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David Gerard

@ dgerard @awful.systems

Posts
243
Comments
153
Joined
3 yr. ago

the guy who got Elon and Grimes to hook up, destroying Twitter and proceeding to blow up the United States

https://davidgerard.co.uk/

  • UK AI Action Plan: vaporware, crypto bros, and no AI

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  • Not as far as I know.

  • Duolingo is dying celebratory thread

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  • I did the Spanish-from-English course, which I understand was the best course on Duolingo, from start to finish over 2 years. I also skimmed the English-from-Spanish course.

    I got good enough to pick my way slowly through Salvadoran newspaper articles, which is basically what I wanted. (This also teaches me more words.) I need to ping my Spanish-speaking friends to teach me how to fucking speak it though, Duolingo didn't teach me shit.

    (The tabloid newspapers are easy. The pompous newspapers write in a fancy tone which ~nobody in .sv uses. I really wanna read El Faro in Spanish, but it writes in high-level sarcastic and pissed-off. Still a subscriber tho. Guess I gotta git gud!)

    .sv Twitter was easy, cos it turns out shitposting is the universal human tongue.

    I understand Spanish-from-English in particular has decayed badly in the AI era. Apparently it randomly started teaching someone "vosotros" which was never previously introduced. Pretty sure it still doesn't teach "vos", which is annoying (.sv uses vos).

    Its main advantage was that I did it at all - the gamification tickled my brain just right - and I did in fact learn anything from it.

    I was a paying customer, but my subscription finished a few months after the AI memo, so adios.

  • AI works can’t be copyrighted or patented in the US

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  • except that it's all stolen code. whether it's a copyright violation, well that's call your lawyer

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 8th March 2026

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  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    David Gerard @awful.systems

    AI works can’t be copyrighted or patented in the US

    pivot-to-ai.com /2026/03/04/ai-works-cant-be-copyrighted-or-patented-in-the-us/

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 1st March 2026

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  • yeah Carvalho was up to his heck in the whole thing at the time

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 1st March 2026

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  • i've suffered Masnick's writing since the early 2000s and he has never learnt to write any better

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 1st March 2026

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  • ehh. i'm not inclined to hand it to marcus. i can't think of an example of him saying something new and interesting.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 1st March 2026

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  • nah

  • Blue Owl won’t give your money back. This is fine

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  • the AI bubble, the private credit bubble (this one), the Wall St Bitcoin thing, etc. are all about writing down a big number with a $ in front on thin justification, then borrowing against it

    this runs into issues tomorrrow. but not today!

  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    David Gerard @awful.systems

    OpenAI’s ‘$110b’ funding round is $25b and some promises

    pivot-to-ai.com /2026/03/03/openais-110b-funding-round-is-25b-and-some-promises/
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    David Gerard @awful.systems

    Get your war on: AI chatbots in the kill chain

    pivot-to-ai.com /2026/03/02/get-your-war-on-ai-chatbots-in-the-kill-chain/
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    David Gerard @awful.systems

    Copilot: insecure and unhelpful — but oh, those influencers!

    pivot-to-ai.com /2026/02/27/copilot-insecure-and-unhelpful-but-oh-those-influencers/
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    David Gerard @awful.systems

    Blue Owl won’t give your money back. This is fine

    pivot-to-ai.com /2026/02/26/blue-owl-wont-give-your-money-back-this-is-fine/
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    David Gerard @awful.systems

    Accenture: you’re promoted or fired on using the AI

    pivot-to-ai.com /2026/02/25/accenture-youre-promoted-or-fired-on-using-the-ai/

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd February 2026

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  • CS 2005 is absolutely worth it, it's a version of Photoshop that does everything you actually need including CMYK with Pantone.

  • Bet against the bubble: Goldman Sachs’ non-AI stock index

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  • I also didn't say it's a good hedge. It'll stay uncorrelated right up to the moment you need it to, when it'll crash in lockstep.

  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    David Gerard @awful.systems

    Meta’s director of AI alignment falls for OpenClaw

    pivot-to-ai.com /2026/02/24/metas-director-of-ai-alignment-falls-for-openclaw/
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    David Gerard @awful.systems

    Bet against the bubble: Goldman Sachs’ non-AI stock index

    pivot-to-ai.com /2026/02/23/bet-against-the-bubble-goldman-sachs-non-ai-stock-index/
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    David Gerard @awful.systems

    Amazon Web Services vibe-codes itself an outage or two

    pivot-to-ai.com /2026/02/20/amazon-web-services-vibe-codes-itself-an-outage-or-two/
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    David Gerard @awful.systems

    AI vibe-generates the same ‘random’ passwords over and over

    pivot-to-ai.com /2026/02/19/ai-vibe-generates-the-same-random-passwords-over-and-over/
  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    David Gerard @awful.systems

    Seedance’s ‘generated’ AI Cruise-Pitt demo was a green screen and face swap

    pivot-to-ai.com /2026/02/18/seedances-generated-ai-cruise-pitt-demo-was-a-green-screen-and-face-swap/

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th February 2026

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  • amazed he got through that without somehow blaming sneerclub

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th February 2026

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  • "Dark Enlightenment" was invented for Nick Land for his essay of the same name.

  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    David Gerard @awful.systems

    The AI Scare Trade — the all-purpose excuse for number go down

    pivot-to-ai.com /2026/02/17/the-ai-scare-trade-the-all-purpose-excuse-for-number-go-down/

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 8th February 2026

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  • more proximately, he also went to the Manifold Markets meetup for statistical predictors that just happened to include Jordan Lasker, which is why he keeps making these posts with curiously Lasker-adjacent talking points. It's very disappointing.

  • The Anthropic test refusal string: kill a Claude session dead

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  • Apparently it works in binary.

  • SaaSpocalypse: investors overspend badly on software companies and blame AI

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  • The Stoller piece is instructive - he's wrong, but it's a perfect example of the resentment and the reasons for the resentment.

  • Microsoft walks back AI in Windows 11! Yeah, right

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  • the second, I think. I'm actually surprised we have no smoking guns on vibe coding in production at MS. Or even one guy saying "hell yeah we totally did."

  • The OpenAI and Nvidia $100b not-a-deal is off

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  • On the other hand, Nvidia is doing some very questionable circular looking deals.

    On the other other hand, Jensen knows precisely how to surf a bubble while it's bubbling, he's done it before. When you do stupid shit and the number goes up, shareholders don't have a lot to get aggrieved about.

  • The long awaited Gerard/Zitron crossover: I'm on Better Offline saying the stuff I always say, about OpenClaw, Moltbook and the coming Great Depression 2

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  • The bit where OpenAi and Anthropic need actual real dollars to set on fire.