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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this - this one was a bit late, I got distracted)
I woke up and immediately read about something called āDefense Llamaā. The horrors are never ceasing: https://theintercept.com/2024/11/24/defense-llama-meta-military/
Scale AI advertised their chatbot as being able to:
However their marketing material, as is tradition, include an example of terrible advice. Which is not great given itās about blowing up a building āwhile minimizing collateral damageā.
Scale AIās response to the news pointing this out ā complaining that everyone took their murderbot marketing material seriously:
On the one hand, that spectacular failure could potentially dissuade the military from buying in and prolonging this bubble. On the other hand, having an accountability sink for war crimes would be a tempting offer to your average army.
The eventual war crimes trials will very likely reveal that āAI targetingā has already been used as an accountability sink for a premeditated ethnic cleansing policy in Gaza.
Iāve been wondering about this
One the one hand, military procurement (at least afaik) tends toward complete functional product
On the other hand, military R&D programs have been among the most spectacularly profligate financial black holes in recent decades
None of the options involved feel great, even if āit gets shunted from mil procurement and all industry claims get publicly brandished as the bullshit it isā comes to pass (which tbh still feels like an optimistic outcome, with unclear time horizons)
I mean it fits into the pattern of procurement projects that arenāt allowed to fail despite having had serious coherence issues starting at the design stage. Though the military is usually less prone to the āproblem in search of a solutionā dynamic that VCs are prone to if a project gets started it can shamble forwards as a zombie for years before anyone finds the political will to kill it.
there is nothing sam altman more fervently desires than his own F-35 project
saltman doesnāt have skunk works or anything f35-shaped
Maybe not, but their product certainly stinks.