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Stubsack: Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 29th June 2025
  • I think they're different people but may be in communication out of band.

    edit a search for "HandofLixue" on Google only gives one hit, an old profile on LessWrong now renamed to "The Dao of Bayes":

    https://www.lesswrong.com/users/the-dao-of-bayes

  • Stubsack: Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 29th June 2025
  • Maybe instead of worrying about obscure wiki pages, Habryka should reflect why a linkpost titled Racial Dating Preferences and Sexual Racism is on the front page of his precious community now, with 48 karma and 22 comments.

  • Iyo vs. Io — OpenAI and Jony Ive get sued
  • Pretty sure Altman is gonna get away with settling with Iyo. Hopefully they demand cold hard cash and not weird-ass OpenAI company scrip.

  • Stubsack: Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 29th June 2025
  • Following up on the thread that spawned from my comment yesterday:

    https://awful.systems/comment/7777035

    (I'm in vacation mode and forgot it was late on Sunday)

    I wonder if Habryka, the LWer who posted both there and on Xhitter that "someone should do something about this troublesome page" realized that there would be less pushback if he'd simply coordinated in the background and got the edits in place without forewarning others. Was it intentional to try to pick a fight with Wikipedians?

  • yes scott we know you are
  • it's circled back to LW so expect a bunch of people showing up going ACTUALLY

    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EhE2jsiMcqGPRjd9a/papetoast-s-shortforms?commentId=AgG8ZM8kP98TKoW7J

  • OpenAI needs its $40 billion funding deal — so it’s threatening Microsoft!
  • I'm no fan of MSFT but in this case I hope they squeeze Saltman for everything he has.

  • Wake up babe, new "in this moment I am enlightened" copypasta just dropped
  • pls let me know who thinks Ringworld is ”hard SF” so I can punch them

  • Wake up babe, new "in this moment I am enlightened" copypasta just dropped
  • spoilers for a number of works follow

    Hyperion - mankind lives in uneasy competition with semi-hostile AIs. Wars between human factions have already killed billions. The Earth is destroyed by a science experiment dropping a black hole into the core. The farcaster (teleportation) network causes ecological disasters on multiple planets.

    Dune - after catastrophic wars between humans and AIs, computers are forbidden. The only way to travel interstellar distances are via the monopoly of the Guild navigators. Society is explicitely feudal. Our hero protagonist disrupts this, establishing a theocracy in a war that kills billions. His successor holds humanity in societal stasis for millenia, to induce the Scattering that will preserve it from similar societies in the future. Of course, billions die during this period.

    Foundation - humanity collapses into a new Dark Age. Presumably, trillions die.

    Ringworld - I read it long ago but it was so 70s I've basically blotted it out. The wiki summary indicates it's not so bad unless you're stranded on the Ringworld itself.


  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th June 2025
  • Except my feeling is it's mostly people who have grown up with Linux as a settled fact of computing life, not Unix greybeards.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th June 2025
  • Don't have much to add, other than I first became aware of this connection when Freenode imploded. I wrote in a short essay that

    [the] dominant ideology of new Freenode is free speech, anti-LGBT, and adherence to fringe Unix shibboleths such as anti-systemd, anti-Codes of Conduct, and anti anti-RMS.

    (src)

    Maybe it's connected to the phenomenon of old counter-cultural activist become massive racists.

  • Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2025! Don’t expect much — it still doesn’t work
  • As an Apple customer I am entirely unmoved by their utter failure to shoehorn an LLM into their gadgets. I'm starting to think they might have dodged a bullet by missing the hype train.

  • Steven Pinker in race-science podcast shocker
  • "Shocker", yeah right. Least surprising appearance ever.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 8th June 2025
  • This FT post about the VC ghouls getting blindsided by daddies Elon and Trump fighting is pretty entertaining

    https://www.ft.com/content/df15f13d-310f-47a5-89ed-330a6a379068

    https://archive.is/cKxyV

    David Friedberg, a co-host of the All-In podcast that often features Musk and that has become a sounding board for the Trump-aligned tech world, suggested there was a broader cost to America from the spat between the US president and the Tesla boss. “China just won,” he posted.

    Behind the scenes, prominent Silicon Valley figures were desperately trying to prevent Musk from appearing on an emergency episode of the podcast, according to two people familiar with the matter, out of concern that the billionaire would make the dispute even worse and poison the relationship with tech’s most powerful ally in Washington, vice-president JD Vance.

    L. O. L.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 8th June 2025
  • I wonder if the US is closing in on the “imprison inconvenient billionaires for tax evasion” stage of managed democracy

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 8th June 2025
  • there's no anime avatar, how do we know it's really Elon?

  • Lionsgate: "The AI movies are coming, we swear, they're just stuck in Canada"
  • "Mr. Burns" -- too on the nose. Try better, scriptwriters.

    Using Runaway’s AI technology, the studio can avoid a pricy film shoot that would cost millions and take a few days and use AI to create the shot for about $10,000.

