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.

Last week’s thread

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

  • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
    5·
    5 hours ago

    I got this AMAZING OPPORTUNITY in my inbox, because once your email appears on a single published paper you’re forever doomed to garbage like this (transcript at the end):

    Highlights:

    • Addresses me as Dr. I’m not a doctor. I checked, and apparently Dr. Muhhamad Imran Qureshi indeed has a PhD and is a lecturer at Teesside University International Business School (link to profile). His recent papers include a bunch of blockchain bullshit. Tesside University appears to be a legit UK university, although I’m not sure how legit the Business School is (or how legit any Business School can be, really).
    • Tells us their research is so shit that using wisdom woodchippers actually increases their accuracy.
    • One of the features is “publication support”, so this might be one of those scams where you pay an exorbitant fee to get “published” in some sketchy non-peer-reviewed journal.
    • One of the covered AI tools is Microsoft Excel. If you were wondering if “AI” had any meaning.
    • Also, by god, are there so many different ChatGPT clones now? I haven’t heard most of those names. I kinda hope they’re as AI as Excel is.

    I’m not sure which would be worse, this being a scam, or them legit thinking this brings value to the world and believing they’re helping anyone.

    transcript

    Email titled Revolutionize Your Research: AI-Powered Systematic Literature Review Master Class

    Online course on writing AI-Powered Systematic Literature Review

    Register Now:

    Dear Dr. [REDACTED],

    we’re reaching out because we believe our AI-Powered Systematic Review Masterclass could be a game-changer for your research. As someone who’s passionate about research writing, we know the challenges of conducting thorough and efficient systematic reviews.

    Key takeaways:

    • AI-powered prompt engineering for targeted literature searches
    • Crafting optimal research questions for AI analysis Intelligent data curation to streamline your workflow
    • Leveraging AI for literature synthesis and theory development

    Join our Batch 4 and discover how AI can help you:

    • Save time by automating repetitive tasks
    • Improve accuracy with AI-driven analysis
    • Gain a competitive edge with innovative research methods

    Enrollment is now open! Don’t miss this opportunity to take your systematic review skills to the next level.

    Key Course Details: Course Title: AI-Powered Systematic Literature Reviews Master Class Live interaction + recording = Learning that fits your life Dates: October 13, 2024, to November 3, 2024 Live Session Schedule: Every Sunday at 2 PM UK time (session recordings will be accessible). Duration: Four Weeks Platform: Zoom Course Fee: GBP 100 Certification: Yes Trainer: Dr. Muhammad Imran Qureshi

    Key features

    • Asynchronous learning
    • Video tutorials
    • Live sessions with access to recordings
    • Research paper Templates
    • Premade Prompts for Systematic Literature Review
    • Exercise Files
    • Publication support

    The teaching methodology will offer a dynamic learning experience, featuring live sessions every Saturday via Zoom for a duration of four weeks. These sessions will provide an interactive platform for engaging discussions, personalised feedback, and the opportunity to connect with both the course instructor and fellow participants. Moreover, our diverse instructional approach encompasses video tutorials, interactive engagements, and comprehensive feedback loops, ensuring a well-rounded and immersive learning experience.

    Certification

    Upon successful completion of the course, participants will receive certification from the Association of Professional Researchers and Academicians UK, validating their mastery of AI-enabled methodologies for conducting comprehensive and insightful literature reviews.

    AI tools included

    • Microsoft Excel
    • ChatGPT
    • Elicit
    • Powerdrill
    • Sciespace
    • Jenni
    • Gemni
    • Copilot
    • SCOPUS
    • Scholarcy and many more Register Now
    • fnix@awful.systemsEnglish
      4·
      1 hour ago

      Aren’t you supposed to try to hide your psychopathic instincts? I wonder if he’s knowingly bullshitting or if he’s truly gotten high on his own supply.

    • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
      4·
      11 hours ago

      the various full-tilt levels of corporate insanity from the last 10y or so are going to make remarkable case studies in the coming years

  • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
    6·
    10 hours ago

    so, I’ve always thought that blind’s “we’ll verify your presence by sending you shit on your corp mail” (which, y’know, mail logs etc…) is kinda a fucking awful idea. but!

    this is remarkably fucking unhinged:

  • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
    13·
    1 day ago

    Today in “Promptfondler fucks around and finds out.”

