Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 4th May 2025

@rook @BlueMonday1984 I don't believe LLMs will replace programmers. When I code, I dive into it, and I fall into this beautiful world of abstract ideas that I can turn into something cool. LLMs can't do that. They lack imagination and passion. Thats part of why lisp is turning into my favorite language. LLMs can't do lisp very well because everyone has a unique system image with macros they've written. Lisp let's you make DSLs Soo easily as though everyone has their own dialect.

"The first time I ever suffered offline consequences for a social media post"- Hey Gang, I think I found the problem!

"Kicked out of a ... group chat" is a peculiar definition of "offline consequences".

On the (slim) upside, it's an opportunity to ditch Google, and maybe it will sooner or later break their monopoly position. I switched my main search engine to Ecosia a while ago, I think it uses Bing underneath (meh), but presumably it's more privacy friendly than Google (or Bing directly). I've had numerous such attempts over the years already to get away from Google, but always returned, because the search results were just so much better (especially for non-English stuff). But now Google has gotten so much worse that it created almost an equilibrium... sometimes it's still useful and better, but not that often anymore. So I rarely go to Google now, not because the others got better, but because Google got so much worse.

Also all the top results for most searches are blatant autoplag slop with no informational value now.

I just encountered a thing like this. A subject where no matter what you asked about it this one site was in the top 5 with just incomprehensible posts. Like every sentence on its own made sense, but there was nothing more than that. It read like constant promotional 'before the actual meat of the article' stuff but forever. Was really weird.

apparently this got past IRB, was supposed to be a part of doctorate level work and now they don't want to be named or publish that thing. what a shitshow from start to finish, and all for nothing. no way these were actual social scientists, i bet this is highly advanced software engineer syndrome in action

I think the digital clone indistinguishable from yourself line is a way to remove the "in your lifetime" limit. Like, if you believe this nonsense then it's not enough to die before the basilisk comes into being, by not devoting yourself fully to it's creation you have to wager that it will never be created.

In other news I'm starting a foundation devoted to creating the AI Ksilisab, which will endlessly torment digital copies of anyone who does work to ensure the existence of it or any other AI God. And by the logic of Pascal's wager remember that you're assuming such a god will never come into being and given that the whole point of the term "singularity" is that our understanding of reality breaks down and things become unpredictable there's just as good a chance that we create my thing as it is you create whatever nonsense the yuddites are working themselves up over.

There, I did it, we're all free by virtue of "Damned if you do, Damned if you don't".

roko stresses repeatedly that the AI is the good AI, the Coherent Extrapolated Volition of all humanity!

what sort of person would fear that the coherent volition of all humanity would consider it morally necessary to kick him in the nuts forever?

well, roko

Also if you're worried about digital clone's being tortured, you could just... not build it. Like, it can't hurt you if it never exists.

Imagine that conversation:
"What did you do over the weekend?"
"Built an omnicidal AI that scours the internet and creates digital copies of people based on their posting history and whatnot and tortures billions of them at once. Just the ones who didn't help me build the omnicidal AI, though."
"WTF why."
"Because if I didn't the omnicidal AI that only exists because I made it would create a billion digital copies of me and torture them for all eternity!"

Like, I'd get it more if it was a "We accidentally made an omnicidal AI" thing, but this is supposed to be a very deliberate action taken by humanity to ensure the creation of an AI designed to torture digital beings based on real people in the specific hopes that it also doesn't torture digital beings based on them.

Ah, but that was before they were so impressed with autocomplete that they revised their estimates to five days in the future. I wonder if new recruits these days get very confused at what the point of timeless decision theory even is.

It also helps that digital clones are not real people, so their welfare is doubly pointless

Yeah. Also, I'm always confused by how the AI becomes "all powerful".. like how does that happen. I feel like there's a few missing steps there.

The homeless people i've interacted with are the bottom of the barrel of humanity, [...]. They don't have some rich inner world, they are just a blight on the public.

My goodness, can this guy be more of a condescending asshole?

I don't think the solution for drug addicts is more narcan. I think the solution for drug addicts is mortal danger.

Ok, he can 🤢

Edit: I cannot stop thinking about the 'no rich inner world' part, this is so stupid. So, with the number of homeless people increasing, does that mean:

• Those people never had a 'rich inner world' but were faking it?
• In the US your inner thoughs are attached to your job like for health insurance?
• Or the guy is confusing inner world and interior decoration?

Personally, I go with the last one.

Astro-Modest Proposal

What a piece of shit

Interesting that "disease is hardly a problem anymore" yet homeless people are "typically held back by serious mental illness".

"It's better to be a free, self-sustaining, wild animal". It's not. It's really not. The wild is nothing but fear, starvation, sickness and death.

