this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
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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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Want to wade into the snowy surf of the abyss? 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 so 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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[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Last week 404 Media reported on some DOGE deposition videos.

The videos were since removed via court order, but are available on Internet Archive.

For anyone unfamiliar: this slots under TechTakes because DOGE is basically Elon Musk's army of naive fascist silicon valley tech-bros rampaging about the federal government with Chat-GPT, SQL, and unsecured thumb-drives.

This article is behind a paywall, but links to the following video snippets from the depositions:

https://www.instagram.com/reels/DVtOiqJjcu4/ https://www.instagram.com/reels/DVyhJT9jf4f/

For example here Justin Fox talks about deleting federal grants that he considered in-scope for an anti DEI executive order: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DVtOiqJjcu4/

Q: "Why is a documentary about Holocaust survivors DEI"

A: "It's the gender based story 🤷 that's inherently discriminatory to focus on this specific group 🙄."

Q: "It's inherently discriminatory to focus on what specific group?"

A: "The gender based. So, females 🤷 during the Holocaust."

He goes on to clarify that it's DEI because it focuses on Jewish women. Oh that's OK then!

There is a lot of video to work through but I know there is more ~~comedy gold~~ rage inducing punchable nazi snippets within.

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 7 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

"Do you think there's a reason why the DSA didn't allow you to use Signal or other apps on your government phone?"

"No."

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE "S" STANDS FOR YOU IGNORANT CHILD??

Just gonna file this on my mental list of reasons I didn't go into law.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 6 points 21 hours ago (1 children)
[–] jaschop@awful.systems 3 points 16 hours ago

I tend to like her education takes. Like the first piece of hers that I read.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] fiat_lux@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It was very good, and I'm glad I clicked through to the link to Robert Kingett's story "The Colonization of Confidence", which deserves its own highlight.

Even if the constant reminders that I'm trapped in the machine are painful.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Hey, he's posted here before!

That story is rad as hell. I was ready to run through a wall for those folks at the end. Appreciate you, Robert!

I swear every time his stuff floats through here I end up standing as I read it and wildly gesticulating at my living room or ranting extemporaneously to my basement about something it made me think of or feel. After reading this piece I hope that comes off as more complimentary to his work than showing myself to be a freaking weirdo.

[–] fiat_lux@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

I noticed that too which is an extra reason why I figured I'd drop the link and name in. His posts about receiving an LLM-generated happy birthday is something I think about surprisingly frequently.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

A hackernews notices that HN autoflags 404 Media articles. A little downthread, dang bullshits unconvincingly in reponse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47354634

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 4 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

If this is the real reason:

It's because, for a long time, most of their content was behind a signup wall with no obvious workaround. I don't know if it still is or not. If it isn't, we can change it.

It is baffling that this isn't communicated upfront to the users. Really weird move orange site.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 5 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Do they also block NYT, WSJ, Atlantic? I think not. Odd, but I didn't trust dang and friends to start with. HN is not intended to be a neutral forum.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 4 points 15 hours ago

No, they're allowed and users usually post an archive link to get around the paywall.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 3 points 17 hours ago

A lateral move from pointing at the unbelievers and screeching, really

[–] nfultz@awful.systems 6 points 2 days ago

And locally, UAW RPSP just announced a tentative agreement, apparently they got a technology policy through without calling out AI explicitly. Might be too little too late tbh.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Uxn_Tq-CMVyPstXD9GnCzuiRp660QdAw/view

[–] lurker@awful.systems 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

AI was going to give us all universal healthcare but we didn't believe hard enough and now all we have is this.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 10 points 2 days ago

I was not ready

[–] macroplastic@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 days ago
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