Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 26th January 2025 - awful.systems - awful.systems
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 26th January 2025 - awful.systems - awful.systems
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.)
Maybe this is common knowledge, but I had no idea before. What an absolutely horrible decision from google to allow this. What are they thinking?? This is great for phishing and malware, but I don't know what else. (Yeah ok, the reason has probably something to do with "line must go up".)
CIDR 2025 is ongoing (Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research). It's a very good conference in computer science, specifically database research (an equivalent of a journal for non-CS science). And they have a whole session on LLMs called "LLMs ARE THE NEW NO-SQL"
I didn't have time to read the papers yet, believe me I will, but the abstracts are spicy
We systematically develop benchmarks to study [the problem] and find that standard methods answer no more than 20% of queries correctly, confirming the need for further research in this area.
(Text2SQL is Not Enough: Unifying AI and Databases with TAG, Biswal et al.)
Hey guys and gals, I have a slightly different conclusion, maybe a baseline 20% correctness is a great reason to not invest a second more of research time into this nonsense? Jesus DB Christ.
I'd also like to shoutout CIDR for setting up a separate "DATABASES AND ML" session, which is an actual research direction with interesting results (e.g. query optimizers powered by an ML model achieving better results than conventional query optimizers). At least actual professionals are not conflating ML with LLMs.
Polish commentary on Hitlergruß: https://bsky.app/profile/smutnehistorie.bsky.social/post/3lgaoyezhgc2c
Translation:
- it’s just a Hindu symbol of prosperity
- a normal Roman salute
- regular rail car
- wait a second
From the "flipping through LessWrong for entertainment" department:
What effect does LLM use have on the quality of people's thinking / knowledge?
- I'd expect a large positive effect from just making people more informed / enabling them to interpret things correctly / pointing out fallacies etc.
Good news, everyone: critihype is canceled until the next tweet.
https://xcancel.com/kailentit/status/1881476039454699630
"We did not have superintelligent relations with that…"
til that there's not one millionaire with family business in south african mining in current american oligarchy, but at least two. (thiel's father was an exec at mine in what is today Namibia). (they mined uranium). (it went towards RSA nuclear program). (that's easily most ghoulish thing i've learned today, but i'm up only for 2h)
Reposting this for the new week thread since it truly is a record of how untrustworthy sammy and co are. Remember how OAI claimed that O3 had displayed superhuman levels on the mega hard Frontier Math exam written by Fields Medalist? Funny/totally not fishy story haha. Turns out OAI had exclusive access to that test for months and funded its creation and refused to let the creators of test publicly acknowledge this until after OAI did their big stupid magic trick.
From Subbarao Kambhampati via linkedIn:
"𝐎𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐲 𝐨𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐨𝐟 “𝑩𝒖𝒊𝒍𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒏 𝑨𝑮𝑰 𝑴𝒐𝒂𝒕 𝒃𝒚 𝑪𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑩𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒉𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒌 𝑪𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒔” hashtag#SundayHarangue. One of the big reasons for the increased volume of “𝐀𝐆𝐈 𝐓𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐰” hype has been o3’s performance on the “frontier math” benchmark–something that other models basically had no handle on.
We are now being told (https://lnkd.in/gUaGKuAE) that this benchmark data may have been exclusively available (https://lnkd.in/g5E3tcse) to OpenAI since before o1–and that the benchmark creators were not allowed to disclose this *until after o3 *.
That o3 does well on frontier math held-out set is impressive, no doubt, but the mental picture of “𝒐1/𝒐3 𝒘𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒃𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒏 𝒔𝒊𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒉, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒃𝒐𝒐𝒕𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒗𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒆𝒓 𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒉”–that the AGI tomorrow crowd seem to have–that 𝘖𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘈𝘐 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘵–is shattered by this. (I have, in fact, been grumbling to my students since o3 announcement that I don’t completely believe that OpenAI didn’t have access to the Olympiad/Frontier Math data before hand… )
I do think o1/o3 are impressive technical achievements (see https://lnkd.in/gvVqmTG9 )
𝑫𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒘𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒐𝒏 𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒃𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒉𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒌𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒉𝒂𝒅 𝒑𝒓𝒊𝒐𝒓 𝒂𝒄𝒄𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒊𝒔 𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒊𝒎𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒗𝒆–𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒅𝒐𝒆𝒔𝒏’𝒕 𝒒𝒖𝒊𝒕𝒆 𝒔𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎 “𝑨𝑮𝑰 𝑻𝒐𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒐𝒘.”
