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.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)
@bitofhope @BlueMonday1984 Maybe he’s going to rewrite AI in a weekend to make it good!
It’s also incredibly misleading, maybe it was possible to “completely” re-write the UI back in 2005—never mind that most of the value would come from, the underlying geographic data being mostly correct and mostly correctly labeled—there is no way in hell that the same would achievable in 2024. (Also the notion it would take any coder
2 * 1000 / (365 * 5/7) =7 years to achieve a comparable result is proposterous)Apparently the 1x engineer is taking weekends instead of working 24/7.
I don’t blame Saltman for this one, since it’s just a more specific version of the general pathology that assumes the markets are basically Gods.
"In our top story today, the rapture has drawn the souls of the faithful into heaven and we have entered what experts are calling a “final tribulation”. We’re also receiving reports that Dread Cthulhu has awoken from his deathly slumber in his house at R’lyeh, and environmental groups are claiming that increased sightings of wolves and frost giants could herald the arrival of Fimbulwinter and through it Ragnarök.
The stock market, however, seems to be taking the literal end times in stride, with strong performances from Raytheon and other manufacturers countering a downturn in other sectors."
you see, air defense is very useful against supernatural horrors beyond human comprehension
(also they recently changed name to RTX after merger. surely no fucked up managerial cancer would spread from there, like with Boeing-McDonnel Douglas merger. not like they make anything of absolutely critical importance for Ukrainians)
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Just wanted to say thanks again to the admins and community for maintaining this oasis of sanity.
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How do you all suppose the Great Bullshit Implosion is going to interact with our incoming US government? When it becomes clear that the money is running out, will OpenAI be able to talk the Trump government into bailing them out, or will the fash kick them when they’re down, since tech will be a nice fat scapegoat for the economy hitting the shitter?
I don’t think Trump’s presence changes much regarding the AI bubble. It’s still massive capital and operational expenditure, with ??? revenue to show for it. Trump very likely faces a big stock market correction in 2025 or no later than 2026, just as surely as Harris or Biden would have.
and they just added Nvidia to the indexes, replacing Intel in at least one
nvidia will be fine - they know damn well this is a bubble - but number is going to take a beating
Doesn’t hurt them to strike while the silicon is hot.
it looks like they’re trying to delay either of those in most ghoulish way possible https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/11/safe-ai-champ-anthropic-teams-up-with-defense-giant-palantir-in-new-deal/
OpenAI you stand accused of the crime of being woke. To make the case, we call in the expert on everything woke: James A. Lindsay.
Which is my way of saying, it will be very dumb and very paranoid, and not even wrong.
How do you all suppose the Great Bullshit Implosion is going to interact with our incoming US government? When it becomes clear that the money is running out, will OpenAI be able to talk the Trump government into bailing them out, or will the fash kick them when they’re down, since tech will be a nice fat scapegoat for the economy hitting the shitter?
Kicking them whilst they’re down would be an easy win when “the cruelty is the point” is your unofficial motto, and there’s plenty of anti-tech sentiment for Trump to work with. And, of course, they’re a piss-easy scapegoat - AFAIK tech’s managed to piss off both political wings here.
He’s probably gonna kick them whilst they’re down.
the ones ending up being kicked down in this scenario have more money than god and ear of trump, not to mention that some of these were likely donors to his campaign. maybe sutskever or even saltman might be ceremonially burned at stake for posterity, but thiel and musk are gonna be safe
I’m 100% down for a “Let them fight” moment
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I know this shouldn’t be surprising, but I still cannot believe people really bounce questions off LLMs like they’re talking to a real person. https://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/47183/are-llms-unlikely-to-be-useful-to-generate-any-scientific-discovery
I have just read this paper: Ziwei Xu, Sanjay Jain, Mohan Kankanhalli, “Hallucination is Inevitable: An Innate Limitation of Large Language Models”, submitted on 22 Jan 2024.
It says there is a ground truth ideal function that gives every possible true output/fact to any given input/question, and no matter how you train your model, there is always space for misapproximations coming from missing data to formulate, and the more complex the data, the larger the space for the model to hallucinate.
Then he immediately follows up with:
Then I started to discuss with o1. [ . . . ] It says yes.
