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.

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

  • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
    10·
    21 hours ago

    there it is, sammy has gone and said people are just prompting the model wrong (I recall we’ve had that bit said here earlier)

    but in true sammy grift: you just need to be asking the right questions to trump intelligence. “why do you want to suck, as a human?” sammy asks, not understanding a moment of humanity

  • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
    10·
    1 day ago

    This is extremely tangential to the areas of sneer interest, but seeing as this is the only technology related community I am in, I’m putting it here.

    This song has been making the rounds on the charts/social media and I refuse to believe that it isn’t about the package management tool apt

  • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    a couple weeks back, I was (bc reasons) looking around to see how to turn off goog’s annoying gemini bullshit in an account, and you can!

    except then even after doing that, accounts in that org still got prompts (in the form of in-app banners, and sparklebuttons in shit like gmail) to Try The Model

    it looks like people aren’t biting enough, because now you get it whether you like it or not, for the low low price of pushing up your base account fee! and I checked in one org - “Gemini App” is disabled org-wide, but the fucking prompt is immediately in the UI (and you get a modal popover opening gmail)

    fuck these people so much

    • Mii@awful.systemsEnglish
      10·
      2 days ago

      Oh well. Nothing screams healthy business like force-feeding your product to every customer who can’t hammer the conveniently hidden opt-out button fast enough. I’m sure Gemini is doing great.

      • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
        11·
        2 days ago

        oh, no no

        nooooo no no no

        there isn’t an opt-out button

        there is only:

        1. “Continue”,
        2. “Learn More”
        • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
          11·
          1 day ago

          Hello, I’d like to punch you in the groin. Will you accept ~or would you like to learn more~?

          Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. Did you say you accept?

          Ah, you don’t want to be punched in the groin. That’s OK, I understand. We value your painless existence very much.

          Now, obviously we cannot let you opt out of the Strictly Necessary punches in the groin. Surely you understand that if it’s necessary to punch you in the groin, your permission or lackthereof is irrelevant. Rest assured, this applies only when we really have to punch you in the groin.

          What, do you want me to list all the possible circumstances in which one might be obligated to punch you in the groin? Don’t be unreasonable, now. I’m sure you know it when you see it.

          That aside, I presume we can punch you in the groin for functional purposes? The kind that may not be strictly necessary, but serve a purpose in the functioning of our service.

          Oh, we can’t? It’s OK, you have the right to make that choice. We don’t judge. Anyway, we take it that you’re probably at least cool with us punching you in the groin for the purposes of analyzing your behavior to improve our groin punching. Let me know if you decide you don’t want us to do that anymore.

          Oh, I thought you were cooler than that. Alright, if you hate the working class and want to make it harder for the poor, overworked developers to improve your experience, we’ll do it your way. I guess we’ll have to make do with just the groin punches that are strictly necessary or for marketing purposes.

          Ah, aren’t you observant. Have you ever noticed that all the adverts you get are really terrible? That’s because advertisers need to be able to punch you in the groin to find out what you like and to make their ads more appealing to you. Just food for thought. But if you really insist…

          Fine, fine. Marketing groin punches are out. As for your question, no we don’t identify as an advertising company per se. But we are partnered with other companies that are in fact advertising companies. Would you like to adjust your preferences for our groin punching partners?

          Well maybe to you it looks like the opt-out process we just went through should also cover this part but can we really know if we don’t look?

          Who’s a good puppy? You’re a good puppy, yes you are! ❤️

          Will you deny us permission to punch you in the groin on behalf of AAAAAAAAAAA Inc. or will you not?

          OK, so we can only punch you in the groin on behalf of AAAAAAAAAAA Inc. for the purposes of Legitimate Interest?

          It means the kinds of purposes where there is a legitimate interest to punch you in the groin.

          Why would you ask if you didn’t want me to answer? Fine, that’s a no for Legitimate Interest based groin punching on behalf of AAAAAAAAAAA Inc.

          Will you deny us permission to punch you in the groin on behalf of AAAAAAAAAAB Inc. or will you not?

          Oh, we have a total of six hundred and sixteen thousand six hundred and sixty-six partners in our crotch impactizing network.

