this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
19 points (95.2% liked)

TechTakes

2586 readers
68 users here now

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.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Want to wade into the sandy surf of the abyss? 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.)

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] lurker@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think Trash Future had a great statement when Richard Dawkins was going on about Claudia that applies to this, which was "you don't have put in the the newspaper that you hug your stuffed animals and tell them good night."

[–] TinyTimmyTokyo@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

The rsync slop-code scandal (mentioned here earlier) has now blown up in rsync's github issues tab. And of course on the orange site.

[–] BurgersMcSlopshot@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The "C is too hard for the AI so have the AI rewrite it in Rust" take is just so galaxy-brained.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I strongly suspect there are an uncomfortably large number of Rust enthusiasts who tacitly assume that all the type-checking/borrow-checking/object lifetime tracking are primarily enabling features for AI coding.

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago

i have already seen ai enthusiasts make quite clear that they imagine the purpose of formal theorem verification is to act as a bolt on for llms

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I want to believe that's next-level trolling. It's too funny to be true.

[–] sus@programming.dev 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

The manager of the store says:
"Stop. You know nothing. You have baked 0 bread loaves by hand. No one has ever depended on your bread. You are a finger-wagging "they put dog poo in my bread" type in an era where you hide in plain sight coasting on the moral high ground of baking homemade bread from scratch at home without poo. You can't ship bread, can't adapt, can't even realize that a bread shop is not the place for this kind of attitude."

dogshit bread is the future, so you better get over it.

[–] kgMadee2@mathstodon.xyz 4 points 1 day ago

@TinyTimmyTokyo @BlueMonday1984
> OP's language seems as if it belongs to someone who trains their children that gender and sex are different and sincerely hopes his son will play with dolls
Says Mx. keysmash username, as if it was a bad thing 🧐

[–] mirrorwitch@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

A detailed look at what kind of slop code is being added to rsync and how exactly slop codes does, allegedly, "tests". Somehow it's just what I expected and worse than I thought.

https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/116667218484408879

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

OK sysadmin question: how can I “pin” a last-known good version in apt?

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

https://wiki.debian.org/AptConfiguration#Using_pinning

Beware that down the line you may run into dependency resolution issues (but hopefully the upstream situation is resolved by then)

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 4 points 2 days ago

If you ignore the AI images (not sure how much of an excuse 'it was a joke' is but whatever) an interesting take on AI shit from an economic perspective: https://www.owenmcgrann.com/p/the-dead-economy-theory

[–] sinedpick@awful.systems 12 points 3 days ago (12 children)

our favorite techno-fascist hacker has posted a plea for money to buy a house in the most expensive place in the world and to exclusively fly around in private jets because she's the best at writing code to multiple matrices and everyone has been so unjustly mean to her. https://justine.lol/animus/

[–] corbin@awful.systems 5 points 2 days ago

I'm pretty sure that this was triggered by Rich Felker (musl) telling her to go away last week. She's finally asked a search engine for her legacy; previously, on Awful, we discussed the degree to which she's done this to herself by loudly espousing corporate fascism.

[–] TinyTimmyTokyo@awful.systems 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Why doesn't she just ring up Peter Thiel. She seems like just the type of person he'd love to donate some Thiel bucks to.

EDIT: I just went to her linked GitHub sponsors page. I was surprised to find Simon Willison there, but maybe I shouldn't have been. It certainly gave me another reason to look sideways at him.

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 3 days ago

Does not seem uncommon under a subset of very privileged white gay men. So not shocked if Thiel does.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] dgerard@awful.systems 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

by "culture wars" she means she's a fucking nazi

This was the reason Wendy Hanamura cited when she canceled my invitation to speak at the Internet Archive.

hmm, looking at the text you link it says "your past statements in Twitter" first. could it be they found out you're a fucking nazi

also you're shocked, shocked to find that 4chan people are assholes. you hang out there for hours at a time. probably just coincidence.

Tunney has deleted the post already! But there's an archive and another one

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago

i don't think she should be allowed to say "the ghetto." doesn't matter whether it's problematic when someone else says it, she definitely doesn't get to

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

The first technologist was Prometheus who took fire from the gods and gave it away to humanity.

"This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

I need you to donate money to me, and I mean you, as in literally you. You couldn't have read this far unless you are someone who legitimately cares

I have been helpless with giggles for five fuckin' minutes.

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago

she badly underestimates my capacities as a hater

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Prometheus a technologist? No he was a social media user.

"prometheus: hot take,

the greek gods: no give that back"

https://modmad.tumblr.com/post/758625466711228416

Also you do care just not in the way she hopes.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 14 points 3 days ago

Gestural Bayesianism!

I am the intersection of so many unliked groups whose minds I've come to understand. If you were to use bayesian inference to compute the probability that I'm a good person, it would underflow a double.

Hold on whilst I update towards the hypothesis that bayes for these people is just a syllable they emit when they talk about forming opinions.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

From the linked post:

Hacker News is my favorite place on the web, because it's the last bastion of curiosity online.

Fuuuuck off

I need you to donate publicly under your real name and I want you to tell your friends how much money you gave me, since that's the best way to show that you're serious.

This improves dramatically if you read it in the voice of Wayne Newton's televangelist character from License to Kill (1989).

I want to travel around the world and experience the cosmopolitan lifestyle my project is named after, using only private aviation, so that I won't be molested or risk being detained each time I fly.

Grifting off the United States' escalating institutional abuse of trans people is a special kind of ghoulish.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 3 days ago

I need you to donate publicly under your real name and I want you to tell your friends how much money you gave me, since that’s the best way to show that you’re serious.

Thats a trap if I ever saw it.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Hacker News is my favorite place on the web, because it's the last bastion of curiosity online.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Speaking of HN, here's the discussion there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48314875

btw, when normal people read that someone has a lien on their income from the state of New York, they don't assume it's because she's a brave truth-talker being oppressed by the Man, they assume she can't fucking handle her finances and they should be really careful donating money to her.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

There's gold in them comments:

The fundamental tension here is between pre-Christian and post-Christian worldview. Are you allowed to be great, or do you have to apologize for your greatness? Justine refuses to apologize, which is the cardinal sin.

Ha ha no it's because she went fash, you credulous dork

Friedrich Nietzche has been a disaster for the human species.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] TinyTimmyTokyo@awful.systems 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If you want to witness a bunch of emotionally stunted clanker fondlers totally missing the point, check out the comments on this orange site thread.

[–] TinyTimmyTokyo@awful.systems 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] scruiser@awful.systems 5 points 3 days ago

I was surprised in a good way see nearly every single comment call him out. Of course, some of those comments (maybe even the majority) are probably boosters mad that he is skipping the slop emails in his inbox. I guess Paul Graham found an angle of hypocrisy that both AI boosters and realists can unite in mocking. Quite an accomplishment.

load more comments
view more: next ›