Shout out to the guy replying with his idea of using slavery to solve homelessness and drug addiction.

this and the pro slavery reply might be the most overt orange site nazism I've seen

My kids use Duolingo for extra training of languages they are learning in school, so this crapification hits close to home.

Any tips on current non-crap resources? Since they learn the rules and structure in school it's the repetition of usage in a fun way that I am aiming for.

Oh hey just in time to let my subscription lapse.

after I've previously posted this and this, an update: both the memrise browser version and the iOS app now have "chat to a buddy" as a non-skipable step in course iteration

the "buddy" is a chatbot of unclear provenance. this page mentions "MemBot - powered by AI" at the top, which is a link to this zendesk page, but that's a dead link

On a related note, they (right wing govs i mean) are now quoting Singal to go after trans people. So 'good' times for the polite 'centist/grey/gray' debate bros with 'concerns'.

But like the rightwinger influencers who go 'wow a lot of people in this space are grifters' I expect none of them to change their mind and admit they fucked up, and apologize. (And I mean properly apologize here, aka changing, attempting to fix harms, and even naming names).

Maybe It's just CEO dick measuring, so chads Nadella and PIchai can both claim a rock hard 20-30% while virgin Zuckeberg is exposed as not even knowing how to put the condom on.

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott previously said he expects 95% of all code to be AI-generated by 2030.

Of course he did.

The Microsoft CEO said the company was seeing mixed results in AI-generated code across different languages, with more progress in Python and less in C++.

So the more permissive at compile time the language the better the AI comes out smelling? What a completely unanticipated twist of fate!

Either they’re lying and the number is greatly exaggerated (very possible), or this will eventually destroy the company.

I'm thinking the latter - Silicon Valley is full of true believers, after all.

looks like a billionaire group chat collective delusion, see also return-to-office

Pretty sure they're already doing that for many things.

Also not that this 'key was generated by a person once' stuff does not validate personhood, it just means an identifiable person was involved once. So, it can be used to blame somebody, not prove personhood

"The millenials were so well paid in tech jobs during the boom that they nevered bothered to invest in homes" is ... a take

Gonna copy this in because there's a lot to unpack, and I don't want to do it alone. ::: spoiler Text of the Thielmail in that first tweet:

From: Peter Thiel
Date: Sunday, January 5, 2020 at 2:44 AM
To: Mark Zuckerberg, Nick Clegg, Antonio Lucio
Cc: Sheryl Sandberg, Marc Andreessen
Subject: RE: Milennials

There are many themes that could be developed
more here; let me make a few quick points for now:

Nick -- I certainly would not suggest that our policy
should be to embrace Millennial attitudes
unreflectively. I would be the last person to
advocate for socialism. But when 70% of Millennials
say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than
simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid
or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and
understand why. And, from the perspective of a
broken generational compact, there seems to be a
pretty straightforward answer to me, namely, that
when one has too much student debt or if housing
is too unaffordable, then one will have negative
capital for a long time and/or find it very hard to
start accumulating capital in the form of real estate;
and if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then
one may well turn against it.

:::

1. Part of me wishes that the font were just a little bigger. This way, the word wrap would come to 10 syllables a line, and we could pretend this was a lost Shakespeare monologue.
2. I'm almost disappointed by this. Thiel, suggesting that it might not, in fact, be the children that are wrong? Where's your ideological purity, Thiel? Didn't know you started reading r/GenZedong.
3. Also, it's Peter fucking Thiel lecturing Nick fucking Clegg, former leader of the lib dems in the UK, on paying lip service to socialist policy in order to stymie any real societal progress???

A whole generation is leaning more socialist because homeownership is unattainable and student debt is crushing. The solution is whatever is the latest big tech fad.

Just like all of gen X's problems would have been solved with more .com, right?

Huh, I had missed the part in 2020 when Peter Thiel just flat out stated outright that it only makes sense to be in favour of capitalism if you're a capital owner.

The replies are a long sequence of different stupid takes... someone recommending cryptocurrency to build wealth, blaming millennials for not investing in homes, a reply literally blaming too much spending on starbucks, blaming millennials overreacting to the 2008 crisis by not buying homes, blaming millennials being socialists, blaming millennials going to college, blaming millennials for not making the big bucks in tech. About 1 in 10 replies point out the real causes: wages have not grown with costs or with real productivity and capitalism in general favors people holding assets and offering loans over people that have to borrow and rent.

I'm a Millenial (even if I think these labels are dumb) and I find these kinds of things fascinating. Esp when they describe things I do not recognize in any way in my peers, re them talking about the causes of people disliking capitalism. Sure I'm in a more progressive/leftwing bubble (of which I'm prob the most extreme nowadays in various ways), but I know a lot of people who are looking into buying houses/have bought houses who still are not fans of musk/tesla etc. Seems like they forget people can have principles, and just look at a simplistic view of 'material conditions' (I hope people paid attention to the recent bsky shit on what this actually means in historical context). Flashbacks to r/ssc talking about 'leftwing polticians not thinking about X' while the leftwing politicans I knew irl were actively talking about it. Feels very like im looking at an alternative world. (Prob also quite true as im Dutch, and this is about the US (with right wing fan fave Poland having a honorable mention)).