          Indeed, we are proud to have such a wide network of trusted allies.

          Ugh, fine. I guess I can check the end of the list to see if there’s a way to make a selection for all of them at once. Honestly, this form is starting to make me a bit dizzy as well.

          Wow, who knew flipping through all those pages would take so long. There’s a line in here that says “disagree to all”, but there’s no checkbox or anything. It’s just there. Clicking it doesn’t seem to change anything. You can probably assume it worked.

          Please calm down, we’re almost done. Would you like to accept and save?

          Well it sounds like I mean “accept and save the options you just set”, not the ones we offered initially, doesn’t it?

          Your groin punching settings have been applied. I don’t think there were any mistakes, but if you need to change the settings, you can find the form hidden somewhere in this house, assuming we remembered to put it there.

          • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
            5·
            21 hours ago

            this is so wildly on point

            yours?

            (it should become an internet copypasta and drift into mass consciousness)

            • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
              6·
              16 hours ago

              Thanks. I wrote this last night not expecting it to become so long, but I like to think the real work was done by thousands of very clever people with highly sophisticated moral compasses pretending not to understand privacy legislation.

        • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
          8·
          1 day ago

          Im gonna build a special circle in hell for these people, together with the ‘yes’ or ‘ask me again later’ people. On this circle all the software your stack depends on will break your build and releases a new release every friday at 5. Whohahhahah

  • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    some of the first research science on promptfondlers and model-affine dipshits is starting to see the light of day and, in what will surprise probably 0% of our regulars, it confirms some things

    (I have grumped about their desire for outsourced thinking in the past myself)

    • imp_poe@awful.systemsEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      fucking hell. well i guess moving all my shit elsewhere has become my midweek project instead of my procrastinate-project.
      EDIT: [rereads and comprehends the tuta addendum] well. cool. i think i’m going to reschedule that “move everything” to after my “scream and cry into a pillow”. anyone have any other recs?

      • khalid_salad@awful.systemsEnglish
        7·
        10 hours ago

        I am also in the “scream and cry” phase of this. However, I have already decided on the following replacements for non-email:

        1. Mullvad VPN
        2. Ente for photos and photo backup
          2a. their authenticator also slaps
        3. Filen for cloud storage[1]
        4. Bitwarden for password management
          4a. Keyguard is great if you are on Android. I am looking into[2] other (non CLI) Bitwarden-compatible password managers for Desktop I should not have suggested Keyguard, since I am not aware if it has been audited. It was probably a mistake for me to use it at all. Sorry everyone.

        edit: Should mention that I am also looking into a calendar replacement.

        edit2: maybe mailbox.org? They are recommended on PrivacyGuides.org.

        1: This is more like a stopgap for me until I confirm they are worth sticking with or find someone better. The 29.99€ 100GB lifetime storage may be worthwhile for this (though I cannot say whether I am confident they will be around in 5 years, this can at least serve as a short-term solution).
        2: lassitude

          • khalid_salad@awful.systemsEnglish
            5·
            1 day ago

            Thanks! I actually plan on putting a couple of things on Mataroa:

            1. “Here is a list of shit you can do to make your computer suck less (would contain the above)”
            2. “Here is how to make your Pixel phone less frustrating in 2024 (basically, how to use user profiles to create a dumb phone without the massive security issues or headache of ‘oh, actually I do need that app occasionally’)”


            (Aside: if anyone can recommend a better blogging platform, I would appreciate it. I like Mataroa for its privacy focus, minimalism, and low cost-of-leaving. The only issue I have is lack of KaTeX/MathML/however-the-fuck-omg-why-is-TeX-still-trying-to-hurt-me-in-2025 support.)

