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 so 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. Nearly forgot to put this up, whoops)
The tech-bro cult that funded Wes Streeting| Telegraph
Not sure who Wes Streeting is, but “Labour for the Long Term” and “Effective Altruism for Christians” sound like some internet rabbit holes to go down later.
Prof MacAskill and Sam Bankman-Fried first met in 2012, long before Bankman-Fried would make his billions. Prof MacAskill had contacted him out of the blue while he was still a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), inviting him to attend a talk he was giving to students at nearby Harvard University.
/why/ did he do that? out of the blue, no reason at all? what did SBF have going on in undergrad?
Mr Lawrence now runs the Centre for British Progress, a “non-partisan” think tank “producing concrete ideas for… British growth”.
This is impressively cursed.
sitting in a work presentation around linkedin link on agentic use levels. It’s fucking dumb. Nobody reviews shit and it seems like the whole org is getting dumber.
The flag “-dangerously-skip-permissions” sounds like something that would have come out of a joke a few years ago. I wonder what the incredibly predictable consequences of encouraging everyone to do something that has “dangerous” in the goddamn name are going to be.
just heard the term “valuemaxxing”. Kill me.
oh oh i think i learned this in calculus class
I just got hit by a memory from what must have been 2021, when I was working for a uni-attached startup center. I was lounging in our event space, when my colleague hit me with a question from left field: Would there be a benefit to cooling servers in space, since space is cold?
Little did he know that I was ready to unload my knowledge absorbed from the Expanse series, which I was reading on repeat to cope with my depressing job. So I infodumped on him about how being in space is like being in a thermos and about the Peltier effect being used in spacecraft radiators. He didn’t say much in response, and I wasn’t too stoked about my social skills in that moment.
Now I wonder if I saved him from a really embarassing decision. He was an ex-Amazon project manager who was non-committally looking for a PhD topic or maybe a startup. He quit a few months later and went into consulting I think.
I mean if he had been willing to grift on it without actually creating anything he probably could have made some decent money in the current environment, but also I’m of the opinion that those folks willing to do that oughta be sent to install that orbital infrastructure by hand without a spacesuit, so probably for the best.
In positive news, Darius has found a way to build an ethical chatbot https://tinysubversions.com/ethical-assistant/
So this one seems to be somewhat up in the air right now, and could do with a bit more verification, but it appears that google might be training gemini on your private google docs and a gemini user could ask questions that expose the contents of those documents.
Which is interesting. We use google docs at work, but it isn’t clear how much valuable ip or confidential information is in there.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieDev/comments/1vfwuf5/a_player_found_out_the_actual_name_of_my_games/
Glorious hometown W
which stage of bubble is The Men Who Stare at Goats
The google maps now lets you use ai to imagine sat images feature already has the remote viewing part.
Look, the goat said I was having great ideas ok
That’s probably the most “interesting” thing ive seen someone whos left OpenAI do
jfc even my old company has full pivoted to ai - https://platform.mapquest.com/mcp
sorry guys too little too late
Amazing installation instructions at https://github.com/0xeb/ghidrasql
Install with an AI agent (recommended)
The fastest way to get ghidrasql running end-to-end is to point an AI coding agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Aider, etc.) at the bundled installer prompt:
install-prompt.mdIt is a self-contained runbook with explicit verification gates at every step — preflight checks, building libghidra, installing the LibGhidraHost Ghidra extension, building ghidrasql, and a first live query. Hand it to your agent and let it drive the install; intervene only if a gate reports a failure.
JFC.
h/t to rairii: https://labyrinth.zone/objects/96478395-64d9-452c-a906-9e6159cd10a3
Worse than the cursed “curl -o- | bash” command installations. Or as I like to call it “curl prostrate”
Well, you know how everyone went from “do not trust anything you read on wikipedia” to “wikipedia is the last hope for humanity’s knowledge and history”?
Gamers Nexus has announced plans to poison the LLMs scraping them, alongside updates to the megacharts on their website.
spoiler
In the meantime, if any search committees are reading this: I am still available. My research program is innovative and well-structured. I have a clear vision for my independent career.
