Nerds love information. Learning information, sharing information, correcting people on information (with sources). Techbros read popmedia on silicon valley stuff and regurgitate it
The word “techbro” absolutely oozes with self-entitled douche vibes. It’s absolutely fitting since every techbro is an absolute sack. What kind of sack….? Oh, you know the answer already.
i work in a math department in a university and have colleagues that vaguely gesture at "the AI" and it's fucking maddening when they should know better than to fall to this over generalization shit
Techbros think you are shit and have no right to anything. They are NOT cool. Nerds are fun lovers, enjoy playing with tech and are a blast to be around. Techbros suck. They think they are super hot shit and other people do not matter
Yeah, can't tell you how many times I've seen techbros try to ruin gaming. Talking about how we need $100 games and every little aspect of the game hidden behind $30 pay walls. Or my favorite "come on bro, we need play to earn bro. Make money when you game bro. Make it so you can earn NFT's bro. Yeah it'll ruin every game's ecosystem with hackers but trust me bro, it's gonna be great."
Greatly explains how the people overseeing the nuclear arsenal got fired then someone had an oh shit moment and tried to find them all to hire them back.
I mean, he absolutely 100% is, like completely. It's like trying to say tankies aren't leftists. They are, whether you want to admit it or not. Nerds come in different flavors, and tons of techbros are absolutely nerds, just with a different focus. There's nothing inherently 'good' about being a nerd, which is what this post is trying to suggest.
Tech bros are just garden variety, jock sport fans whose favourite team is crypto, wear musk jersies, and play fantasy football with their NFTs and meme coins
I read an essay once that boiled the jock/nerd conflict down to two groups equally invested in patriarchal ideals, but separated by a desire for warrior kings vs. scholar kings. Techbros are the result of that conflict's end; nerd shit got destigmatized so now we have a unified group of assholes that feel they're entitled to all the power and resources because of a belief in their inherent superiority.
I used to live in the bay area and techbros aren't nerds they're salespeople who happen to work in tech. You also don't need to be a nerd to know that's all bullshit.
It's relatively easy for a nerd to become a techbro. Just gotta have the right timing and the right tech. It's impossible to a techbro to become a nerd.
There's nothing about being a nerd that means somebody is inherently informed or reasonable or anything like that. Y'all are trying to 'take back' the term nerd, but it's kind of a lame attempt and ignores how many of them absolutely are nerds. Just because they're doing work you dont value doesn't mean they couldn't be nerds.
1. a person who is extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable about a particular subject, especially one of specialist or niche interest. "the executive is an unabashed film nerd"
As a developer this is me all the time when someone tries to tell me ChatGPT, or Claude IO or Gemini or CoPilot is amazing. And I ask them what they know about Large Language Models and have they coded any bot frameworks. And the less they know the more they get offended by an actual developer peeing all over this nonsense that AIs are amazing. As really it's just a level of interpretation of models being called AI because it sounds cooler than bot large Language learning algorithm.
Of course But LLMs are amazing though. They are great for generating text, but that is about it. Manufacturers want to ride the hype train and try to fling it to a wall to see what sticks. Most of it is bullshit. Like a toaster with AI to see how long you need to toast your bread.
But then you have things like VLC who are experimenting with LLMs to auto generate subtitles, which always sync up and can be generated in any language the user wants. That shit is cool af.
It's just using the right tool for the job. As you said with textual paths and understanding it's very cool. It can do summaries and writing pretty well. But it cannot code DESPITE all this nonsense from Google and others saying it can. It can SCAFFOLD simple shit quickly. That helps me but doesn't replace me. When it gets into auth and systems it really fails to understand nuances beyond 101 level infrastructure.
And dumb as a box of rocks. It's insulting when people make them seem like they even have average intelligence let alone being nerds. Techbros are the most gullible dumbasses I've ever met.
"You are a piece of shit who somehow got labeled in a way that makes you sound smart and a lot of things that you AREN'T, I am into tech and I am someone's sibling. We are not the same."
Techbro is like salesman for repackaged tech shit, that suit men are too stupid to understand. So they use a lot of buzz words and sell something others made 95% and they have just wrapped that in their own product. 100% reliant on code others made. Probably not following the open source license terms, either.
When I criticized NFTs, I was told "you just don't understand crypto". Really? I was in the room when Rijndael was created. Don't quote the old magic to me, I was there when it was written. Their problem was that I understand exactly what it can and can't do. /Rant
Nerds are cool and typically just hyper fixated on a niche technology finding fun in what they do and sharing with others. Tech bros are a synonym for douchebags who code for their own self worth and nothing more, ruining everything around them.
Only reason I haven't swapped over is that every time I use my dad's samsung it feels like shit. Laggy and disjointed and unresponsive, and he got it new last year
I work in IT, the IoT is a NIGHTMARE for security, home or organization. You don't want those things connected to your network because I doubt most of the manufacturers will provide software updates and security fixes for long. It's another way to put in planned obsolescence. I love technology, I hate how capital driven businesses use and implement it.