Then I asked o1 [ . . . ], to which o1 says yes [ . . . ]. Then it says [ . . . ].
Then I asked o1 [ . . . ], to which it says yes too.
I’m not a teacher but I feel like my brain would explode if a student asked me to answer a question they arrived at after an LLM misled them on like 10 of their previous questions.
I’m not a teacher but I feel like my brain would explode if a student asked me to answer a question they arrived at after an LLM misled them on like 10 of their previous questions.
When I was a lab demonstrator in university, one of the lab exercises was somewhat hard to get right, and our team noticed a huge raft of plagiarism. Not only were multiple students using the exact same code, but it was code that didn’t even work! The course had a policy of instant failure with evidence of plagiarism, which was made clear at the start of the course, and yet this just kept happening. To top it all off, the lab exercises didn’t change from year to year, so the same code kept showing up! This plus a number of other incidents broke me and made me realise I didn’t have it in me to be this kind of educator.
It would be great if this was all a big psyop by big tech to gaslight educators into ending their careers for some kind of mass brainwashing conspiracy, because at least there would be some intention behind it. Instead, we’re poisoning collective consciousness with cyberslop because we think one day the virtual dumbass will reach enlightenment. We don’t actually have a way for that to happen, so we’re just going to metaphorically bash our own heads against rocks in hopes we glitch ourselves into the singularity.
So yeah in short my head would explode too.
the writer’s room is [open]
that’s dasha the laptop, she used to work in a corporation but is sick of that and retired to be a writer
why do neurotypical people love to do this. why can’t you say sam harris sucks in a normal way
For a palette cleanser, you might appreciate that If Books Could Kill just released a solid dunk on Sam Harris
ha, the screen cap is from the ibck subreddit. one of my favorite podcasts
that adds a whole nother layer of lol
People enjoy making amateur diagnoses of public figures, and people enjoy feeling like they’re superior to neurodivergent people.
actual diagnosis, inexplicably not in the DSM-5
Seeing a worrying trend of people wanting to cosplay as La Resistance, going dark, hiding from the cops. “Fun” fact, the Gestapo was extremely good at finding, torturing and killing people in the resistance. If people only know you via encrypted messaging, who is gonna raise a ruckus when you’re sent to a camp?
unrelated but we’re all gonna get so many of trumpist brown-nosed sleazes as ambassadors now
it looks likely that we out there in poland might get georgette mosbacher as next ambassador. she was more of an lobbyist going hard against eu digital tax, but there’s much more
I am left thinking that many people here in the US are going to have a hard time accepting that having this person, at this stage in his life, as the national figurehead will do permanent damage to the US’ prestige and global standing. Doesn’t matter if Reagan was sundowning, media was more controlled then and his handlers were there to support the institution of the presidency at least as much as they were there to support a narcissist. In 2016, other countries could look at Trump as a temporary aberration and wait him out. This time, it’s clear that the US is no longer a reliable partner.
An intentional sacrifice of the US’ role as head manager of the global economy is not nearly as well thought out as the people pushing it think it is.
plenty of them will just shrug it off as “commie propaganda” and will ignore reality as long as they can receive coast to coast am, then blame dems for the bits they cannot ignore anymore
bonus points to former hilary’s consultants (or so i hear) running current campaign deciding that going to the right (who the fuck likes cheney?) was a good idea
At least their shirts will accessorize nicely
Questions To Which the Answer is No, an ongoing series:
Generative AI - Can it actually help with the day-to-day technical work of a practising engineer?
The upcoming Autumn Panel Discussion hosted by the UCD Engineering Graduates Association (EGA) will take place on Tuesday, November 19, 2024, at ESB’s Headquarters. This event will explore several pressing topics at the intersection of engineering and artificial intelligence. Attendees will gain insights into current trends in AI, particularly the latest advancements in generative AI tools and platforms. The discussion will feature case studies that highlight the successful integration of AI into real-world engineering processes, offering practical examples of its applications. Additionally, the panel will address the essential skills that engineers need to effectively incorporate AI into their workflows, providing guidance on upskilling for the future. The event will conclude with a Q&A session, allowing participants to engage directly with the panelists and delve deeper into the ethical considerations surrounding AI in engineering.