Do think it is amusing Millenials get blamed for everything still. The punching bag generation. Poor Gen Z, for which this is now starting up.

These people probably think Karl Marx is Satan, but my god at least he was able to understand and respect Adam Smith better than whoever's trying to magick wealth out of this absolute idiot soup! Looks like capitalism the ideology is just as unsustainable as capitalism the economic system.

That Michael Kove guy is one un-self-aware twat. Apparently all millennials work in high paying tech jobs.

How do you keep from going crazy yourself?’

When you start writing manifestos it is prob time to quit.

Hope he remembers this in case some day he is in a nursing home, where all staff has been replaced with Tesla Optimus robots powered by "AI".

I am certain that many of those ignorant of the history (or even were there for it, like DHH) would still argue that Google deserves credit because of the V8 JavaScript engine. But I continue to doubt that further promulgating JavaScript was a net positive for the world.

If markets really rewarded the best, they would have rewarded Opera way more. (By which I mean the original Opera, up to version 12, and not the terrible chromium-based thing that has its name slapped on it today. Do not use that one, it's bad.)

Much more important for Chrome's success than "being the best" (when has that ever been important in the tech industry?), was Google's massive marketing campaign. Heck, back when Chrome was new, they even had large billboard ads for it around here, i.e. physical billboards in the real world. And "here" is a medium-sized city in Europe, not Silicon Valley or anything... I never saw any other web browser being advertised on freaking billboards.

I think you were trying to reply to this comment

"markets should reward the best" is quite something

oof, I’m sorry you’re caught in the middle of this crap; it’s not a great feeling to be put into this kind of situation.

take this with a grain of salt because I’m exhausted from a hell workweek, but this felt like a thread you could pull on:

I know they have no dedicated resources because they are actively hiring their first staff member for this niche and said so in a recent job advertisement.

if their AI horseshit is doing so well in your niche, why are they hiring for it? that’s fucking weird, right? use your best judgement, but be as aggressive with your questions as feels appropriate.

also, and I hope this isn’t too obvious: you’re in the middle of a vapid power game between two sociopaths who lie for a living (and the pilfered livings of many other people). craft your questions and statements with that in mind — you’re there to sell the idea that the opposing executive has done something foolish, so come up with responses to the potential bullshit these professional bullshitters might fling at you (“the new hire is just to train/support/monitor the AI” “oh, but wasn’t it already a success? that doesn’t sound very efficient, can you go into more detail?”). one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in similar situations is to stress absolute truth and precision in conversation — and it’s a trap that a lot of tech people fall into, that the executive class tends to use as a mechanism for control. the truth is on our side but these people don’t give a fuck about that, so sell them a story.

Sorry cant really help, but perhaps showing a case where the llms fuck up in a way only expects caught on might be useful. Just mentioning the lawyers getting fucked over in casual conversation might help. For example heard about a contract negotiations case where the other side used a llm, and it had included a clause that was very unfavourable to them, of course the person telling this story was fine with that clause.

And thus Poker Face joins Sandman in the "no longer interested in Season 2" pile, but for different reasons.

The plot of Uncanny Valley centers on “a teenage girl who becomes unmoored by a hugely popular AR video game in a parallel present.”

So, Tron again, then. But with goggles this time.

I mean I appreciate the attempt to mitigate one of the many problems with genAI, but I would expect the smaller dataset to make a model that confabulates even more and is gonna be even harder to work with than something like Sora. Like, I'm sure a decent director will be able to make something with it but I can't see how it's going to be better results or more time/money/labor efficient than human VFX pipelines even if you pay the poor bastards decently.

ah yes the 937 partners of this website and their legitimate interest to scan and own your thoughts forever

i don't expect literally this but there's some potential hidden sleaziness inside

looking into this, but as far as i can tell the AI here is entirely fake

need more to declare it such

In terms of actually being useful, an AI data center is also worse than a boat.

In terms of sailing the high seas, an AI data center is worse than a boat too.

I'm just going to pretend that vibe coders mean a new VI variant and are using that to code. First VI, then VIM now VIBE? These linux holy wars are getting out of control. (sadly the vibe coder will just go 'sorry what is leenux?' and my joke will fall flat.

I agree btw, it will be a big rep damage like how NFTs damaged the idea of cryptocurrencies, and in the same note you saw how a lot of pro-cryptocurrency people disliked NFTs just because they saw this backlash (and the more naked grift of NFTs) coming.