            • self@awful.systemsEnglish
              4·
              1 day ago

              Aside: if anyone can recommend a better blogging platform, I would appreciate it.

              so I can’t promise better, but you’re eligible for an account on the awful.systems blogging platform if you want one. it has MathML! it has jank! you can modify the frontend by PRing into a repo!

              it hasn’t seen much use yet, but I was planning on posting a short story I’m writing there when it’s done. I can also say that as much as I don’t like WriteFreely on the web, its phone app is surprisingly ok

              • khalid_salad@awful.systemsEnglish
                2·
                10 hours ago

                I have the outline of a write-up about about category errors and measuring proxies (e.g. reported sexual orientation). I think I am a poor writer but the only critique I’ve ever gotten was from a “colleague” who writes like he gets paid by the word1. I will consider sharing the post once it is finished. ❤

                1: one rejection on a collaboration with this guy was essentially “have you nerds heard of ‘brevity’ or ‘wit’?” — from computer scientists 😭

        • Mii@awful.systemsEnglish
          5·
          2 days ago

          Filen does photos too, so you could consolidate 2 and 3 into one. I went and bought 500 GB lifetime storage on their Black Friday offer. Let’s see if they stick around. So far the experience has been smooth.

          And if you mention mailbox.org, let me throw Posteo.com into the mix. Basically the same offer, but where mailbox presents itself a bit more business-like, Posteo seems to market itself towards individuals. I moved my mails there and are quite happy with it, but you have to roll encryption yourself. No auto solutions like Proton or Tuta.

          • khalid_salad@awful.systemsEnglish
            5·
            2 days ago

            Last time this came up, I considered Posteo but decided to hold off (I think it was actually you who suggested it ❤). There was a concern I had about deleting an account due to inactivity, but I think I just misunderstood or misremembered something on PrivacyGuides. This might be a good choice.

            As far as Filen for photos, I am reasonably confident that Ente will stick around (they seem to take sustainability seriously). Stuff like this worries me about Filen (emphasis mine):

            What else is planned for Black Friday this year?
            As every year, we’ve planned a special surprise to give back to our loyal users this Black Friday. Just like in previous years, we won’t be revealing any details just yet. All I can suggest is to check in with us around November 18th—you won’t want to miss it!

            Are lifetime plans stackable?
            Yes, we’d like to emphasize once again that all types of our plans can be easily combined. Subscription plans only expire based on their individual purchase dates.

    • self@awful.systemsEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      proton’s ceo is, at this moment, trying to post through it on multiple official company accounts

      thank fuck I switched to tuta

      [I hold up a hand to my earpiece and make a horrified face]

      a second milkshake has hit the duck (cw: fetishized racism, you know the one)

      I’m waiting to hear back from tuta about what the fuck but this might be the reason why I hop providers again

      image description (but see cw)

      so somebody at tuta had the idea to write this post on their official account on Twitter:

      Don’t get cucked by Big Tech’s invasive policies. Keep your private data safe and secure with state of the art end-to-end encryption with Tutanota.

      and then the image attached to the post is a cuckold porn meme I started to describe here but won’t??? because describing the image put me in a really terrible mood??? it’s SFW but trust me you don’t want it. the Black men in the picture have had their faces covered by logos for Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook in that order. the white woman in the picture does not have her face covered. impact font bottom text: “YOUR PERSONAL DATA”

      • khalid_salad@awful.systemsEnglish
        4·
        1 day ago

        Well, this Andy dipshit gave an absolute dogshit apology on reddit.

        Snippets below:

        sophistry and bullshitting

        First, while the X post was not intended to be a political statement, I can understand how it can be interpreted as such, and it therefore should not have been made. While we will not prohibit all employees from expressing personal political opinions publicly, it is something I will personally avoid in the future. I lean left on some issues, and right on other issues, but it doesn’t serve our mission to publicly debate this. It should be obvious, but I will say that it is a false equivalence to say that agreeing with Republicans on one specific issue (antitrust enforcement to protect small companies) is equal to endorsing the entire Republican party platform.

        andy doesn't know his head from the DNC mascot

        Second, officially Proton must always be politically neutral, and while we may share facts and analysis, our policy going forward will be to share no opinions of a political nature. The line between facts, analysis, and opinions can be blurry at times, but we will seek to better clarify this over time through your feedback and input.

        The exception to these rules is on the topics of privacy, security, and freedom. These are necessarily political topics, where influencing public policy to defend these values, often requires engaging politically.

        The operations of Proton have always reflected our neutrality. For example, recently we refused pressure to deplatform both Palestinian student groups and Zionist student groups, not because we necessarily agreed with their views, but because we believe more strongly in their right to have their own views.

