The spooks grow ever closer, and the abyss grows ever sandier.
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.)
Just listened to this and thought it was worth sharing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EY2QDfp2O4
"Are we on the verge of an AI apocalypse, or is Silicon Valley using doomsday fears to distract us from the damage AI is already doing? Tech insiders and Big Tech CEOs warn that superintelligence could wipe out humanity. Meanwhile, AI is already fuelling warfare and environmental destruction, with zero accountability. If the very people warning us about AI’s dangers also stand to profit from it, is existential doom a genuine warning or the ultimate marketing strategy?
This week on The Tea, we’re joined by pioneering AI researcher Dr Timnit Gebru, former co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI team. Timnit warned about the dangers of large language models years before the current AI boom. In this interview, she exposes the motives and the ideology behind Silicon Valley’s apocalyptic vision."
recently I got into crocheting and I was immediately thrown into the hobby drama about all the havoc that generative “AI” is wreacking into the community. fake slop patterns that don’t work, fake photos of impossible amigurumi, that kinda stuff.
then I learned that, a few months ago, Hobbii, an once-beloved crafts supplier currently in a death spiral after being purchased by private equity, had the brilliant idea of alienating their entire client base by talking about how they love “AI” and use it all the time at the company. while firing a ton of people no less, including all the familiar faces that interacted with people online.
in damage control during the entirely predictable backlash, the new CTO Tomas Antvorksov Krag posted this:
While we take our responsibility very serious we have to explore new technologies as they enter the market or risk being left behind.
My brother in Christ Tomas Antvorksov Krag CTO of Hobbii, you are the CTO of a textile crafts company. Every client of yours does crochet or knitting or fucking macramé by hand, for fun. What technology do you figure we would be afraid of being left behind by? The spinning jenny??
My wife has been talking about the scourge of AI in fiber arts for like a year or more, and when I asked if she had any brands that were still trustworthy she said “good luck, mate”.
It’s so bad.
risk being left behind
Im also simply not sure how much of a risk that is, people keep saying that but I’m not sure being conservative on new tech has lead to much business closures the past 20 years.
It’s just such a clichéd remark from AI bros now that I cringe whenever I hear it along with “sure the current model can’t do X but the next one will be able to bro… Just one more model bro”
My NFT blockchain store selling segways in second life is now using LLMs! (Now also available on your Blackberry). Im ready to be raptured, I dont want to be left behind!
@Soyweiser @samvines Second Life - now there’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time
Holy shit, I also got into crocheting last week. I have, however, managed to entirely avoid any hobby drama so far, but of fucking course this one is also being thrown into the fucking AI meatgrinder, ugh money people are so smart, man
I think there’s a typo: we have to explore new technologies as they enter the market TO risk being left behind [by our customers].
furthering my previous guessing that there’s likely only appetite for 2, maybe 3, of these ridiculous IPOs, a number of analyst notes have started kicking around and they’re getting progressively more realistic in their outlook. saw this one this morning
Red Flag #3: The IPO is Exit Liquidity, Not Growth Capital
To justify a $2 trillion valuation, our model shows that Anthropic would have to: • immediately improve NOPAT margin to 10% and sustain it for the next 10 years (compared to -175% reported operating margin in 2025), • grow revenue by 1000% in 2026 and 100% in 2027, and • grow revenue 56% compounded annually from 2028-2035.sounds ambitious. sure hope they don’t have any material risks and systematic exposures that make that harder!
In this scenario, Anthropic’s 1. revenue would reach $3.6 trillion (compared to $4.6 billion in 2025), which is 1.4x the combined TTM revenue of Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), NVIDIA (NVDA), Meta (META), and Oracle (ORCL). 2. NOPAT would reach $358 billion in 2035, compared to the company’s -$8 billion reported operating loss in 2025. For reference, $358 billion is 2.0x NVIDIA’s $184 billion and 2.6x Apple’s $136 billion in TTM NOPAT.good thing the cost of inference is going down! sure, qwen3.8-27b is already stale and everyone needs to throw another couple hundred million at another training update, but the cost of inference! /s
At this point I’m gonna dig a big hole in my yard and stick a sign next to it that says “AI datacenter” with a down arrow. I figure I can get a way better prospectus than anyone currently on the market.
Starting things off with a new(ish) and very well-crafted sneer from Iris Meredith: There’s little that’s “inevitable” about AI
