Mastodawn

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 28th September 2025 - awful.systems

https://awful.systems/post/5699944

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 28th September 2025 - awful.systems - awful.systems

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.)

BlueMonday1984 Sep 21, 2025

Starting this Stubsack off with Brian Merchant’s newest article: The Luddite Renaissance is in full swing

The Luddite Renaissance is in full swing

This fall, the new luddites are rising

Blood in the Machine

BlueMonday1984 Sep 23, 2025

Found a well-done essay by Jared White recently: AI Apologists and the Humanist Legacy of Steve Jobs, which does a good job sneering the ideology of AI and arguing for a more pro-human approach to tech.

AI Apologists and the Humanist Legacy of Steve Jobs

“The whole computer industry wants to forget about the humanist side and just focus on the technology.” Essay by Jared White.

Cycles Hyped No More

Soyweiser Sep 24, 2025

This article also reminded me of how when they are trying to promote AI agents they dont get further than shopping, a secretary, or help you cook with random ingredients. No real human connections

BlueMonday1984 Sep 23, 2025

A full timeline on the RubyGems takeover has been put together - looks like the entire situation’s been caused by pressure from Shopify.

Shopify, pulling strings at Ruby Central, forces Bundler and RubyGems takeover

Ruby Central recently took over a collection of open source projects from their maintainers without their consent.

o7___o7 Sep 24, 2025

Who’s left to do actual work? Does ruby just die now?

BlueMonday1984 Sep 24, 2025

Who’s left to do actual work? Who would start a new project that depends on these institutions? Does ruby just die now?

Honestly, it probably will. The RubyGems takeover shattered any trust people had in the Ruby ecosystem - that’s something which is damn-nigh impossible to recover from.

corbin Sep 24, 2025

I’m curious whether you or @[email protected] are familiar with the concept of MINASWAN. The only time it’s appeared in the discussion is in one of the apologies posted by one of the Ruby Central board members, as their signoff line. Quoting a 2016 analysis of MINASWAN in which it is argued that Ruby’s central tenet is not MINASWAN, but wa (和):

Just for the record, MINASWAN is at least half true. Matz is nice. … I would not call DHH nice. … So if MINASWAN is really a basic truth about the Ruby culture, then how does DHH fit in at all? … MINASWAN is garbage. It’d be more accurate to say, “Ruby showcases the Japanese value of 和, but we are arrogant Americans, so we reduce this to a really basic American idea, harshly compressing it in the process to a state where it cannot possibly mean anything any more, instead of bothering to learn something about the outside world for once.” But MINASWAN was already a long acronym, so I guess they had to draw the line at RSTJVO和BWAAASWRTTARBAIHCIITPTASWICPMAAMIOBTLSATOWFO.

Also, I really think it’s worth understanding that Ruby is not at risk here. Ever since the release of RPG Maker XP in 2005, Ruby has been a staple of embedded scripting for game engines. Really, what we’re seeing here is the demise of Rails.

@BlueMonday1984 - awful.systems

Lemmy

rook Sep 25, 2025

Does ruby just die now?

Part of the background to this issue is the development of rv which apparently offers a future where rubygems is much less important, and some folk seem to be taking that as a threat.

Whether or not the new tooling delivers, the rubygems debacle has probably helped the new project considerably.

o7___o7 Sep 25, 2025

It’d be lovely for see the correct folks build a better one with blackjack and webhooks.

V0ldek Sep 25, 2025

I have no idea about Ruby or the politics behind the scenes, but I do know who DHH is and so it seems like literally none of this would’ve happened if not for point 2. on the list?? Just like, don’t platform the rancid toxic cesspit of a man and you’re fine??

smiletolerantly Sep 22, 2025

This scream into the void has been on my mind for a while: Apparently I work for an AI company now.

Kinda.

When I had the interviews with my now-employer at the beginning of the year, they were an open-source cybersecurity startup. Everything sounded great, we got along, signed the contract. I took a long vacation before starting the position, and when I got back, I was… amused? bewildered? to find that a), we are no longer open source; and b), we have pivoted, hard, towards AI.

Luckily, I still get to work 100% of the time on the core (cybersecurity) product (which is actually a really good and useful thing, sorry, not going to be more specific), it’s just that part of the dev team, as well as all of marketing and sales, now work on building and selling an AI product built on top of that.

