this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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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.

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 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (4 children)

person who can barely brain themselves finds they have to engage with US postal system, hilarity ensues

(via friend who often sends me tweet-screenshots (one day I'll convince 'em to join here))

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Dude got a check delivered to him, presumably via the same mail system he is shitting on? But fine, apparently "not getting paid" is also a competitive advantage.

Also checks, lol????

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Also checks, lol???

the US (banking system, but not exclusively that) is living in the past to a stunning degree

couple years back when I visited (mid 2010s), in DC I had someone make a physical imprint of my CC for a payment, and in NYC doing card transactions on the subway ticket machines it doesn't ask for card pin but instead for zip code (and as a non-resident, you just enter 0000 (never tried to see if others work))

checks/cheques are still a rather frequent way of inter-business/inter-person value transfer

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

We usually trail a bit behind here in Sweden so none of the plastic cards in my wallet have raised numerals anymore, but the last generation I had did.

I’m old enough to literally handling cashing checks as a bank teller. Nowadays I guess a cashiers check is still in demand for big ticket items like vehicles but last time I got a car (via credit) it was all done by my digitally signing a bunch of stuff on my phone.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

yeah here in ZA we've had futuristic banking since the 00s (straight-up USSD banking services were available), chip&pin have been around for probably a decade if not more

it did take a little while for NFC to roll out (probably because our banks are dicks and charge vendors for payment terminals, which many would bother not replacing while their existing ones work) but even that is well into "you can nfc-pay at shops in towns in the middle of nowhere"

afaik US banks are still working on the really, really hard problem of .... same-/next-day interbank payments. you know, that thing that most other places have figured out 2~3 decades ago? yeah

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

tbf I believe a contributing factor for US banks being stuck in the 1950s is regulation designed to prevent giant mergers. But I may be wrong.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

Holy shit, this is LinkedIn matetial

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

For those who are wondering, real tweet. I checked. Guy is defending himself by going 'physical mail is outdated and shouldn't exist'. This guy is going to get cybercrimed by somebody so hard.

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

I think a human would probably recommend priority mail atp. You'd get tracking, wouldn't waste 19 stamps, and shipping is already included in the cost

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

In a couple of generations of LLMs ChatGPT will tell you you can just draw your own stamps and it will be perfectly legal.

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

Funny you would say that. In Dutch but real.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This is actually cool for real.

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

Rather embarrassingly, Austria Post doesn’t do that but does have “crypto stamps” which are regular stamps only with a QR code linking to an NFT or something. To be fair to Austria Post, though, they are really good at extracting cash from the pockets of overexcitable stamp collectors with gimmickry like this. https://onlineshop.post.at/en-AT/page/crypto-stamp

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

I still follow developments in Austria a little but I had missed this cursed bit of information. Thanks for the nightmares, hope my dad (a hobbyist stamp collector) won’t fall into that trap now.

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

can anyone recommend a language learning app or system that isn’t dependent on LLM garbage? after bouncing off of Duolingo I almost landed on Readlang, but:

  • all of its features seem to be LLM-dependent
  • because of that, its word and phrase explanations have a bit of oddity to them that I feel will get worse when I get past the beginner material
  • it’s a lot slower than it should be because it’s calling into ChatGPT for everything
  • even though this is supposedly their strength, I’ve had really bad instances where a GPT-based translation app translates Spanish (which should be fairly easy) into absolutely nonsensical English, and I’m kind of terrified I’ll make a fool of myself learning Spanish from a system where that’s a statistically likely probability
  • maybe I don’t want to pay some asshole to not write me some study materials????
  • plagiarism and the rainforests
  • it feels like Readlang really doesn’t need an LLM or a $6/month subscription that’ll almost certainly go up? like, it’s essentially an e-reader with a manual translation feature (that could be just a Spanish word/phrase dictionary) that also generates flash cards whenever you activate the translation. is there really not an e-reader or browser plugin that just does this shit without LLMs?

with that rant out of the way, I’m open to suggestions that aren’t Duolingo’s model or another round of passing grades and zero vocabulary retention at the community college

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

Honestly, almost anything can work. Some, sort of flash card system, and some, sort of input in the language that you enjoy. I use Anki and yes it's trash but I have never found spending anymore than the least necessary time on the tech of language learning worth it.

The crucial thing, in my experience, is that language acquisition only works if you're paying attention because you actually care about the material in front of you. I think a lot of people make the mistake of only studying aspirationally and well beyond their current capacity, forgetting how to be a child and be highly curative and explorative. Weird shit, even practically unuseful shit, is surprisingly better than you'd think.

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

I have a memrise lifetime thing that I bought some years ago and occasionally use, but I've never done a comparative test so I can't tell you how much better/worse it is than anything else. they did try integrating some chatgpt-backed "have a conversation" junk a while back but it's optional (and when I asked support about it, as well as which data is used for training, the answer said it was optional. I have no measure to tell how true this was/is)

you don't say which you want to learn (except mentioning spanish) but best other addition I have is that languagejones (youtube channel) recently did a review of every language on duolingo, including some comparisons with how those languages were treated on other platforms. might be worth a look

bonus round: the most recent agma schwa cursed conlang circus featured some absolutely amazing entries (I watched part 3 last weekend while recuperating on the couch). some of the ones from it include goptjaam and seraphim and I promise you they may be the most cursed thing you see all day

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

ah yep, this is for Spanish! I’ll give memrise and that languagejones video a look

I think what excited me about Readlang is that I could use real text (which gives my ADHD brain something other than language learning to be excited for) and it’s like a semi-automated version of the process I’ve seen Spanish speakers use to learn English with a translation dictionary and handwritten flash cards. I might just have to try a variety of apps (for as much as these free trials will let me — a lot of these companies are terrified I’ll learn something of value without paying them a fuckload of money) until I find one that tickles the same part of my brain

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