TechTakes
- Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 24th November 2024
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)
- Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 7 July 2024
Need to make a primal scream without gathering 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 facts of 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.
- Whoops! AI tenant-screening tool SafeRent pays $2.28 million settlement for being massively racistpivot-to-ai.com Whoops! AI tenant-screening tool SafeRent pays $2.28 million settlement for being massively racist
SafeRent is a machine learning black box for landlords. It gives landlords a numerical rating of potential tenants and a yes/no result on whether to rent to them. In May 2022, Massachusetts housing…
- On “Safe” C++: An Odyssey of Sneers
this post has been making the rounds on Mastodon, for good reason. it’s nominally a post about the governance and community around C++, but (without spoiling too much) it’s written as a journey packed with cathartic sneers at a number of topics and people we’ve covered here before. as a quick preview, tell me this isn’t relatable:
> This is not a feel good post, and to even call it a rant would be dismissive of the absolute unending fury I am currently living through as 8+ years of absolute fucking horseshit in the C++ space comes to fruition, and if I don’t write this all as one entire post, I’m going to physically fucking explode.
fucking masterful
an important moderator note for anyone who comes here looking to tone police in the spirit of the Tech Industry Blog Social Compact: lol
- Pumping the AI bubble: a data center funding craze with ‘novel types of debt structures’pivot-to-ai.com Pumping the AI bubble: a data center funding craze with ‘novel types of debt structures’
The AI bubble demands infrastructure. The big techs can’t build data centers fast enough. These also need power plants and networking. Where does the money come from? Investment bankers and private…
- Coca-Cola’s new AI-generated Christmas ad is as bad as you’d expectpivot-to-ai.com Coca-Cola’s new AI-generated Christmas ad is as bad as you’d expect
Toys’R’Us released a TV ad generated with Sora a few months ago. Everyone loathed it and the ad caused massive brand damage. Toys’R’Us executives considered it a huge success. [YouTube; NBC] You ne…
- HarperCollins offers $2,500 to feed a book to AI, some authors still not keenpivot-to-ai.com HarperCollins offers $2,500 to feed a book to AI, some authors still not keen
Daniel Kibblesmith is an author and TV writer. His children’s book Santa’s Husband is published by HarperCollins. HarperCollins sent an offer of $2,500 for a three-year license to feed Kibblesmith…
- I Attended Google's Creator Conversation Event, And It Turned Into A Funeralwww.giantfreakinrobot.com I Attended Google's Creator Conversation Event, And It Turned Into A Funeral
I recently attended a funeral. It was called the Google Web Creator Conversation Event and took place on October 29, … Continue reading "I Attended Google’s Creator Conversation Event, And It Turned Into A Funeral"
- Substack readers may be paying for AI-generated newsletters, Medium full of slop toopivot-to-ai.com Substack readers may be paying for AI-generated newsletters, Medium full of slop too
Substack is a hugely popular newsletter platform. Top writers can draw in over $1 million a year in subscriptions. But a lot of these top blogs may be at least partly AI slop. AI detection startup …
- OpenAI, Google, Anthropic admit they can’t scale up their chatbots any furtherpivot-to-ai.com OpenAI, Google, Anthropic admit they can’t scale up their chatbots any further
Once you’ve trained your large language model on the entire written output of humanity, where do you go? Here’s Ilya Sutskever, ex-OpenAI, admitting to Reuters that they’ve plateaued: [Reuters] Th…
- AI and venture capital are going nuclearpivot-to-ai.com AI and venture capital are going nuclear
We previously detailed the small modular reactor push in AI — where AI companies put off doing anything about the carbon output from their ghastly power usage by putting a few dollars into alleged …
- Ed Zitron yelling abuse at CEOs for twenty-three minutes
YouTube Video
Click to view this content.
- ProQuest is quietly trying to license academic books to feed an AIpivot-to-ai.com ProQuest is quietly trying to license academic books to feed an AI
ProQuest is an academic information company that sells access to books, journal articles, and dissertations. We’ve heard from authors that ProQuest has been contacting their publishers seeking deal…
a bit of completely original journalism based on reader tips, thank you
- Where's Your Ed At - Lost In The Futurewww.wheresyoured.at Lost In The Future
Soundtrack: Post Pop Depression - Paraguay I haven't wanted to write much in the last week. Seemingly every single person on Earth with a blog has tried to drill down into what happened on November 5 — to find the people to blame, to somehow explain what could've been done differently,
- UK Home Office speeds up visa and refugee processing with Copilot AI reject-a-botpivot-to-ai.com UK Home Office speeds up visa and refugee processing with Copilot AI reject-a-bot
Under years of pressure from the right-wing press, the previous and current UK governments have required the Home Office to reduce immigration numbers by any means possible — whether it makes sense…
- How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it)
YouTube Video
Click to view this content.
- Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 17th November 2024
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)
- Raw Story, Alternet copyright suit against OpenAI dismissed for failure to show harmpivot-to-ai.com Raw Story, Alternet copyright suit against OpenAI dismissed for failure to show harm
News sites Raw Story and AlterNet sued OpenAI in February, claiming ChatGPT scraped their stories and that ChatGPT regurgitates their copyrighted material. [Complaint, PDF; Docket] NY District Judg…
- Microsoft adds AI to Notepad — yes, Notepad. And Paint.pivot-to-ai.com Microsoft adds AI to Notepad — yes, Notepad. And Paint.
