BlueMonday1984

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Why do they think people buy newspapers in 2025?

To be fair to WaPo, The Onion returned to print in 2024 and reportedly did pretty well from the move.

Granted, this is a bit of an apples-and-oranges situation - for one thing, the Onion is a serious journalistic outlet, whilst WaPo is not.

ETA: If you've had your interest piqued, you can grab the print versions through their membership program - minimum cost is a pretty hefty $99 a year, though.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago

Democracy dies in darkness, and WaPo's jumping headfirst into it.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago

Edit: But also - why do AI scrapers request pages that show differences between versions of wiki pages (or perform other similarly complex requests)? What’s the point of that anyway?

Gonna take a shot in the dark here and guess that the people behind these AI scrapers are incredibly stupid, and think Scrape More = More Data = More Growth = More Good^TM^. Given this bubble's already given us the goddamn scourge that is "vibe coding", and is headed by growth-obsessed fuckwits and True Believers^TM^, chances are I'm completely correct on this.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

Found a damn-good sneering of AI art on Newgrounds recently - highly recommend checking it out.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago (12 children)

Remember Stephen Elop of Nokia’s “burning platform” memo in 2011?

I was entering high school in 2011, so no.

Nokia adopted Windows Mobile as their phone operating system — which failed in the market. Nokia used to own the phone market.

The only real experience I have with Nokia is my dad's Nokia 3310 (which he exclusively uses as an alarm clock these days) and nonstop memes about the 3310's supposed indestructibility. Kinda wild to me that Nokia once ruled the entire goddamn phone market.

Nadella going AI is going to be Facebook going Metaverse at the best.

And at worst...well, by my guess, its gonna be "Microsoft accidentally brings forth the Year of the Linux Desktop"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago

Got two major pieces to show which caught my attention:

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

The only LLM-Based Experience^tm^ I've had so far (and probably ever) was a brief session of Death by AI I had with friends, and that game boils down to "give the chatbot a prompt and your response, and maybe try to not die horribly".

Pretty much all the fun of that game comes from giving the chatbot manmade horrors beyond its comprehension and seeing it struggle to keep up.

Novelty value is basically the only thing LLMs have going for them, and that isn't changing any time soon.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I unfortunately know jack shit about quantum computing, so I can't really weigh in, but I am rooting for them to pull it off, because PsiQuantum getting all the VC money ever means AI stops getting all the VC money ever

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago

They also needed to rapidly rein it in after gamers got it to pull a Tay AI and start spamming slurs.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

New artcle from Brian Merchant: An 'always on' OpenAI device is a massive backlash waiting to happen

Giving my personal thoughts on the upcoming OpenAI Device^tm^, I think Merchant's correct to expect mass-scale backlash against the Device^tm^ and public shaming/ostracisation of anyone who decides to use it - especially considering its an explicit repeat of the widely clowned on Humane AI Pin.

headlines of Device^tm^ wearers getting their asses beaten in the street to follow soon afterwards. As Brian's noted, a lot of people would see wearing an OpenAI Device^tm^ as an open show of contempt for others, and between AI's public image becoming utterly fouled by the bubble and Silicon Valley's reputation going into the toilet, I can see someone seeing a Device^tm^ wearer as an opportunity to take their well-justified anger at tech corps out on someone who openly and willingly bootlicks for them.

 

It's been a good minute since I took a shot at predicting how the AI bubble (and its burst) is gonna play out. This is less a dedicated post and more a compilation of the bajillion thoughts I've had about this.

  1. Throwing the Humanities a Bone

Right off the bat, I suspect the arts/humanities will gain a degree of begrudging respect at the direct expense of tech's public image taking a nosedive. My primary reason for this is due to the slop-nami and its wide-spread impact on the Internet at large.

On one end, you have an utter tidal wave of AI-generated slop flooding basically every corner of daily life, giving us a nonstop torrent of misinformation (political or otherwise) and inhumanly shit "artwork" which clogs the Internet with garbage and drowns out human voices wherever it can, acting as an omnipresent annoyance at best and a direct threat to people's livelihoods at worst.

On the other end, you have the AI bros responsible for/complicit in this slop-nami, who uncritically praise whatever garbage gen-AI creates, relentlessly hype up its "creative" qualities and relentlessly doomsay about the incoming Artificial General Intelligence that will wipe out humanity/solve all of humanity's problems/God-Knows-Fucking-What.

Combined, these two aspects of the bubble paint a picture of tech as an utterly insipid and artless field, full of soulless dilletantes who are incapable of making or understanding art at best and actively hostile to it at worst.

If that new image of tech takes root in the public consciousness, its gonna make the arts/humanities look a fair bit better by comparison. Sure, the fields are still gonna have to deal with the stigma of being a "useless degree" but its better than your degree being taken as an indictment of you as a person.

Confidence: Low. This is pure gut instinct (and probably hope) talking from watching the slop-nami first-hand - whilst it could force people to appreciate the arts a bit more, nothing's stopping the slop-nami from devaluing the arts even fucking more.

  1. Smells Like Fash Spirit

On another front entirely, I expect this bubble will leave the tech industry with a reputation as a Nazi bar - a reputation that will linger even after Trump and his cronies are thrown out of office.

Silicon Valley's sucking up to Trump and DOGE's AI-Powered^tm^ annihilation of the state is doing wonders on this particular front, but fascists' fascination with slop and TESCREAL being fash to its core are likely helping build this image as well.

Referencing an earlier comment of mine, AI as a concept will likely get hit with the stench of fash as well - considering the TESCREAL movement partially powering this bubble is fascist as hell, that seems likely.

Confidence: High. Unlike Prediction 1, I've got some solid evidence to suggest tech's picking up a reputation for fascism. Mainly Silicon Valley's jackbooted goose-stepping to Trump's tune.

 

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.)

 

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.)

 

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.

(Taking over for Gerard this time. Special thanks to him for starting this.)

 

Another banger video from f4mi, showcasing some pretty creative ways to sabotage slop summarisers/scrapers.

Sidenote: I was right - anti-scraping measures would make use of feeding false info to scrapers.

 

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.)

 

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, and happy new year in advance.)

 

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.)

 

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.)

 

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.)

 

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 - gonna try posting last week's thread a different way this time)

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