Even if techbros are real nerds, calling out a minor subsection of nerds who regularly lay off thousands of other nerds, particlularly targeting elder and disabled nerds while claiming non-neurotypicalness while never getting a diagnosis they could so easily afford, and make the working lives of nerds miserable for no good reason other than make number go up and capriciousness is not "hating on nerds". Nerds can be kind, they can be assholes too, the choice is up to the individual nerd.
James Gosling quit his high paying job when Oracle took over Sun and started sending lawsuits. Say what you will about Java, but Gosling is a god damn hero.
In fairness, Bill Gates does have actual tech credentials instead of being just a business person. He's definitely not getting idolized or anything, but he does actually get some amount of respect from computer nerds.
Yes, he’s absolutely a computer nerd, but his obsession with proprietary software and his constant need to crush competitors under his boot is insanely unpopular with computer nerds.
Techbros are often very educated people working in large companies doing complex work, though. I'm not a fan of techbro culture at all, but some of y'all are really twisting reality in order to shit on them in every way possible.
The US quite literally recruited loads of world class scientists from the Nazis after WW2. Not escapees, but actual NAZI scientists. It's insane how many of you have such emotional-based reasoning that because you (rightfully) hate Nazis and the far right, that you have to assume that anybody even tangentially related to them MUST be bad in EVERY way possible, including intelligence. Not that it also isn't dumb to assume that all techbros are Nazis. Stop making me defend techbros, ffs.
Yes, but when marketing gets to it and it becomes a buzzword, that utility is reduced, if nothing else than because the understanding of the technology isn’t explained well enough for people to actually know when to use it or not use it.
So did the steam engine, but if it had been sold as way to heat your house and water the plants via the air, people would have been right to call it a garbage product who's best use was in parting fools from their money. Science will out. We're not going to miss practical applications of block chain and AI, by being critical of their application now.
As a nerd (since the 1980s), this is EXACTLY correct. That said, there ARE valid uses for blockchain technologies. Just, uh, not replacing existing financial systems.
Agreed. We can be just as awful as anybody else. Nerds are frequently too insecure or otherwise powerless to be as shitty as they would like to be. Sometimes a nerd will think they are powerless to cause harm because they only see it in terms of the physical threats they endured through adolescence, blinding them to the real harm they are capable of, consciously or unconsciously. Of course, some achieve some measure of success and seek revenge.
You know, I read an article about one of the dudes who created the first cryptocurrencies (not bitcoin, but an early one). He is now vehemently anti-crypto, to the point of publicly condemning it, because he realized all it is in it's current state is difficult to regulate hyper-capitalism with no protections for the little guy. A scammer's dream.
As an artist, I loved the idea of NFTs as a concept. And I'm not referring to the shitty low quality "art" nfts like those fucking apes.
But, when you think of the physical art world, an artist can sell their art for next to nothing, then if that resells for a high sum, the artist won't benefit, only the reseller.
By linking ownership of a physical art piece to an nft, it could ensure royalties are paid to artists when pieces resell, which personally I think would be fair.
You just invented copyright except instead of being useless, it’s useless and it burns down the rainforest while not even accomplishing the thing it says it does.
I had an idea for a series of pieces that were just an nft hash printed in really large font and framed. The gallery would also have a bunch of posters of the same nft but with a random character changed. those would sell as signed, certified, numbered prints of a fake nft. It was delicious irony in my head.
The problem of course being that the value provided by that concept basically amounted to "we'll write some terms about royalties into the default sales contract". The whole blockchain part of the solution was completely unnecessary for that and it could've been done at least equally well through a boring old artist-friendly storefront.
If you say that, you clearly haven't seen the technical complexity of smart contracts and the like. Irrelevant to the application and hype crap, those are not "just" database-ledgers.
Oh, I've absolutely seen the technical complexity of smart contracts. That's why all my apes are gone, don't open the NFT even if someone gives it to you, it will steal all your apes, someone help, please, help! /S
Especially after they made mining less appealing, by design, so there's less interest in people processing those transactions. Great idea all around, solid 5/7.
Realistically, the applications of blockchain tech are extremely niche.
Cryptocurrency has well-documented practical challenges.
NFTs were always a con.
Most distributed ledger applications don't have sufficient scale to warrant the overhead of the distribution, nor to overcome the fundamental security issue that you can overwhelm the truth with lies if you possess a large percentage of the computational power on he network.
I'm really yet to see a well thought through deployment.
Append-only databases are a thing, but irreversibility isn't necessarily a good thing. People do screw up, stuff gets stolen, and having no recourse can be a bad thing. I feel it's a niche tech pretending to be a swiss army knife. Like someone else said, blockchain is a solution looking for a problem.
Blockchain is also built on so many compromises and faulty half baked tech that it is constantly getting exploited. It is as immutable as the ticket arm at a NY subway station, and relies HEAVILY on public support and public decency to keep working as built.
