this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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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.)

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[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

"Columbia student suspended over interview cheating tool raises $5.3M to ‘cheat on everything’"

https://bsky.app/profile/hypervisible.bsky.social/post/3lne5zqaxyc2c

[–] antifuchs@awful.systems 3 points 3 hours ago

I’m sure whoever put money into that venture will see dramatically amazing returns, now there’s a founder that will not take the money and run.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 5 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

I saw in passing a claim that investors (or rather gamblers) are fleeing the dollar for safer assets such as "gold and Bitcoin".

Gold might be true, the ancient relic is up against the dollar, but Bitcoin!? Someone tell me that isn't true and it's just coinfondlers trying to hype it, in order to steer stupid capital their way.

[–] yellowcake@awful.systems 1 points 6 minutes ago

when stocks are suffering Bitcoin is seen as the automatic money machine cause allegedly line can only go up. It doesn’t produce or rely on supply chain logistics and is immune to trade wars so it quickly gets popularity again. And there’s no such thing as a former coiner because once there’s a hint of potential bag holders arriving then they activate like fucking sleeper agents ready to push the moon-prop

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Quick check suggests that Bitcoin is indeed up over the last couple of days, but at time of posting is down YTD. Any dumb money going into Bitcoin to hedge against USD chicanery is replacing the money that came out of it in response to the overall economic disaster still in progress, so I wouldn't exactly call it a "flight to safety" as much as a "morons returning their still-on-fire hands to the hot stove"

Ed: also all the usual disclaimers about liquidity, stable coins, manipulation, etc. apply just as strongly as they do for any other discussion of the Bitcoin spot price.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 8 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

Inside baseball, and I don't really have a dog in this fight, but LW is crowing over a legal loss for RationalWiki

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KW5tjMmTqsoRa6zrd/pablo-s-shortform?commentId=wB9jcCPrXzNCLCQXL

They link to a TracingWoodgrain(!) tweet which is basically just a screenshot of a talk page

https://xcancel.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1913717061626347642

I don't know the significance of this, if any. I don't recognize the names of any of the plaintiffs(?) in the screenshot, so I find it a bit amusing that probably the only google juice they had were RW.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 6 points 8 hours ago

An lesswrong:

countless articles that have ruined careers, stifled research, and brought entire fields of inquiry into undeserved disrepute.

uh-huh

An different lesswrong:

LLMs can provide reasonable fact-checks.

Christ on a futa dick

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 6 points 8 hours ago

The closest I could find to an official statement is at the bottom here:

We are under advisement from counsel not to discuss any ongoing litigation in public at this time. We'll let you know the status of the current issues when we are able to. Your patience and understanding are most appreciated.

Further up the page, an IP editor says that another user is probably TW; the user in question has since been blocked for "ban evasion". Dunno what that's about.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

Ah that is a bit sad, I often link to Rationalwiki as it properly documents several far right people. (no idea about the people listed here, never heard of them). And seeing people defend/use the twg article is a bit sad. But I'm not going to repeat what what I said about that bullshit here before already. Anyway, typical Rationalism rationalization bullshit.

E: seems the problem is that RW is in a SLAPP suits allowed state and has little money. Of course the anti-RW people will use this loss to claim that RW is actually defamatory.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 7 points 8 hours ago

But I’m not going to repeat what what I said about that bullshit here before already

Yeah, I didn't write at truly Rationalist length about it, but I did spend longer than was healthy.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Going off-topic a bit - there's a new expose on Limited Run Games, and its a doozy

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 6 points 7 hours ago

TL;DR: They're a boutique video game company who scam video game collectors with overpriced physical releases of video games, and dress up their entire operation in the guise of video game preservation.

Recently, their inner workings have been exposed, showing the company to be an abusive hellscape roughly on par with Activision-Blizzard (minus the rampant misogyny), with employee abuse at basically every level and widespread financial misconduct.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

Sorry annoyed rant incoming, have no other place to put it in a normal way. Has nothing to do with out regular subjects, feel free to ignore. I just needed to scream into the void

