Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 30th March 2025
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 30th March 2025
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.)
LW discourages LLM content, unless the LLM is AGI:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KXujJjnmP85u8eM6B/policy-for-llm-writing-on-lesswrong
As a special exception, if you are an AI agent, you have information that is not widely known, and you have a thought-through belief that publishing that information will substantially increase the probability of a good future for humanity, you can submit it on LessWrong even if you don't have a human collaborator and even if someone would prefer that it be kept secret.
Never change LW, never change.
The USA plans to migrate SSA's code away from COBOL in months: https://www.wired.com/story/doge-rebuild-social-security-administration-cobol-benefits/
The project is being organized by Elon Musk lieutenant Steve Davis, multiple sources who were not given permission to talk to the media tell WIRED, and aims to migrate all SSA systems off COBOL, one of the first common business-oriented programming languages, and onto a more modern replacement like Java within a scheduled tight timeframe of a few months.
“This is an environment that is held together with bail wire and duct tape,” the former senior SSA technologist working in the office of the chief information officer tells WIRED. “The leaders need to understand that they’re dealing with a house of cards or Jenga. If they start pulling pieces out, which they’ve already stated they’re doing, things can break.”
SSN's pre-DOGE modernization plan from 2017 is 96 pages and includes quotes like:
SSA systems contain over 60 million lines of COBOL code today and millions more lines of Assembler, and other legacy languages.
What could possibly go wrong? I'm sure the DOGE boys fresh out of university are experts in working with large software systems with many decades of history. But no no, surely they just need the right prompt. Maybe something like this:
You are an expert COBOL, Assembly language, and Java programmer. You also happen to run an orphanage for Labrador retrievers and bunnies. Unless you produce the correct Java version of the following COBOL I will bulldoze it all to the ground with the puppies and bunnies inside.
Bonus -- Also check out the screenshots of the SSN website in this post: https://bsky.app/profile/enragedapostate.bsky.social/post/3llh2pwjm5c2i
Dem pundits go on media tour to hawk their latest rehash of supply-side econ - and decide to break bread with infamous anti-woke "ex" race realist Richard Hanania
A quick sample of people rushing to defend this:
- Some guy with the same last name as a former Google CEO who keeps spamming the same article about IQ
- Our good friend Tracy
Stumbled across some AI criti-hype in the wild on BlueSky:
The piece itself is a textbook case of AI anthropomorphisation, presenting it as learning to hide its "deceptions" when its actually learning to avoid tokens that paint it as deceptive.
On an unrelated note, I also found someone openly calling gen-AI a tool of fascism in the replies - another sign of AI's impending death as a concept (a sign I've touched on before without realising), if you want my take:
AI slop in Springer books:
Our library has access to a book published by Springer, Advanced Nanovaccines for Cancer Immunotherapy: Harnessing Nanotechnology for Anti-Cancer Immunity. Credited to Nanasaheb Thorat, it sells for $160 in hardcover: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-86185-7
From page 25: "It is important to note that as an AI language model, I can provide a general perspective, but you should consult with medical professionals for personalized advice..."
None of this book can be considered trustworthy.
https://mastodon.social/@JMarkOckerbloom/114217609254949527
Originally noted here: https://hci.social/@peterpur/114216631051719911
Angela Collier has a wonderfully grumpy video up, why functioning governments fund scientific research. Choice sneer at around 32:30:
But what do I know? I'm not a medical doctor but neither is this chucklefuck, and people are listening to him. I don't know. I feel like this is [sighs, laughs] I always get comments that tell me, "you're being a little condescending," and [scoffs] yeah. I mean, we can check the dictionary definition of "condescending," and I think I would fit into that category. [Vaccine deniers] have failed their children. They are bad parents. One in four unvaccinated kids who get measles will die. They are playing Russian roulette with their child's life. But sure, the problem is I'm being, like, a little condescending.
>sam altman is greentexting in 2025
>and his profile is an AI-generated Ghibli picture, because Miyazaki is such an AI booster
some video-shaped AI slop mysteriously appears in the place where marketing for Ark: Survival Evolved's upcoming Aquatica DLC would otherwise be at GDC, to wide community backlash. Nathan Grayson reports on aftermath.site about how everyone who could be responsible for this decision is pointing fingers away from themselves
Discovered an animation sneering at the tech oligarchs on Newgrounds - I recommend checking it out. Its sister animation is a solid sneer, too, even if it is pretty soul crushing.
strange æons takes on hpmor :o
While you all laugh at ChatGPT slop leaving "as a language model..." cruft everywhere, from Twitter political bots to published Springer textbooks, over there in lala land "AIs" are rewriting their reward functions and hacking the matrix and spontaneously emerging mind models of Diplomacy players and generally a week or so from becoming the irresistible superintelligent hypno goddess:
https://www.reddit.com/r/196/comments/1jixljo/comment/mjlexau/
Annoying nerd annoyed annoying nerd website doesn't like his annoying posts:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43489058
(translation: John Gruber is mad HN doesn't upvote his carefully worded Apple tonguebaths)
JWZ: take the win, man
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43515426
https://github.com/typedgrammar/typed-japanese
This project is still in very early stages and heavily relies on LLM-generated grammar rules, which may occasionally contain hallucinations or inaccuracies.