      • khalid_salad@awful.systemsEnglish
        8·
        2 days ago

        Here is their response:

        @mav Yes, this was bad. I did not take a screenshot back then (the post was deleted after 30 minutes), but I scrolled all my way through Mastodon to find our apology:

        https://mastodon.social/@Tutanota/108910936764865962

        https://mastodon.social/@Tutanota/108910937813834878

        This was a mistake, we apologized & we made sure that we would never post something similar again.

        At Tuta, we foster honesty, respect & diversity.

        We are here to fight for privacy & against Big Tech surveillance. We want everyone to get the respect they deserve.

        and this:

        @shalf We set up guidelines that all team members on social media duty need to adhere to. We also created a social media review group where we post & discuss every proposal before actually publishing. And it has worked fine ever since. :)

        Content of Apology

        Dear Privacy Fans,

        Last week, on Friday, a post was made on our social media profiles which goes against our core values as team members and as a company. This post was made in poor judgement, without stopping and examining the underlying racist and sexist problems posed by this meme template, and it does not represent the culture and environment of the Tutanota Team. After a period of approximately 30 minutes the offensive post was removed from all platforms and a “brief” apology was posted.

        This brief apology does not go far enough to address this mistake and we would like to update everyone on how we are working to address this issue internally and how we will make sure that this does not happen again. As a company we are working with all of our team members to foster a culture that respects diversity in all forms. This is both on a personal level between colleagues, but also at an institutional level by working to create structures which allow diversity to flourish.

        • self@awful.systemsEnglish
          3·
          1 day ago

          I mean… it’s an apology, I don’t know what I was expecting. this still feels like a bigger, redder flag than the one cop who called them a honeypot (and at the same time didn’t seem to know what tuta is) — is this really a service I feel safe recommending marginalized people use? probably not, they should use signal. is it even suitable for the “grandma & drug dealer” use case? that question’s a bit more difficult.

          could they really have said or done anything to fix this? shit, I don’t know. maybe I need to dig a lot more into who and what tuta actually is. I ran into one of their (former?) developers on mastodon and they seem to outwardly be marginalized and antifascist. if that’s what tuta’s composed of internally, then I’m a lot more able to trust them. until I do that checking though, I don’t think I’ll recommend tuta to anyone who might need it — the opsec risk of trusting your keypair to a company run by assholes is very high, especially in the current climate.

          • khalid_salad@awful.systemsEnglish
            4·
            1 day ago

            I agree. Currently I can’t recommend any email providers. Hopefully Posteo works out, but at this point I am strongly considering just starting my own competitor in the vein of Signal messenger. Basically “we think of email as a public good.”

            • self@awful.systemsEnglish
              3·
              1 day ago

              I’d love to work on something like that. have you checked out any of soatok’s work on federated key infrastructure? I can dig up some links if you haven’t and it seems interesting; I understand soatok is developing it with the possibility that it could be an enabling technology for federated end-to-end encrypted email in mind.

      • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsEnglish
        6·
        2 days ago

        Shit’s so diseased its a sequel to Tuskegee. They cooked this cack with CIA-grade crack.

        (I have no rational way to respond to this - I’m just trying some Dracula Flow-type shit and hoping it lands.)

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
      4·
      1 day ago

      I’m sure I’m not the first to note it, but there is a kind of irony in Scott and the gang using such a clear example of a motte-and-bailey argument (got to find a better phrase for that. Maybe some pithy reference to Patton at Calais to maintain the history theme? Inflatable Tank Defense?) in regards to IQ. When talking among friends they treat IQ tests like they are a strong correlate with innate intelligence, no caveats. As such IQ test scores are a reason to ignore environmental factors and not bother investing in equity-minded interventions. But when someone makes the obviously racist conclusion too visible, the argument shifts to be about how actually the correlations between IQ and environmental factors are obvious and really this supports anti racism. It’s a straightforward form of decontextualization that relies on completely ignoring the entire history and contemporary arguments around IQ to defends a single data point. Of course once everyone agrees with that data point they can go right back to the wildly racist nonsense that they were doing in the first place.