No, not software engineers, engineer engineers. Yikes!
hackernews having a normal one (EDIT: Then things got worse)
HN Title: The evolution of nepotism in academia, 1088-1800
In the top comments:
dash2 55 minutes ago | next [–]
Here’s an interesting extract:
We find evidence of nepotism for 5–6.6% of scholars’ sons in Protestant and for 29.4% in Catholic universities and academies. Catholic institutions relied more heavily on intra-family human capital transfers. We show that these differences partly explain the divergent path of Catholic and Protestant universities after the Reformation.
This relates to an important paper providing evidence that indeed Protestantism was associated with scientific progress: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4389708
red016 3 minutes ago | parent | next [–]
i’d be more interested in jewish numbers than protestant or catholic
Ah yes, the famous European Jewish run universities. You don’t have to be an idiot to be anti-Semitic, but it certainly helps.
Audibly rolling my eyes
deleted by creator
re: election results. unfortunately i’m not surprised or even disappointed by now. it makes me feel sad for my 2015 self and her naivete. she didn’t understand what a disgusting and evil culture she lived in
I don’t have too much coherent to say right now
fuck the fascists for what they’ve done and what they intend to do
fuck the neoliberals for doing their best to convince marginalized people that they shouldn’t defend themselves against a terrible fate
fuck the accelerationists for pumping shitheaded propaganda into the fediverse, for the victory lap they’re taking now, and for the general idea that their revolution is worth our deaths
shit’s about to get very hard and very weird and I can’t stress enough how important it is to be careful who you trust with your life
what a surprise, the thread all the leftist shitposters on mastodon boosted about how you’re a class traitor if you don’t vote for the Green Party (who I don’t buy as socialist) or “any other socialist party” (fucking who??? am I supposed to write “socialism” on my ballot in crayon???) conveniently went missing
anyway post your favorite fuckhead accelerationist here, mastodon’s a shooting gallery tonight
i do love how the “anti-imperialist” protest vote against harris was a choice between like three or four putin apologists. the state of the US left is really fucked up and i don’t want to look at it ever again.
i bet the self-described antiimperialists going all for Southern Lebanon Parking Lot 2024 feel real smug right now
anyway post your favorite fuckhead accelerationist here, mastodon’s a shooting gallery tonight
I’ve intentionally been avoiding feeds the last few days because I just do not have the headspace for it, but I quickly checked on shit now
and
fuck
Didn’t the Green Party woman also just go ‘I’m pro Israel’ the day for the election or so? Which I think is one of the reason she might have picked up a few moves (the idea she might be more pro gaza I mean).
The bad guys have definitely learned a new sort of trick. Haven’t wrapped my head around it yet, but it is bad, innit?
Apologies for the screed:
Quick recap:
2016-2020: executive orders every day, non-elected positions being captured by conservatives, dems just hand-wringing and tweeting. but Dems get lucky with a pandemic and trump loses
2021-2024: weekend at biden’s.
Where was the election reform? The dismantling or reform of the electoral colleges? The extra seats on the SC? Bribing the public with stimulus packages to boost the economy?
Remember when we pushed Biden left? Remember when the dems preserved abortion rights, prevented the invasion of ukraine, and stopped bankrolling Israel’s genocide?
“exercise your democratic rights and voice by voting for our candidate that wasn’t democratically chosen as our candidate”. “vote blue and do not voice any critical thought”. “any vote that isn’t for the party that didn’t meaningfully reverse or prevent conservative actions is a vote for trump”.
In sum: the bad guys didn’t do anything new.
The closest we got to a trump loss was some republican spook who went to a trump rally with a gun because it was closer than the harris rally.
According to some reports the dems simply stayed home and he even lost votes compared to 2020
The thing that’s most baffling to me is how the difference in ground game had zero impact. We were pounding the pavement, doors got fuckin knocked. The GOP did less than zero, firing their entire staff responsible for in-person outreach and gave 100 million to PACs run by grifters who put it directly into their own pockets.
Unless we’ve missed a trick, retail politics as it has existed is dead.
I’m seeing some takes now that the ground game did make a difference of a couple of points in the swing states, where it was concentrated, it’s just that that wasn’t enough.
Not enough for the presidential race, sadly; perhaps enough to scrape by with a few Senate victories.
