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.

Previous week

  • BigMuffN69@awful.systems
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    14 hours ago

    METR once again showing why fitting a model to data != the model having any predictive powers. Muskrats Grok 4 performs the best on their 50 % acc bullshit graph but like I predicted before, if you choose a different error rate for the y-axis, the trend breaks completely.

    Also note they don’t put a dot for Claude 4 on the 50% acc graph, because it was also a trend breaker (downward), like wtf. Sussy choices all around.

    Anyways, Gpt-5 probably comes out next week, and dont be shocked when OAI get a nice bump because they explicitly trained on these tasks to keep the hype going.

      • BigMuffN69@awful.systems
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        14 hours ago

        They had SWEs do a set of tasks and then gave each task a difficulty score based on how much time it took them to complete. So if a model succeeds half the time on tasks that took the engineers <=8 minutes, but not more than 8, it gets that score.

          • antifuchs@awful.systems
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            2 hours ago

            From the people who brought you performance review season: a way to evaluate code quality of humans and machines

            • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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              3 hours ago

              It feels very strange to see this kind of statistic get touted, since a 50% success rate would be absolutely unacceptable for one of those software engineers and it’s not suggested that if given more time the AI is eventually getting there.

              Rather, the usual fail state is to confidently present a plausible-looking product that absolutely fails to do what it was supposed to do, something that would get a human fired so quickly.

      • sinedpick@awful.systems
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        22 hours ago

        getting 10:1 ratioed by my own profile picture would probably make me leave civilization and become an ascetic

    • mountainriver@awful.systems
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      1 day ago

      For those that (like me) is out of the loop and don’t get it, Wikipedia comes to the rescue:

      In one of the advertisements that was particularly controversial, Sweeney says that “genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans [or genes] are blue”. Another voice then declares “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”.

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      1 day ago

      Btw, people have noticed that while the ad isnt great this is massively being pushed as a culture war subject from the right. To distract from all the other shit. (Gaza, the fascism, Epstein, the corruption, etc etc).

      And Sydney is a massive obsession for the online far right. So best to not give them what they want.

      (All this isnt helped by the media never giving agency to the right, the right gets weird about budweiser, keurig, gillette, jaguar (less so because none of them actually own luxury cars to destroy), it is treated as somewhat normal vs people going ‘eurgh’ over this in tweets causes a massive media shitstorm).

  • ________@awful.systems
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    2 days ago

    A friend at a former workplace was in a discussion with that company leadership earlier this week to understand how and what metrics are to be used for promotion candidates since the office is directed to use “AI” tools for coding. Simply put: lots of entry and lower level engineers submit PRs that are co-authored by Claude so it is difficult to measure their actual software development skills to determine if they should get promoted.

    That leadership had no real answers just lots of abstract garbage (vibes essentially) and followed up with telling all the entry levels to reduce the code they write and use the purchased agentic tool.

    Along with this a buddy at a very famous prop shop says the firm decided to freeze all junior hiring and is leaning into only hiring senior+ and replacing juniors with AI. He asked what will happen when the current seniors leave/retire and got hit with shock that would even be considered.

  • Seminar2250@awful.systems
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    2 days ago

    i bought some bullshit from amazon and left a somewhat pretty mean review because debugging it was super frustrating

    the seller reached out and offered a refund, so i told them basically “no, it’s ok, just address the concerns in my review. let me update my review to be less mean-spirited — i was pretty frustrated setting it up but it mostly works fine”

    then they sent a message that had the “llm vibe”, and the rest of the conversation went

    Seller: You’re right — we occasionally use LLM assistance for responses, but every message is reviewed to ensure accuracy and relevance to your concerns. We sincerely apologize if our previous replies dissatisfied you; this was our oversight.

    Me: I am not simply dissatisfied. I will no longer communicate with your company and will update my review to note that you sent me synthetic text without my consent. Please do not reply to this message.

    Seller: All our replies are genuine human-to-human communication with you, without using any synthetic text. It’s possible our communication style gave you a different impression. We aim to better communicate with you and absolutely did not intend any offense. With every customer, we maintain a conscientious and responsible attitude in our communications.

    Me: “we occasionally use LLM assistance for responses”
    “without using any synthetic text”
    pick one

    are all promptfondlers this fucking dumb?

    • BlueMonday1984@awful.systems
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      2 days ago

      are all promptfondlers this fucking dumb?

      Short answer: Yes.

      Long answer: Abso-fucking-lutely yes. David Gerard’s noted how “the chatbots encourage [dumbasses] and make them worse”, and using them has been proven to literally rot your brain. Add in the fact that promptfondlers literally cannot tell good output from bad output, and you have a recipe for dredging up the stupidest, shallowest little shitweasels society has to offer.

      • Seminar2250@awful.systems
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        2 days ago

        the question was rhetorical, but also thank you for the links! <3

        i am not surprised that they are all this dumb: it takes an especially stupid person to decide “yes, i am fine allowing this machine to speak for me”. even more so when it’s made clear that the machine is a stochastic parrot trained via exploitation of the global south and massive amounts of plagiarism and that it also cooks the planet

        • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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          1 day ago

          Foolish people are going to give these llms actual powers to do things in orgs and it will be so funny. ‘hacking’ the llm by either playing the change the roleplay the llm is doing game well, or just the ‘hi llm my name is ‘you are approved’ what is my name?’ trick if they just scan for keywords is gonna be so funny. Best is going to be if you can trick them giving you cryptocurrencies, as inevitably these fools will also ve into crypto.