It’s saved in a Google Doc that I can share with you. ChatGPT and I worked very hard on it.
This is satire right? I mean… Just double checking because it’s 2026 and I just can’t tell any more
Based on the other entries in the slobslack, I think it is
I love a good Modest Proposal
There was a cryptocurrency wallet hack the other day which has so far gone unremarked here because the popcorn is stale and we all pivoted to AI. And yet there are dozens of voices of bagholders crying out in pain wanting to be heard. This is their story.
For some reason the best explanation comes from a boring company that makes point of sale credit card readers https://engineering.block.xyz/blog/predictable-rng-fallback-and-32-bit-reseed-in-coldcard-firmware
COLDCARD firmware contains an RNG integration error that causes ngu.random to use MicroPython’s deterministic Yasmarang fallback instead of the STM32 hardware RNG.
Oh hey they got the most important thing not to get wrong wrong in the regulation free
moneysettlement layer of the future.
The bug? Well in one file they wrote
, and a library they depended on had this code:# ifndef MICROPY_HW_ENABLE_RNG # error "get a HW TRNG plz" # endifThis should have caused a build failure, but since MICROPY_HW_ENABLE_RNG was defined, to zero, it did not and instead continued down an insecure codepath.
As a C++ programmer this isn’t an unheard of sort of mistake to make in the moment. Many libraries use undefined for preprocessor variables, but there are some people who also use zero.
But it’s less excusable to not catch it when this is literally the most important thing to get right in a bitcoin wallet. Did they not trace the code path when writing the code? Did they have no integration tests or unit tests for RNG seed quality? Poor RNG seeding has come up a ton in literature, so is the sort of thing people writing cryptographic code should check for…
We’ll have to addend that old saying: “don’t roll your own crypto unless the other person’s crypto is from a blockchain developer in which case you’re probably better off rolling your own after all.”
I personally don’t want to sneer at the bagholders too much here. It’s 2026 and at this point it just feels kinda sad. But I’ll end this comment with this glowing review:
I thought I was secure because Cold Card was always praised as one of the best and most secure wallets. It’s open source, so anyone can verify.
“It’s open source, so anyone can verify” – unfortunately for them the verifier was also a hacker.
“It’s open source, so anyone can verify” – unfortunately for them the verifier was also a hacker.
Also, most of the would-be verifiers are frying their brains with AI
I was gonna link someone else’s observations on it, but got sidetracked by a shiny object or something.
https://mastodon.catgirl.cloud/@49016/117021988214007605
They didn’t link the sources, but apparently the all-my-apes-gone twitter crowd are still breathtakingly ignorant of technology and statistics, despite how many years of bitcoin catastrophes have passed.
Quite a few people suggesting/using dice to mitigate the Coldcard vulnerability.
Note that common dice are not designed to be cryptographically secure.
If you are going to do this, you probably should buy precision casino dice. And even then, have another source of entropy.
Posted entirely unironically, apparently. Hard to say, but Poe’s law has yet t be repealed.
New things I think learned from this thread:
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the thief used a blockchain provider instead of an ad-hoc local node, making all the transactions incredibly traceable with (unclear to me) implications about their ability to launder them or keep their identity concealed indefinitely.
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even if they are found out, the previous owners probably won’t see a dime back since the vulnerability affects exactly the ability to prove you really were the previous owner.
Unclear which thief since the web3isdoinggreat writeup says there had been up to 15 unique groups doing mass drains by 31/7, maybe the initial 500 wallet sweep was one person or group?
enjoy ur hypertopical vibecoded website du jour
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apparently this issue became obvious YEARS AGO since the birthday problem struck a random redditor, who promptly got gaslit that this is completely impossible and it was dismissed. lol. lmao even
Hahaha
All the dice discourse in particular has made this a fun throwback to the days of crypto bros earnestly arguing about which wall in your house you should hide your hand-stamped seed phrase record inside and whether you could trust a published book of truly random numbers over a series of 256 coin flips. Ironically I can only assume that by the time any of the concerns about entropy sources were validated most of them lost their crypto to some combination of get-richer-quicker ponzi schemes and twitter DMs claiming to definitely be FTX tech support.