    So I’m guessing what happened here is that the statistically average terminal session doesn’t end after opening an SSH connection, and the LLM doesn’t actually understand what it’s doing or when to stop, especially when it’s being promoted with the output of whatever it last commanded.

    Shlegeris said he uses his AI agent all the time for basic system administration tasks that he doesn’t remember how to do on his own, such as installing certain bits of software and configuring security settings.

    Emphasis added.

    • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
      8·
      1 day ago

      so I snipped the prompt from the log, and:

      ❯ pbpaste| wc -c
    2063

      wow, so efficient! I’m so glad that we have this wonderful new technology where you can write 2kb of text to send to an api to spend massive amounts of compute to get back an operation for doing the irredeemably difficult systems task of initiating an ssh connection

      these fucking people

      • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
        8·
        1 day ago

        Assistant: I apologize for the confusion. It seems that the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet is not the correct one for your network. Let’s try to determine your network configuration. We can do this by checking your IP address and subnet mask:

        there are multiple really bad and dumb things in that log, but this really made me lol (the IPs in question are definitely in that subnet)

        if it were me, I’d be fucking embarrassed to publish something like this as anything but a talk in the spirit of wat. but the promptfondlers don’t seem to have that awareness

        • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
          8·
          1 day ago

          But playing spicy mad-libs with your personal computers for lols is critical AI safety research! This advances the state of the art of copy pasting terminal commands without understanding them!

          I also appreciated The Register throwing shade at their linux sysadmin skills:

          Yes, we recommend focusing on fixing the Grub bootloader configuration rather than a reinstall.

          • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
            5·
            14 hours ago

            it’s a classic

            similarly, Mickens talks. if you haven’t ever seen ‘em, that’s your next todo

    • khalid_salad@awful.systemsEnglish
      10·
      1 day ago

      “I only had this problem because I was very reckless,” he continued, "partially because I think it’s interesting to explore the potential downsides of this type of automation. If I had given better instructions to my agent, e.g. telling it ‘when you’ve finished the task you were assigned, stop taking actions,’ I wouldn’t have had this problem.

      just instruct it “be sentient” and you’re good, why don’t these tech CEOs undersand the full potential of this limitless technology?

  • Moc@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    2 days ago

    Hopefully this doesn’t break the rules. But where can I find some educational podcasts that aren’t overly capitalist, reactionary, rationalist, or otherwise right-leaning or authoritarian in nature.

    I want to specifically avoid content like Lex Friedman, Huberman, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris. That sounds good on the surface but goes down a rabbit hole of affirming reactionary bias.

    I’m not amazing with words, so I hope what I’m saying makes sense. Thanks.

    • mirrorwitch@awful.systemsEnglish
      8·
      22 hours ago

      I tend to like “Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff” more than “Behind the Bastards”. Need some nugget of hope in these dark days. A lot of the cool people have been downright inspiring.

      My daily podcast is “It Could Happen Here”, but some other mainstays in the educational side include:

      • Live Like the World is Dying
      • Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness
      • It’s Going Down
      • Final Straw Radio
      • Reaction (especially liked her dives on the Pinkertons and “The Business Plot”)
      • Srsly Wrong [unrelated to the similarly named thing]
      • The Iron Dice
      • Bad Hasbara
      • Fronline Herbalism if you like plants
    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
      9·
      1 day ago

      Most everything from Cool Zone Media is going to be pretty decent. Haven’t listened to the whole catalogue, but Ed Zitron of Better Offline is an established nonmember (as far as I know) friend of the sneer and Behind the Bastards is truly excellent.

      Maintenance Phase is an excellent examination of diet and health grifters, and Mike’s others (You’re Wrong About and If Books Could Kill) are also pretty excellent.

      I also want to spotlight Wittenburg to Westphalia, a history podcast ostensibly about the wars of the reformation and the social and economic chamges of the early modern period. But in order to really give a sense of how dramatic those changes are, he has so far provided only an incredibly thorough examination of medieval European society from the politics to economics and social structures. He has an episode about unfree labor that I found particularly interesting.

      • o7___o7@awful.systemsEnglish
        8·
        23 hours ago

        Second on Maintenance Phase! I marathonned it on a road trip a couple of days ago, and not only is it a well-researched and a fun listen, you’ll discover that so much of the stuff Aubrey and Michael discuss is directly congruent to our typical subjects. Can’t recommend it enough.

        They’ve inspired me to work on an effort post for MoreWrite, tentatively titled, “A Unified Theory of Bullshitter-Driven Social Diseases.”