We all know that data contamination is an issue with LLMs and LRMs. We also know that reasoning claims need more careful vetting than “𝘸𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘥𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨” (see “In vs. Out of Distribution analyses are not that useful for understanding LLM reasoning capabilities” https://lnkd.in/gZ2wBM_F ).
At the very least, this episode further argues for increased vigilance/skepticism on the part of AI research community in how they parse the benchmark claims put out commercial entities."
Big stupid snake oil strikes again.
This is a thought I've been entertaining for some time, but this week's discussion about Ars Technica's article on Anthropic, as well as the NIH funding freeze, finally prodded me to put it out there.
A core strategic vulnerability that Musk, his hangers-on, and geek culture more broadly haven't cottoned onto yet: Space is 20th-century propaganda. Certainly, there is still worthwhile and inspirational science to be done with space probes and landers; and the terrestrial satellite network won't dwindle in importance. I went to high school with a guy who went on to do his PhD and get into research through working with the first round of micro-satellites. Resources will still be committed to space. But as a core narrative of technical progress to bind a nation together? It's gassed. The idea that "it might be ME up there one day!" persisted through the space shuttle era, but it seems more and more remote. Going back to the moon would be a remake of an old television show, that went off the air because people ended up getting bored with it the first time. Boots on Mars (at least healthy boots with a solid chance to return home) are decades away, even if we start throwing Apollo money at it immediately. The more outlandish ideas like orbital data centers and asteroid mining don't have the same inspirational power, because they are meant to be private enterprises operated by thoroughly unlikeable men who have shackled themselves to a broadly destructive political program.
For better or worse, biotechnology and nanotechnology are the most important technical programs of the 21st century, and by backgrounding this and allowing Trump to threaten funding, the tech oligarchs kowtowing to him right now are undermining themselves. Biotech should be obvious, although regulatory capture and the impulse for rent-seeking will continue to hold it back in the US. I expect even more money to be thrown at nanotechnology manufacturing going into the 2030s, to try to overcome the fact that semiconductor scaling is hitting a wall, although most of what I've seen so far is still pursuing the Drexlerian vision of MEMS emulating larger mechanical systems... which, if it's not explicitly biocompatible, is likely going down a cul-de-sac.
Everybody's looking for a positive vision of the future to sell, to compete with and overcome the fraudulent tech-fascists who lead the industry right now. A program of accessible technology at the juncture of those two fields would not develop overnight, but could be a pathway there. Am I off base here?
hackernews: We're going to build utopia on Mars, reinvent money, and construct god.
also hackernews: moving off facebook is too hard :( :( :(
Rationalist death count keeps climbing https://xcancel.com/jessi_cata/status/1882182975804363141#m
You may have heard that Catturd doesn't have any fiber in his diet and was hospitalized for bowel blockage. (Best sneer I've seen so far: "can't turd.") Along similar lines, Srid isn't taking his statins for high cholesterol caused by a carnivore diet.
Meta: I'm kind of pissed that Catturd is WP notable but laughing my ass off at the page for carnivore diets. Life takes and gives.
I hope everyone is ready for the constant overlap between politics and AI / Silicon Valley; because I'm not.
Trump Admin Accused of Using AI to Draft Executive Orders (Source Bluesky Thread).
I'm not 100% sure I buy that the EOs were written by AI rather than people who simply don't care about or don't know the details; but it certainly looks possible. Especially that example about the Gulf of Mexico. Either way I am heartened that this is the conclusion people jump to.
