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)
Screwing up the night sky: not just for SpaceX anymore! Texas Startup Keeps Launching These Obnoxiously Large Satellites—and the Worst Is Yet to Come.
Thursday’s launch saw the first commercial satellites in orbit, and AST SpaceMobile wants to build a constellation of more than 100 satellites. On its own, one satellite is bright enough to mess with observations of the cosmos.
BlueWalker 3 appeared as bright as two of the ten brightest stars in the night sky, Procyon and Achernar, through the lenses of different telescopes, according to a Nature study published in October 2023.
I get why 5G in remote areas would be neat. But surely there are other (more expensive?) ways to achieve similar-ish safety / rescue / navigation / rural broadband sorts results without cluttering the sky or being all hyper-capitalistic about it. Not at all my area though.
I’ve been slightly unhappy at my job lately as it’s been getting less cool and more bureaucratic and stressful over time; so I’ve been idly browsing job postings. But so many of them are about AI it’s kinda discouraging.
Take Microsoft for example, a big company that surely does lots of interesting stuff. They currently have 17 job postings for experienced programmers in California. 12 of them mention AI in the description. That’s 70%. And the only cool position asks for a bazillion years of kernel experience (almost tempted to go for that anyway though).
Ugh guess it’s maybe not the best time to switch jobs. Really I should just go self employed what could possibly go wrong?
Im feeling the same way. Ever since my current job began pivoting to AI I’ve been casually browsing listings as well and have had the same experience.
The worst are those that list ”interest in AI“ or some variation of that as a required skill, lol.
But hey, try and apply for the kernel position anyway if it sounds interesting to you. Most requirements in listings are overstated anyway so it never hurts to give it a go.
oh hey, balaji’s lord of the flies cosplay island thing starts tomorrow
guess we should prepare for a flood of impression thinkpieces and naval-gazing wankery
(yes that’s intentional. no I’m not sorry)
I won’t be satisfied until I see a picture of the living accommodations that isn’t an AI render of a futuristic skyscraper. I need to know how shitty the tents are gosh darn it.
Good to know - thesaurus dot com is infected
https://bsky.app/profile/courtneymilan.com/post/3l4lwvra6r22e
It looks like the entry for decaf is largely the same as it was in 2011: http://web.archive.org/web/20111216183946/https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/decaf
Where:
- It Was a little clearer that it was actually showing synonyms for “coffee” (presumably it didn’t have an entry for decaf, but decaf was a synonym for coffee, or something like that).
- It cited Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus
The current page still sites Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus, though it’s quite hidden amongst all the modern web “design”.
I have just ordered Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus, and shall report back.
Jason Kint writes a thread on how Google spun - and publications printed their spin - on a recently lost case: https://xcancel.com/jason_kint/status/1836781623137681746
If you already are very cynical about tech journalism (or the state of journalism in general), it might be nothing new except confirmation from the internal documents of Google. But always nice to see how the sausages are made.