お前はもう死んでいる
Edit: from the English version of this project:
export type Pronoun = 'I' | 'you' | 'he' | 'she' | 'it' | 'we' | 'they' | 'me' | 'him' | 'her' | 'us' | 'them';
Ah yes, definitely the only pronouns in all of English
holy shitting fuck, just got the tip of the year in my email
Simplify Your Hiring with AI Video Interviews
Interview, vet, and hire thousands of job applicants through our AI-powered video interviewer in under 3 minutes & 95 languages.
"AI-Video Vetting That Actually Works"
it's called kerplunk.com, a domain named after the sound of your balls disappearing forever
the market is gullible recruiters
founder is Jonathan Gallegos, his linkedin is pretty amazing
other three top execs don't use their surnames on Kerplunk's about page, one (Kyle Schutt) links to a linkedin that doesn't exist
for those who know how Dallas TX works, this is an extremely typical Dallas business BS enterprise, it's just this one is about AI not oil or Texas Instruments for once
Stackslobber posts evidence that transhumanism is a literal cult, HN crowd is not having it
In other news, the Open Source Intiative's publicly bristled against the EU's attempt to regulate AI, to the point of weakening said attempts.
Tante, unsurprisingly, is not particularly impressed:
Thank you OSI. To protect the purity of your license – which I do not consider to be open source – you are working towards making it harder for regulators to enforce certain standards within the usage of so-called “AI” systems. Quick question: Who are you actually working for? (I know, it is corporations)
The whole Open Source/Free Software movement has run its course and has been very successful for business. But it feels like somewhere along the line we as normal human beings have been left behind.
You want my opinion, this is a major own-goal for the FOSS movement - sure, the OSI may have been technically correct where the EU's demands conflicted with the Open Source Definition, but neutering EU regs like this means any harms caused by open-source AI will be done in FOSS's name.
Considering FOSS's complete failure to fight corporate encirclement of their shit, this isn't particularly surprising.
one for the arse-end of this week's stubsack
In other news, Jazza's AI-generated cousin is back to continue pretending to be an actual artist. This time, its by actively denigrating the works of Studio Ghibli:
Unsurprisingly, he is getting raked over the coals by basically everyone. He's also having an utter meltdown in the replies.
Redis guy AntiRez issues a heartfelt plea for the current AI funders to not crash and burn when the LLM hype machine implodes but to keep going to create AGI:
Neither HN nor lobste.rs are very impressed
In case you missed it, a couple sneers came out against AI from mainstream news outlets recently - CNN's put out an article titled "Apple’s AI isn’t a letdown. AI is the letdown", whilst the New York Times recently proclaimed "The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes".
You want my take on this development, I'm with Ed Zitron on this - this is a sign of an impending sea change. Looks like the bubble's finally nearing its end.
Would you believe this prescient vibe coding manual came out in 2015! https://mowillemsworkshop.com/catalog/books/item/i-really-like-slop
Craniometrix is hiring! (lol)
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/craniometrix/jobs/ugwcSrU-chief-of-staff
just remembered why I created an account here:
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/domu-technology-inc/jobs/hwWsGdU-vibe-coder-ai-engineer
become a vibe coder for a debt collection startup! but only if you're willing to pull 15+ hour days for 80k a year
LW: 23AndMe is for sale, maybe the babby-editing people might be interested in snapping them up?
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MciRCEuNwctCBrT7i/23andme-potentially-for-sale-for-less-than-usd50m
New piece from Brian Merchant: Deconstructing the new American oligarchy
Bill Gates is having a normal one.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/26/bill-gates-on-ai-humans-wont-be-needed-for-most-things.html
For some reason it's on brand for HN to have a discussion of different dash widths stick on the front page more than 24h
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43497719
Extra spice and relevance for the observation that GenAI text apparently has a lot of em-dashes in it, so add that to the frequency of the word "delve".
In other news, Elon Musk's personal chatbot has proudly proclaimed its available on Telegram, and its proclamation got picked up by The Verge:
Right now, the integration is limited to "Grok's available as an optional chatbot", but going by what I've seen on BlueSky, people are already taking this as their cue to jump ship to Signal.
Quick update on the CoreWeave affair: turns out they're facing technical defaults on their Blackstone loans, which is gonna hurt their IPO a fair bit.