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corbin @awful.systems
Posts 13
Comments 163
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 17th November 2024
  • I wasn't going to explain my downvote, but it's been a few days and apparently everybody here is thinking about MRAs when there's more at stake.

    I see Nixon in Trump: somebody who starts and prolongs wars for their own political gain. Of my three uncles who qualified to go to Vietnam, one was permanently disabled during basic training, one didn't come back home, and one fell apart before I was born. I had to "voluntarily" register as a potential servicemember in order to access various standard government services as a young man in the 2000s, while the USA was invading Iraq and Afghanistan. Under a sufficiently fascist government, the USA has shown itself capable of sending its men to death. This system is explicitly misandrist; only men are required to register and only my uncles suffered this hate.

    Misandry isn't equal and opposite to misogyny. Our society was never obligated to hate men and women in ways that are nicely symmetric and amenable to analysis; indeed, critical theory suggests that society deliberately structures itself to obfuscate its hate.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 17th November 2024
  • Trump would have to literally kill all lawyers. Think of the DoJ as a pile of folks who all took an oath to the law itself. When pundits complain that it's being "weaponized", they're actually talking about a facet of overcriminalization where the DoJ's limited attention can be controlled somewhat; it's always going to be a full-power laser that targets what the law perceives as criminality.

    In particular, the President doesn't have the authority to tell the DoJ to stop an investigation, and the DoJ usually can't tell individual prosecutors to stop filing motions. Trump wasn't able to protect Cabinet member and Teapot Dome Candidate #2 Michael Flynn from prosecution, nor can he protect Eric Adams. The worst that he can do is a Saturday Night Massacre, where he fires lawyers until the investigations stop, and the entire pattern of special counsel is purpose-designed to prevent that from actually working.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 17th November 2024
  • Personally I'm betting on Teapot Dome: somebody in the Cabinet will be convicted of something like bribery, foreign influence, or electoral interference; and the cleanup will implicate multiple other Cabinet members. Trump needs to do this at some point anyway; he's already done all of the Nixon things like Watergate and interfering in foreign wars, and while he attempted a Teapot Dome last time with Ryan Zinke, he needs to actually have a Cabinet member removed or convicted in order to truly be a worse president than Warren G. Harding.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 10th November 2024
  • I haven't done a headcount yet and the election's not fully tallied, but I think that the Senate still has around 70% support for NATO, and historically we can expect to see a "blue dog" phenomenon in the House as a reaction to Republicans gaining seats. Effectively, both the Democrats and Republicans will function as big tents of two distinct parties, and there is usually tripartisan support (everybody but the far-right Republicans) for imperialism. We may well see votes where the legislators override presidential vetoes to force weapons sales and otherwise fulfill NATO obligations.

    And yes, you read that correctly; Democrats move right as a reaction to Republicans doing well. Go back to bed, America…

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 10th November 2024
  • Well, it's more like 2000, really, in the sense that the courts are being used to restrict voting rights. There's strong evidence of flagrant UOCAVA violations: thousands of absentee ballots which should affect the federal election have been challenged in swing states. Edit: Here is part 1 and part 2 from an attorney whose Pennsylvania UOCAVA ballot was challenged; he goes through the law and explains what he's going to do.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 10th November 2024
  • Feynman reminds me of the brujo (one specific man, not brujería in general) from Pirsig's Lila. Feynman's safecracking and unorthodox approaches are like the brujo's routine flaunting of social norms; through routinely doing things the wrong way (sacred clowning), new possible behaviors and modes of social existence are explored. Also, Feynman's attitudes towards women remind me of that brujo's tendency to spy on women by looking through their windows into their homes while they were not necessarily dressed, which the brujo's society did not tolerate.

  • Where's Your Ed At- The Cult of Microsoft
  • "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling." Some corporations are criminal enterprises and should have their tax numbers revoked. Some corporate officers are criminals and should be prosecuted. Some are complicit in crimes against humanity or war crimes and should be internationally prosecuted.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 3rd November 2024
  • Every person I talk to — well, every smart person I talk to — no, wait, every smart person in tech — okay, almost every smart person I talk to in tech is a eugenicist. Ha, see, everybody agrees with me! Well, almost everybody…

  • Mr Beast crypto fraud traced
  • Mr. Rogers' channel thumbnails would look like one of those full-completion video-gaming channels that involve a controller-holder, sometimes along with a confused roommate or neighbor, logging hour #73 of a 20hr RPG because they can't figure out how to get a platinum on the last minigame. There'd be a blurry background of the handpuppets and two headshots of Mr. Rogers smiling and his guest freaking out. I think the titles would be fairly tame, though; I'm imagining, "Another Day in the Neighborhood #112 | An Unexpected Guest, Learning to Tie Shoes"

    Now, where it gets fun is imagining that Lamb Chop could have the same setup. "Lamb Chop & Friends #52 | She's Unstoppable, So Much Blood, Can We Unsummon Lamb Chop?"

  • the hackernewses whining that linus is so unfair in enacting legal sanctions against the russian who works in development for bomb components are comedy gold
  • Meanwhile, actual Pastafarians (hi!) know that the Russian Federation openly persecutes the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster for failing to help the government in its authoritarian activities, and also that we're called to be anti-authoritarian. The Fifth Rather:

    I'd really rather you didn't challenge the bigoted, misogynist, hateful ideas of others on an empty stomach. Eat, then go after the bastards.

