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.

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

    • self@awful.systemsEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      please be very careful with the VSLAM (camera+sensors) ones, and note carefully that iRobot avoided responsibility for this by claiming the impacted people were testers (a claim the alleged testers appear to disagree with)

    • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      On bsky you are required to post proof of cat, here at e/acc you are required to post proof of googly roomba

  • slopjockey@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    This is barely on topic, but I’ve found a spambot in the wild. I know they’re a dime a dozen, but I wanted to take a deep dive.

    https://www.reddit.com/user/ChiaPlotting/

    It blew its load advertising a resume generator or something bullshit across hundreds of subs. Here’s an example post. The account had a decent amount of karma, that stood out to me. I’m pretty old school, so I thought someone just sold their account. Right? Wrong. All the posts are ChatGPT generated! Read in sequence, all the karma farm posts are very clearly AI generated, but individually they’re enticing enough that they get a decent amount of engagement: “How I eliminated my dent with the snowball method”, “What do you guys think of recent Canadian immigration 🤨” both paraphrased.

    This guy isn’t anonymous, and he seemingly isn’t profiting off the script that he’s hawking. His reddit account leads to his github leads to his LinkedIn which mentions his recent graduation and his status as the co-founder of some blockchain bullshit. I have no interest in canceling or doxxing him, I just wanted to know what type of person would create this kind of junk.

    The generator in question, that this man may have unknowingly destroyed his reddit account to advertise, is under the MIT license. It makes you wonder WHY he went to all this trouble.

    I want to clone his repo and sniff around for data theft; the repo is 100% percent python, so unless he owns any of the modules being imported the chance of code obfuscation is low. But after seeing his LinkedIn I don’t think this guy’s trying to spread malware; I think he took a big, low fiber shit aaaaalll over reddit as an earnest attempt at a resume builder.

    Personally, I find that so much stranger than malice. 🤷‍♂️

    • self@awful.systemsEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      the username makes me think the account started its life shilling for the chia cryptocurrency (the one that spiked storage prices for a while cause it relied on wearing out massive numbers of SSDs, before its own price fell so low people gave up on it), but I don’t know how to see an account’s oldest posts without going in through the defunct API

    • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      saw you already got two answers, another answer: medium’s stupid popover blocker is based on a counter value in a cookie that you could can blow up yourself (or get around with instance windows)

      I am a very big fan of the Fx Temporary Containers extension

      • Steve@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        I didn’t even know about the temporary containers extension. that’ll be very useful for so much stuff. Thanks as well!

        • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
          1·
          3 months ago

          yeah for some reason it’s not very well known, which is why I tell people about it. I’m 90% done with my months-ago-promised browser post, and should have it up soon

          couple last-minute irks came up recently as I was doing some stuff, so now I’m trying to figure out whether those have answers or not…

  • Steve@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    I read the white paper for this data centers in orbit shit https://archive.ph/BS2Xy and the only mentions of maintenance seem to be “we’re gonna make 'em more reliable” and “they should be easy to replace because we gonna make 'em modular”

    This isn’t a white paper, it’s scribbles on a napkin

    Design principles for orbital data centers. The basic design principles below were adhered to when creating the concept design for GW scale orbital data centers. These are all in service of creating a low-cost, high-value, future-proofed data center. 1. Modularity: Multiple modules should be able to be docked/undocked independently. The requirements for each design element may evolve independently as needed. Containers may have different compute abilities over time. 2. Maintainability: Old parts and containers should be easy to replace without impacting large parts of the data center. The data center should not need retiring for at least 10 years. 3. Minimize moving parts and critical failure points: Reducing as much as reasonably possible connectors, mechanical actuators, latches, and other moving parts. Ideally each container should have one single universal port combining power/network/cooling. 4. Design resiliency: Single points of failure should be minimized, and any failures should result in graceful degradation of performance. 5. Incremental scalability: Able to scale the number of containers from one to N, maintaining profitability from the very first container and not requiring large CapEx jumps at any one point. Maintenance Despite advanced shielding designs, ionizing radiation, thermal stress, and other aging factors are likely to shorten the lifespan of certain electronic devices. However, cooler operating temperatures, mechanical and thermal stability, and the absence of a corrosive atmosphere (except for atomic oxygen, which can be readily mitigated with shielding and coatings) may prolong the lifespan of other devices. These positive effects were observed during Microsoft’s Project Natick, which operated sealed data center containers under the sea for years.25 Before scaling up, the balance between these opposing effects must be thoroughly evaluated through multiple in-orbit demonstrations. The data center architecture has been designed such that compute containers and other modules can be swapped out in a modular fashion. This allows for the replacement of old or faulty equipment, keeping the data center hardware current and fresh. The old containers may be re-entered in the payload bay of the launcher or are designed to be fully demisable (completely burn up) upon re-entry. As with modern hyperscale data centers, redundancy will be designed-in at a system level, such that the overall system performance degrades gracefully as components fail. This ensures the data center will continue to operate even while waiting for some containers to be replaced. The true end-of-life of the data center is likely to be driven by the underlying cooling infrastructure and the power delivery subsystems. These systems on the International Space Station have a design lifetime of 15 years26, and we expect a similar lifetime for orbital data centers. At end of life, the orbital data center may be salvaged27 to recover significant value of the hardware and raw materials, or all of the modules undocked and demised in the upper atmosphere by design.

