webshit weekly

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the third week of February, 2017.

Inferring Your Mobile Phone Password via WiFi Signals
February 15, 2017 (comments)
Some nerds port Van Eck phreaking to wifi. Hackernews is amazed that RF attacks still work, provided your smartphone unlock process is retarded. (Unless you use Blackberry OS 10's picture/number unlock, your smartphone unlock process is retarded.) The attack requires complete control of the wifi access point, and people who connect to random-ass networks deserve what they get.

40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus
February 16, 2017 (comments)
A blogspammer posts an amazing finding: immigrants hang out with other immigrants. Hackernews is frantic to post about how uninterested they are in stupid things like sports and music, and how that lack of interest hasn't stopped them from making friends with other hipsters.

Master C++ Programming with Open-Source Books
February 17, 2017 (comments)
An idiot recommends learning C++ by starting with Boost and a book about Qt that's over a decade out of date, among other terrible wastes of paper. Hackernews spends some time shitting on Stroustrup, then some more time shitting on K&R. Sample quote: "The best place to master c++ is StackOverflow." In accordance with Federal law, the Rust Evangelism Strikeforce stages a sortie, but meets resistance.

LLD is included in the upcoming LLVM 4.0 release
February 18, 2017 (comments)
The LLVM compiler suite finally gets around to having a linker. Hackernews experiences pants-wetting glee despite having no clear understanding of the matter at hand. The Rust Evangelism Strikeforce shows up to party. Half of the comments are people misunderstanding how linkers work.

Detection of radioactive iodine at trace levels in Europe in January 2017
February 19, 2017 (comments)
Someone noticed trace radiation in northern Europe, which is where Russia sinks all of its broken nuclear reactors. Hackernews is utterly terrified -- far more than the reporting agency -- and demands to know why ISRN did not personally reach out to the web programming community regarding this incident.

Dear Apple
February 20, 2017 (comments)
Some shithead whines to Apple. Apple does not care. Hackernews thinks it's weird that a company as rich as Apple doesn't care what Hackernews thinks, but they suspect it's better this way. Apple knows best.

How we built a back end system for Uber-like maps with animated cars
February 21, 2017 (comments)
An internet implements a phone toy so nerds have something to stare at while waiting for their jitney cabs. Hackernews sets about comparing a phone map to a first-person shooter. One Hackernews is pissed it can't track random non-taxi vehicles. The rest of the comments are just people throwing out GIS- and database-related product names to seem knowledgeable.