- 4 Posts
- 266 Comments
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 8th March 2026English
0·24 hours agoYou can’t build a fandom full of that many fucked-up people without some of them getting horny in a fucked-up way.
Edit to add: example of a non-erotic fanfic https://archiveofourown.org/works/73396436
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•Get your war on: AI chatbots in the kill chainEnglish
0·1 day agoThat header pic sure takes me back
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 8th March 2026English
0·1 day agoFelicitations!
(“A job,” Blake thinks. “I need to find one of those.”)
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd February 2026English
0·9 days agoI would also not put my finger on those microscope slides
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd February 2026English
0·12 days agowomp, and wait for it, womp
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd February 2026English
0·12 days agoDo you want Tylers Durden? Because this is how you get Tylers Durden.
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•AI vibe-generates the same ‘random’ passwords over and overEnglish
0·12 days agoTrain your chatbot on TV Tropes, and the password will always be swordfish.
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd February 2026English
0·14 days agoThe post names Joscha Bach as someone Aella tried to exclude.
You do not under any circumstances have to hand it to Aella
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd February 2026English
0·14 days ago“Yes, I am hammering myself in the balls. But maybe its worth it?”
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd February 2026English
0·14 days agoThe phrase “ambient AI listening in our hospital” makes me hear the “Dies Irae” in my head.
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd February 2026English
0·14 days agoA longread on AI greenwashing begins thusly:
The expansion of data centres - which is driven in large part by AI growth - is creating a shocking new demand for fossil fuels. The tech companies driving AI expansion try to downplay AI’s proven climate impacts by claiming that AI will eventually help solve climate change. Our analysis of these claims suggests that rather than relying on credible and substantiated data, these companies are writing themselves a blank cheque to pollute on the empty promise of future salvation. While the current negative effects of AI on the climate are clear, proven and growing, the promise of large-scale solutions is often based on wishful thinking, and almost always presented with scant evidence.
(Via.)
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd February 2026English
0·15 days agoIt’s morgin’ time
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd February 2026English
0·15 days agoLimor Fried and I had a class together at MIT in 2001. This has no bearing on the present circumstances and offers me no real insight (anything I could say about our extremely limited interactions would amount to confirmation bias). It’s just the odd little factoid that comes to mind whenever adafruit Does Something Online.
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th February 2026English
0·16 days agoPresuming that they are all liars and cheaters is both contrary to the instincts of a scientist and entirely warranted by the empirical evidence.
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th February 2026English
0·16 days agoFirst of all, like, if you can’t keep track of your transcripts, just how fucking incompetent are you?
Second, I would actually be interested in a problem set where the problems can’t be solved. What happens if one prompts the chatbot with a conjecture that is plausible but false? We cannot understand the effect of this technology upon mathematics without understanding the cost of mathematical sycophancy. (I will not be running that test myself, on the “meth: not even once” principle.)
blakestacey@awful.systemsto
TechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th February 2026English
0·17 days agoMathematicians: [challenge promptfondlers with a fair set of problems]
OpenAI: [breaks the test protocol, whines]
We will aim to publish more information next week, but as I noted above, this was a quite chaotic sprint (you caught us by surprise! please give us time to prepare next time!). We will not be able to gather all the transcripts as they are quite scattered.
Some of the prompts included guidance to iterate on its previous work…

I know I’ve said somewhere on here before that “Harry Potter for pop science nerds” is fanfiction on easy mode, but I’ll stand by it.