As someone who works in tech support, dealing with users, weird data, and knowing that some degree of bugs are to be expected, irreversibility is horrifying. Part of me wants to gove up on electronic payments and go pure cash.
I think where there's value in the blockchain technology is the ability to work in a more trustless fashion. I'm not going to say completely trustless because you still have to trust the validator nodes, but it's a distributed trust model rather than centralized. That's a very specific technical solution, so certainly not as widely useful as it was hyped, but the hype train has moved onto AI at this point anyway.
I get people are mad at bank fees, but have you ever had a bank alter your ledger entries maliciously? What experience leads people to distrust addition or their own data copies of their transaction records such that they do trust some tech bro claiming "cryptographic security" without having the slightest clue whether P≠nP and why anybody who doesn't get that and can't explain the significance isn't someone to be trusted talking about crypto.
Yeah, just a weirdly niche and overengeneered way to go about it. Also, you can have next-gen encryption tech, and some dude will still open a shady email and get his shit stolen. Good thing it's immutable /s.
People have overextended the umbrella so far that having any serious conversation requires you to specify. AI is when computer do anything, at this point. Most people are just referring to language models.
AI is software doing a task as good or better than a human. A simple if else program that plays tic tac toe is a tic tac toe AI. It's not impressive, but it is still AI. AGI is something way different though. And no, these are not new terms, that is how they were used since ever.
You see something that's important to understand w/LLMs is *what is a language?* At its core, a language is a means of encoding information for the purpose of transmitting it. Photographs, speech, code, metadata on an email server, and electrical impulses controlling industrial robots are all equally 'languages'
LLMs are generalizable enough that there are usecases for everything that can be done w/computers.
They're not a nerd unless they've developed (currently developing) some sort of financial issue due to an expensive hobby like magic the gathering. Mine is currently beyblade x.
No, it's gotta be time. A closet full of Warhammer sets is just hoarding. You aren't a nerd until you've made the time commitment to paint those things and/or play for hours. Collectors can be nerds, but they need to spend way to much time either learning more about their chosen thing, expanding their collection, or building and maintaining the display. There's some kind of creative seed at the heart of what you're doing that separates it from just consumption.
Battletech. I don't even play tabletop, but I probably have enough miniatures to run a major campaign solo. I'll probably die of old age before I get them all painted, and that's not going to stop me from buying more.
For me it's game development. The amount of money I've put into art and audio assets, hiring level designers, and editors for my writing... eye watering.
But… they have a LotR game, Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game… and… and… IT’S LOTR, FER CRYIN’ OUT LOUD, BUT MINIS… and… I want… 😭
I fear I have already taken my first steps on this dark path. My brother’s been into 40K and Age of Sigmar for a decade, and I’ve resisted for such a long time… But LotR… and… we wants it, precious, it’s ours, it is!
X is so cool though! It sucks how slow Hasbro is releasing the X products. Japan is already on the third major line and the US barely has the beginning of the second. I wanna order the CX Dran Brave, but I haven't even gotten Dran Buster yet.
It's definitely a one hit wonder though, get solid contact with the blade and it wrecks things. It hit wizard rod so hard that it burst and the blade flew out of the stadium and off the table.
I own every D&D book ever released. I even bought the most recent ones and I don't even play D&D anymore. I theory craft the living hell out of characters though.
But also, that financial sinkhole of a hobby needs to be nerdy as hell. Dumping money into pickup artist scams or the latest "tech gadgets" is not a nerdy pursuit.
You seen Venetian Snares' Traditional Synthesizer Music videos? I have no clue what's going on but it's neat as hell. here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbLt0S0W5jE
it's across four computers. Two clusters of six, an AIO on a pedestal with another monitor, and a laptop. Shit looks like a cyberpunk hacker cave, especially because I have no fucking cable management
bohjeenie
When nerds finally had their time in the sun with the technology boom, your regular old bullshit artists just moved where the money is now.
FrogSupreme
I'm a huge nerd and every techbro I've met has been some smooth-brain MBA failson.
kidonanescalator
Yeah get'em..
sometimesarobot
Nerds love information. Learning information, sharing information, correcting people on information (with sources).
Techbros read popmedia on silicon valley stuff and regurgitate it
myth1250
The word “techbro” absolutely oozes with self-entitled douche vibes. It’s absolutely fitting since every techbro is an absolute sack. What kind of sack….? Oh, you know the answer already.
idownvoteplottwist
i work in a math department in a university and have colleagues that vaguely gesture at "the AI" and it's fucking maddening when they should know better than to fall to this over generalization shit
RickO3611
Techbros think you are shit and have no right to anything. They are NOT cool. Nerds are fun lovers, enjoy playing with tech and are a blast to be around. Techbros suck. They think they are super hot shit and other people do not matter
doodlydoofus
Yeah, can't tell you how many times I've seen techbros try to ruin gaming. Talking about how we need $100 games and every little aspect of the game hidden behind $30 pay walls. Or my favorite "come on bro, we need play to earn bro. Make money when you game bro. Make it so you can earn NFT's bro. Yeah it'll ruin every game's ecosystem with hackers but trust me bro, it's gonna be great."
williamvanauger
Elon musk isnt anywhere near smart enough to be a nerd.
clarkWhogotsanity
Greatly explains how the people overseeing the nuclear arsenal got fired then someone had an oh shit moment and tried to find them all to hire them back.
kilgoth1
I mean... the dude isn't wrong. At all. Like, at ALL.