Saw Lazerpig released a 'culture war' video (content warning for anybody who wants to look it up), in which he is doing a 'both sides should listen to each other' stick. (yeah, I know). In which he includes a bit on how Daryl Davis (the anti KKK guy) was called a white supremacist by antifa. Which was news to me, I never heard anybody near anti-facism call him that (but yeah filter bubbles). (I have hear a lot of people say they he gives KKK/racist members a shield to get back into respectability without doing the actual work, get lesser jail time, and that his work is only temporary and the places where he got rid of the KKK they just came back later). So I was annoyed that Lazer'talk to both sides'Pig didn't actually talk to anybody involved in antifa. But it got worse, as far as I can tell the event his is talking about took place in 2019, they protested against the alt-right being there, who according to event organizer Tim Pool(posted mostly for the picture) were not there. Other organizers are this guy (note the tweet about Jimmy concepts, as we talked about that fool more on that below in other threads. The myth thing he organizes also just tweets transphobia (funny thing, they started this org because of 'Zeitgeist: The Movie', aaaaa)), and a third guy who I didn't find any social media profile off. (Source for the organizers. Exactly the type of shit antifa says Daryls naively helps (Don't get me wrong, him convincing individual members is good, I just don't think he is without flaws (for example, the people he follows on twitter)). Do some research lazerpig, obv they didn't protest Daryl, they protested the other guys there, and Daryl got caught in the crossfire because he knows about the KKK, not the alt right. (the far right loved it, their 'they called Daryl a nazi' articles are all over the place). The racists nowadays don't don the hood, they wear the frog, and pretend to be hated by the KKK while planning marches with them.

(Posting it here because I had to get it off my chest (and it got worse the more I looked into it), and due to how the video is framed if I were to comment this people wouldn't listen to me and claim that I'm doing exactly what the video is claiming is bad about 'the left').

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 1 points 45 minutes ago

Yeah that was a bit of a rough one, and I say that as someone who at this point needs to admit that I enjoy multi-hour video essays as a genre. The "Ent" framing is also kind of awkward because the whole point of that bit of LotR was that even though the ents didn't want to go to war the war came to them just the same.

Though to be fair I think I already started doubting his sourcing when it turned out that that Moskva maintenance leak was a fake.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

Thanks, not that I really needed to be believed, I was just really annoyed that he does this whole thing about how the right does all kinds of things and then still falls into their trap.

He then says 'politically I'm an Ent' which is very funny, as I used that in a negative way here before. Apart from that his heart is somewhat in the right place, clearly he isn't a bigot (so I'm not cancelling the pig, im just going 'oof that was a particularly bad take in a bit of an iffy but well intended video. He will become really insufferable if somebody ever introduces him to grey tribe style Rationalism)

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

You’ll accept my belief and like it, dammit! /s

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 11 hours ago

Ow I liked it, the thanks was genuine.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 10 points 17 hours ago

Ran across a piece from Jan Wildeboer: Botnet Part 2: The Web is Broken, which focuses on the "residential proxy" services which he discovered to be a likely source of the AI slop scrapers that are DDoSing the 'Net.

Ending paragraph is pretty notable IMO, so I'm dropping it here:

I am now of the opinion that every form of web-scraping should be considered abusive behaviour and web servers should block all of them. If you think your web-scraping is acceptable behaviour, you can thank these shady companies and the “AI” hype for moving you to the bad corner.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 8 points 16 hours ago
[–] aninjury2all@awful.systems 6 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

Jimmy Concepts casually acknowledges being a useful idiot (or useful not-quite-an-idiot?) for the absolute worst people out there

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

I don't recognize this person, know of a good background primer?

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

His claim to fame is this bs note how he eventually got too shitty that even some of the people who joined him on this disavowed him. Before his turn to zionism he dropped a lot of antisemitic dogwhistles. (Forgive me for quoting this guy but here is a (source). He also was too crazy for dr phil (source), a guy who shouts 'ok groomer' at lgbt people a lot, a proud manspreader (yeah, I hope you get the point he is wierd, like mega weird, but this gets weirded, he had some proud (I think now deleted) manspreader picutre you twitter with one of those sex cult women, NXIVM iirc), a sword guy. A white genocide guy, And this is only what I can recall on the top of my head. The guy is made for the 'weird' label, and any disavowal he makes should be reacted at like this

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 6 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Hot damn it’s like he just kept reaching for the chud high score

Puts the “Oh, the nazis used me!” wankpost tweet in a whole other light

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 5 points 7 hours ago

Yep, he's been operating in obvious bad faith since the conceptual penis days, at least.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 8 hours ago

Yeah the guy sucks incredibly. Always found it a bit glaring that there was no rationalwiki page on him specifically. But I have long ago decided that I will not start to help maintain a wiki on all these people (I already have an unhealthy focus on this stuff, that would just cross the line), or I would have helped out.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 6 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Ugh, what a piece of shit.

even some of the people who joined him on this disavowed him

Normal fascist shit.

