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.)

  • self@awful.systems
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    so the nix devenv CLI tool that was gaining popularity around the time I left nix is now doing extremely invasive telemetry and quietly implemented a feature that exfiltrates your entire repo and all related files to their servers to feed into an LLM. if you’d like a reminder of the extreme bad faith the corporate assholes who own nixpkgs operate under, someone tried to add DO_NOT_TRACK to Nix’s wrapped version of devenv, and the devenv lead maintainer used their elevated privileges on the nixpkgs repo to revert that change instantly without following any existing processes or asking for the community’s consensus.

    I ranted some time ago about how all these shit commercial tools are just ways to capture and monetize large parts of the nix ecosystem, and the bill has finally come due. lixpkgs can’t happen soon enough (and the nix infra people seem to agree — they’ve been using lix for a while now, cause the regular evaluator is too unstable for large-scale use)

    • nightsky@awful.systems
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      someone tried to add DO_NOT_TRACK

      Tangentially related, but I only just now learned about this env var, and the console do not track proposal. While it is a practical solution to the problem of many different env vars… I’m also so annoyed that it’s necessary at all. That it’s required to set some env var to opt-out, instead of being strictly opt-in which such things should always be. Maybe I would like the proposal more if they had called the env var DONT_BE_SPYWARE.

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      fuck, I saw their “we added a LLM weeee” post, didn’t realize it was this shittily implemented. not too surprised

      the rest, ugh. fuck that implementation then

      even just using this anywhere with a NDA becomes an instant violation. how little do these fucking dipshits think through their actions…

  • swlabr@awful.systems
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    New elon allegedly spawned 5 months ago via MAGA columnist/influencer Ashley St. Clair

    CW: Original source is the new york post, which I thought was an appropriate rag for this kind of news. Feel free to link a non NYP source.

    https://archive.md/SY8LX

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      E: no prob different person

      E2: climbing on my hill See another recent kid from Musk, vs the relative lack of them before ~2018 (my rough estimate when his radicalization by weird twitter people began (I believe he isnt smart enough/has the attention span to be radicalized by moldbug sliding into his dms (also jock vs creep)) began), sure he had an above average amount of kids with his first wife but nothing like the wild secret seeding he does now. I really think he was a late concert to Nazism and not one always (he always was a racist piece of shit). See also how this man who has trouble shutting the fuck up was silent about gomergate1 and approved on hrt for his exdaughter (and due to trans people showing how gender isnt innate, quite performative, and poreus, nazis hate trans people). This is my hill! (Yeah, this doesn’t really matter, neo-nazis delenda est no matter when they became one).

      E3: the most divorced deadbeat dad

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        Also, was the old messaging exchange that’s been getting some attention sources to “MILO” as in Milo “maybe if I’m hateful enough they’ll ignore that I’m gay” Yanniwhatever?

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          Yes Nero is that Milo. The reactionary who tried the whole ‘I’m going to troll the liberals by being gay and objectifying black men lol, ow god why are yall trying to eat my face’ guy. Last I heard he is ex gay now. Massive pos, but also turns out that a lot of things he wrote in the before times were actually ghostwritten by others, others who he then didn’t pay (because pos (Sidenote, but it amazes me how many of them simply don’t pay employees/contractors (I assume their dealers do get paid))).

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            You know, I feel like he’s still breaking down barriers because I’ve never heard of a straight man being that much of a messy bitch.

            But internalized homophobia aside the fact that they’re so frequent in failing to pay their hired help really puts the lie to the libertarian side of their ideology. Even if you and I in particular have too much pride and sense to work with them they never seem to have issues finding someone to take the risk, meaning that *someone is getting exploited into make the lifestyles of the rich and famous possible.

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              also often double whammies with the predation thing (finding those down on their luck who just really need something, fucking over early-career people, etc)

    • froztbyte@awful.systems
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      MAGA columnist/influencer Ashley St. Clair

      ah. earlier someone linked me screenshots of the tweets and I was trying to remember where I knew the name from.