Seanspeed
I mean, he absolutely 100% is, like completely. It's like trying to say tankies aren't leftists. They are, whether you want to admit it or not. Nerds come in different flavors, and tons of techbros are absolutely nerds, just with a different focus. There's nothing inherently 'good' about being a nerd, which is what this post is trying to suggest.
daojones75
Techbros are to nerds what people who make New Year's "exercise more" resolutions are to gym rats.
slinkydust
I think everyone that regularly goes to a gym hates those new years people because they don't know gym etiquette, not because they're douchebags
innagaddavidababy
If you think the deep neural networks we have today are like the pattern recognition we’ve had for years, you are badly misinformed.
doobiedoobop
Tech bros are just garden variety, jock sport fans whose favourite team is crypto, wear musk jersies, and play fantasy football with their NFTs and meme coins
Perfectlynormalhumanbieng
Techbros are literally a reskinned version of the 80s jock but with a tech angle rather than sports.
scrumby
I read an essay once that boiled the jock/nerd conflict down to two groups equally invested in patriarchal ideals, but separated by a desire for warrior kings vs. scholar kings. Techbros are the result of that conflict's end; nerd shit got destigmatized so now we have a unified group of assholes that feel they're entitled to all the power and resources because of a belief in their inherent superiority.
parabolic000
I mean, you had the Gordon Gekko Wall Street types in the 80s too.
LaffertyDanie1
I used to live in the bay area and techbros aren't nerds they're salespeople who happen to work in tech. You also don't need to be a nerd to know that's all bullshit.
sgnight13
Techbros are just finance bros with shitty ideas
huffnpuff72
It's relatively easy for a nerd to become a techbro. Just gotta have the right timing and the right tech. It's impossible to a techbro to become a nerd.
DominicGraziano
Nerds make interesting shit, techbros figure out how to scam people with said interesting shit
AgamemnonsMemes
Techbros rarely understand what they are talking about, meaning they are not nerds
Seanspeed
There's nothing about being a nerd that means somebody is inherently informed or reasonable or anything like that. Y'all are trying to 'take back' the term nerd, but it's kind of a lame attempt and ignores how many of them absolutely are nerds. Just because they're doing work you dont value doesn't mean they couldn't be nerds.
AgamemnonsMemes
noun
noun: nerd; plural noun: nerds
1. a person who is extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable about a particular subject, especially one of specialist or niche interest.
"the executive is an unabashed film nerd"
djangojazz
As a developer this is me all the time when someone tries to tell me ChatGPT, or Claude IO or Gemini or CoPilot is amazing. And I ask them what they know about Large Language Models and have they coded any bot frameworks. And the less they know the more they get offended by an actual developer peeing all over this nonsense that AIs are amazing. As really it's just a level of interpretation of models being called AI because it sounds cooler than bot large Language learning algorithm.
SirHonytawk
Of course
But LLMs are amazing though. They are great for generating text, but that is about it.
Manufacturers want to ride the hype train and try to fling it to a wall to see what sticks. Most of it is bullshit. Like a toaster with AI to see how long you need to toast your bread.
But then you have things like VLC who are experimenting with LLMs to auto generate subtitles, which always sync up and can be generated in any language the user wants. That shit is cool af.
djangojazz
It's just using the right tool for the job. As you said with textual paths and understanding it's very cool. It can do summaries and writing pretty well. But it cannot code DESPITE all this nonsense from Google and others saying it can. It can SCAFFOLD simple shit quickly. That helps me but doesn't replace me. When it gets into auth and systems it really fails to understand nuances beyond 101 level infrastructure.
chewtoy9696
As a nerd, every single techbro I've ever met is a pos
Mechlai
This is the first I'm hearing of the term
NotTheSameAnymore
Same!!!!
tinctures
And they all salivate Pavlovian-style when you say "disrupt".
Dawnbringer551
Both a POS and a poser
caledric
And dumb as a box of rocks. It's insulting when people make them seem like they even have average intelligence let alone being nerds. Techbros are the most gullible dumbasses I've ever met.
beez428
"You are a piece of shit who somehow got labeled in a way that makes you sound smart and a lot of things that you AREN'T, I am into tech and I am someone's sibling. We are not the same."
kilgoth1
Pretty much. Bunch of people out there giving "nerds" a bad fucking name and I'm pretty pissed about it.
