I do feel like active anti-scraping measures could go somewhat further, though - the obvious route in my eyes would be to try to actively feed complete garbage to scrapers instead - whether by sticking a bunch of garbage on webpages to mislead scrapers or by trying to prompt inject the shit out of the AIs themselves.
Me, predicting how anti-scraping efforts would evolve
(I have nothing more to add, I just find this whole development pretty vindicating)
Good news everyone: A new tarpit to trap LLM scrapers just dropped
AI is useless, shut the fuck up
On another somewhat orthogonal point, I suspect AI has likely soured the public on any kinda tech-forward vision for the foreseeable future.
Both directly and indirectly, the AI slop-nami has caused a lot of bad shit for the general public - from plagiarism to misinformation, from shit-tier AI art to screwing human artists, the public has come to view AI as an active blight on society, and use of AI as a virtual "Kick Me" sign.
Sidenote: AFAIK, even with this pardon, Ulbricht still ended up spending more time in prison than if he took a plea deal he was reportedly offered:
He was offered a plea deal, which would have likely given him a decade-long sentence, with the ability to get out early on good behavior. Worst-case scenario, he would have spent five years in a medium-security prison and been freed.
Gotta say, this whole situation's reminding me of SBF - both of them thought they could outsmart the Feds, and both received much harsher sentences than rich white collar criminals usually get as a result.
Also, a reminder that Musk was a junior programmer on two of the worst Sega CD games.
Which two?
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.)
To paraphrase one of South Park's more infamous jokes (because I'm not giving this shit any dignity):
Looks like we're getting a lotta sneer material here! The topic is "People Who Annoy Scoot".
Man wrote nearly 5k words of pure unfiltered cap:
I'm not sure how someone can read all this without capping themselves. We could sneer this all fucking day.
Far as I can tell, the only real benefit here is significant energy savings, which would take LLMs from "useless waste of a shitload of power" to "useless waste of power".
Starting off with a weapons-grade sneer: How to Dehumanize Accessibility with AI
Personally, my money's on them being thoroughly lost in the AI safety sauce - the idea of AI going rogue has been a staple in pop culture for quite a long time (TV Tropes lists a lot of examples), and the relentless anthropomorphisation of LLMs makes it pretty easy to frame whatever fuck-ups they make as a sentient AI pulling malicious shit.
And given man's long and storied history of manipulating and misleading their fellow man, I can see plenty of opportunity for fuck-ups baked directly into your average LLM's training data.
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 12th January 2025
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 insist
Found a couple QRTs cooking the guy which caught my attention:
https://twitter.com/denimneverdies/status/1872364569743786286
https://twitter.com/TheWapplehouse/status/1873915404529406462
SATIRE Tech bro’s doomsday bunkers https://isglitch.com/article/20241231-tech-bros-doomsday #Humor #Satire
It took me a good minute or so to realise this was satire. Nice find.
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 5th January 2025
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 insist
I mean, at least it’s not some stupid vaguery that armchair dullards will argue in circles forever about word meanings and minor technicalities that have nothing to do with AI and everything to do with their own malformed views of reality and humans behavior.
They're called "programmers". They think it makes them sound smart.
Well-known YouTuber Markiplier also went off on Honey back in 2019, and needless to say he felt pretty vindicated:
ZITRON DROPPED (his last post for the year)
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 29th December 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 awf...
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 insist
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 23rd December 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 awf...
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 insist
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th December 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 awf...
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 insist
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 8th December 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 awf...
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 insist
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 1st December 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 insist
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 insist
Where's Your Ed 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,
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 insist
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 insist
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 3rd 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 insist
You Can't Make Friends With The Rockstars - Ed Zitron on the tech press
You cannot make friends with the rock stars...if you're going to be a true journalist, you know, a rock journalist. First, you never get paid much, but you will get free records from the record company. [There’s] fuckin’ nothin' about you that is controversial. God, it's gonna get
Gonna add the opening quote, because it is glorious:
You cannot make friends with the rock stars...if you're going to be a true journalist, you know, a rock journalist. First, you never get paid much, but you will get free records from the record company.
[There’s] fuckin’ nothin' about you that is controversial. God, it's gonna get ugly. And they're gonna buy you drinks, you're gonna meet girls, they're gonna try to fly you places for free, offer you drugs. I know, it sounds great, but these people are not your friends. You know, these are people who want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of the rock stars and they will ruin rock 'n' roll and strangle everything we love about it.
Because they're trying to buy respectability for a form that's gloriously and righteously dumb.
Lester Bangs, Almost Famous (2000)
EDITED TO ADD: If you want a good companion piece to this, Devs and the Culture of Tech by @Unser
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 20 October 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 insist
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 13 October 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 insist
"The Subprime AI Crisis" - Ed Zitron on the bubble's impending collapse
None of what I write in this newsletter is about sowing doubt or "hating," but a sober evaluation of where we are today and where we may end up on the current path. I believe that the artificial intelligence boom — which would be better described as a generative AI boom
None of what I write in this newsletter is about sowing doubt or "hating," but a sober evaluation of where we are today and where we may end up on the current path. I believe that the artificial intelligence boom — which would be better described as a generative AI boom — is (as I've said before) unsustainable, and will ultimately collapse. I also fear that said collapse could be ruinous to big tech, deeply damaging to the startup ecosystem, and will further sour public support for the tech industry.
Can't blame Zitron for being pretty downbeat in this - given the AI bubble's size and side-effects, its easy to see how its bursting can have some cataclysmic effects.
(Shameless self-promo: I ended up writing a bit about the potential aftermath as well)
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 9 September 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 insist
Ed Zitron on Google's antitrust loss
Last week, in the midst of the slow, painful collapse of the generative AI hype cycle, something incredible happened. On Monday, a Federal Judge delivered a crushing ruling in the multi-year-long antitrust case filed against Google by the Department of Justice. In 300-pages of dense legal text, Jud...
Humane was founded by former Apple employees Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno. They wanted something that would rival the iPhone. The Ai Pin (that’s “Ai”, not “AI”) would take commands by…
Ed Zitron on what might come next for the AI bubble and the tech industry
Soundtrack: Masters of Reality - High Noon Amsterdam I have said almost everything in this piece in every one of these articles for months. I am not upset, but just stating an obvious truth. The current state of affairs effectively pushes against the boundaries of good sense, logic and reason,
