this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2025
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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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

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[–] rook@awful.systems 7 points 1 month ago

One to watch from a safe distance: dafdef, an “ai browser” aimed at founders and “UCG creators”, named using the traditional amazon-keysmash naming technique and and following the ai-companies-must-have-a-logo-suggestive-of-an-anus style guide.

Dafdef learns your browsing patterns and suggests what you'd do next After watching you fill out similar forms a few times, Dafdef starts autocompleting them. Apply with your startup to YC, HF0 and A16z without wasting your time.

So… spicy autocomplete.

But that’s not all! Tired of your chatbot being unable to control everything on your iphone, due to irksome security features implemented by those control freaks at apple? There’s a way around that!

Introducing the “ai key”!

A tiny USB-C key that turns your phone into a trusted AI assistant. It sees your screen, acts on your behalf, and remembers — all while staying under your control.

I’m sure you can absolutely trust an ai browser connected to a tool that has nearly full control over your phone to not do anything bad, because prompt injection isn’t a thing, right?

(I say nearly full, because I think Apple Pay requires physical interaction with a phone button or face id, but if dafdef can automate the boring and repetitive parts of using your banking app then having full control of the phone might not matter)

h/t to ian coldwater

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

New Baldur Bjarnason: The melancholy of history rhyming, comparing the AI bubble with the Icelandic banking bubble, and talking about the impending fallout of its burst.

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 7 points 1 month ago
[–] swlabr@awful.systems 7 points 1 month ago

This is truly nothing: Aella (credited as Aella Martin) has a Bacon number of 3

[–] ShakingMyHead@awful.systems 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Anthropic to pay 1.5 billion to authors

That's... quite a bit. I wonder if we'll start to see more complaints about people reaching their token limit "prematurely" or if Anthropic will release a $1000/month "unlimited" plan or something like that.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 7 points 1 month ago (3 children)

given the run rates all these fuckers have, I half expect they feel glad it’s “as low as it is”. couple of the authors I’ve seen speak about it reckon pay out better to them (once off) than they tend to get from book royalties (I saw chisnall and some others post around it earlier). precedent from this is probably a good thing, even if I wish it went harder (esp given how likely “a fine you can afford is just a tax” is to develop as a normal situation)

re burn rates: openai confirmed in the last day or so that it expects a $118b burn through 2028. fucking obscene

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[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 1 month ago

in which business continues cosying up to fash

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 5 points 1 month ago

New premium column from Ed Zitron: Why Everybody Is Losing Money On AI

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