ThingsThatDontJustifyGenocide
As a nerd, "techbro" = "venture capitalist in tech" and/or "fratbro that works in tech(but knows nothing about it)"
Felrian
Guys from highschool that went into sales
hsalonen3000
Techbro is like salesman for repackaged tech shit, that suit men are too stupid to understand. So they use a lot of buzz words and sell something others made 95% and they have just wrapped that in their own product. 100% reliant on code others made. Probably not following the open source license terms, either.
Mikataki
Nothing a white button-down, tan khakis, and a metric ton of nepotism can't fix.
wodansring
This.
minqapoc
Techbros are the new jocks.
Niagaran
Every single guy I ever saw on Twitter (even before Elmo) hawking crypto was a fetid POS
JonWallace1985
Yeah, let’s go watch Star Trek, play D&D, and laugh at the crypto bros as the market bottoms out like we told them it would.
artrald
As a high level nerd, my bosses are techbros and I won't say anything against them. Where they can hear.
mikeatike
And also techbros tend not to know much about tech.
obijan
When I criticized NFTs, I was told "you just don't understand crypto". Really? I was in the room when Rijndael was created. Don't quote the old magic to me, I was there when it was written. Their problem was that I understand exactly what it can and can't do. /Rant
vegivamp
Now that's quite a boast...
obijan
Was working in Brussels for Banksys. Very boring job but smart people. Hand debugging C code tondo RSA will put hair on your chest.
obijan
Fun fact: Do you know why they named it that?
vegivamp
Which bit 🙂 rijndael is named for the guy who wrote the paper, iirc.
If you were working for banksys back in the day you're a fellow belgistani, I suppose?
obijan
The running joke there is that they named it like that to make it nearly impossible for Amercians to pronounce. :)
ButtPlunger69
Nerds are cool and typically just hyper fixated on a niche technology finding fun in what they do and sharing with others. Tech bros are a synonym for douchebags who code for their own self worth and nothing more, ruining everything around them.
Sticklebrickk
"Sweet! I can take advantage of you without ever meeting you?"
CelestialSea
They have nothing in common with nerds except an affinity for technology.
Kenbamazingbutprobablywontbe
And oh so stupid when it comes to anything about technology
chewtoy9696
Good lord so stupid
AfterTheRainComesTheRainbow
Had one go 'prove AI is art theft', then he decided the story I linked that y'know, showed proof wasn't proof enough for him.
chewtoy9696
Being that I had to deal with techbros at my last job, you can never win with them or make them see outside their bubble
AfterTheRainComesTheRainbow
Oh God that sounds irritating as hell
nation543
They know the pros about every iPhone version ever but they couldn't tell you why they hate Android so much, aside from texting.
AnbaricDragon
Only reason I haven't swapped over is that every time I use my dad's samsung it feels like shit. Laggy and disjointed and unresponsive, and he got it new last year
AnbaricDragon
I might try oneplus at some point if I can find a refurbished one online
ChaosInherent
It's literally always "it integrates so well with all of my apps and devices." Like...yeah, you have all apple products, no shit.
johnvictor
I work in IT, the IoT is a NIGHTMARE for security, home or organization. You don't want those things connected to your network because I doubt most of the manufacturers will provide software updates and security fixes for long. It's another way to put in planned obsolescence. I love technology, I hate how capital driven businesses use and implement it.
quasarvoyager2
Even if techbros are real nerds, calling out a minor subsection of nerds who regularly lay off thousands of other nerds, particlularly targeting elder and disabled nerds while claiming non-neurotypicalness while never getting a diagnosis they could so easily afford, and make the working lives of nerds miserable for no good reason other than make number go up and capriciousness is not "hating on nerds". Nerds can be kind, they can be assholes too, the choice is up to the individual nerd.
Seanspeed
Well said. There's nothing inherently good about nerdism anymore than there's anything inherently good/bad about being a sports fan.
DrewThe3DPrinterGuy
Speaking as a nerd/geek/dork/whatever, fuck every last techbro and cryptofuck in the face with a rusty rake.
Saffstorm
Wow graphic, I like the enthusiasm
RickO3611
Yea this... creepy soulless fucks with zero to no humanity. Musk has a team of them
NightOwlRally
I was going to suggest an oak boat oar to the kneecaps, but now I want to hear the rake tines chitter while whapping someone.
Jessebob42
It’s just bullshit rebranding for a cash grab.
AlmightyElephant
Will do, Sir/Ma'am o7
AlmightyElephant
S'Ma'rm?
DrewThe3DPrinterGuy
I rarely read the names of people I am replying to also so don't feel bad :P
DanimalRC
Scattercat
Steve Jobs was a techbro. The Woz, who did all the actual work and did it primarily because he loved it, was a nerd.
mikeatike
James Gosling quit his high paying job when Oracle took over Sun and started sending lawsuits. Say what you will about Java, but Gosling is a god damn hero.
FriendlyNeighborhoodGrammarPerson
Thomas Edison - techbro.
