this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
20 points (100.0% liked)

TechTakes

1728 readers
104 users here now

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

Tbh, weird. If I were a hyper-capitalist, CA-based CEO, I would take the burner phone as an insult. I’d see it as a lack of faith in the capture of the US. Who needs plausible deniability when you just own the fucking country?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

it's weird and lowkey insulting imo. let's assume that for some bizarre reason tech ceo needs a burner phone to call governor newsom: do you think i can't get that myself, old man? i'd assume it's bugged or worse

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

or worse

Man, I'm getting tired of these remakes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

the phones seem to serve no practical purpose. they already have his number and I don't think you can conclude much from call logs. so suppose they are symbolic. what he would be communicating is that he's so fully pliant that he is willing to do things there is no possible excuse for, and not even for real benefit, just to suck up to them. the opposite of plausible deniability

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Even worse, he got caught handing them out. And even with all that, I'd expect a tech CEO to just go 'why not use signal?' or 'what threat profile do you think we have?' (sorry I keep coming back to this, it is just so fucking weird, like 'everything I know I learned from television shows' kind of stuff)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago

Brings to mind the sopranos scene of the two dudes trying to shake down a starbucks or starbucks analogue for protection money