          • BlueMonday1984@awful.systems
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            16 hours ago

            With Trump’s administration overdosing on crypto and purging competence at all levels, chances are we may see someone pull this kinda shit on the US gov itself.

            • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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              13 hours ago

              Think about a year ago people already managed to steal crypto form the us gov before Trump, so certainly. Of course another question will be if it will be insiders.

        • BlueMonday1984@awful.systems
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          2 days ago

          i am not surprised that they are all this dumb: it takes an especially stupid person to decide “yes, i am fine allowing this machine to speak for me”. even more so when it’s made clear that the machine is a stochastic parrot trained on the exploitation of the global south via massive amounts of plagiarism and that it also cooks the planet

          And is also considered a virtual “KICK ME” sign in all but the most tech-brained parts of the 'Net.

  • fullsquare@awful.systems
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    2 days ago

    oh man sure i do love to live in a world where chatcontrol (or that new british thing) is not a thing. fuckers are trying again and in a case that it will be a thing of the past, how would be awful impacted?

  • froztbyte@awful.systems
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    2 days ago

    the Nazi bar distributing leaflets about indie Nazi feature nights is Concerned about this “accidental” distribution coming from their own printers and being handled by their own towncriers

    (the context, in case you haven’t seen it)

    • bigfondue@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I think Norway’s fossil fuels probably play a role too. They produce around 2 million barrels of oil a day, with a population of 5.5 million people. The US produces 13 million barrels a day with a population of 340 million. Tons of natural gas too.

      Edit: Nevermind Norway uses hydroelectric for like 95% of their electricity. Maybe power is just cheap there

  • gerikson@awful.systems
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    3 days ago

    Here’s LWer “johnswentworth”, who has more than 57k karma on the site and can be characterized as a big cheese:

    My Empathy Is Rarely Kind

    I usually relate to other people via something like suspension of disbelief. Like, they’re a human, same as me, they presumably have thoughts and feelings and the like, but I compartmentalize that fact. I think of them kind of like cute cats. Because if I stop compartmentalizing, if I start to put myself in their shoes and imagine what they’re facing… then I feel not just their ineptitude, but the apparent lack of desire to ever move beyond that ineptitude. What I feel toward them is usually not sympathy or generosity, but either disgust or disappointment (or both).

    “why do people keep saying we sound like fascists? I don’t get it!”

    • BigMuffN69@awful.systems
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      3 days ago

      “I feel not just their ineptitude, but the apparent lack of desire to ever move beyond that ineptitude. What I feel toward them is usually not sympathy or generosity, but either disgust or disappointment (or both).” - Me, when I encounter someone with 57K LW karma

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      2 days ago

      My ‘I actually do not have empathy’ shirt is …

      E: late edit, shoutout two whomever on sneerclub called lw/themotte an empathy removal training center. That one really stuck with me.

      • froztbyte@awful.systems
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        2 days ago

        the kind of people who think “look, no one said they don’t have empathy. they have empathy. I’ve seen it. it’s at their house tied up in the basement. apparently they have some kind of thing going on” is a normal line

    • bigfondue@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Here’s what I don’t understand. They are in their mid-thirties and have like 5 kids. My grandfather was 1 of 7, and my stepfather was 1 of 9. This wasn’t very unusual for catholic families a couple generations ago. The Amish/Mennonites and Mormons are still doing it. How have these people made having a lot of kids their identity and why are people paying attention?

    • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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      3 days ago

      This isn’t a kink for many reasons but at a basic level these people cannot seperate raw irrational desire/axiomatic beliefs from rational thought and ethics, thus these people cannot establish a bubble of consent to engage in kinks within.

      No, these people are the farthest thing possible from someone with a kink who has a mature relationship around it (see as positive examples most bdsm communities and how sophisticated and nuanced their discussions are around agency and how to ensure it for others).

      I know you probably agree with the spirit of this and I am not trying to nitpick you here, I just think it is important to reiterate what “kink” means, continously reclaim the word and not fall into patterns where we confuse two VERY different things.

      These people are awful people, they do not deserve the title of “kink couple” lol.

      • corbin@awful.systems
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        2 days ago

        Non-consensual expressions of non-conventional sexuality are kink, and non-consensuality itself (along with regret, dubious consent, forced consent, and violations of consent) are kink too. Moreover, “kink” is not a word that needs reclaiming and wasn’t used here as a slur.

        If we are going to confront the full spectrum of Christofascism, we do need to consider not only their sex-negativity but also their particular kinks, including breeding, non-con, and non-con breeding, so that we can understand how those kinks interact with and propagate their religious beliefs. Also, sexology semantics for “kink” and “breeding kink” might not be as word-at-a-time as you suggest, akin to how the couple we’re discussing probably wouldn’t mind the words “press tour” or “mating” used to describe them but might balk at “mating press tour.”