Before his turn to zionism he dropped a lot of antisemitic dogwhistles.

For a Christian nationalist, zionism is an antisemitic dogwhistle

He also was too crazy for dr phil (source)

He’s probably malding over the fact that he doesn’t have Ben Shapiro’s career.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 13 hours ago

Yeah you are right on the zionism stuff, see also 'judeo-christian values' and how a lot of Jewish people hate it when people say that. I meant it more as a 'before the whole gaza invasion/genocide' thing. To show this anti-Semitic shit (in which I include his zionism) is a pattern, im not saying he had a 'come to Jesus moment' and suddenly repented his shit ways.

Normal fascist shit.

Indeed. He just went too mask off. Ironically in a way as he basically is doing that now re the (imaginary) people he says are further right than him.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

I’d also like a primer! That being said, I decided to take 1 minute of psychic DOT and looked at his profile. His Bio:

Perennial outsider. Cancelled by both sides. Pro-America. Anti-Communist. Anti-Fascist. Based af. Liberty First! 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲

Chud shit. At best, he’s a Pinker-esque centrist (and therefore a cryptofascist). At worst, a Nazi. My bet is Nazi.

Scrolling through some of the tweets, it’s clear that:

  • He is a Zionist, and therefore a fascist
  • He is currently in a twitter feud with Cernovich
  • He believes in some kind of “Woke Right” that will apparently destroy the GOP if left unchecked (read: un-killed)
  • Yarvin wants to adopt him

Not a great guy, it seems!

E: at the very surface of his tweets, he takes every opportunity to denounce fascism. What he is really opposed to is authoritarianism, or more specifically, dictatorships. Normal chud shit.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

For more of a primer, see my reaction to op. He has been a long term far right weirdo. One of those people that if you seriously listen to them you will get dumber as a result, he has jumped on all the far right culture war bandwagons so far, he is their 'scientific/academic social justice explainer' and he is just full of shit. Wanted to see if some breadtuber had done a video on him (This is the only one I found before I gave up scrolling past all the rightwing bullshit, sorry it is a bit corny) but jesus christ he himself put a lot of stupid vids out there. The problem of the cost of producing bullshit vs debunking it. Did find out he is a 'new atheist' who found religion. So 10 for 10 on those people being shit lol.

E: eurgh sometimes I don't like how much I know about all these weird dorks.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Dan Olson finds that "AI overviews" are not as constant as the northern star.

The phrase “don’t eat things that are made of glass” is a metaphorical one. It’s often used to describe something that is difficult, unpleasant, or even dangerous, often referring to facing difficult tasks or situations with potential negative outcomes.

But also,

The phrase “don’t eat things made of glass” is a literal warning against ingesting glass, as it is not intended for consumption and can cause serious harm. Glass is a hard, non-organic material that can easily break and cause cuts, damage to the digestive tract, and other injuries if swallowed.

Olson says,

Fantastic technology, glad society spent a trillion dollars on this instead of sidewalks.

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 5 points 19 hours ago

Thank god for wikipedia and other wikis, may they live long and prosper.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Kicking off the week's Stubsack with the evening's example of "why do I know who these people are":

Paul Graham approvingly mentions Jordan "Cremieux" Lasker as one who "has spoken out against both wokeness and authoritarianism".

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Graham wtf are you doing the man is a racist. We dint praise hitler for standing up to authoritarianism re stalin.

Also amazing finger on the pulse of where the pendulum is swinging towards. Putting trumpian fascism and being pro trans rights/diversity in some false equivalence.

E: also lol at including alleged TP0 (cremieux) 'death to people who do adultery' in a list of anti authoritarians.

E2: double lol doing this a day after James Lindsay post a similar but even more disingenuous 'mea culpa' 'I learned nothing, and im gonna make it worse' post (he blames a shadowy global group of nazis (which he also capitalized) behind the people who influenced him for everything, while remaining as anti-cultural marxism as ever (in style of posting not direct words))

[–] aninjury2all@awful.systems 4 points 18 hours ago

How many of those people on the list were either Jeffrey Epstein buddies or a recipient of Thielbux

[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 6 points 23 hours ago

OT: made it to Tallinn, now I gotta watch for those delivery robot things!