At least it’s not a wrapper around ChatGPT, and does offer something kinda new and actually beneficial, but still, it’s an LLM product.

Now, for the actual scream-into-the-void: Once a month, in a company-wide meeting, I have to observe how people praise LLMs to the the moon, attribute nonsense or downright bugs to something akin to proto-sentience, and give absurd estimates of profitability based on the idea that AI will totally be used everywhere and by everyone, very soon now, you’ll see. What finally prompted (pun intended) me to post this is the CEO yesterday unironically referencing AI 2027’s “predictions”.

Can’t wait for the bubble to burst. I’m really curious to see if I’ll keep my job through that. At the end of the day, the stuff I work on luckily has nothing to do with AI, and basically every other application of the product makes more sense; but now the entire company has shifted gears towards AI…

Soyweiser Sep 22, 2025

You would hope that, if they take their job seriously, the managers who predict AI mooning, that they also write predictions for the other situations. And not just the best case scenarios.

smiletolerantly Sep 22, 2025

I mean… yeah, you would hope that, wouldn’t you? And to be fair, they were selling the product beforehand as well. It’s just apparently a lot easier to sell the AI angle right now.

Soyweiser Sep 22, 2025

Yeah hope for your job that they don’t bet the company on the 2027 thing. Because that would be quite the failure of management. If they just use it as a tool for sales I get it (don’t like it, but I get it), the CEO being all in on it is worrying though, which is why I hope he has also made predictions for what if he is wrong and AI never advances anymore significantly (or even becomes a liability as a sales tool).

smiletolerantly Sep 23, 2025

Realistically, the bubble bursting just means going back to pre-2025 target markets. But who knows.

Soyweiser Sep 23, 2025

For the company hopefully, but it could also turn into ‘any mention of AI gets interpreted as a bad sign’ and you need to pivot before that affects the bottom line. (clearly the pendulum is towards it being a good sign atm).

David Gerard Sep 22, 2025

crikey. I assume the CV is in good order and kept updated on the job sites just to see what comes in.

smiletolerantly Sep 22, 2025

Yeah… (Un)fortunately, everything not AI-related is pretty great in regards to the company, so I’ve decided to stick with it and hopefully still be there after the bubble bursts, unless they try to reassign me to the AI-project, then I’m gone.

flere-imsaho Sep 23, 2025

take care and step carefully. there’s a moment where the stress from working for a company with goals that counter your personal ethics is going to be hard to bear, and the worst thing you can do then is to change your value system to reduce the cognitive dissonance.

smiletolerantly Sep 23, 2025

Thanks, I appreciate the concern. Luckily, the entire core dev team is very critical/cynical about AI, it’s not just me, everyone I directly work with also wants to build the product for its intended purposes, not for AI-use. I think that somewhat lessens the pressure to go with the narrative.

Plus, I can’t see that happening while participating in discussions on this lemmy instance :D

In any case, thank you for the sound advice, Mawhrin-Skel Flere-Imsaho!

gerikson Sep 22, 2025

Techdirt: AI Slop Startup To Flood The Internet With Thousands Of AI Slop Podcasts, Calls Critics Of AI Slop ‘Luddites’

They say “Luddites” as if it’s a bad thing…

AI Slop Startup To Flood The Internet With Thousands Of AI Slop Podcasts, Calls Critics Of AI Slop ‘Luddites’

So look, I’m not one of these people who thinks “AI” has no useful applications. Just this week I had an efficient conversation with a Gemini chatbot when trying to cancel a Googl…

Techdirt

ShakingMyHead Sep 22, 2025

“We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that’s bringing those people to life”

This quote is just… something.

Is the plan to literally create 8 billion podcasts in the near future? This company doesn’t think that might be a tad excessive?

swlabr Sep 22, 2025

Tech take from the near future: Podcast life begins at conception i.e. the instant one thinks the inside thoughts should be outside

fullsquare Sep 22, 2025

new extreme strain of catholicism: life begins at conceptualization

swlabr Sep 22, 2025

Uh I think we are very quickly and dangerously approaching Dawkinsian Meme Theory

YourNetworkIsHaunted Sep 23, 2025

RAIDEN!