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      SHE is gowned in a black dress sewn with tiny emeralds, rubies, sapphires too small to detract from the darkness of her gown, instead giving it the illusion of a rainbow sheen.

      Following “gowned” so closely with “dress” is awkward, because the latter is redundant. Consider, e.g., “She is gowned in black, the fabric sewn with…” Using both “gowned” and “gown” in the same sentence compounds the problem. Consider introducing further information about the fabric: e.g., “the darkness of the velvet” or “the darkness of the silk”.

      Whoof. Made it through the first sentence.

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      Nice try, but you’re going to have to work a lot harder if you want to trick me into clicking on that. I lived through browsing peak Slashdot at -1, you know

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        guy chooses never to take in feedback or think about how to git gud at writing so every time he spurts out more sludge it’s just more infinite degrees of fractal bad.

        Why the fuck is it in bad script form? MAN: WOMAN: MAN: WOMAN: just fucking name them! There’s like ten names in the text, just fucking do it, you shit!

        FWIW the only way to read yudkowskian dialogue is to imagine yud as each character wearing a different wig for that character. No distinctions in voice though, none are apparent in the text.

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          ah good point. He reads “mature and excellent at communication” as a self-description. After that, there’s absolutely no way he can resist writing himself into both characters.

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            The man is a hollow shell, and the woman is tripping over her own tongue in the least regal fashion imaginable. There’s no emotional maturity because there’s no interiority. There’s no communication, just Yud doing Ready Player One with Nerd Culture™ references. Remember the Evil Overlord list? You do, don’t you? Wasn’t the Evil Overlord list funny? Now imagine if an Evil Overlord had, wait for it, read the Evil Overlord list. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

            (Yes, he did the same damn thing in HPMOR, too.)

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            all of his works are socrappy dialogues (crappy socratic dialogues). This one is an unsubtle exploration of his BDSM fetish

    • swlabr@awful.systems
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      Also, shit writing prompt. I haven’t seen a writing prompt online that I didn’t hate. “Hey wouldn’t it be neat if someone wrote about this premise???”

      Writing prompt: Day one at the dildo factory

      shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up

      • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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        Writing Prompts:

        • Pokemon and Digimon are both real and they are at war.
        • Fractals are alive and they hate us
        • A woman explores beyond the event horizon of a black hole and it’s just very hot and cramped and boring and not at all pleasant
        • A company starts a time mine where they mine causality but they didn’t think about sustainability

        OK OK you have a point, I hate all of these and I wrote them.

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          when I think about it more, what I don’t like is how insistent WPs are. Like what’s being communicated to me is “hey this is a good story idea, now you write it so you can prove my point!!!” You aren’t my editor, pal!

          • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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            Yeah, it’s a lot easier to think of a potentially interesting premise than it is to sit down and actually write it out. Also if I’m gonna write something it’ll be something I think is interesting rather than a prompt.

        • istewart@awful.systems
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          • Diligent application of Bayesian reasoning finally gains you the ability to fly, propelled by your own farts

      • blakestacey@awful.systems
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        Writing prompt: Day one at the dildo factory

        “Yarrgh. Another crew of bushy tails, more wet behind the ears than 'tween the legs. You’ve no idea what’s in store for you, but these eyes, these old eyes have seen things. Like the great injector malfunction of aught-six…”

  • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
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    looks like our sneer comrade DisneylandDiplomat (disney6830 on discord), who did the Thinkateria rationalist-parody blog, died in Oct 2022. From Reddit Sneerclub:

    Hello, I am writing since I saw this sub is a bit active again. I am wondering if anyone remembers the blog “thinkateria” or the reddit user DisneylandDiplomat who often posted links to promote it here. he was my little brother and he killed himself in October of 2022, after deleting the blog, and I only saw his reddit activity afterwards. I think it was satirical writing making fun of these other bloggers discussed here. He was very private and this sub is really the only insight into his state of mind at that time that I have. There’s no point to this post except I feel a need to share that he is gone and this is the only place I know he had any connections with. It must have been hard for everyone who talked about this so early on.

