webshit weekly
An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the second week of March, 2017.
How the Instant Pot cooker developed a cult following
March 08, 2017
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Someone associated with Blackberry finally makes a popular product. Rather than focusing on the actual point of the article, Hackernews slobbers about pressure cookers for two days, demonstrating that if you point something out to a webshit, they'll just look at your finger.
The Rusty Web: Targeting the Web with Rust
March 09, 2017
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The Rust Evangelism Strikeforce tries to convince web programmers to care about their cult. They mask their shame by pretending Rust is being compiled to a special web assembly language (it's actually just being translated to javascript, like everything else on earth). Hackernews is excited about the opportunity to find out if the type of a blown stack is 'null' or 'undefined,' but nobody can get the program to run.
Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016
March 10, 2017
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AirBnB, whose business model is "Uber for toilets," claims it's finally making money, a claim backed up by the fact that it just borrowed another billion dollars. Half of the comments are from people slowly realizing why consumer protection laws exist. The other half are from people trying to figure out what AirBnB is hiding from by not taking the company public.
Show HN: Sleeping Beauty, a 7-day roguelike game
March 11, 2017
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Some dickhead made a roguelike with a javascript implementation of a VT220. The nerdfest that ensues in response is identical to every other roguelike release. The Hackernews twist: dozens of commenters fantasizing about making their own roguelike in various idiotic programming languages.
A little-known iPhone feature that lets blind people see with their fingers
March 12, 2017
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SPOILER ALERT: it's a screen reader. The author seems surprised it has features catering to visually-impaired people. Yahoo considers this a finance story. Hackernews is full of people who see perfectly fine but are better-informed than visually-impaired people. One idiot whines about Apple products being closed source, but has no intention of rectifying the functionality gap. Nobody makes the "in the land of the blind the one iPhone is king" joke.
How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013)
March 13, 2017
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SPOILER ALERT: lobbying. Hackernews International beats off about not being American. Hackernews US either makes too much money to give a shit or else believes that politicians are evil masterminds from whom there is no escape. Or both.
Simple example of machine learning in TensorFlow
March 14, 2017
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A grad student posts a TensorFlow hello world program for approximately the fifth time. Hackernews has the attention span of a methed-out ferret, so this gets upvoted to the front page again. Sample quote: "This has been done before, though by who eludes me. I've seen it here on HN a few years ago." The Hackernews who posted the link -- the same person who wrote the code -- contributes nothing further to the discussion.