Dem talking heads spending so much energy courting moderate conservative votes was an excellent way to demobilise their base. They really gave their all to lose an election that should have been a free win.
This wasn’t a free win, however. The reason Harris took over in the first place was because Biden’s performance in the debate was poor enough that the Democrats thought there was no longer any chance with him, and this was already with lowering approval ratings. Had he stayed, I bet Trump’s victory would have been even wider.
I mean, I don’t think it was unreasonable to expect liberals to show up against someone who’s sole policy proposals were mass deportations and political reprisals, and so I can understand the logic of focusing on the center (which in US politics means center-right).
But this being the democratic party, they also couldn’t commit to an actual narrative to make that play. Rather than “look at their ties to Big Tech!” or even sticking with “look how weird these people are!” they had to go hat-in-hand and stake themselves to divisive (to say nothing of abhorrent) policies because that’s the only connection they could try to make. I think we’re seeing a major problem with the whole “big tent” concept.
It was twitter. Elon Musk joins Trump’s team. What happens? Harris’ chances begin to drop.
Trump did lose support, but there was probably enough propaganda on Twitter to make enough people go “both sides” and just sit out the election.and of course, Twitter and Facebook style influence campaigns work just as well or even better elsewhere, in communities that haven’t hardened themselves against that type of bullshit
IDK, do you really think twitter still has that much cultural relevance? ugh
I’m sure it played a part, though.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to be careful who you trust with your life
strong agree
minor upside: it’s going to be a good time to make lists of people who suddenly feel comfortable to mask off
fucking fuck this sucks
minor upside: it’s going to be a good time to make lists of people who suddenly feel comfortable to mask off
correct. keep receipts.
fuck the accelerationists for pumping shitheaded propaganda into the fediverse, for the victory lap they’re taking now, and for the general idea that their revolution is worth our deaths
So much this
Not surprised, still very disappointed, I feel sick.
Yeah this is fucked up. I feel so bad for everybody (esp the Americans, but this will hurt the world). Shit this prob means I should start looking into seriously helping out locally when all this explodes into more international shit. (Which imho is the best you can do anyway, do things locally, build a bit of a support network for your community).
(Note I’m not American, but I think this will end badly, just the fucker stepping out of the paris accord for example, and all the weird blowhard fascists this will make feel emboldened to do more politics locally).
E: I really hope the people who go ‘this is the same as in 2020, wait till all votes are counted’ are correct and not on hopeium.
i think they indeed are on hopium/copium
I can’t tell, US elections have imho always been extremely dumb. (But, in the past decades+ ours have not been much better).
both by electoral college and by popular vote trump has advantage, and worse than that house and senate are republican now
Yeah, turns out this is the bad place.
The history books are going to refer to this era as “The Stupid Years”.
Because all of this is very fucking stupid.
I fully expect they are, even as I also hope they’re not.
Well, it’s more like 2000, really, in the sense that the courts are being used to restrict voting rights. There’s strong evidence of flagrant UOCAVA violations: thousands of absentee ballots which should affect the federal election have been challenged in swing states. Edit: Here is part 1 and part 2 from an attorney whose Pennsylvania UOCAVA ballot was challenged; he goes through the law and explains what he’s going to do.
I think I’m more angry than anything. l hadn’t realized how tight my media bubble had gotten and was pretty sure this wasn’t realistic. I had gotten myself ready for another round of 2020 nonsense and denial, not this.
The level of fucked we are is too big for words
I wanted to say something darkly comedic about the AI bubble popping under the new regime, but my heart is too sick to make a joke
Слава Україні. The world has failed you.
are you US-based? very sorry, take care
yes, i am. i’ve been plotting to get out for years but i’ve been too depressed since my partner died to make any progress tbh. i’ve no idea what to do
ugh that sucks, I’m sorry
I would suggest Canada, but we’re set to get our own Trump in power in about a year or so. Too many people looking on the house on fire and thinking that pouring gasoline on it is the best solution.
