Skip Navigation

gerikson

@ gerikson @awful.systems

Posts
3
Comments
587
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 5th July 2026

    Jump

  • officially out of the loop here:

    What is an LLM "system card", does it have any sort of scientific/technical validity, or is it just performance theater by the LLM vendor?

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 5th July 2026

    Jump

  • LWer: slavery was bad and abolishing the slave trade was a net good

    LW commenters: really?

    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yDZcsojmRXo5qKNBm/surprising-facts-about-the-slave-trade

    (I can kind of understand that intellectual honesty can prompt people to question a narrative, and in some ways I respect it, but there comes a time when you need to ask yourself "am I being the best person I can be by defending slavery" and back away from the keyboard)

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 5th July 2026

    Jump

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 28th June 2026

    Jump

  • “Omelas” seems like a great brand name

    Jump

  • "The ones who walk away from Omelas describes a utopia ---"

    good enough! ship it!

  • “Omelas” seems like a great brand name

    Jump

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 21st June 2026

    Jump

  • The poster deftly doesn't address the real moral question: what if conversion therapy (either for homosexuality or trans identification) worked ? Would it be ethical to allow it?

    This is the difference between politics/ethics and science. As the old saying goes, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 21st June 2026

    Jump

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 21st June 2026

    Jump

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 21st June 2026

    Jump

  • The header image is gold.

  • Google found liable for defamatory AI overviews

    Jump

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 21st June 2026

    Jump

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 14th June 2026

    Jump

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 14th June 2026

    Jump

  • It's been a while since I immersed myself in SF publishing but I think that older terms like "New Wave" and "cyberpunk" were basically marketing terms riding off the hits that spawned them. I believe they were a collaboration between the fandom, magazines and publishers - not in any structured way, but like in music, a term is used to encompass many different acts.

    One slubstack does not a genre name, tho. And it's broad enough to be meaningless. For example one of the first authors is Scott Alexander, who is not formally a programmer, just someone who hangs out online terminally. Vinge was a CS prof, but Banks afaik didn't have any formal CS training. Ken McLeod worked as a programmer, as did Charles Stross.

    SF is a nerd author paradise and nowadays nerds program, so ... chicken and egg?

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 14th June 2026

    Jump

  • "It is your moral duty to send as much money as you can to Sam Altman"

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 14th June 2026

    Jump

  • Wake up babe new genre definition just dropped

    https://stoates.substack.com/p/programmer-science-fiction

    Includes all the usual suspects, but notably doesn't mention Ken MacLeod whose Fall Revolution series is probably too socialist[1]. Also avoids discussing Stross post-Singularity Sky.

    [1] MacLeod's Corporation Wars trilogy has immersive VR, artificial conciousness rebelling against authority, and literal p-zombies but is also very anti-fascist, so no wonder it's not mentioned (also, it's unfortunately not very good)

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 14th June 2026

    Jump

  • This is a new method of bootlicking: if you as a FLOSS developer don't use LLMs to fix vulnerabilites identified by LLMs, you're being unethical

    https://lobste.rs/c/5toqqs

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 14th June 2026

    Jump

  • This all reads as a very elitist and privileged perspective.

    Dude look where you’re commenting

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 14th June 2026

    Jump

  • I haven't experienced the situation you're describing myself, but it feels very plausible.

    Similarly, all developed societies depend on a number of people selflessly working in positions of elected or non-elected authority (local councils, HOAs, school boards) and treating them like people who cannot afford to make any mistakes is not a recipe for increased democratic engagement.

    Anyway, so far no-one has commented, negatively or otherwise, and I think most LWers are treating it as harmless fun.

    It's not making me any more interested in coming more than 200 feet from any of these people, and neither is this https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GtZKzWgAqWrE2tXrQ/contra-dance-at-lessonline, but maybe that's just me being mean.