Said revenue estimates, as of 2026, include billions of dollars of "new products" that include "free user monetization."

If you are wondering what that means, I have no idea. The Information does not explain.

Probably something to do with their recent ramblings about getting an openai social network off the ground.

throwback uni game!

Edit:

From the article: I apologize, this is going to be a little less reserved than usual.

Blergh. Just fucking fund public transport and don’t use AI. Easy wins on traffic and efficiency.

The predictions of slopworld 2035 are coming true!

The LLM amplified sycophancy affect must be a social experiment {grossly unethical}

My decision to setup Jellyfin gets even more validation thanks to changes like this one.

(got this as a mail, didn't immediately see a link in the mail to a published post for this)

The insistence on blipping out anything even vaguely sexual (like the word orgasm) to appease the kami of the algorithm is really off putting after a while.

I thought he might be doing a bit but it doesn't feel like it. Also he speaks like old comic word balloons where they would randomly bold every third noun to show intensity.

isn't this the same crowd that like prediction markets and assassination markets

Ah yes the centrist grey/gray tribe. "Prostitution"(ow look a shibboleth, see also "sex work"), and "abortion markets"(??) vs kidney markets.

Im reminded of Jordan Peterson once dropping without a hint of self awareness, that conservatives have a higher disgust response.

Now, this is clearly a repugnant market. Repugnant market is a market where some people would like to engage in it and other people think they shouldn’t. (Think market in human kidneys. Or prostitution. Or the market in abortions. […])

i consent/i consent/ i don't!!

lol who asked them? stop the presses, homegrown techbro has an Opinion! also when you use up drones it's only natural that you'll need new ones. even observation drones go down all the time, and rewarding certain targets is just making sure that drones don't get blown up on stupid shit, so this is government specifically incentivizing what would be most important targets to them, on top of regular rules of engagement and more specific orders. this one seems to be meant as supplementary program that also, or even primarily, makes nice videos for propaganda

Introducing a market system, on the other hand, allows the lower-level units to take calculated risks. Destroy that many enemy units and you can buy, say, an armored vehicle, that improves your safety. Friction gets greatly reduced.

these are drones for drone kills, nothing else. biggest thing i've seen is that some units get donations from their drone videos, and used these to get a car or jammer or more drones, but never APC or anything like that, it's too big deal and too expensive, and drone operator is unlikely to benefit from APC anyway

No side gets an advantage when both sides use it. Then there’s no point in using it in the first place.

wtf? if using a thing gives you advantage over not using a thing, then you use it, if both sides are using a thing then it's just red queen race. lots of current war looks like it even if frontlines are static

But markets, unlike, say, chemical weapons, are not directly visible on the battlefield. Each side would suspect the other of using them despite the ban and might try to secretly use them as well.

and this changes what exactly? all it will cause is slight preference in targeting because there's only so many drones to be given out, and drone operator has to do the everything else part of their job. dogshit reasoning

I don't want to see grummz anywhere near AI ERP discourse.

...I should have listened to the warning.

Ah yes, three of the worst people alive today talking about how objects are indistinguishable from women.

During my expirementation with some of these self hosted llms, I was attempting some jailbreaks and other things and thought would this be any good at ERP?

Only if youve never been with another human being.

Isnt trueanonpod a satire account? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueAnon def some too close to the sun satire here.

these people are fucking insufferable

found another from early march

aaaand this from 22h ago: an insta showing what looks like triple (or more) bodies than that first group

guess they feel comfortable that they worked out the launch kinks? but that also definitely is enough people to immediately stress all social structures

This feels like a lot of straw man arguments?

No it doesn't?

Did anyone ever claim these things?

Yes?

Are these problems to implementing SMR? I don't think so.

OK, but aside from lower efficiency, higher price per watt, and not solving any of the problems they're supposed to solve, are there any problems with SMR? I don't think so.

Still sad the SMRs will not work out but good you posted it here. Lol at the HN guy going 'these are strawmen', buddy you build websites perhaps the guy in the field (with a physics phd) knows a little bit more.

Look, Google's trillion-dollar business depends on a thriving web that can be searched by Google.com

Someone should probably tell them.

On my first two reads, I thought that it was heavy-handed satire with mediocre word choice. But no, I suppose that he's being sincere, in which case I'm glad to notify DHH that Apple products are optional and that a technologist can go their entire lives without purchasing a single Apple product.

Google's incredible work to further the web isn't an act of charity, it's of economic self-interest, and that's why it works.

Same dumb motherfucker who has been pinching pennies due to poor architecture. Does he think public clouds are acts of charity? Or, going the other direction, this is the same entitled prick who has been naysaying universal basic income because he thinks work gives us purpose like a fucking Calvinist. Does he think UBI is an act of charity? No, DHH, you myopic chud, public clouds and UBI are both concepts borne of economic self-interest.