    • self@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      there’s so much wrong with this entire concept, but for some reason my brain keeps getting stuck on (and I might be showing my entire physics ass here so correct me if I’m wrong): isn’t it surprisingly hard to sink heat in space because convection doesn’t work like it does in an atmosphere and sometimes half of your orbital object will be exposed to incredibly intense sunlight? the whitepaper keeps acting like cooling all this computing shit will be easier in orbit and I feel like that’s very much not the case

      also, returning to a topic I can speak more confidently on: the fuck are they gonna do for a network backbone for these orbital hyperscale data centers? mesh networking with the implicit Kessler syndrome constellation of 1000 starlink-like satellites that’ll come with every deployment? two way laser comms with a ground station? both those things seem way too unreliable, low-bandwidth, and latency-prone to make a network backbone worth a damn. maybe they’ll just run fiber up there? you know, just run some fiber between your satellites in orbit and then drop a run onto the earth.

        • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
          1·
          4 months ago

          Easy, the cables go into the space elevator. Why do you all have to be so negative, don’t you have any vision for the future?

    • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Design principles for a time machine

      Yes, a real, proper time machine like in sci-fi movies. Yea I know how to build it, as this design principles document will demonstrate. Remember to credit me for my pioneering ideas when you build it, ok?

      1. Feasibility: if you want to build a time machine, you will have to build a time machine. Ideally, the design should break as few laws of physics as possible.
      2. Goodness: the machine should be functional, robust, and work correctly as much as necessary. Care should be taken to avoid defects in design and manufacturing. A good time machine is better than a bad time machine in some key aspects.
      3. Minimize downsides: the machine should not cause exessive harm to an unacceptable degree. Mainly, the costs should be kept low.
      4. Cool factor: is the RGB lighting craze still going? I dunno, flame decals or woodgrain finish would be pretty fun in a funny retro way.
      5. Incremental improvement: we might wanna start with a smaller and more limited time machine and then make them gradually bigger and better. I may or may not have gotten a college degree allowing me to make this mindblowing observation, but if I didn’t, I’ll make sure to spin it as me being just too damn smart and innovative for Harvard Business School.
      • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        You joke, but my startup is actually moving forward on this concept. We already made a prototype time travel machine which while only being able to travel forward does so at a promising stable speed (1). The advances we made have been described by the people on our team with theoretical degrees in physics as simply astonishing, and awe-inspiring. We are now in an attempt to raise money in a series B financing round, and our IPO is looking to be record breaking. Leave the past behind and look forward to the future, invest in our timetravel company xButterfly.

    • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      I’m sure every poster who’s ever popped in to tell us about how extremely useful and good LLMs are for this are gonna pop in realsoonnow

  • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    years ago on a trip to nyc, I popped in at the aws loft. they had a sort of sign-in thing where you had to provide email address, where ofc I provided a catchall (because I figured it was a slurper). why do I tell this mini tale? oh, you know, just sorta got reminded of it:

    Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2024 07:22:05 +0000
From: Amazon Web Services <[email protected]>
To: <snip>
Subject: Are you ready to capitalize on generative AI?

    (e: once again lost the lemmy formatting war)

    • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Are you ready to capitalize on generative AI?

      Hell yeah!

      I’m gonna do it: GENERATIVE AI. Look at that capitalization.

      • self@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        there’s no way you did that without consulting copilot or at least ChatGPT. thank you sam altman for finally enabling me to capitalize whole words in my editor!

        • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
          0·
          4 months ago

          yes, i actually never learned how to capitalize properly, they told me to use capslock and shift, but that makes all the letters come out small still. thanks chatgpt.

          • self@awful.systemsEnglish
            0·
            4 months ago

            my IDE, notepad.exe, didn’t support capitalizing words until they added copilot to it. so therefore qed editors couldn’t do that without LLMs. computer science is so easy!

            • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              For a moment I misread your post and had to check notepadplusplus for AI integration. Don’t scare me like that

              • self@awful.systemsEnglish
                1·
                3 months ago

                fortunately, notepad++ hasn’t (yet) enshittified. it’s fucking weird we can’t say the same about the original though

                • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
                  1·
                  3 months ago

                  I’d argue that you cannot say basic notepad has enshittified, as it always was quite shit. That is why 9 out of 10 dentists recommend notepad++