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 youā€™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 cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

Last weekā€™s thread

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

  • self@awful.systems
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    18 days ago

    oh cool, Minecraft LSD: Dream Emulator edition

    which would be a cool concept, if the generative AI model werenā€™t incredibly prohibitively expensive to run, trained on plagiarized videos, and incapable of coherently tracking state (believe it or not, LSD: Dream Emulator does have a gameplay and progression loopā€¦ game-like things without one tend to get dull very quick)

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      17 days ago

      game-like things without one tend to get dull very quick

      This has been a thing with games leaning heavily on procedural generated content as well. Takes a lot of effort to make those more interesting in the longer term. The ai is the future of gaming people are sure to rediscover this fact again. Sadly compared ro pgc people they will waste a lot more energy and money.

      • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems
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        17 days ago

        I think itā€™s fine to have little art games that are only interesting to play for a few minutes. They can still have an impact that stays with you forever. Catacombs of Solaris for instance is one I love and think about all the time.

        These AI guys though, god it must be so sad working on this stuff. They canā€™t be proud of what theyā€™re making if the goal is to trick people into thinking you can have a real Minecraft game in there. The game is not even relevant, as far as I can tell theyā€™re only using it to draw attention to their stupid and doomed ASIC business.

        • ebu@awful.systems
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          17 days ago

          goddammit! you have no idea how many variations of ā€œfirst person walking simulator projected image texture trippy visualsā€ i slapped into every search engine!

          but yes, that was the one i was thinking of

          • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems
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            17 days ago

            Ah awesome! I didnā€™t think it was because you canā€™t upload pictures, but maybe you can in the ā€œRevisitedā€ version!

            • ebu@awful.systems
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              17 days ago

              i went and bought it, and yup, the revisited version is the one i was thinking of. time to walk around inside a picture of Sam Altman so i can absorb his raw intellect and business acumen

        • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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          17 days ago

          Pgc can be a useful tool in the toolbox however. Just look at dwarf fortress for example. But games need more than just that. And with LLMs there could also ve some use (generation of voices I think for example, or some low level of conversational chatter). The problem is the data usage, the anti worker stuff (no voice actor wants their voice stolen for example), and like in this case, the people just promoting their other crap. Like how crypto games are just a shell to promote their crypto bs.

          LLMs could have some minor use but with the backlash due to techbros going their usual vc style techbro ways, and steam requiring disclosure I doubt it will be of much use the risk is too great. Which considering the power costs is great.

          • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems
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            17 days ago

            We also have stuff like DLSS, which is pretty cool and I imagine ends up being more efficient in energy usage. The key thing I believe is itā€™s built as a specific tool for a specific purpose, instead of general purpose slop machines eating humongous databases to excrete absolutely nothing useful for anyone.