this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
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TechTakes

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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.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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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.

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.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

Not everyone wants ai for their search tools

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (5 children)

the wife sent this one to me

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

From a piece by Scott Alexander, I think.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

buddy slept through ww1+2 (it fits because brits called germans huns in their propaganda), also, roughly 5% of world population

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

I'll allow it

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

Not a sneer, but still a damn good piece on AI from Brian Merchant:

The great and justified rage over using AI to automate the arts

(Personal sidenote: Tech's public image is almost certainly gonna take a nosedive as a result of this AI bubble. "We made a machine with the express purpose of putting artists out of business" isn't a business case, its the setup for a shitty teen dystopian novel.)

(Fuck, now I wanna try and predict how the AI bubble bursting will play out...)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

AP takes down CF Vance apologia, not asserting things that they cannot evidence (that Vance did not have sexual relations with that couch)

before: https://archive.is/fXiMc after: https://archive.is/j3aot

This is the journalistic integrity we expect of AP News

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Crowdstrike offers 10 USD gift cards as apology.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/24/crowdstrike-offers-a-10-apology-gift-card-to-say-sorry-for-outage/

Those that try to use them find out that Crowdstrike can't even buy gift cards at scale.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

Real “Scott’s Tots” energy

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

Japan supermarket chain uses AI to gauge staff smiles, speech tones in quality service push (South China Morning Post).

Called “Mr Smile”, it was developed by the Japanese technology company InstaVR and is said to be able to accurately rate a shop assistant’s service attitude.

It has also been designed with “game” elements that invite staff to improve their attitude by challenging their scores.

The company said its goal was to “standardise staff members’ smiles and satisfy customers to the maximum”.

Thanks I hate it

Press release here: https://www.aeonretail.jp/pdf/240701R_1.pdf or here: https://www.instavr.co.jp/news/aeon-retail-smile-2024-07-01/ (Lots of big words so I didn't try to read it)

InstaVR's English website here: https://www.instavr.co/

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

Previous workplace merged with a US company that among other things offered "sentiment analysis" for call centers - the software was supposed to detect if someone was upset or irate. Could be used to help employees deal with irate customers, but could also detect if an employee was rude or stressed. Same software could be used to ensure employees used certain stock phrases like "welcome to InitTech, how may I help you?"

Point is, tech has been used to enforce conformity since well forever.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

standardise staff members’ smiles

Completely normal and chill thing to want

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

What if instead of making robots better we just made interacting with a real person indistinguishable by demanding they conform to arbitrary metrics that the brain-slugs that control our minds think look like genuine human warmth and kindness?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Like the couch story, this is real.

(No but for real, how would we know? Doubt any of us work at twitter and if we did we prob would be in no position to talk, would not be surprised if it was, and considering they are going after the information with a weird agressiveness (I saw the 'stay informed' thing myself). I think this has a high likelihood of not being false.

E: More things I cannot confirm But very much lol if okta accidentally exposed this information (which makes me more doubtful it is true), first crowdstrike now okta jesus.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (5 children)

so what rhymes with Proton getting into AI grifting? you fucking guessed it

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

so what rhymes with Proton getting into AI grifting?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

Can't blame this shit on the survey!

I checked, crypto shit was not in any of the top 8 results (top 5 broken out, and they mentioned 3 more, which are surely #6 through #8).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

The fuck is happening over there?

I could have “excused” the AI bullshit as “we did it to appease the corporate customers who make us money” but there’s no way you can spin this.

I’m canceling my account. At this point I might just say fuck it and use my Yahoo mail for everything again.

(And this time the Reddit thread is the dumpster fire I’ve been expecting the last one to be lol)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I'm sorry, what's a 1-2-punch, idgi 🤔🤔🤔

(big fat fucking /s ofc)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

we still keep a proportion of Proton’s financial reserves in Bitcoin.

further down the page

Proton is not a crypto company. We do not speculate in crypto

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

so I’ve accidentally been paying shitheads who speculate on crypto to speculate on crypto. I’m kinda angry at myself for not catching this.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

more on the nsfw side but this is a kinda interesting finding/use of existing tech

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

niche because only some types of slop, but still!

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