Nikola Tesla - nerd/genius
tetondons
Exactly.
killergrooves85
Computer nerds idolize The Woz and Richard Stallman. Business freaks idolize Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
ihateimgurffs
Stallman is a dick. Just sayin.
Noughmad
He's not nice, and he's not kind. He's just *right*.
gesel
Paul Allen was a good guy.
themostboringusername
Colopty
In fairness, Bill Gates does have actual tech credentials instead of being just a business person. He's definitely not getting idolized or anything, but he does actually get some amount of respect from computer nerds.
killergrooves85
Yes, he’s absolutely a computer nerd, but his obsession with proprietary software and his constant need to crush competitors under his boot is insanely unpopular with computer nerds.
Hrafna55
Dennis Ritchie & Ken Thompson
coffeeandprozac
A techbro is someone who lacks both the knowledge to be a nerd and the fortitude to acquire that knowledge.
Seanspeed
Techbros are often very educated people working in large companies doing complex work, though. I'm not a fan of techbro culture at all, but some of y'all are really twisting reality in order to shit on them in every way possible.
coffeeandprozac
Anyone who participates in the modern Nazi movement can't be terribly educated, no matter what degree they purchased.
Seanspeed
The US quite literally recruited loads of world class scientists from the Nazis after WW2. Not escapees, but actual NAZI scientists. It's insane how many of you have such emotional-based reasoning that because you (rightfully) hate Nazis and the far right, that you have to assume that anybody even tangentially related to them MUST be bad in EVERY way possible, including intelligence. Not that it also isn't dumb to assume that all techbros are Nazis. Stop making me defend techbros, ffs.
Owl2017
The block chain and machine learning has a lot of functional utility at the end of the day
RatsLiveOnNoEvilStar
Yes, but when marketing gets to it and it becomes a buzzword, that utility is reduced, if nothing else than because the understanding of the technology isn’t explained well enough for people to actually know when to use it or not use it.
SirHonytawk
There still is not a single viable use case for Blockchain that doesn't already exist with an easier and more efficient solution.
scrumby
So did the steam engine, but if it had been sold as way to heat your house and water the plants via the air, people would have been right to call it a garbage product who's best use was in parting fools from their money. Science will out. We're not going to miss practical applications of block chain and AI, by being critical of their application now.
slinkydust
Like what? Examples besides illegal money and Google search
AndyTheAbsurd
As a nerd (since the 1980s), this is EXACTLY correct. That said, there ARE valid uses for blockchain technologies. Just, uh, not replacing existing financial systems.
INeedMoreGifMeMoreJustOneMore
That's such a nerd thing to say! Fight on, you nerd!
AgainstMethod
As a nerd (I think), I feel like I should push back and say nerds can totally be predators and jerks. Not even particularly uncommon.
phalanxausage
Agreed. We can be just as awful as anybody else. Nerds are frequently too insecure or otherwise powerless to be as shitty as they would like to be. Sometimes a nerd will think they are powerless to cause harm because they only see it in terms of the physical threats they endured through adolescence, blinding them to the real harm they are capable of, consciously or unconsciously. Of course, some achieve some measure of success and seek revenge.
Bigbob993
You know, I read an article about one of the dudes who created the first cryptocurrencies (not bitcoin, but an early one). He is now vehemently anti-crypto, to the point of publicly condemning it, because he realized all it is in it's current state is difficult to regulate hyper-capitalism with no protections for the little guy. A scammer's dream.
mooseablethenok
I can not think of a single use for blockchain that isn't done better by a write once database.
sagejosh0
Yes, but how are they going to make ALL the money if they don’t take control of where the money comes from?
crcinau
Git is the closest thing to a useful blockchain....
wouldClimbForCash
Look up accurev. It's git but immutable. Well, it came before git, IIRC. Can't say much about it; I had only peripheral contact with it as a sysadmin.
thelategirl
As an artist, I loved the idea of NFTs as a concept. And I'm not referring to the shitty low quality "art" nfts like those fucking apes.
But, when you think of the physical art world, an artist can sell their art for next to nothing, then if that resells for a high sum, the artist won't benefit, only the reseller.
By linking ownership of a physical art piece to an nft, it could ensure royalties are paid to artists when pieces resell, which personally I think would be fair.
mooseablethenok
You just invented copyright except instead of being useless, it’s useless and it burns down the rainforest while not even accomplishing the thing it says it does.
spinbutton3
Sadly all the NFT platforms I've seen are scams
wouldClimbForCash
I had an idea for a series of pieces that were just an nft hash printed in really large font and framed. The gallery would also have a bunch of posters of the same nft but with a random character changed. those would sell as signed, certified, numbered prints of a fake nft. It was delicious irony in my head.
Colopty
The problem of course being that the value provided by that concept basically amounted to "we'll write some terms about royalties into the default sales contract". The whole blockchain part of the solution was completely unnecessary for that and it could've been done at least equally well through a boring old artist-friendly storefront.