        Which isn’t going to be as pompous as it sounds, I promise!

    • self@awful.systemsEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      Behind the Bastards is very easy to listen to and usually focuses on documenting the bad shit that various reactionary and fascist figures have done (in a humorous manner — the host was a writer for Cracked during its peak). a couple of the most recent episodes have covered some of the same topics we talk about in SneerClub and TechTakes, and they’re well worth a listen even if you know the subject matter well. I haven’t checked it out yet, but I think It Could Happen Here is a spin-off with the same main host that’s also broadly anti-fascist.

      e: also, and I had to look this up cause I keep switching podcast apps: I Don’t Speak German is also good, and my co-admin David was on it (episode 82? I swear it was more recent than that… David were you on more than once?)

      • David Gerard@awful.systemsMEnglish
        6·
        1 day ago

        i was! ep 82 and 85

        IDSG has slowed down a lot cos Daniel’s got shit going on right now, but they try to do one when they can

    • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      These aren’t exactly educational but the two pods I bring up in this joint are “If Books Could Kill” and “Scam Goddess”. Again, they aren’t exactly educational but you’ll learn from them!

    • Steve@awful.systemsEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      Some others that might work for you, mixture of informative and entertaining hosts

      • Some More News
      • This Machine Kills
      • Never Post
      • Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
      • Maintenance Phase
      • You’re Wrong About
  • David Gerard@awful.systemsMEnglish
    12·
    2 days ago

    Metal music festival Shell Shock II loses headliner, multiple bands after announcing Kyle Rittenhouse as guest

    Ex-headliners Evergreen Terrace: “Even after they offered to pull Kyle from the event, we discovered several associated entities that we simply do not agree with”

    the new headliner will be uh a Slipknot covers band

    organisers: “We have been silent. But we are prepping. The liberal mob attempted to destroy Shell Shock. But we will not allow it. This is now about more than a concert. This is a war of ideology.” yeah you have a great show guys

  • maol@awful.systemsEnglish
    9·
    1 day ago

    I didn’t realize I was still signed up to emails from NanoWrimo (I tried to do the challenge a few years ago) and received this “we’re sorry” email from them today. I can’t really bring myself to read and sneer at the whole thing, but I’m pasting the full text below because I’m not sure if this is public anywhere else.

    spoiler

    Supporting and uplifting writers is at the heart of this organization. One priority this year has been a return to our mission, and deep thinking about what is in-scope for an organization of our size.

    National Novel Writing Month To Our NaNoWriMo Community:

    There is no way to begin this letter other than to apologize for the harm and confusion we caused last month with our comments about Artificial Intelligence (AI). We failed to contextualize our reasons for making this statement, we chose poor wording to explain some of our thinking, and we failed to acknowledge the harm done to some writers by bad actors in the generative AI space. Our goal at the time was not to broadcast a comprehensive statement that reflected our full sentiments about AI, and we didn’t anticipate that our post would be treated as such. Earlier posts about AI in our FAQs from more than a year ago spoke similarly to our neutrality and garnered little attention.

    We don’t want to use this space to repeat the content of the full apology we posted in the wake of our original statements. But we do want to raise why this position is critical to the spirit—and to the future—of NaNoWriMo.

    Supporting and uplifting writers is at the heart of what we do. Our stated mission is “to provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page”. Our comments last month were prompted by intense harassment and bullying we were seeing on our social media channels, which specifically involved AI. When our spaces become overwhelmed with issues that don’t relate to our core offering, and that are venomous in tone, our ability to cheer on writers is seriously derailed.

    One priority this year has been a return to our mission, and deep thinking about what is in-scope for an organization of our size. A year ago, we were attempting to do too much, and we were doing some of it poorly. Though we admire the many writers’ advocacy groups that function as guilds and that take on industry issues, that isn’t part of our mission. Reshaping our core programs in ways that are safe for all community members, that are operationally sound, that are legally compliant, and that are mission-aligned, is our focus.

    So, what have we done this year to draw boundaries around our scope, promote community safety, and return to our core purpose?

    We ended our practice of hosting unrestricted, all-ages spaces on NaNoWriMo.org and made major website changes. Such safety measures to protect young Wrimos were long overdue.

    We stopped the practice of allowing anyone to self-identify as an educator on our YWP website and contracted an outside vendor to certify educators. We placed controls on social features for young writers and we’re on the brink of relaunch.