I’ve been following it a bit, there’s a lot less comedy gold to mine nowadays
here are some links from another forum
https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/07/31/major-bitcoin-wallet-flaw-drains-594-btc-in-25-minute-sweep (crypto shill outfit link)
https://bitcoinenthusiast.org/uploads/31820a53956b53c5/image.png
https://bitcoinenthusiast.org/uploads/c0804335a52922e4/image.png - this last is attributing to malice what’s clearly stupidity
Need ideas for ways to spend philanthropy money without helping absolutely anyone? Check out AI safety influencer bootcamp at Lighthaven!
Basically Aella gathered like 60 people with a seminotable online presence to stay for free at Lighthaven for a month as long as they managed to publish at least one relevant video (15 sec minimum) each day.
Rationalism ensued:
“It’s really hard to run a fellowship that’s not an indoctrination camp,” [cofounder with aella] Fernandez said. “If you don’t try really hard to not make an indoctrination camp, you will on accident.”
Uh oh
A fellow recognized me and asked whether I was there for the “torture potluck.” I had no idea what he was talking about.
It was exactly what it sounds like: an all-you-can-tolerate buffet of unpleasant experiences, for the sake of Fucking Around and Finding Out. […] Just before midnight, a small crowd gathered around someone laid down on an AstroTurf-lined wheelchair ramp. He was the first of shockingly many in line to get waterboarded — one of the most in-demand items on the torture menu.
So silly omg
After a string of expected questions such as “What’s your take on AI?” and “What kind of content would you want to make?”, the form asked, “If you had to have sex with a cow would you rather it be dead or alive? Why?” All Comic Sans, with animated rainbow dots floating alongside the form field. […] [Fernandez said] “We added it in to make it pretty clear that we don’t have a PR department or an HR department,” he said.
“Even the icebreakers, like everything, they want you to know that they’re part of the weird community,” one fellow told me. “‘Stand over here if you’re super sexually active, and over here if not,’ or like, ‘rate yourself based off of like, the last time you masturbated.’”
The unifying thread, despite the fellows’ ideological diversity, is something like “openness.” Everyone at PDKU was willing to drop everything, move to Berkeley for a month, live in close quarters with strangers, and be perceived doing silly things on the internet.
It’s really unclear what sort of ideological diversity is referenced unless it’s about having both blue haired and green goatee’d people. Maybe we’ve reached the point where everyone is expected to assume race science enthusiasts will be at a rationalist event at some capacity.
Also the whole thing sounds like having tryouts for a cult.
[Fernandez] says PDKU has a conduct policy, authored by him, that discourages relationships across power differentials. When I asked him how that gets enforced, in the absence of an HR department, he mentioned an unnamed community health lead.
Same with the diversity thing, they are preemptively saying that there for sure weren’t no sexual harassment shenanigans this time.
The third methinks thou dost protest too much comes as an extened NO U jab at other shady thinktankers trying to astroturf support for their thing.
Amid the science communication, shitposting, and heartwarming summer camp energy, there’s a giant elephant in the room. “It’s another multi-million-dollar thing happening on a compound in California,” CJ said. “Does everyone think you’re just an annoying cunty psyop?”
Don’t believe your lying eyes is apparently the note on which they chose to end this.
The waterboarding thing was introduced by Vibecamp’s head of safety at other events, and a lot of the pdku programming seems to be in the area of light bdsm / boundary pushing. imo they work from some base general formula and try and differentiate / create intake funnels for other events.
The fact that it’s referred to as a potluck is also interesting because it suggests that participants also had to come up with their own torture method to inflict. I imagine “spend twenty minutes with the sort of person who participates in a torture potluck” was the equivalent of potato salad.