ShakingMyHead Sep 23, 2025

I don’t know why this quote gets me so much compared to others, but it’s kind of like someone stated that they made a new innovative antenna design, and they hope that with the help of the mole people, they can probably make an even better one. Then everyone talks about how the antenna design actually isn’t that innovative and probably is going to fail, and all I’m thinking of is “who the hell are the mole people?”

froztbyte Sep 28, 2025

black mirror enhancement: because the algorithms involved may present multiple likely fits to any given input, each output is also considered a conception and given due protection (even if not used)

irelephant [he/him]Sep 25, 2025

The Ai bubble has taught me that the luddites are really misunderstood.

The Luddites were a 19th century guerrilla movement that smashed textile machines, burned factories and threatened their owners. But they were not motivated by a fear of technology […] the luddites […] were engaged in the most science-fictional exercise imaginable – asking not what a technology does, but who it does it to and who it does it for. The Luddites, you see, were skilled weavers whose intense physical labor produced the textiles that clothed the nation. The difficulty of their trade – both in terms of esoteric knowledge and physical prowess – allowed them to command high wages and good working conditions.

All that was threatened by the advent of textile machines, which produced more fabric in less time, and required less skill. The owners of textile factories bought these machines with profits derived from the weavers’ labor, and then used those machines to grind down the weavers. Their hours got longer, their pay got shorter, and many of them were maimed or killed by the new machines.

Weaving engines are ingenious and delightful machines. The Luddites had no beef with the machines – their cause was the social relations that governed those machines. By painting Luddites as mere technophobes, we strip ourselves of the ability to learn from history. The lesson of the Industrial Revolution is that merely asking what a machine does and not who it does it for and to can lead to literal genocide.

pluralistic.net/2022/01/04/general-ludd/

Pluralistic: 04 Jan 2022 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

swlabr Sep 26, 2025

The spectre of Marx nods in approval

gerikson Sep 22, 2025

Cloudflare sponsors Ladybird and Omarchy, techfash workfare

nightsky Sep 22, 2025

TIL about Omarchy.

Of course it uses Hyprland. Of course the demo video on the website shows using Grok in it.

Still can’t believe that choosing a Linux distribution now involves decision-making factors like “what’s their take on fascism”. But I guess the real problem is that such questions weren’t asked for way too long before.

gerikson Sep 22, 2025

Remind me: why is Hyprland bad? I don’t doubt it is, I just need it to add to my mental list of stuff to avoid.

BasiqueEvangelist Sep 22, 2025

drewdevault.com/2023/09/…/Hyprland-toxicity.html
tl;dr: incredibly toxic transphobic community enabled by the devs

Hyprland is a toxic community

nightsky Sep 23, 2025

Yep… also: this. To be fair, the project did have a blog post last year about improvements to moderation, and claim that transphobes would not be tolerated, but I don’t know how things developed after that.

FDO's conduct enforcement actions regarding Vaxry

BasiqueEvangelist Sep 22, 2025

why the hell are they sponsoring omarchy how is a customized hyprland config “helping the open web”

o7___o7 Sep 23, 2025

Maybe more on-purpose obscurantism ala Urbit?

BlueMonday1984 Sep 22, 2025

Red site’s having a normal one about it

Cloudflare is sponsoring Ladybird and Omarchy | Lobsters

gerikson Sep 23, 2025

Usual suspects weighing in.

bitofhope Sep 22, 2025

Damn, I was kinda hoping the Ladybird guy wouldn’t turn out awful but nah, can’t have shit in IT.

veganes_hack Sep 23, 2025

has there been more indication of him being a bit fashy since that one github issue? haven’t been following it that much.

bitofhope Sep 23, 2025

The lobsters thread linked in a sibling comment has more examples, but here’s him eulogizing Charlie Kirk in a nazi bar nitter.net/awesomekling/…/1966456391146606806

froztbyte Sep 23, 2025

real fucking weird tweet from ronacher there too

bitofhope Sep 23, 2025

I never got much of a sense that Charlie would be open to have his own mind changed

No way, really? Are you really doubting the professional nazi troll’s desire to have his convictions challenged through good faith dialogue?