    May you never run out of breadsticks, travelers.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 27 October 2024
  • It's almost completely ineffective, sorry. It's certainly not as effective as exfiltrating weights via neighborly means.

    On Glaze and Nightshade, my prior rant hasn't yet been invalidated and there's no upcoming mathematics which tilt the scales in favor of anti-training techniques. In general, scrapers for training sets are now augmented with alignment models, which test inputs to see how well the tags line up; your example might be rejected as insufficiently normal-cat-like.

    I think that "force-feeding" is probably not the right metaphor. At scale, more effort goes into cleaning and tagging than into scraping; most of that "forced" input is destined to be discarded or retagged.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 20 October 2024
  • Thus leading to this sneer on HN. I'm quoting it in entirety; click through for Poe's Law responses.

    I was telling someone this and they gave me link to a laptop with higher battery life and better performance than my own, but I kept explaining to them that the feature I cared most about was die size. They couldn't understand it so I just had to leave them alone. Non-technical people don't get it. Die size is what I care about. It's a critical feature and so many mainstream companies are missing out on my money because they won't optimize die size. Disgusting.

  • The Nobel Prize in physics goes to Geoffrey Hinton for his work in computer science. What?
  • Lucky 10000: this integration started decades ago. You may have heard of "computational trinitarianism" or read Baez & Stay 2009. The current big listing of correspondences is called the computational trilogy. Don't let the Nobel committee's foolishness blind you to the genuine connections between computer science and physics.

  • Leopard-trainer J. Tunney now scared of leopards

    justine.lol AI Training Shouldn't Erase Authorship

    AI training scrubs authorship knowledge from open source code

    AI Training Shouldn't Erase Authorship

    After a decade of cryptofascism and failed political activism, our dear friend jart is realizing that they don't really have much of a positive legacy. If only there was something they could have done about that.

    24

    Why has Emperor Zuck given us this bounty?

    In this big thread, over and over, people praise the Zuck-man for releasing Llama 3's weights. How magnanimous! How courteous! How devious!

    Of course, Meta is doing this so that they don't have to worry about another 4chan leak of weights via Bittorrent.

    6

    HN has no opinions on memetics

    > Sometimes what is not said is as sneerworthy as what is said.

    It is quite telling to me that HN's regulars and throwaway accounts have absolutely nothing to say about the analysis of cultural patterns.

    6

    It's not a death threat, you're just unfamiliar with 90s hip-hop

    Possibly the worst defense yet of Garry Tan's tweeting of death threats towards San Francisco's elected legislature. In yet more evidence for my "HN is a Nazi bar" thesis, this take is from an otherwise-respected cryptographer and security researcher. Choice quote:

    > sorry, but 2Pac is now dad music, I don't make the rules

    Best sneer so far is this comment, which links to this Key & Peele sketch about violent rap lyrics in the context of gang violence.

    18

    Overly libertarian crypto-bro vs AML regulations: EU edition

    Choice quote:

    > Actually I feel violated.

    It's a KYC interview, not a police interrogation. I've always enjoyed KYC interviews; I get to talk about my business plans, or what I'm going to do with my loan, or how I ended up buying/selling stocks. It's hard to empathize with somebody who feels "violated" by small talk.

    39

    Big Yud and the Methods of Compilation

    In today's episode, Yud tries to predict the future of computer science.

    58

    Bluesky lead dev is dismissive of security flaws

    8

    Libertarian becomes lawyer, appreciates police

    www.lesswrong.com Defunding My Mistake — LessWrong

    Confessions of an ex-ACAB • • Until about five years ago, I unironically parroted the slogan All Cops Are Bastards (ACAB) and earnestly advocated to…

    Defunding My Mistake — LessWrong

    Choice quote:

    > Putting “ACAB” on my Tinder profile was an effective signaling move that dramatically improved my chances of matching with the tattooed and pierced cuties I was chasing.

    21

    Those darn "anti-fascists" are punching too many Nazis

    As usual, I struggle to form a proper sneer in the face of such sheer wrongheadedness. The article is about a furry who was dating a Nazifur and was battered for it; the comments are full of complaints about the overreach of leftism. Choice quote:

    > Anti-fascists see fascism everywhere (your local police department) the same way the John Birch Society saw communism everywhere (Dwight Eisenhower.). Or maybe they are just jealous that the fascists have cool uniforms and boots. Or maybe they think their life isn’t meaningful enough and it has to be like a comic book or a WWII movie.

    Well, I do wear a Captain America shirt often…

    8

    upside-down thinking: the law is not for entrepreneurs

    A well-respected pirate, neighbor, and Lisper is also a chud. Welcome to HN, the Nazi Bar where everybody's also an expert in technology.

    15

    You can't take my land from me without giving me investment advice

    Eminent domain? Never heard of it! Sounds like a fantasy from the "economical illiterate."

    Edit: This entire thread is a trash fire, by the way. I'm only highlighting the silliest bit from one of the more aggressive landlords.

    7

    JAQing off to harass a trans community member

    Saw this last night but decided to give them a few hours to backtrack. Surprisingly, they've decided to leave their comments intact!

    This sort of attitude, not directly harassing trans folks but just asking questions about their moral fiber indirectly, seems to be coming from some playbook; it looks like a structured disinformation source, and I wonder what motivates them.

    5

    The sad thing is that the cop didn't get away with it

    "The sad thing is that if the officer had not made a few key missteps … he might have covered his bases well enough to avoid consequences." Yeah, so sad.

    For bonus sneer, check out their profile.

    3