    We redesigned our volunteer program and brought it into legal compliance. Previously, none of our ~800 global volunteers had undergone identity verification, background checks, or training that meets nonprofit standards and that complies with California law. We are gradually reinstating volunteers.

    We admitted there are spaces that we can’t moderate. We ended our policy of endorsing Discord servers and local Facebook groups that our staff had no purview over. We paused the NaNoWriMo forums pending serious overhaul. We redesigned our training to better-prepare returning moderators to support our community standards.

    We revised our Codes of Conduct to clarify our guidelines and to improve our culture. This was in direct response to a November 2023 board investigation of moderation complaints.

    We proactively made staffing changes. We took seriously last year’s allegations of child endangerment and other complaints and inspected the conditions that allowed such breaches to occur. No employee who played a role in the staff misconduct the Board investigated remains with the organization.

    Beyond this, we’re planning more broadly for NaNoWriMo’s future. Since 2022, the Board has been in conversation about our 25th Anniversary (which we kick off this year) and what that should mean. The joy, magic, and community that NaNoWriMo has created over the years is nothing short of miraculous. And yet, we are not delivering the website experience and tools that most writers need and expect; we’ve had much work to do around safety and compliance; and the organization has operated at a budget deficit for four of the past six years.

    What we want you to know is that we’re fighting hard for the organization, and that providing a safer environment, with a better user interface, that delivers on our mission and lives up to our values is our goal. We also want you to know that we are a small, imperfect team that is doing our best to communicate well and proactively. Since last November, we’ve issued twelve official communications and created 40+ FAQs. A visit to that page will underscore that we don’t harvest your data, that no member of our Board of Directors said we did, and that there are plenty of ways to participate, even if your region is still without an ML.

    With all that said, we’re one month away! Thousands of Wrimos have already officially registered and you can, too! Our team is heads-down, updating resources for this year’s challenge and getting a lot of exciting programming staged and ready. If you’re writing this season, we’re here for you and are dedicated, as ever, to helping you meet your creative goals!

    In community,

    The NaNoWriMo Team

    • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systemsEnglish
      8·
      1 day ago

      God that’s exhausting. Wasn’t Nanowrimo supposed to be a fun thing at some point? Is there anyone in the world who thinks this sort of scummy PR language is attractive?

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      I don’t have the broader context to comment on the changes they discussed regarding child endangerment and community standards apart from “Wait… oh my God you weren’t already doing that???”

      But it’s such a huge pull back to go from “hating AI is ableist and basically Hilter” to “uhhhh guys we’ve had our plates full cleaning up the mess and the most we’ll say about AI is to stop being assholes about it on our forums.” Clearly there’s still a lot of cleaning up to do at some level.

  • Steve@awful.systemsEnglish
    14·
    2 days ago

    My current hyperfixation is Ecosia, maker of “the greenest search engine” (already problematic) implementing a wrapped-chatgpt chat bot and saying it has a “green mode” which is not some kind of solar-powered, ethically-sound, generative AI, but rather an instructive prompt to only give answers relating to sustainable business models etc etc.

    See my thread here https://xcancel.com/fasterandworse/status/1837831731577000320

    I’m starting to reach out to them wherever I can because for some reason this one is keeping me up at night.

    • Mii@awful.systemsEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      They’re from Germany and made the rounds on the news here a few years back. They’re famous for basically donating all their profits to ecological projects, mostly for planting trees. These projects are publicly visible and auditable, so this at least isn’t bullshit.

      Under the hood they’re just another Bing wrapper (like DuckDuckGo).

      I actually kinda liked the project until they started adding a chatbot some months back. It was just such a weird decision because it has no benefits and is actively against their mission. Their reason for adding it was “user demand” which is the same bullshit Proton spewed and I don’t believe it.

      This green mode crap sounds really whack, lol. So I really wonder what’s up with that. I gotta admit that I thought they were really in it because they believed in their ecological idea (or at least their marketing did a great job convincing me) so this feels super weird.

    • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      That is a good username. Also very scummy business practices. I have a quite big dislike for people who pull that kind of shit.

      • Steve@awful.systemsEnglish
        6·
        2 days ago

        Thanks! I thought it shows up on here too. Anyway, you can find me on all the places with that username

    • Steve@awful.systemsEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      I have sent an email to their press enquiries contact asking for more information, but I don’t know if I have the “press” clout to warrant a response (I know I don’t)

  • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
    13·
    3 days ago

    as seen via jwz, the tail wagging the dog continues (archive) at mozilla

    “if you can’t beat 'em, join 'em” but the wrong way around. I guess they got tired of begging google for money?

