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blakestacey @ blakestacey @awful.systems
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614
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2 yr. ago

  • Oxford pretends AI benchmarks are science, not marketing

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  • Whatever marginal utility genAI has in mathematics, like being a shitty version of a semantic search engine, is outweighed by the damage it is doing to critical thought at large. "Ooh, the bus to the math conference runs so smoothly on this leaded gasoline!"

  • Oxford pretends AI benchmarks are science, not marketing

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  • Reasoning With Machines doesn’t work on reasoning, really. It’s almost entirely large language models — chatbots. Because that’s where the money — sorry, the industry interest — is. But this paper got into the NeurIPS 2025 conference.

    A reminder that the NeurIPS FAQ for reviewers says that "interactions with LLMs" are an acceptable way "to enhance your understanding of certain concepts". What other big conferences are there... AAAI 2026, you say?

    AAAI-26 will follow a two-phase reviewing process as in previous years, with two additions: an additional AI-generated review in Phase 1, and an AI-generated summary of the discussions at the end of the discussion phase. The AI-generated content is being used as part of a pilot program to evaluate the ability of AI tools to assist in the peer review process.

    I'm gonna say it: The entire "artificial intelligence"/"machine learning" research field is corrupt. They have institutionally accepted the bullshit fountain as a tool. It doesn't matter if they're only using chatbots as a "pilot program"; they've bought into the ideology. They've granted fashtech a seat at the bar and forced all the other customers to shake its hand.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 9th November 2025

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  • How do you write like this?

    The first step is not to have an editor. The second step is to marinate for nearly two decades in a cult growth medium that venerates you for not having an editor.

  • MIT releases, then quietly removes, nonsense AI cybersecurity paper

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  • The only nice feeling here is that of every joke we science students made about the management school being validated.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 9th November 2025

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  • muted colors

    A lot of it looks like it was pissed on.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 2nd November 2025

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  • The computer-science section of the arXiv has declared that they can't put up with all your shit any more.

    arXiv’s computer science (CS) category has updated its moderation practice with respect to review (or survey) articles and position papers. Before being considered for submission to arXiv’s CS category, review articles and position papers must now be accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review. When submitting review articles or position papers, authors must include documentation of successful peer review to receive full consideration. Review/survey articles or position papers submitted to arXiv without this documentation will be likely to be rejected and not appear on arXiv.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 2nd November 2025

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  • "I can read HTML but not CSS" —Eliezer Yudkowsky, 2021 (and since apparently scrubbed from the Internet, to live only in the sneers of fond memory)

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 2nd November 2025

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  • Oreo: the cookie that doesn't need a marketing department.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 2nd November 2025

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  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 26th October 2025

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  • Level design, color palette, continuity, assets and physics by a bowl of salvia

  • the code smells of fashtech: omarchy

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  • Do you remember / Unending and boundless September / Flames were catchin' the threads of the first-years

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 26th October 2025

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  • the code smells of fashtech: omarchy

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  • It is 1998, and I am reading Internet posts complaining about Mac users

    It is 2005, and I am reading Internet posts complaining about Mac users

    It is 2025, and I am reading Internet posts complaining about Mac users

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 26th October 2025

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  • All participants in the Stubsack, including awful.systems regulars and those joining from elsewhere, are reminded that this is not debate club. Anyone tempted by the possibility of debate-club behavior is encouraged to touch your nearest grass immediately. We are here to sneer, not to bicker: This is a place to mock the outside world, not to settle grand matters of ideology, unless the latter is done in an extraordinarily amusing way.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 26th October 2025

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  • I believe those sentences can be paraphrased as, "The term entire function is only used in complex analysis. The function f(z) = z^2 + 1 is zero at z = i."

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 26th October 2025

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  • New research coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and led by the BBC has found that AI assistants – already a daily information gateway for millions of people – routinely misrepresent news content no matter which language, territory, or AI platform is tested. [...] 45% of all AI answers had at least one significant issue.

    • 31% of responses showed serious sourcing problems – missing, misleading, or incorrect attributions.
    • 20% contained major accuracy issues, including hallucinated details and outdated information.
    • Gemini performed worst with significant issues in 76% of responses, more than double the other assistants, largely due to its poor sourcing performance.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2025/new-ebu-research-ai-assistants-news-content

    And yet the BBC still has a Programme Director for "Generative AI" who gets trotted out to say "We want these tools to succeed". No, we don't, you blithering bellend.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 26th October 2025

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  • (thinks) The Colossus of Chodes

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 26th October 2025

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  • the code smells of fashtech: omarchy

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  • The best pizza we had in college came from the place where the window by the front door had a spiderweb fracture and when you stood at the cash register you could see back into the kitchen where one old Italian guy was making pizza and six beefy Italian guys were standing around doing nothing.

    General rules can have exceptions, is all I'm sayin'.

  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    blakestacey @awful.systems

    Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 5th October 2025 - awful.systems

    awful.systems /post/5699944
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    blakestacey @awful.systems

    Stubsack: Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 20th July 2025 - awful.systems

    awful.systems /post/4885338
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    blakestacey @awful.systems

    Credulous coverage of AI slop on Wikipedia

  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    blakestacey @awful.systems

    Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 9 March 2025

    awful.systems /post/3608350
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    blakestacey @awful.systems

    Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 23 February 2025

    awful.systems /post/3491424
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    blakestacey @awful.systems

    DeepSeek might not be such good news for energy after all

    www.technologyreview.com /2025/01/31/1110776/deepseek-might-not-be-such-good-news-for-energy-after-all/
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    blakestacey @awful.systems

    Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 2nd February 2025

    awful.systems /post/3329759
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    blakestacey @awful.systems

    Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 26th January 2025 - awful.systems - awful.systems

    awful.systems /post/3278715
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    blakestacey @awful.systems

    Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 19th January 2025 - awful.systems

    awful.systems /post/3226912
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    blakestacey @awful.systems

    Facebook "Secretly Trained Its AI on a Notorious Piracy Database, Newly Unredacted Court Docs Reveal"

  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    blakestacey @awful.systems

    Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 6 October 2025

  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    blakestacey @awful.systems

    Elon Musk’s Tunnel Reportedly Oozing With Skin-Burning Chemical Sludge

    futurism.com /the-byte/elon-musk-boring-company-tunnel-sludge