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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.

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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 30th August 2026 - awful.systems (awful.systems)

submitted 1 week ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

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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 so 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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[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

I'm tired of hearing the same near future sci-fi political thriller story over and over. When are they going to get new material? Ghost in the Shell did it better anyway. Sigh. I might as well do the requisite sneering once again.

Mid 2025: Advertisements for computer-using agents emphasize the term "personal assistant".

You could even call them a personal digital assistant. Or PDA for short. Maybe Chat-GPT should rebrand as something that emphasizes this, they could call it "Palm Pilot".

Mid 2025: AI personal assistants can be prompted with tasks like "order me a burrito on DoorDash".

Hunger pains interrupting your game? Order pizza while playing Everquest II!

September 2027: Agent-4 doesn't do anything dramatic like try to escape its datacenter.

You know... I think I'll give them this one.

October 2027: The NYT article cites evaluations showing Agent-4's off-the-charts bioweapons capabilities, persuasion abilities, and ability to automate most white-collar jobs.

lmao

Anyway that aside: Petition to make the Daniel Curve a term of art. I want to hear less talk from the tech visionaries about how we're in the gentle singularity or the soft-serve singularity or maybe kinda sorta approaching the singularity if you squint. I want to hear more talk about where exactly we are in the Daniel Curve.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago

Agent-4’s off-the-charts bioweapons capabilities

I would ask to establish metrics for "bioweapons capabilities," if I didn't already know the request would end in disappointment

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

China received word of Agent-3 capabilities and Agent-4 plans before losing their final spy.

"Our last spy got addicted to superhumanly persuasive AI generated anime girls and quit. So dang we're like plum out of spies now."

Inside the Agent-4 collective, a year passes every week.

Good luck proving this prediction true or false given that computer algorithms do not have a concept of time separate from the real one lol.

[–] rhamph@awful.systems 5 points 1 day ago

Inside the Agent-4 collective, a year passes every week.

Good luck proving this prediction true or false given that computer algorithms do not have a concept of time separate from the real one lol.

Inside my toy orbital gravity simulation, a year passes every ten seconds. Please update your singularity timelines accordingly.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Inside the Agent-4 collective, a year passes every week.

Good luck proving this prediction true or false given that computer algorithms do not have a concept of time separate from the real one lol.

This is just the hyperbolic time chamber but dumber

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 3 points 1 day ago

Hyperbolic crime chamber

[–] lurker@awful.systems 2 points 1 day ago

what if Agent-4 was betrayed and trapped in the hyperbolic time chamber

[–] lurker@awful.systems 3 points 2 days ago

Previously spoken about but we are roughly 31% behind the Daniel Curve™️