ThingsThatDontJustifyGenocide
Blockchain is just a public change-ledger that's irreversible due to crytographic security.
It's just a database-ledger.
We already have uses for both. We don't need blockchain. It doesn't need to be public.
stblackbird
If you say that, you clearly haven't seen the technical complexity of smart contracts and the like. Irrelevant to the application and hype crap, those are not "just" database-ledgers.
ThingsThatDontJustifyGenocide
Oh, I've absolutely seen the technical complexity of smart contracts. That's why all my apes are gone, don't open the NFT even if someone gives it to you, it will steal all your apes, someone help, please, help! /S
LOL. "smart contracts".
slinkydust
Bitcoin and their 8 verifiable transactions per second. Seems efficient /S
InTangier
Especially after they made mining less appealing, by design, so there's less interest in people processing those transactions. Great idea all around, solid 5/7.
drcyberbob
Realistically, the applications of blockchain tech are extremely niche.
Cryptocurrency has well-documented practical challenges.
NFTs were always a con.
Most distributed ledger applications don't have sufficient scale to warrant the overhead of the distribution, nor to overcome the fundamental security issue that you can overwhelm the truth with lies if you possess a large percentage of the computational power on he network.
I'm really yet to see a well thought through deployment.
InTangier
Append-only databases are a thing, but irreversibility isn't necessarily a good thing. People do screw up, stuff gets stolen, and having no recourse can be a bad thing. I feel it's a niche tech pretending to be a swiss army knife.
Like someone else said, blockchain is a solution looking for a problem.
SirenBrick
Blockchain is also built on so many compromises and faulty half baked tech that it is constantly getting exploited. It is as immutable as the ticket arm at a NY subway station, and relies HEAVILY on public support and public decency to keep working as built.
euphoricopportunity
As someone who works in tech support, dealing with users, weird data, and knowing that some degree of bugs are to be expected, irreversibility is horrifying. Part of me wants to gove up on electronic payments and go pure cash.
sfrinlan
I think where there's value in the blockchain technology is the ability to work in a more trustless fashion. I'm not going to say completely trustless because you still have to trust the validator nodes, but it's a distributed trust model rather than centralized. That's a very specific technical solution, so certainly not as widely useful as it was hyped, but the hype train has moved onto AI at this point anyway.
gesel
But why?
I get people are mad at bank fees, but have you ever had a bank alter your ledger entries maliciously? What experience leads people to distrust addition or their own data copies of their transaction records such that they do trust some tech bro claiming "cryptographic security" without having the slightest clue whether P≠nP and why anybody who doesn't get that and can't explain the significance isn't someone to be trusted talking about crypto.
ThingsThatDontJustifyGenocide
You can build a trustless system without public ledgers and validation nodes.
InTangier
Yeah, just a weirdly niche and overengeneered way to go about it.
Also, you can have next-gen encryption tech, and some dude will still open a shady email and get his shit stolen. Good thing it's immutable /s.
HighFlyKai
Sure, although the part about AI is incorrect. AI is a complex field and it would be akin to saying physics is just “adding numbers together”.
idownvoteplottwist
People have overextended the umbrella so far that having any serious conversation requires you to specify. AI is when computer do anything, at this point. Most people are just referring to language models.
ihateimgurffs
AI is software doing a task as good or better than a human. A simple if else program that plays tic tac toe is a tic tac toe AI. It's not impressive, but it is still AI. AGI is something way different though. And no, these are not new terms, that is how they were used since ever.
idownvoteplottwist
Ah, so my phone calculator doing 23487 x 1847 is AI
ihateimgurffs
No, because that is you using the tool. Hammer puttin a nail in a board is not AI, it is you doing the work with a tool.
idownvoteplottwist
oh good, then chatgpt and company are not AI :)
ElbowDeepInAPoliceState
You see something that's important to understand w/LLMs is *what is a language?* At its core, a language is a means of encoding information for the purpose of transmitting it. Photographs, speech, code, metadata on an email server, and electrical impulses controlling industrial robots are all equally 'languages'
LLMs are generalizable enough that there are usecases for everything that can be done w/computers.
smoldix42069
They're not a nerd unless they've developed (currently developing) some sort of financial issue due to an expensive hobby like magic the gathering. Mine is currently beyblade x.
TacoPoweredHelicopter
That's not a nerd, that's a dork.
scrumby
No, it's gotta be time. A closet full of Warhammer sets is just hoarding. You aren't a nerd until you've made the time commitment to paint those things and/or play for hours. Collectors can be nerds, but they need to spend way to much time either learning more about their chosen thing, expanding their collection, or building and maintaining the display. There's some kind of creative seed at the heart of what you're doing that separates it from just consumption.
smoldix42069
That's fair
parabolic000
Battletech. I don't even play tabletop, but I probably have enough miniatures to run a major campaign solo. I'll probably die of old age before I get them all painted, and that's not going to stop me from buying more.
smoldix42069
That's cool! Is that from the franchise as mech commander?
parabolic000
Yep. Last year was it's 40th birthday.
smoldix42069
Nice, I loved mech commander so much when I was young.