Aside: I also like how much media is starting to cite bluesky (and activitypub to a lesser extent). I assume a bunch of journalists moved off of twitter or went multi-platform.
following on from this comment, it is possible to get it turned off for a Workspace Suite Account
- contact support (
?button from admin view) - ask the first person to connect you to
Workspace Support(otherwise you'll get some made-up bullshit from a person trying to buy time or Case Success or whatever, simply because they don't have the privileges to do what you're asking) - tell the referred-to person that you want to enable controls for "Gemini for Google Workspace" (optionally adding that you have already disabled "Gemini App")
hopefully you spend less time on this than the 40-something minutes I had to (a lot of which was spent watching some poor support bastard start-stop typing for minutes at a time because they didn't know how to respond to my request)
- contact support (
so I ran into this fucking garbage earlier, which goes so hard on the constituent parts of "the spam is the point", an ouroborosian self-reinforcing loop of Just More Media Bro Just One More Video Bro You'll See Bro It'll Be The Best Listicle Bro Just Watch Bro, and the insufferably cancerous "the medium is the message" videos-made-for-youtube-because-youtube that if it were a voltron it'd probably have its own unique Special Moment sequence instead of being one of the canned assembly shots
Buckle up humans; because humanity's last exam just dropped: https://lastexam.ai/ (Hacker News discussion). May the odds be ever in your favor.
Edit: Per NyTimes, whom I hate, they were apparently trying to avoid an over-dramatic name. Amazing:
The test’s original name, “Humanity’s Last Stand,” was discarded for being overly dramatic.
so the new feature in the next macos release 15.3 is "fuck you, apple intelligence is on by default now"
For users new or upgrading to macOS 18.3, Apple Intelligence will be enabled automatically during Mac onboarding. Users will have access to Apple Intelligence features after setting up their devices. To disable Apple Intelligence, users will need to navigate to the Apple Intelligence & Siri Settings pane and turn off the Apple Intelligence toggle. This will disable Apple Intelligence features on their device.
trump just dumped half trillion dollars into openai-softbank-oracle thing https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2025/01/21/trump-stargate-ai-openai-oracle-softbank/77861568007/
you'd think it's a perfect bait for saudi sovereign wealth fund, and perhaps it is
for comparison, assuming current levels of spending, this will be something around 1/10 of defense spending in the same timeframe. which goes to, among other things, payrolls of millions of people and maintenance, procurement and development of rather pricey weapons like stealth planes (B-21 is $700M each) and nuclear-armed nuclear-powered submarines ($3.5B per Ohio-class, with $31M missiles, up to 24). this all to burn medium-sized country worth of energy to get more "impressive" c-suite fooling machine
I know a lot of people are looking for alternatives for programs as stuff is ennshitfying, rot economying, slurping up your data, going all in on llms etc https://european-alternatives.eu/ might help. Have not looked into it myself btw.
Xcancel is giving me issues so gimme a sec. That said: another killing. https://x.com/st_rev/status/1882852779582239053?s=46
It's term time again and I'm back in college. One professor has laid out his AI policy: you should not use an AI (presumably Chat GPT) to write your assignment, but you can use an AI to proofread your assignment. This must be mentioned in the acknowledgements. He said in class that in his experience AI does not produce good results and that when asked to write about his particular field it produces work with a lot of mistakes.
Me, I'm just wondering how you can tell the difference between material generated by AI then edited by a human, and material written by a human then edited by an AI.
we have this year's greatest pride anthem already and it's only january
this post from the guy who writes explainers about consumer financial structures hits different if you know he met and is exchanging tweets with noted race scientist Jordan Lasker (cremieux)
https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/chicago-casino-investment-offering/
maybe it's me but i'm hearing ultrasonic frequencies
probably nothing, right?
Days since last open source issue tracker pollution by annoying nerds: zero
My investigation tracked to you [Outlier.ai] as the source of problems - where your instructional videos are tricking people into creating those issues to - apparently train your AI.
I couldn't locate these particular instructional videos, but from what I can gather outlier.ai farms out various "tasks" to internet gig workers as part of some sort of AI training scheme.
Bonus terribleness: one of the tasks a few months back was apparently to wear a head mounted camera "device" to record ones every waking moment.
It took me a year of hell to hire a new teammate. But it took a few weeks to implement AI all over the company.
Employers Would Rather Hire AI Than Gen Z Graduates: Report
We have gaps of needs all over the department and a massive pool of applicants. Sorry unemployed folks.
