webshit weekly

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

Disclaimer
Nobody mentioned Rust this week. A search team has been sent out on the assumption that the Rust Evangelism Strikeforce has been kidnapped.

The Benjamin Franklin Method: How to Be a Better Writer
November 01, 2016 (comments)
Hackernews looks to the Founding Fathers for understanding on how better to present their TedX talks. Several software packages are proposed as substitutes for talent.

The Mirai Botnet Is Proof the Security Industry Is Broken
November 02, 2016 (comments)
An internet is angry about default passwords. Hackernews demands that someone be held accountable for shitty deployment practices, as long as it's not them. The term 'security industry' is never defined, but is regarded as failed, successful, irrelevant, crucial, and above all, ready for disruption.

What is Blockchain Technology? A Step-by-Step Guide For Beginners
November 03, 2016 (comments)
Blockchain Idiots, LLC posts an unattributed blog about blockchain idiocy. Various men in suits are quoted, all claiming that this is something people should take very seriously. An itemized list is presented which explains how blockchain shit can perform every single task you may ever want in all aspects of your life. Hackernews is confident that this has not yet happened because nobody is as smart as Hackernews. Various people promise to sign up for each other's ponzi schemes.

Browsers, not apps, are the future of mobile
November 04, 2016 (comments)
An internet decides that we should shitcan every single program except web browsers. Nobody seems to notice this has already happened. Hackernews realizes that this is probably a shitty plan on a resource-constrained mobile device, but decides the best compromise is to compile real programs to Web Assembly and run them in browsers.

Serverless Map/Reduce
November 05, 2016 (comments)
Clarification: "serverless" here means "on someone else's servers" and "map/reduce" is still code for "I don't understand data structures." Some bragging occurs because someone managed to use more computers than ever before to achieve the performance of half an HPC rack. The author can't tell the difference between Rmax and Rpeak and is impressed by 60GB/s throughput. Hackernews is amazed at how much easier computers are when you pay someone else to do all the hard parts.

Why I won't recommend Signal anymore
November 06, 2016 (comments)
An internet points out that choosing an encrypted messaging platform is hard because they all suck in a variety of ways. Hackernews spends a couple of days talking past each other about why their selection criteria are better than everyone else's selection criteria. Everyone agrees the primary problem with all messaging platforms is that they are not built into iOS by default and the world's grammar schools fail to indoctrinate children into their use.

Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being
November 07, 2016 (comments)
A leisure studies major vomits a couple thousand words of dime-store evolutionary psychology. Hackernews seizes on the opportunity to delude themselves into believing that their crippling anxiety and ever-increasing depression are what makes them better than you.