Soyweiser Sep 23, 2025

I was hoping it was meant as a trollish sort of post (because anybody who didn’t realize that soon after ~2016 has not paid any attention), but then he did a bothsides. Really doing a ‘lets be open to the idea of gay people being stoned (and that isn’t even the correct quote, it is put to death, leviticus is specific (it also seems to only be about people in Israel, or else the land will vomit you out, and old testament. Kirk wasn’t even a good bible scholar). and trans people being eradicated’.

froztbyte Sep 23, 2025

dunno, I seem to recall I’ve seen a couple other stinkers from ronacher lately. dude’s also full on the LLM bandwagon iirc

probably need to keep a notes file

Soyweiser Sep 23, 2025

Sorry I meant that my hope was wrong, and too generous.

fullsquare Sep 23, 2025

no, you see, exchange of opinions with charlie kirk was supposed to work like this: you get in with your opinion and leave with his

swlabr Sep 23, 2025

It is well known that the Marketplace Of Ideas is Zero Sum

veganes_hack Sep 23, 2025

as a bonus here he does a “i’m not usually political, but the left is evil” nitter.net/awesomekling/…/1967493595545682220 great, just great

self Sep 23, 2025

he keeps hanging out with fascists and receiving money from organizations that support fascists and something about his personal brand in interviews being wearing “Big Tech is gangstalking me” t-shirts also very much rubs me the wrong way

ladybird is a ridiculously unserious project (last I heard they were considering a rewrite in Swift and ignoring everyone who told them why that’s a terrible idea, maybe they’ve given up on that by now) and I frankly have no idea why it’s being hyped over Servo as an independent browser project other than a general willingness in tech to play ball with weird little fascists

e: also this lobste.rs subthread

Federico Damián Schonborn (@federicoschonborn)

CW: ladybird browser, andreas kling, fascism

Possum City

froztbyte Sep 23, 2025

nice, good collection of links, will help next time I need to find it. couple weeks ago I mentioned it on masto and I had someone Very Huffily reply to me (a situation I resolved by simply blocking them, gfy with that nonsense)

veganes_hack Sep 23, 2025

fucking hell. but in hindsight, the vibes were always just a little bit off in his videos. guess servo is the only hope for a decent browser free from corporate/technofascist garbage.

antifuchs Sep 23, 2025

I mean, of course they are. Perfect culture fit, both projects.

blakestacey Sep 22, 2025

Bethany Brookshire:

Some people think ChatGPT has a place writing things like news briefs, stuff written to a specific style and tone and, y’know, kinda boring.

So Science did a study.

ChatGPT failed.

Why? It got stuff wrong. “Also, extensive editing for hyperbole was needed.” science.org/…/can-chatgpt-help-science-writers

Can ChatGPT help science writers?

gerikson Sep 22, 2025

Harvard Business Review: AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity

[…] Employees are using AI tools to create low-effort, passable looking work that ends up creating more work for their coworkers. On social media, which is increasingly clogged with low-quality AI-generated posts, this content is often referred to as “AI slop.” In the context of work, we refer to this phenomenon as “workslop.” We define workslop as AI generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task.

AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity

Despite a surge in generative AI use across workplaces, most companies are seeing little measurable ROI. One possible reason is because AI tools are being used to produce “workslop”—content that appears polished but lacks real substance, offloading cognitive labor onto coworkers. Research from BetterUp Labs and Stanford found that 41% of workers have encountered such AI-generated output, costing nearly two hours of rework per instance and creating downstream productivity, trust, and collaboration issues. Leaders need to consider how they may be encouraging indiscriminate organizational mandates and offering too little guidance on quality standards. To counteract workslop, leaders should model purposeful AI use, establish clear norms, and encourage a “pilot mindset” that combines high agency with optimism—promoting AI as a collaborative tool, not a shortcut.

Harvard Business Review

nfultz Sep 23, 2025

They put ‘environmental impact of AI’ on the front of the student newspaper (below the fold, but still), then you flip and see this

kinda feeling two steps forward, three steps back rn on top of all the other drama on campus

swlabr Sep 23, 2025

it would be very funny if Rocco Basilico’s legacy was that his name bore resemblance to Roko Basilisk and nothing else

image desc

Quote tweet: “my name is rokos basilisk and i’m making artificial intelligence that you put on your body” Quoted tweet: an embedded article platforming Meta’s Chief Wearables Officer named “Rocco Basilico”

YourNetworkIsHaunted Sep 26, 2025

My name is Rocco Pa’perclip Basilico Yudkowski Way…

swlabr Sep 23, 2025

Satire warning!!! 🚨🚨🚨 You have been warned!!!

Some great tips for using ChatGPT to stop being a “Brain only” person to a fully optimised person!

5 Secret Ways to Use ChatGPT Like an AI Pro (2025 easy prompt guide!)

YouTube