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fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 12th October 2025English3·6 days agoI guess one of the main attractions of Arch is the AUR plus the rolling-release update model. Personally, I’ve had Arch as my daily driver for over 5 years and I haven’t run into any system-breaking issues with updates (there have been small hiccups, like my custom keyboard layout stopping working), which is a better record than I had with for example Ubuntu. But I suppose it’s very dependent on the particular hardware and software one uses and Lenovo laptops are generally well-supported.
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•"Anti-ai arguments literally support eugenics"English71·11 days agoAny minimally competent critique of AI would make such bigotry ipso facto meaningless. Note that the cited phrase implicitly accepts the premise of “AIs” as being in the same category of sentient beings as humans by virtue of it being possible to betray the latter for the former, and hence for any genuinely AI-critical person, it makes about as much sense as talking about ‘anti-table bigotry’; it’s just a meaningless configuration of words if one understands what they mean.
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 14th September 2025English8·1 month agoWhy progressives should care about falling birth rates
2 weeks old, but regardless. The Financial Times’ John Burn-Murdoch wrote a very EA-adjacent article basically making the case for “progressive” eugenics. The studies he cites all derive from a behavior-genetic model of intergenerational value transmission, i.e. conservatism is “in the genes” & progressivism is literally getting bred out of the gene pool.
A masterclass in baiting liberals. Take note, NYT & Atlantic!
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 31st August 2025 - awful.systemsEnglish8·2 months agoMark Cuban is feeling bullied by Bluesky. He will also have you know that you need to keep aware of the important achievements of your betters, as though he is currently the 5th most blocked user on there, he was indeed once the 4th most blocked user. Perhaps he is just crying out to move up the ranks once more?
It’s really all about Bluesky employees being able to afford their healthcare for Mark you see.
And of course, here’s never-Trumper Anne Applebaum running interference for him. Really an appropriate hotdog-guy-meme moment – as much as I shamelessly sneer at Cuban, I’m genuinely angered by the complete inability of the self-satisfied ‘democracy defender’ set to see their own complicity in perpetuating a permission structure for priviliged white men to feel eternally victimized.
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 31st August 2025 - awful.systemsEnglish13·2 months agoMore of a pet peeve than a primal scream, but I wonder what’s with Adam Tooze and his awe of AI. Tooze is a left-wing economic historian who’s generally interesting to listen to (though perhaps in tackling a very wide range of subject matter sometimes missing some depth), but nevertheless seems as AI-pilled as any VC. Most recently came about this bit: Berlin Forum on Global Cooperation 2025 - Keynote Adam Tooze
Anyone who’s used AI seriously knows the LLMs are extraordinary in what they’re able to do … 5 years down the line, this will be even more transformative.
Really, anyone Adam? Are you sure about the techbro pitch there?
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 24th August 2025English9·2 months agowell, Zen buddhism
Yeah, this is the Valley after all. Some have used Buddhism as a building block for constructing “metarationality”.
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 17th August 2025English3·2 months agoOh you thought TESCREAL sounded fancy huh? Well I’ll raise you a BIGGER word!
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd June 2025English8·4 months agoSearching Reddit has really become standard practice for me, a testament to how inhuman the web as a whole has gotten. What a shame.
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•"OpenAI Is A Systemic Risk To The Tech Industry" [Ed Zitron]English7·6 months agoMany ordinary people lost their jobs and homes during the Great Recession, while no one at the top was ever held individually accountable. Knowing the dynamics of the tech world, a hard crash would likely end up playing out the same way.
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•Greenland 'Freedom City'? Rich donors push Trump for a tech hub up northEnglish6·6 months agoAbsolutely. We already sanction Russian oligarchs for the same reasons, why should we treat the American ones any different honestly.
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 30th March 2025English8·7 months agoBill Gates is having a normal one.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/26/bill-gates-on-ai-humans-wont-be-needed-for-most-things.html
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 30th March 2025English7·7 months agoWanting to escape the fact that we are beings of the flesh seems to be behind so much of the rationalist-reactionary impulse – a desire to one-up our mortal shells by eugenics, weird diets, ‘brain uploading’ and something like vampirism with the Bryan Johnson guy. It’s wonderful you found a way to embrace and express yourself instead! Yes, in a healthier relationship with our bodies – which is what we are – such changes would be considered part of general healthcare. It sometimes appears particularly extreme in the US from here from Europe at least, maybe a heritage of puritanical norms.
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 30th March 2025English9·7 months agoReminds me of the stories of how Soviet peasants during the rapid industrialization drive under Stalin, who’d never before seen any machinery in their lives, would get emotional with and try to coax faulty machines like they were their farm animals. But these were Soviet peasants! What are structural forces stopping Yud & co outgrowing their childish mystifications? Deeply misplaced religious needs?
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•People don’t enjoy making music, says AI music CEO being sued for stealing musicEnglish14·9 months agoA generous interpretation may be that writing music in the context of the modern music industry may indeed be something that’s creatively unsatisfying for composers, but the solutions to that have nothing to do with magical tech-fixes and everything to do with politics, which is of course anathema to these types. What dumb times we live in.
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 19th January 2025 - awful.systemsEnglish6·9 months agoAh, the Image Upload Protocol must have gone woke.
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 19th January 2025 - awful.systemsEnglish5·9 months agoI’ve never heard of anyone describing 1984 that way, could you elaborate on your points or link to some analysis?
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th December 2024English5·10 months agoSomeone else said it, but for someone completely accustomed to a life of easy privilege, having it suddenly disappear can be utterly intolerable.
fnix@awful.systemsto TechTakes@awful.systems•the dead end grift that is lab grown meatEnglish5·10 months agoYou should read the article first.
I remember when this guy used to castigate Sam Harris for platforming Charles Murray’s race science. The same guy who now eulogizes Charlie Kirk and does the bidding of billionaires. Really encapsulates the elite pivot to the right.