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    canada has come up several times in the last several days and based on my small sample size, americans have no idea that the US government has been unsubtly threatening CA with annexation. these are not politically unconcerned or right wing people either

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      “Unsubtlly” being him quite literally saying that he wants Canada to be the 51st state.
      Not sure how much more unsubtle you can get there.

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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      A lot of the reporting is using kids gloves instead of calling out the thinly veiled threats (god our media sucks), but anyone who can connect dots and read the tariffs + greenland + canada 51st state + panama + gulf of mexico news should be able to see Trump’s hawkish expansionist dreams pretty easily.

      Is this a matter of not following the news, poor critical thinking, or just so much stuff hitting the fan that it’s hard to keep up?

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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        On the kid gloves, my bank keeps sending me updates on the state of the world economy and general big picture investment advice (and explaining their own actions). And between a lot of talk on AI, I saw they posted “we are going to take our profits on the usa investments, despite the tarifs being off the table”. Which was, esp the first half, an interesting way to suggest to readers that they are pulling a lot of money out of the US and others might be wise to also do so. (Not that they would literally say the latter as ‘not financial advice’ etc). But yes worrying.

        • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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          Yeah I already have a lot of non-US stocks, and next week I’m going to rebalance to make them the majority.

          I’m not a finance person. My uncle who’s in the world of international corporate law thinks things will be fine so maybe I’m being a bit cautious but the way I see it there are a few big issues:

          • The US government is trying it’s best to implode itself.
          • There is a brain-drain effect (or heck, a worker-drain effect in general), it will pick up as things get worse.
          • The US government is becoming much more isolationist and detached from the global economy.
          • There is a small but real chance that the US government will start one or more major wars over the next decade

          All of this also increases the risk of “black swan” events like pandemics, hacks, the US “investing” all the “savings” they “found” into cryptocurrency schemes, large-scale unrest, or god knows what else.

            • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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              Yeah just saw that. It’s messed up.

              I told my job a couple weeks ago that I’m planning to move out of the US. They need me more than I need them so they might actually help with that; but even if a transfer works out I intend to get out this year one way or another, even if it means a study visa instead of a job.

              Even if things magically turn around like some people think my mind is set. Irreversable damage has already been done in my mind. I said in another comment that I feel like a stranger in America now (this is, in a weird sense, kind of a freeing feeling).

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                this is, in a weird sense, kind of a freeing feeling

                speaking from experience, yep. once you make your mind up on a gtfo intent re a bad situation, so much other shit just falls away

                it’ll definitely have hard bits, but keep at it. worth it

    • aio@awful.systems
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      for a moment there i thought i’d been uninformed about the US threatening to annex California

  • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
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    from a discord. musk did not actually marry grimes, but apart from that my aplogies for mr beaning the whole america

    • scruiser@awful.systems
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      That was literally the inflection point on my path to sneerclub. I had started to break from less wrong before, but I hadn’t reached the tipping point of saying it was all bs. And for ssc and Scott in particular I had managed to overlook the real message buried in thousands of words of equivocating and bad analogies and bad research in his earlier posts. But “you are still crying wolf” made me finally question what Scott’s real intent was.

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        Even if it wasn’t the seed of doubt about his real intentions, it also reveals how out of touch he is in a way (esp now 8 years later), and just how silly some LW stuff is. Like how they all want to be super-predictors, and try to keep notes on how good their prediction etc are, but how little all these other predictions matter when you make a mistake like this. “All this stuff about how [trump] is “the candidate of the KKK” and “the vanguard of a new white supremacist movement” is made up.”(E: Ahum) Also note that he [Scott/Trump/The LGBT person who wrote that text on the flag] didn’t notice that the lgbt flag was upside down.

