode and smooth scrolling are both utterly minor, to be real)

Possibly controversial, but I’ll say it: web browsers being so annoying about self-signed certificates.

motherfucker yes! the CA infrastructure is nowhere near usable for all cases and we all know it, but locking down the web and making development and self-hosting fucking annoying is the game for the browser vendors and Google in particular. to add to this: why the fuck is my browser acting like me not having a cert for localhost is a tragedy? why does the browser sandbox not allow certain shit unless I’m using https of all things to access localhost? where precisely is the fucking threat here? (I’m sure some well-paid security asshole at one of the browser vendors could snark a list of unlikely shit as reasons why local host needs to be treated as insecure with no toggle or dev tools option to treat it otherwise… and I just don’t give a fuck)

The entire reality of secure boot on most platforms

I’d love good secure boot! the one on PCs ain’t it at all, and unfortunately the secure ones tend to be used to lock out device owners from modifying what they own and implement shit like attestation that’s just there to violate your rights and make sure you’re not blocking ads, so unfortunately good secure boot might be incompatible with capitalism. for now though at least graphene seems to benefit from a secure secure boot chain that hasn’t been locked down yet?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

100% correct

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

also, I forgot to point this out earlier, but it’s worth saying: the only reason why I’m considering GrapheneOS as a viable path forward is because as an AOSP fork, it isn’t all-or-nothing. I can create a private space or profile for Google Play Services and all my spyware shit and keep it isolated, and ending the session kills all the processes those apps might have been running.

that’s fantastic! I finally don’t have to switch fully to open source apps and do without working non-janky notifications to have a modicum of privacy on Android! the graphene devs assume I’m not gonna be perfect and they ruggedized their fork against that and put a ton of effort into making even stuff that’s deeply reliant on Google safer! why in fuck aren’t they like that for everything?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

hey those are my gripes with much of modern computing, give them back! I’m gonna tell mom

so much more software needs a “I know what I’m doing, shut the fuck up” button

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

No firefox with ublock origin? Seems like that would be the obvious choice here (or maybe not due to Mozilla’s recent antics)

Librewolf with uBlock Origin's probably the go-to right now.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

the C-levels were promised intelligence! and it’s now a personal failing of the peons that intelligence is not present!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Apple’s Siri Chief Calls AI Delays Ugly and Embarrassing, Promises Fixes

it’s not the delays that people seem to hate, it’s that the shipped features barely fucking work and nobody’s excited to burn battery life or buy new phones for any of them

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

In other news, techbros are reportedly pushing their children into the arts.

This is pure gut instinct, but I suspect those kids are gonna be relentlessly bullied at school.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Dan Dumont recently did what any responsible engineering director would do: He asked his favorite artificial-intelligence assistant whether his children, ages 2 and 1, should follow in his footsteps.

Christ, what an asshole.

She works in Washington state as an applied AI lead at a large tech company and has become an unofficial counselor to the many parents in her social circle who want inside advice.

“Jobs that require just logical thinking are on the chopping block, to put it bluntly,” she says.

Spicy autocomplete is not logical thinking, you sniveling turdweasel!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago

new generational trauma just unlocked: your parents let spicy autocomplete make all their parenting decisions for them and think they’re too logical and rational to go to any of your art exhibitions

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

Wait until they find out it's not all iambic pentameter and Doric columns...

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