    "I have been in this business long enough to become vice chairman. What is this "CGI" you speak of?"

    (not sure you can get that sort of shot for less than $10K but you don't have to literally go out an shoot on film/digital actors and shit)

  • Advent of Code 2024 - the home stretch - it's been an aMAZEing year

    current difficulties

    1. Day 21 - Keypad Conundrum: 01h01m23s
    2. Day 17 - Chronospatial Computer: 44m39s
    3. Day 15 - Warehouse Woes: 30m00s
    4. Day 12 - Garden Groups: 17m42s
    5. Day 20 - Race Condition: 15m58s
    6. Day 14 - Restroom Redoubt: 15m48s
    7. Day 09 - Disk Fragmenter: 14m05s
    8. Day 16 - Reindeer Maze: 13m47s
    9. Day 22 - Monkey Market: 12m15s
    10. Day 13 - Claw Contraption: 11m04s
    11. Day 06 - Guard Gallivant: 08m53s
    12. Day 08 - Resonant Collinearity: 07m12s
    13. Day 11 - Plutonian Pebbles: 06m24s
    14. Day 18 - RAM Run: 05m55s
    15. Day 04 - Ceres Search: 05m41s
    16. Day 23 - LAN Party: 05m07s
    17. Day 02 - Red Nosed Reports: 04m42s
    18. Day 10 - Hoof It: 04m14s
    19. Day 07 - Bridge Repair: 03m47s
    20. Day 05 - Print Queue: 03m43s
    21. Day 03 - Mull It Over: 03m22s
    22. Day 19 - Linen Layout: 03m16s
    23. Day 01 - Historian Hysteria: 02m31s
    13
    Advent of Code Week 3 - you're lost in a maze of twisty mazes, all alike

    Problem difficulty so far (up to day 16)

    1. Day 15 - Warehouse Woes: 30m00s
    2. Day 12 - Garden Groups: 17m42s
    3. Day 14 - Restroom Redoubt: 15m48s
    4. Day 09 - Disk Fragmenter: 14m05s
    5. Day 16 - Reindeer Maze: 13m47s
    6. Day 13 - Claw Contraption: 11m04s
    7. Day 06 - Guard Gallivant: 08m53s
    8. Day 08 - Resonant Collinearity: 07m12s
    9. Day 11 - Plutonian Pebbles: 06m24s
    10. Day 04 - Ceres Search: 05m41s
    11. Day 02 - Red Nosed Reports: 04m42s
    12. Day 10 - Hoof It: 04m14s
    13. Day 07 - Bridge Repair: 03m47s
    14. Day 05 - Print Queue: 03m43s
    15. Day 03 - Mull It Over: 03m22s
    16. Day 01 - Historian Hysteria: 02m31s
    20
    Advent of Code 2024 Week 2: this time it's all grids, all the time

    The previous thread has fallen off the front page, feel free to use this for discussions on current problems

    Rules: no spoilers, use the handy dandy spoiler preset to mark discussions as spoilers

    24
    Person who exercises her free association rights at conferences incites ire in Jameson Lopp
    protos.com Bitfinex hacker Razzlekhan was job hunting at Bitcoin 2024

    Razzlekhan, who conspired to launder tens of thousands of bitcoin, told attendees she was searching for work as a crypto consultant.

    Bitfinex hacker Razzlekhan was job hunting at Bitcoin 2024
    1
    www.web3isgoinggreat.com Martin Shkreli claims to have been behind a Donald Trump memecoin

    After Arkham Intelligence announced a $150,000 bounty for anyone who could prove the identity of the person behind a Donald Trump memecoin called $DJT, blockchain sleuth zachxbt quickly rose to the occasion. He submitted evidence that Martin Shkreli, the "pharma bro" who spent years in federal priso...

    This season's showrunners are so lazy, just re-using the same old plots and antagonists.

    8
    In an attempt to secure the libertarian vote, Trump promises to pardon Dread Pirate Roberts (while calling for the death penalty for other drug dealers)
    www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com Ross Ulbricht - Lawyers, Guns & Money

    Trump: Donald Trump promised to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the online illegal drug marketplace Silk Road, in a raucous speech before the Libertarian National Convention on Saturday night. “And if you vote for me, on Day One, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht,” t...

    Ross Ulbricht - Lawyers, Guns & Money
    6
    www.404media.co Flood of AI-Generated Submissions ‘Final Straw’ for Small 22-Year-Old Publisher

    “The problem with AI is the people who use AI. They don't respect the written word,” the founder of Bards and Sages said.

    > “It is soulless. There is no personality to it. There is no voice. Read a bunch of dialogue in an AI generated story and all the dialogue reads the same. No character personality comes through,” she said. Generated text also tends to lack a strong sense of place, she’s observed; the settings of the stories are either overly-detailed for popular locations, or too vague, because large language models can’t imagine new worlds and can only draw from existing works that have been scraped into its training data.

