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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 9 March 2025 (awful.systems)

submitted 1 month 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] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

New piece from Brian Merchant: So the LA Times replaced me with an AI that defends the KKK

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

ZITRON DROPPED

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

So many projects and small websites I’m aware of are being overtaxed by shitty LLM scrapers these days, it feels like an intentional attack. I guess the idea of ai can’t fail, it can only be failed; and so its profiteers must sabotage anything that indicates it’s not beneficial/necessary.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

New piece from Techdirt: Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not)

Strongly recommended reading overall, and strongly recommended you check out Techdirt - they've been doing some pretty damn good reporting on the current shitshow we're living through.

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

occasionally mentioned here Jan Marsalek implicated in surveillance (sometimes comically bad) and planned murder of journalists who crossed him https://theins.press/en/inv/279034 https://www.euronews.com/2025/03/07/uk-court-convicts-three-bulgarians-of-spying-for-russia

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (11 children)

got a question (brought on by this). anyone here know if zitron's talked about his history of how he got to where he is atm wrt tech companies?

there's something that's often bothered me about some of his commentary. an example I could point to: some of the things that he comments on and "doesn't seem to get" (and has stated so) are .... not quite mysteries of the universe, just some specifics in dysfunction in the industry. but those things one could understand by, y'know, asking around a bit. (so in this example, I dunno if that's on him not engaging far/deeply enough in research, or just me being too-fucking-aware of broken industry bullshit. hard to get a read on it)

but things like what's highlighted in thread do leave open the possibility of other nonsense too

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

EZ is a PR person, and definitely has a PR person vibe. I don't know what that poster's deal is, and I would not accuse Ed of being an AI bro. That post kind of has "haters gonna hate" vibes

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

google stepping up their quest to disorganize the world’s information

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

we live in hell https://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/p/a-well-funded-moscow-based-global

(this is compounded by how some segment of heavy ai boosters/users - former cryptobros, but not only them - were already immersed in this particular bubble)

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

Ow look the thing I worried about on r/scc (yes I know my own fault for touching it) which could not happen 'because you dont understand how llms work' happend.

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