SirHonytawk
Nerds are good with math, they know how to balance budgets. And usually have pretty big incomes.
You are thinking about geeks. The non-professional nerds.
OdinYggd
I can't afford drugs. I have model trains.
smoldix42069
I've bought my nephew a model train set and I feel like that's a lie lmao
OdinYggd
Is he building a room spanning layout table with it yet? Give him a push to make sure.
smoldix42069
Not yet
shadolance
For me it's game development. The amount of money I've put into art and audio assets, hiring level designers, and editors for my writing... eye watering.
Xenarion
That's going in geek territory, which has a lot of overlap with nerds but isn't the same.
smoldix42069
Ibhavr never learned the distinction between the two
Xenarion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tvy_Pbe5NA
Umbravtwopointo
"Mine is currently". I feel this. About every 6 to 8 weeks i hyper focus on a new nerd hobby. Sometimes it's new. Most of the time im returning.
smoldix42069
Stay thirsty ya know
billstranger
Stay way away from Games Workshop unless you've got 2 extra houses you can sell
blcollier
But… they have a LotR game, Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game… and… and… IT’S LOTR, FER CRYIN’ OUT LOUD, BUT MINIS… and… I want… 😭
I fear I have already taken my first steps on this dark path. My brother’s been into 40K and Age of Sigmar for a decade, and I’ve resisted for such a long time… But LotR… and… we wants it, precious, it’s ours, it is!
smoldix42069
What are those?
ToastedEggSandwich
They've typically got 4 walls, a roof, and a number of rooms inside.
billstranger
Warhammer, and Warhammer 40k. Miniatures. Miniatures the price of Maxiatures.
Multipew
The little green pieces in monopoly
KinetoPlay
X is so cool though! It sucks how slow Hasbro is releasing the X products. Japan is already on the third major line and the US barely has the beginning of the second. I wanna order the CX Dran Brave, but I haven't even gotten Dran Buster yet.
smoldix42069
I have the limited edition dran buster! I got it from the dran deck set, I like it so far. Go for it my dude, I like the perseus one.
KinetoPlay
I actually received a dran buster, wizard rod, and cobalt dragoon about two hours after posting that comment.
I really like dran buster, it just looks and feels so cool.
smoldix42069
It sure is! My problem with it is obviously stamina and the parts you need for it to be good, unfortunately I don't have them.
KinetoPlay
It's definitely a one hit wonder though, get solid contact with the blade and it wrecks things. It hit wizard rod so hard that it burst and the blade flew out of the stadium and off the table.
caledric
I own every D&D book ever released. I even bought the most recent ones and I don't even play D&D anymore. I theory craft the living hell out of characters though.
KinetoPlay
But do you have the books they released as Magic the Gathering cards?
caledric
Yes
KinetoPlay
Rad.
parabolic000
I collect old AD&D books and read them for fun. Absolutely love when shit was weird and nothing was standardized.
smoldix42069
That's still cool! I've always wanted to try d&d but I am too busy atm
mrmartini
And there goes my credit score
smoldix42069
What's your poison my dude?
mrmartini
This sums it up pretty good: /gallery/im-actually-going-to-participate-one-of-these-things-bPAGDoL
smoldix42069
Dang aren't you talented!
Rainbowdaesh
Modular synthesizers here.
But also, that financial sinkhole of a hobby needs to be nerdy as hell. Dumping money into pickup artist scams or the latest "tech gadgets" is not a nerdy pursuit.
Hammertulski
Two words: Zorlon Cannon. Pairing that kind of random genius with a semi-modular like the Matriarch is just too much fun.
Rainbowdaesh
Pay close attention to the mk1 Tyme Sefari with the feedback mod.

Hammertulski
Holy shit, is that yours? And you already have a Cannon? This may be the greatest thing I’ve seen on Imgur, all time.
Rainbowdaesh
Yes it's.
Not pictured: Metasonix S2000 and D2000 in a 19" rack to the side.
smoldix42069
Agreed.
parabolic000
You seen Venetian Snares' Traditional Synthesizer Music videos? I have no clue what's going on but it's neat as hell. here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbLt0S0W5jE
InTangier
Oof, you got a particularly expensive hobby. Really cool, though.
onlyhalfghost
I am sitting in front of fifteen computer monitors on this desk.
smoldix42069
Get more
onlyhalfghost
I've got two I'm fixing right now and didn't count the ones at the other desk I have to move my chair to use.
Doismellbacon
That's a lot of monitors
onlyhalfghost
it's across four computers. Two clusters of six, an AIO on a pedestal with another monitor, and a laptop. Shit looks like a cyberpunk hacker cave, especially because I have no fucking cable management
parabolic000
I think I found a picture of you.
Doismellbacon
TIL an AIO means all in one