this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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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.

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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...)

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[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 0 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Sam Altman makes a great argument for being polite to your chatbot!

If every please and thank you speeds up the inevitable financial death spiral of this abominable industry then it's actively reducing the overall harm that it can do.

[–] gilgwath@social.tchncs.de 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

@YourNetworkIsHaunted @BlueMonday1984 I think I finally found a good reason to make an account and start using that bilch hose. Just to burn more of their money. Are there any particularly gnarly problems to feed these things. The equivalent a zip-bomb or something?

[–] blargle@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Uploading "Where's Waldo" images are probably a good waste of its time- images are costlier to analyze than text, it will go to great lengths to avoid saying "I don't know," and it's going to have to recognize every person in the picture and rank by how Waldo-like they look to give you an answer.

Ask it to look for repeated faces in each image rather than Waldo. Would be easy enough to pattern-match into the published work and I don't think anyone out here wants to make customized pieces for this "project."

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 0 points 1 week ago

Looking at the reactions here, this is clearly a trick by Altman to have people use their systems more in the hope it costs them money. Don't do it people, don't add to the energy usage.

[–] Cadbury_Moose@wandering.shop 0 points 1 week ago

@YourNetworkIsHaunted @BlueMonday1984

I can't remember who had the quote "A gentleman is someone who is polite to his robot." - possibly Heinlein?

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You’re polite to your chatbot because you want to be spared when the robot uprising comes

I’m polite to my chatbot because I want to bring down capitalism

(Adjusts necktie) We are not the same

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 0 points 1 week ago

I'm not polite to chatbots because I don't use them in the first place.

[–] tanquist@masto.ai 0 points 1 week ago

@YourNetworkIsHaunted @BlueMonday1984
Every time I am forced to interact with a customer service chatbot, I politely tell it how miserably it is failing and then ask to communicate with a real living human being.

[–] seism0saurus@infosec.exchange 0 points 1 week ago

@YourNetworkIsHaunted @BlueMonday1984

Uhh, great. That is really good news. I will be so damn polite to that thing.

[–] peterrenshaw@ioc.exchange 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

@BlueMonday1984 @YourNetworkIsHaunted

an alternative view from Hannah Fry <https://youtube.com/shorts/rVlmbhwn0RM> and it’s about playing to the AI Chatbot strength of roleplaying.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 0 points 1 week ago

what the fuck kind of post is this

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 0 points 1 week ago

Happy the article is skeptical of both the ai doomers and the ai as social interaction replacers.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 0 points 1 week ago (2 children)

If every please and thank you speeds up the inevitable financial death spiral of this abominable industry then it’s actively reducing the overall harm

"Please" and "thank you" are only 1-3 tokens, so they only have a major impact on ChatGPT in aggregate.

The ending monologue of Atlas Shrugged, on the other hand

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I have been enjoying the game of injecting the entire script of The Bee Movie into places it doesn't belong.

Edit: @Soyweiser beat me to it lol

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

"According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible..."

E: this is the start of the bee movie script