    • maol@awful.systemsEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      Only got a paragraph in because of the cheerful citation of aporia (the big Nazi website)

      I love how he goes on and on about how it actually totally makes sense for the average IQ in Malawi to be 60 because most people don’t graduate school, ignoring that Lynn’s methodology wasn’t up to any basic standard

      And by love I mean I fucking hate it

    • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systemsEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      oh my god i didn’t catch that this was astro slate star and thought i was reading some overtly racist piece of shit instead of a covert racist piece of shit. i haven’t kept up with him lately but this this seems very fucked up even by scott’s standards.

    • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
      10·
      1 day ago

      isn’t it racist / dumb to say they have 60 IQ?

      no according to Kirkegaard

      Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu (pause to catch breath) uh.

      A well at least the mask is totally off now.

      E: and a thing that has been bothering me, it is quite fucked up for somebody with Scotts education to go along with this argument about disabled people that easily.

      content warning for this paragraph

      (Not that this is the first time he forgets he has an official education, and cant just ignore that (yes im still mad about the time he said “well she had mental health issues and was a liar” or something about the woman who tragically ended her life after accusing parts of the community of sexual abuse, and didnt mention that a reputation like that would increase the risk of abuse)).

        • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
          9·
          2 days ago

          That isn’t a bonus. He is always in the comments. <include OkayButThatsWorseYouDoGetHowThatsWorseRight.gif>

            • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
              3·
              1 day ago

              It remains one of those small !!fun!! facts that while Marxbro got permad for being annoying and correct about Marx, Sailer only got a temp ban while being wrong, racist but nice (he has been banned at least once, but racists play by the Tusken Raider rules if not permad)

              • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
                1·
                9 hours ago

                I don’t understand this comment (largely for not knowing where any of these things happened) and since it’s the tail end of a Friday at the tail end of a long and stupid week

                I think that’s okay. I think I’m just not going to ask this once. Just not know a thing, as a bit. It’ll be novel!

  • rook@awful.systemsEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    Possibly I’m the last to hear about this one, but seeing as proton mail has come up here a few times before: the founder and ceo Andy Yen is apparently a Trump fan.

    Great pick by @realDonaldTrump. 10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned. People forget that the current antitrust actions against Big Tech were started under the first Trump admin.

    (from the beginning of december, on the nomination of trump staffer Gail Slater to antitrust post at the doj)

    https://xcancel.com/andyyen/status/1864436449942110660

    • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      Sorry I and some others missed this post talking about the tweet so we have two top level ones atm. My more sensational post about the subject got a bit more attention. So you were not late but early.

    • blakestacey@awful.systemsOPEnglish
      10·
      2 days ago

      Underlying original post: a Twitter bluecheck says,

      Sometimes in the process of writing a good enough prompt for ChatGPT, I end up solving my own problem, without even needing to submit it.

      Matt Novak on Bluesky screenshots this and comments,

      AI folks have now discovered “thinking”

  • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
    8·
    3 days ago

    Free SFnal short story idea, came to me literally in a dream:

    Dude is living his best life, beatiful house, beatiful wife, gets a job doing computer stuff “improving the world”. But his big fancy work computer is wasting a lot of space so he reformats it/installs Nix, and suddenly everythings gone, all grey wireframe, no way out. Turns out he was given root to his own simulation and there’s no backup.

    Feels I should have read this somehwere but haven’t read short SF in ages so…

  • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
    14·
    3 days ago

    Did my regular check in of a q-pilled family member’s facebook page. Zuckerberg’s new fash turn is not being received well as he is being read as the worm that he is. i.e. they are still mad about the anti-vax fact checking.

  • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
    12·
    3 days ago

    Looks like LW/Lightcone managed to convince enough people to give then $2M, which will totally not be used to settle sexual assault lawsuits in the future.

          • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
            9·
            3 days ago

            Like every other ‘charity’, rent a room at some super expensive hotel, hire the most expensive cooks and give all your potential donors a free invite, and massive gifts.

  • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
    10·
    3 days ago

    With risk of falling into the ‘classify people into two binary groups’ thing which I have often criticized the Rationalist for. Move over jock vs nerd. There is Jock vs Creep.