        • o7___o7@awful.systems
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          I can’t find the exact quote because google has decayed into hot garbage juice, but there’s a line in Gideon the Ninth where Harrow asks Gideon how she thinks necromancy works exactly, and Gideon says something like, “I don’t know, maybe you think about bones really hard until something happens?”

          That’s how LW people think actual intelligence works.

          • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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            A good necromancer doesnt even need bones, he can create diamondoid undead just by looking at a picture of a blade of grass.

            • sc_griffith@awful.systems
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              what if a future necromancer were to resurrect and torture all people who did not contribute to their eventual creation. I’m going to advocate for teaching necromancy in schools

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                Necromancers are just genetically better, they quickly keep up in conversations and they seem to sparkle(*), I suggest we make them the elites.

                *: please ignore my detractors who keep pointing out this could also be because they snort bone dust. They are just a snarlbunch, and we have noticed the skulls already.

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              About the only good stuff LW does is remind me of other, much better SF. In this case Ian McDonald’s Necroville (Terminal Café in the US), about a future where nanotech enables the resurrection of the dead. Said neo-living are of course discriminated against, have no human rights, and are used as cheap disposable labor by the corporation that uses the technology.

              • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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                Im now reminded of that dystopian short story of the first guy who uploaded his own mind (and how copies kept being abused, had no rights, went crazy when they figured out how much time had really past, and reliably got dementia after x years had past, just like the OG).

                • gerikson@awful.systems
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                  Yeah that’s “Lena” by the SCP guy. Great story.

                  https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

                  MMAcevedo’s demeanour and attitude contrast starkly with those of nearly all other uploads taken of modern adult humans, most of which boot into a state of disorientation which is quickly replaced by terror and extreme panic. Standard procedures for securing the upload’s cooperation such as red-washing, blue-washing, and use of the Objective Statement Protocols are unnecessary.

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      I had forgotten about that one. Thanks, I hate it.

      I was already largely out of step with the Rats at this point, and I definitely hadn’t read it with the new “actually I feel like I was right about this one, neener neener” header. What strikes me now is the attitude here. Like, it takes a staggering degree of reflexive contrarianism to frame this as “see Trump isn’t that racist” instead of “hey look how fast the rest of the political establishment embraced this overt racism. Maybe we should have listened when everyone tries to tell us how racist the political establishment was underneath the respectable and reasonable public face”. Just because the wolves have taken off the wool suits now doesn’t mean they weren’t wolves the whole fucking time.

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        The header was written somewhere during the first Trump admin iirc. But for some reason he didnt add a year. (For people who worry a lot about epistemics and stuff like that another dumb move, imagine people reading that now and thinking he added that last year, it all aged a bit badly). Funny how every time he adds a header he makes it worse. See also his ‘i don’t believe a lot of this anymore’ header above the anti nrx post (which has a year).

  • sus@programming.dev
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    the scott alexander fanclub on reddit is especially unhinged lately. Some choice picks, beginning gently with a sneer:

    Anyone who says there is a 0% chance of a fried egg being sentient is overconfident. Nobody knows what causes consciousness. We have no way of detecting it & we can barely agree on a definition. So we should be less than 100% certain about anything to do with consciousness and fried eggs.

    moving on,

    For me, I currently believe that the way forward is gathering my Dunbar community of ~150 values-aligned people and dropping out together to live in intentional community, generally off-the-grid, interacting with technology only as a tool (no news/algorithms/push notifications), close enough to a major city to visit friends but far enough away to isolate ourselves when we want to.
    We then push forward into an unknown world, supporting each other, doing enough trade and consulting with the outside world to ensure a positive trade surplus for the collective and distributing the profits among us to sustain the community.

    Yes, that is a response to AI despair. In a “non-doomer thread”. Because of course.

    but what takes the cake is the regularly scheduled IQ thread, a beautiful dumpster fire which burns especially bright on this day. Yet one specimen soars above the din:

    The average should recognize and accept their inferiority and make peace with the fact that they will live and die a mediocre life. They should stop trying to interfere in the affairs of their betters and content themselves with their own garden, which can provide enough happiness for them until the end of their life if properly cultivated.