    1
    AI grifters con the US gov that AGI poses "existential risk"
    time.com U.S. Must Act Quickly to Avoid Risks From AI, Report Says

    The U.S. government must move “decisively” to avert an “extinction-level threat" to humanity from AI, says a government-commissioned report

    U.S. Must Act Quickly to Avoid Risks From AI, Report Says

    The grifters in question:

    > Jeremie and Edouard Harris, the CEO and CTO of Gladstone respectively, have been briefing the U.S. government on the risks of AI since 2021. The duo, who are brothers [...]

    Edouard's website: https://www.eharr.is/, and on LessWrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/users/edouard-harris

    Jeremie's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremieharris/

    The company website: https://www.gladstone.ai/

    1
    "The Obscene Energy Demands of A.I." - hackernews discussion

    HN reacts to a New Yorker piece on the "obscene energy demands of AI" with exactly the same arguments coiners use when confronted with the energy cost of blockchain - the product is valuable in of itself, demands for more energy will spur investment in energy generation, and what about the energy costs of painting oil on canvas, hmmmmmm??????

    Maybe it's just my newness antennae needing calibrating, but I do feel the extreme energy requirements for what's arguably just a frivolous toy is gonna cause AI boosters big problems, especially as energy demands ramp up in the US in the warmer months. Expect the narrative to adjust to counter it.

    36
    www.theverge.com Elon Musk’s legal case against OpenAI is hilariously bad

    Elon Musk’s greatest legacy will be as a provider of inane law school exam hypotheticals.

    Elon Musk’s legal case against OpenAI is hilariously bad

    Yes, I know it's a Verge link, but I found the explanation of the legal failings quite funny, and I think it's "important" we keep track of which obscenely rich people are mad at each other so we can choose which of their kingdoms to be serfs in.

    8
    Some interesting tidbits in this ElReg story about "AI Dean Phillips"
    www.theregister.com Developer of Dean Phillips bot suspended by OpenAI

    Biden's challenger model shot down despite super PAC support

    Developer of Dean Phillips bot suspended by OpenAI

    Apologies for the link to The Register...

    Dean Phillips is your classic ratfucking candidate, attempting to siphon off support from the incumbent to help their opponent. After a brief flare of hype before the (unofficial) NH primary, he seems to have flamed out by revealing his master plan too early.

    Anyway, apparently some outfit called "Delphi" tried to create an AI version of him via a SuperPAC and got their OpenAI API access banned for their pains.

    Quoth ElReg:

    > Not even the presence of Matt Krisiloff, a founding member of OpenAI, at the head of the PAC made a difference.

    > The pair have reportedly raised millions for We Deserve Better, driven in part by a $1 million donation from hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who described his funding of the super PAC as "the largest investment I have ever made in someone running for office."

    So the same asshole who is combating "woke" and DEI is bankrolling Phillips, supposed to be the new Bernie. Got it.

    1
    bless this jank @awful.systems gerikson @awful.systems
    [SOLVED] cannot login using mobile Firefox

    Anyone else have this problem? It’s been bothering me for a while and is the last thing keeping me using mobile Chrome.

    On the login page , after entering username and password, the “login” button does nothing. It might slightly change color but I am not directed to the site logged in, nor do I get an error.

    platform: iOS

    The username and password are entered automatically via either Firefox’s password store, or iOS’.

    0
    Looking for: random raytracing program

    Years ago (we're talking decades) I ran into a small program that randomly generated raytraced images (think transparent orbs, lens flares, reflection etc), suitable for saving as wallpapers. It was a C/C++ program that ran on Linux. I've long since lost the name and the source code, and I wonder if there's anything like that out there now?

    11
    The official awful.systems Advent of Code 2023 thread

    Rules: no spoilers.

    The other rules are made up as we go along.

    Share code by link to a forge, home page, pastebin (Eric Wastl has one here) or code section in a comment.

    121
    Any interest in an Advent of Code thread?

    The wider community is still on Reddit, I wonder if there’s an interest to have a small alternative?

    If not, what’s a good Lemmy instance for these things?

    7
    ScottA is annoyed EA has a bad name now
    www.astralcodexten.com In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism

    "All you do is cause boardroom drama, and maybe some other things I’m forgetting..."

    In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism

    In a since deleted thread on another site, I wrote

    > For the OG effective altruists, it’s imperative to rebrand the kooky ultra-utilitarianists as something else. TESCREAL is the term adopted by their opponents.

    Looks like great minds think alike! The EA's need to up their google juice so people searching for the term find malaria nets, not FTX. Good luck on that, Scott!

    The HN comments are ok, with this hilarious sentence

    > I go to LessWrong, ACX, and sometimes EA meetups. Why? Mainly because it's like the HackerNews comment section but in person.

    What's the German term for a recommendation that's the exact opposite?

    12
    We don't even have Universal Basic Income yet but libertarians are already arguing it's too large

    [this is probably off-topic for this forum, but I found it on HN so...]

    Edit "enjoy" the discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38233810

    30
    gerikson gerikson @awful.systems
    Posts 44
    Comments 1.2K