    And, for the foreseeable future at least, advertising is a key commercial engine of the internet

    this tracks analogously to something I’ve been saying for a while as well, but with some differences. one of the most notable is the misrepresentation here of “the internet”, in the stead of “all the entities playing the online advertising game to extract from everyone else”

    • o7___o7@awful.systemsEnglish
      6·
      19 hours ago

      I guess they got tired of begging google for money?

      If the stars come right, there may not be a Google to beg for money

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
      11·
      2 days ago

      Thanks I hate it.

      [Advertising is] the most efficient way to ensure the majority of content remains free and accessible to as many people as possible.

      Content is a scarce resource y’know. Heaven forbid the content farms go out of business; or we might end up having to read Sherlock Holmes isekai fanfiction rather than a content farm’s two paragraphs and three screen-fulls of ads surrounding the tweet du jour. That would be terrible actually quite nice.

  • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
    12·
    2 days ago

    from the (current?) prick-in-chief at YC in this post:

    and everyone in our industry owes a debt to open source builders

    nice of you to admit it. now maybe pay down some of that debt by using sending of your piles of money to those projects

    oh, what’s that, you only want to continue taking from it and then charging other people service rent, without ever contributing back? oh okay then

  • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
    6·
    2 days ago

    nasb, fedi is for losers

    been feeling this for a while too and wondering how to put it into words. especially in light of all the techfash, pressing climate and general market problems, etc

    one of the things I’ve been holding onto (hoping in?) is my estimation/belief that I don’t think the current state of all the deeply-fucked systems is inherently stable, or viable. as I’ve said here before, that very instability is part of why so many of them are engaged in trying to set things up to protect those self-same systems, as they know the swingback is coming and they want to make it as hard as possible to claw things back from them

    but how long until it breaks, and with how much splash damage, are things I haven’t really been able to estimate

    • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
      7·
      2 days ago

      You know that famous Keynes quote, right. To paraphrase: “the tech sector can remain irrational for longer than the planet can remain habitable”.

    • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
      11·
      2 days ago

      My computer crashed as I was writing a response. In short:

      I think fedi existing and having the userbase it has is “victory” enough. Capitalism and fascism push us to think “winning” and “success” are the greatest thing to aspire to. To “win” over capitalism and fascism will require an unlearning and disavowal of those aspirations.

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
        6·
        2 days ago

        This is absolutely an important idea, but in the context of anti-capitalism I think there’s a kind of catch-22 at play. The alternative systems that operate under a capitalist paradigm have serious externalities that come back to bite us whether we engage or not with them. My wife and I have spent some late nights over the last week trying to help family and friends in North Carolina keep track of which roads are usable, who is or isn’t confirmed to be alive yet, etc. Maybe I’m a little extra feisty about climate change today, but it seems like while the alternative doesn’t have to “win” in the same way that capitalists want to we do still need them to lose. Existing independently in parallel isn’t a sustainable end goal, though I do agree that parallel structures are an important part of the solution.

      • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
        6·
        2 days ago

        oh yeah, I agree quite strongly with that sentiment too (and that’s why I didn’t re-use the words of the post I linked)

        the fedi has some pretty dire threats (shit like threads etc) that I do think it needs to deal with by way of more teeth (consider it self-protective boundary setting), but in general I think a lot of the current state of it satisfying people just for being happy to be themselves is perfectly fine and good

        side note: part of my problem is that my thinking on matters is a bit waterlogged due to shortage of knowledge/references, and backfilling that is … well, hard to find the right resources for reading, and perpetual spoon shortage. I’ve been working my way through some Graeber and some other stuff, but very slowly and need more things. also doesn’t help that ZA is, functionally, a desert island

        • o7___o7@awful.systemsEnglish
          4·
          19 hours ago

          Side note:…

          I feel this. A constant, nagging feeling of “I should read theory,” but man, I hate reading theory.

      • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
        4·
        2 days ago

        musk… chess… post… ?

        actually, forget I asked. I’ve had an eventful enough week of bullshit, and am going to close my friday off with some careless daydrinking and relaxation

        (e: I would add: good god “musk chess post” must be one of the craziest strings of words I’ve seen in a while)