    Further study of the user’s excreta clarifies that they are:

    • sincere
    • definitely not racist

    warning: HEAVY PSYCHIC DAMAGE and I really hope the spoiler block functions correctly on your end

    spoiler

    [sic] we should treat all low human capital like zoo animals regardless of skin colour [\sic]

    (archives: one two three)

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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      We then push forward into an unknown world, supporting each other, doing enough trade and consulting with the outside world to ensure a positive trade surplus for the collective and distributing the profits among us to sustain the community.

      That’s just a commune. Like my brother in Christ I think you’re just talking about communism.

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          I think it’s quite funny that they talk about distributing the profits. these guys are all far right creeps. realistically the only thing they’re going to be distributing is calories to the nearby bears

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      For me, I currently believe that the way forward is gathering my Dunbar community of ~150 values-aligned people and dropping out together to live in intentional community

      Years ago (sadly I forgot to take a acreenshot, as the posts were silently removed) there was somebody recruiting for something like this on themotte. Something like “you sound like a good match for our homesteading group, check out our blood and soil(*) voat”. Which was a pretty bad sign (wonder how much of that shit was done via dms).

      *: for the few who do not know, this is one of those undeniable neo-nazi terms.

      E: And the universe aligned and reminded me of this tweet

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        A fried egg cannot code

        Prove it. It is more likely it actually can code, but refuses to do so. Perhaps fried eggs have a genetic predisposition to vore?

        E: other comment there:

        We can’t be 100% sure of anything

        Are you sure about that?

        When I asked Claude if it’s sentient

        AAAAAa (it gets even worse when they are gods in the gapping sentience).

      • swlabr@awful.systems
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        in the slatestar club. straight up ‘sleight of mouthing it’. and by ‘it’, haha, well. let’s justr say. My peanits.

  • nightsky@awful.systems
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    Well this is the final straw. Guess I’ll keep my current iPhone while it still works (unless they ruin iOS too much before that)… but then, what? I don’t want a Google thing either :(

    So I guess it’ll have to be some Android fork. GrapheneOS or so? But even that involves giving money to Google for a Pixel phone… there’s just no good option.

    Or am I overlooking something? I don’t need many features or apps on a phone – I don’t really like today’s smartphones anyway. Mostly I just need the basic features to work reliably. (Context: my last attempt at a non-Android Linux phone was the original Jolla phone, over 10 years ago, and that has left me a little cautious with the idea of a Linux phone, due to the many bugs with basics like “working mobile data” or “working GPS in a navigation app”…)

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      I have been looking into Fairphone for work. My focus for that is mostly long lasting, repairable, hardware. I want a minimum of friction with switching the users, so it would be Android for us, but I think there are open non-Google options.

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      Plus 1 for GrapheneOS, has been pretty solid so far. Also, it seems that police imaging software doesn’t work on it yet!

      • rook@awful.systems
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        5 days ago

        Graphene is very nice, but you should be aware that:

        • the only supported hardware at present are pixel phones by google who are not the world’s most ethical company
        • google are implementing security policies on their devices that cannot be implemented on grapheneos and will prevent certain apps (notably banking ones) from working
        • Mii@awful.systems
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          google are implementing security policies on their devices that cannot be implemented on grapheneos and will prevent certain apps (notably banking ones) from working

          That is concerning. Tbh, banking apps are probably the main reason I use a smartphone at all, because there’s no way anymore, at least where I live, to get a TAN without their stupid apps since they have all deprecated SMS TAN. Some still sell you physical token generators for ridiculous prices, but that’s going away, too.

          And on the main topic of this thread: can Xwitter in general just fucking die already?

          • mountainriver@awful.systems
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            4 days ago

            Regarding banking apps. A relative bought a Huawei just as they were pushed out of the western market and it turned out that it was shipped with a Android fork with a Huawei store. Most things worked fine, but banking apps was a problem because they could only be installed through Google Play or App Store.