The American electorate has just covered itself with gasoline because eggs cost 2 dollars more. Come January they strike the match. gg. HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I’VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE NOVEMBER 5TH. My only consolation is that I’ll hopefully get to watch some of the Magas/non voters/vote-your-conscience peeps suffer before the end. But Ol musky and peter thiel will be in their gilded bunkers while the fires consume us all.
yeah, a lot of broke trumpists will get fucked over, along with all other broke americans, getting worse if they are lgbt or non-white or need healthcare, or are migrants. on top of palestinians, lebanese (done deal at this point), ukrainians (likely) and maybe taiwanese
one thing that i can think of that could reduce damage is that while some policies are stupid, cruel and obviously harmful for everyone, that didn’t stop them previously, but this might make line no go up for billionaire republicans, and if they have trump’s ear, that could make their implementation ineffective on purpose. i mean here specifically undocumented migrant work whose deportation would make post-covid inflation look like a joke
Nashville, here. I hear ya.
I don’t know what else to say, I can’t explain any of this, but also please know that you’re not alone out there.
Ubisoft’s NFT game is going great:
Ubisoft’s NFT game, which has about 6 active players, has a game breaking exploit where one player is winning every match.
“One player pointed out that the Paulstar111 account was top of the rankings with over 56,000 matches played. It’s not yet clear how the player has been able to connect to so many games and automatically win them”
a real web3 moment if there ever was one.
unfortunately the six active players bit is a joke
For any drive by readers who slightly want to know more background about some stuff: Why Richard Feynman wasn’t a great rolemodel.
(more context for the drive by readers, Feynman is often held up as a great man in STEM circles, and even more so in the world of LessWrong Rationalism. (Which is fine if it is about scientific achievements, but it often goes beyond that as here in their page on ‘traditional rationality’)).
Before my postmodern deconstruction and unlearning of the worship of Great Men, all I needed to know about feynman not being a good person to look up to was the calling women bitches thing. Miss me with that PUA shit
Considering the history of PUA stuff on lesswrong, Im going to assume this was a pro not a con for them even.
Feynman reminds me of the brujo (one specific man, not brujería in general) from Pirsig’s Lila. Feynman’s safecracking and unorthodox approaches are like the brujo’s routine flaunting of social norms; through routinely doing things the wrong way (sacred clowning), new possible behaviors and modes of social existence are explored. Also, Feynman’s attitudes towards women remind me of that brujo’s tendency to spy on women by looking through their windows into their homes while they were not necessarily dressed, which the brujo’s society did not tolerate.
The worst part about Trump being president is Trump being president for a year. The second worst part is Vance being president for the next three (after Trump dies of heart failure). The third worst part is the fact that I’ve been owned in a way I can’t even explain to my closest friends.
@slopjockey @BlueMonday1984 Vance concerns me more than Trump.
The third worst part is the fact that I’ve been owned in a way I can’t even explain to my closest friends.
Oh god, this so much. Well, third worst for me personally, as a non-American white guy. I suppose Palestinians, Ukrainians, and marginalized groups in the US might have a few issues they’d rank higher.
the bit i wonder about is: would president couchfucker block weapons exports to Ukraine
I haven’t done a headcount yet and the election’s not fully tallied, but I think that the Senate still has around 70% support for NATO, and historically we can expect to see a “blue dog” phenomenon in the House as a reaction to Republicans gaining seats. Effectively, both the Democrats and Republicans will function as big tents of two distinct parties, and there is usually tripartisan support (everybody but the far-right Republicans) for imperialism. We may well see votes where the legislators override presidential vetoes to force weapons sales and otherwise fulfill NATO obligations.
And yes, you read that correctly; Democrats move right as a reaction to Republicans doing well. Go back to bed, America…
there is usually tripartisan support (everybody but the far-right Republicans) for imperialism
i’m not sure how thoroughly trumpists have purged the party of noncompliants, so maybe this non-far-right republicans block is smaller than it used to be
And yes, you read that correctly; Democrats move right as a reaction to Republicans doing well
i’m not surprised by small to medium number of spineless MPs effectively changing sides, i have seen that previously. it is surprising to me that it keeps happening and dems don’t boot these people without notice, or at least deny them places on ballot
Most likely. Backing out of international obligations and supporting fellow authoritarians seem to be pretty consistent aspects of what passes for MAGA ideology.
i guess this depends on how much vested interest (monetary) he has in MIC
trump seems to treat nato as america’s weapons shop buyers club
What did sideburns ever to do that guy?