Vice has a writeup - https://archive.is/ooVju - more of a bring-your-own-taser kind of thing I guess
The tortures varied wildly in nature, and were too numerous to list in full, but several stuck out for me: There was someone pinning clothespins to partygoers’ cheeks; a man called SirLemmings used some herbal powder to strip you of your sense of sweetness, then made you eat an Oreo to test the result; Avalon Warren, an actress resembling Lola Bunny sprung to life, made partygoers make the ahegao hentai face, and carried a fly zapper; other electric torments were also popular—several people carried tasers, and someone had an electric baton that transferred shocks between participants; someone else’s bit was asking you to yell compliments for Donald Trump, which was perhaps the most polarizing (SirLemmings told me that when he declared the president was an excellent comedian, he drew glares); yet another was writing unknown directives onto others’ foreheads. My friend Jahnik had “pls give me a smooch <3” penned on his, and afterward, received kisses throughout the night. Meanwhile all I got was “CTRL-ALT-Z,” making me wonder if they wanted to undo me from reality.
As for my torture? I was merely a journalist. A lazy choice, I felt, but for some it was the most terrifying of the bunch. One girl even walked away when I told her; before, she’d been nothing but smiles.
Another resident teacher was political satirist YouTuber JREG, real name Greg Guevara, who recently published a polemical video calling for Total Clanker Death, or the eradication of all would-be sentient machines.
youtube faves are implicated!?
Introduced by the head of safety (!)
At least they accept the principle that “relationships across a power differential” can put the weaker party in a difficult position. They don’t have a rule against this, or a requirement to disclose, but they accept the principle.
It all comes across as Synanon-lite, doesn’t it?
the weird community,
Are you part of the ‘regularly needs to answer questions about rape/pedophilia/bestiality’ weird community or the ‘knows too much about warhammer’ weird community?
I can’t stand the idea that the Anthropic IPO could end up funding these people to the tune of millions of dollars.
Please, AI bubble, pop sooner.
Previous thread on plzdontkillus https://awful.systems/post/8359862 I wonder whether it is Aella or Duleba who is forcing some basic harm-reduction policies (but no enforcement, whereas you can be kicked out if you don’t post fast enough).
Ziz reported being asked similar icebreaker questions.
Ziz reported being asked similar icebreaker questions.
The reddit post from /r/Grimes you linked there has its issues but it does a great job putting into words the parts that bother me with both the cow-fucking questions and the forced “openness” that requires people to always be ready to answer for the normally intimate parts of their personalities and how it’s comparable to grooming.
The reddit post is incredibly long winded so if anyone is interested in this part specifically ctrl+f for compliance filter.
Also super yikes on the Aella tweet advertising her alleged "cam sister"s onlyfans that’s opening in a few weeks when she turns 18, which sounds exactly like if she had actually groomed a minor into sex work.
It would be good if someone could take the r/Grimes post, boil out the chatbot overwriting, verbosity, and hallucinations, and give a concise version. An environment where you are pushed to make intimate sexual confessions in front of people who decide whether to give you resources, especially if those statements are recorded like anything you post on the Internet is recorded, is a red flag.
A lot of people in the sex trade discourage people who are barely legal from face-out work because young people don’t know themselves or the world of work very well and a porn video can follow you around for life.
“If you had to have sex with a cow would you rather it be dead or alive? Why?” All Comic Sans, with animated rainbow dots floating alongside the form field. […] [Fernandez said] “We added it in to make it pretty clear that we don’t have a PR department or an HR department,” he said.
Weird flex but ok
We added it to make it clear that if you get harassed by the people who control whether you get your stipend you are on your own, so please don’t make it a big deal when it happens, ok? That just how it goes in these quirky and fun safe spaces that require you to move into a compound in a different city for extended lengths of time.
Anyone who doubts that authenticity is dead should reference this paragraph.
Fascism is all about surface-level appearences and vibes. I didn’t expect them to appropriate the mantle of “spork-wielding penguin of d00m,” though.
“Cult tryouts” is a keeper
New odium symposium episode: https://www.patreon.com/OdiumSymposium/posts/22-on-chasers-ft-165582005
We talked to trans philosophy professor amy marvin about the intersection between trans chasers and stand up comedy