            The solution I found for her was installing a virtual Android environment with Google Play. So when banking apps are needed she opens the virtual environment.

            I don’t know if this solution will continue working, but it works for now. Guess I will find out.

        • o7___o7@awful.systems
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          4 days ago

          A) True, though I got an older model on sale. That said, it is a tradeoff. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

          B) I’m an adhd caveman who came from a LightPhone II. It helps to have an appetite for mild annoyance when stepping outside the regular tech ecosystems.

          Edit: Apologies for sounding defensive, wanted to share my personal experience and ended up simping for software. @rook is 100% right that options are slim and fiddly!

          • nightsky@awful.systems
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            4 days ago

            Thanks for the infos everyone!

            I can live with mild annoyance, if it allows me to sufficiently separate things from Google. Banking apps and such could indeed be a pain point, but I could just put them on another device (e.g. old iPad, which I’m never really using anyway, so i could make it a special purpose device for “those few shitty apps that the world requires me to have”), since I never need that on the go on my phone anyway.

        • froztbyte@awful.systems
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          I saw a toot recently showing a number of methods to deal with the general casual shit (such as checking whether something was installed from play store, etc). don’t know if I stored the link, but might be worth a look around re the latter bits

          (e: to be clear, not saying you’re wrong for indicating those issues (which are entirely valid concerns), and all of this very much depends on whether user wants to even screw around with stuff. just mean to point out that there are definitely some workarounds and options kicking around, although personally nfi how extensive they solve)

          • rook@awful.systems
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            The thing that currently cannot be worked around is the “play integrity api”, but relatively few applications make use of it yet.

            It is a terrible security measure (because it give the impression to app developers that a 5+ year old android installation that’s never had a patch is more secure than an up-to-date graphene install) so there’s a chance that it might be improved in future, but it is currently a looming problem.

  • self@awful.systems
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    Niko Matsakis wrote a post about how the fucking rust compiler toolchain should include an LLM to explain error messages because teaching the semantics of a language is too hard and that pissed me off so much that instead of linking that piece of shit directly I’m posting this excellent sneer from Anatol Ulrich that’s also much shorter than Niko’s extended attempt to beg for a promotion at Amazon

    e: mastodon thread

    • nightsky@awful.systems
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      Oh no :((

      Rust’s emphasis on “reliability” makes it a great target for AI

      What?! Aaaaaaahhh! This makes me want to scream. After so many years of C++ misery and increasing frustration with it, and looking into various alternatives for years, I found that Rust is the lanuage which brought me back to actually enjoying programming. If they really ruin it with LLMs now, I don’t know where to go anymore in terms of programming languages.

      this excellent sneer from Anatol Ulrich

      That reply is indeed excellent.

      • self@awful.systems
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        5 days ago

        I feel the same way. I program in rust cause I like it, and the feeling of actually liking writing systems code was refreshing coming from C and especially C++. rust is a language I find beautiful — but I won’t for long if its excellent diagnostics and tooling all get deprecated in favor of an LLM. I can’t imagine what pivoting to AI would do to the language’s roadmap.

  • DeviantNull@awful.systems
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    6 days ago

    The singularity will be a dozen crappy models in a trench coat, and then finally we’ll have Magic Unified Intelligience™

  • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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    5 days ago

    In lighter news, has anyone else noticed that it’s necessary for any kind of Cybersecurity course to open with what is effectively a Tumblr-style DNI for unethical hackers? Like, I’m not criticizing exactly and I certainly don’t have any better ideas to prevent people using these skills for evil, but the disclaimer up top fits into a certain kind of pattern that I, for one, find hilarious.

    • self@awful.systems
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      5 days ago

      why do all these papers have their own microsites, dedicated domain names (in Anguilla no less!), and shitty graphics? I can’t think of another branch of research that consistently does this shit. it’s almost like it’s all marketing fluff or something!