Notepad is the Windows operating system RichEdit widget as an application. The whole point is to be the simplest possible text editor. But what if Notepad had some AI? Wait no longer. Microsoft has…
- Tony Blair Institute reports on AI in the labor market — using numbers they made up with GPT-4. Again.pivot-to-ai.com Tony Blair Institute reports on AI in the labor market — using numbers they made up with GPT-4. Again.
The Tony Blair Institute has issued another encyclical on the fabulous AI future: “The Impact of AI on the Labour Market.” The headline coverage is that AI will quickly displace three m…
- Google Search is getting worse and worse
Might as well completely give up on the summary cards from now on
- Nobody wants Copilot Pro AI for Office 365 — so Microsoft will force-bundle it and raise the pricepivot-to-ai.com Nobody wants Copilot Pro AI for Office 365 — so Microsoft will force-bundle it and raise the price
Copilot Pro is an AI assistant for Microsoft Office 365, introduced in January. Based on nine months of feedback, Microsoft will generously bundle Copilot with all Personal and Family subscriptions…
- What the Trump win means for AI: surprisingly littlepivot-to-ai.com What the Trump win means for AI: surprisingly little
Well, that was certainly a choice. The finest minds of the AI bubble have already dived in to congratulate Donald Trump on his election victory in the hope he’ll remember who they are tomorrow. Jef…
- UK government chatbot goes into beta — with only a few bizarre hallucinationspivot-to-ai.com UK government chatbot goes into beta — with only a few bizarre hallucinations
The UK’s new Labour government has gone full-tilt into AI — whether it works or not. Today, the Gov.UK website launched the second beta of its searchbot for business users, which will let them find…
- Elon is constructing a texas compound to trap, err, I mean, house his ex wives and children
Didn’t see this news posted but please link previous correspondence if I missed it.
https://archive.is/XwbY0
- Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 10th November 2024
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)
- Pivot to AI? Get in loser, we’re going quantumpivot-to-ai.com Pivot to AI? Get in loser, we’re going quantum
In the desperate search for a new hype, tech investors have been trying for a while to position quantum computing as the next big bubble after crypto and AI. In today’s example, quantum services st…
- SEO spammer behind AI-faked Dublin Halloween parade talks to Wiredpivot-to-ai.com SEO spammer behind AI-faked Dublin Halloween parade talks to Wired
Thousands turned out in Dublin, Ireland, on Thursday night for a huge Halloween parade! Lots of excitement on social media! [My Spirit Halloween, archive] Except there was no parade. The entire eve…
- Where's Your Ed At- The Cult of Microsoftwww.wheresyoured.at The Cult of Microsoft
At the core of Microsoft, a three-trillion-dollar hardware and software company, lies a kind of social poison — an ill-defined, cult-like pseudo-scientific concept called 'The Growth Mindset" that drives company decision-making in everything from how products are sold, to how your on-the-job perform...
Spooky stuff that helps explain a lot of the dysfunction flowing out from Microsoft.
- Whoops! Microsoft leaves alleged AI gender detector running, years after saying they switched it offpivot-to-ai.com Whoops! Microsoft leaves alleged AI gender detector running, years after saying they switched it off
One of the great dreams of AI snake oil is a machine that will violate employment laws in a deniable black-box manner. Whether it works doesn’t actually matter. So AI keeps promising phrenology mac…
- Zuckerberg: The AI Slop Will Continue Until Morale Improveswww.404media.co Zuckerberg: The AI Slop Will Continue Until Morale Improves
"I think we’re going to add a whole new category of content, which is AI generated."
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21495118
> In a quarterly earnings call that was overwhelmingly about AI and Meta’s plans for it, Zuckerberg said that new, AI-generated feeds are likely to come to Facebook and other Meta platforms. Zuckerberg said he is excited for the “opportunity for AI to help people create content that just makes people’s feed experiences better.” Zuckerberg’s comments were first reported by Fortune. > > “I think we’re going to add a whole new category of content, which is AI generated or AI summarized content or kind of existing content pulled together by AI in some way,” he said. “And I think that that’s going to be just very exciting for the—for Facebook and Instagram and maybe Threads or other kind of Feed experiences over time.”
- so sorry! your GPT is in another castlewww.cnbc.com Microsoft CFO says OpenAI investment will cut into profit this quarter
Microsoft has invested over $13 billion in OpenAI, a bet that's weighing on the company's profitability.
- Adobe tells artists to get with the program on NFTs, er, AIpivot-to-ai.com Adobe tells artists to get with the program on NFTs, er, AI
Taking advantage of hot trends is the next wave of growth for Adobe, said CEO Shantanu Narayen ahead of the 2021 MAX conference, speaking of the “demand” for generative AI. No wait, Narayen was say…
- AI hot air at ‘Davos in the Desert’ with Elon Musk and SoftBank
our brains nearly fell out from the weapons grade inanity writing this one up
- How to Become an Intellectual in Silicon Valley (2021)thebaffler.com How to Become an Intellectual in Silicon Valley | Aaron Timms
You now have ideas, an all-purpose acknowledgments section, and a font. How should you present everything? “Write like you talk,” Paul Graham once said, but he forgot to add: “And talk like an asshole.”
- Kunlun’s Melodio and Mureka AI slop music — hear the audio samplespivot-to-ai.com Kunlun’s Melodio and Mureka AI slop music — hear the audio samples
If you like music even a bit, you might boggle at the idea that people would be happy with a stream of anonymous machine-generated slop. But to the music streaming business, caring which song you’r…