webshit weekly

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the last week of November, 2016.

Japan issues tsunami warning after magnitude 7.3 earthquake
November 22, 2016 (comments)
Japan fails to experience a catastrophe. Hackernews trades theories of national identity, posts trip reports of an earthquake, and argues about the weather. One Hackernews can't figure out why Japan failing to experience an earthquake has been posted to a Silicon Valley startup echo chamber. He is ostracized.

Enterprise Ready SaaS Feature Guides
November 23, 2016 (comments)
An Internet posts a list of shit that software should do. 'Enterprise' here means 'worth using at all'. Hackernews agrees that this is a good list. There is no discussion.

Freelance Isn't Free Act Passes in NYC
November 24, 2016 (comments)
New York City passes a law requiring freelance work to involve common business practices. It is not clear why specific idiots were doing it wrong before. Hackernews advocates dealing with nonpaying clients by vandalizing their property or (apparently retroactively) demanding cash up front.

Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine
November 25, 2016 (comments)
An Internet demonstrates that software is bad, and can be broken. The attack requires prepared hardware and unfettered physical access to the machines. The results of the attack are easily detectable. Hackernews is full of election experts, and one guy who thinks blockchains will fix everything.

Geocities Cage at the Exodus Datacenter
November 26, 2016 (comments)
Pictures of a defunct web host. Hackernews get sucked into the nostalgia pit.

Abusing Protocols to Load Local Files, Bypass the HTML5 Sandbox, Open Popups
November 27, 2016 (comments)
A random idiot is angry at some features of an operating system.

Learning to Read X86 Assembly Language
November 28, 2016 (comments)
An Internet writes the first chapter in a book about how computers work. Hackernews is overrun with assembly programmers. In accordance with federal law, someone asks how it works with Rust.

Android security in 2016 is a mess
November 29, 2016 (comments)
Someone is mad about android being a shitty operating system, poorly maintained and badly distributed by its incompetent producer. Hackernews explains that this is because doing things right is hard. The solutions provided range from "give Google money anyway" to "give Apple money instead."

What’s the Second Job of a Startup CEO?
November 30, 2016 (comments)
Some rich asshole shits out ten thousand words amounting to "CEOs lead companies." Hackernews thoughtfully ruminates on this enlightening revelation. After deep consideration of the rich asshole's momentous words, Hackernews concludes: CEOs do lead companies. This one must be a genius. What other secrets are set to reveal?