webshit weekly

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the second week of April, 2017.

Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons
April 08, 2017 (comments)
Some internets upload software to github. Hackernews links to a celebrity's tweet about it, which is just as well since nobody on Hackernews is qualified to analyze the software. Instead, they attempt to reverse-engineer the meaningless blog post that accompanied the software. They're not qualified to do that, either.

Semantic UI
April 09, 2017 (comments)
Someone wrote a metric fuckload of javascript to create a fragile, overengineered framework that uses other fragile, overengineered frameworks to build massive fragile, overengineered CSS files. "Semantic" is a Latin word that means "wrap every word of content in its own div tags." Hackernews whines that this particular abuse of CSS classes isn't in line with their preferred pattern of abuse. Most of the comments are bug reports, all of which are blamed on the users.

Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards
April 10, 2017 (comments)
Climate scientists continue to panic. Hackernews vomits forth hundreds of thousands of kilobytes of useless, uninformed bickering. Nothing of value is posted, but the shit proceeds to flow until every last URL is mined from the references sections of all relevant Wikipedia articles.

Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)
April 11, 2017 (comments)
An internet notices that programs built on single-purpose browser instances are criminally wasteful of resources. Hackernews declares that nobody ever listened to music or talked to other people before the advent of browser-based programs. The insistence on driving in every conceivable nail with the same javascript hammer is defended on the basis that programmers' time is more valuable than literally everything else on earth, pending the next "Ask HN: How to beg for work" thread. The Rust Evangelism Strike Force attempts to promote Rust by likening it to Java.

Chrome 59 has cross-platform headless support
April 12, 2017 (comments)
Google updates their browser to optionally eliminate the pesky "user" part of the browsing experience. Hackernews kindles a pyre for the ten thousand half-assed github projects they've been using for this purpose, eager to give Google as much control over their businesses as possible.

How We Built r/Place
April 13, 2017 (comments)
Some webshits jerk off over the cleverness of their multiplayer painting program. Hackernews debates whether this tremendous waste of effort warrants an erection.

A Competitive Programmer's Handbook
April 14, 2017 (comments)
Someone writes an "intro to algorithms" textbook aimed at undergraduates. Hackernews is excited to see another huge list of shit they can memorize for their next opportunity to perform like trained monkeys during the degrading hiring rituals they all profess to hate. A few Hackernews begin to suspect they are being paid far less than their cohorts. Most decide to argue about the definition of "competition," despite the article's explicit explanation of the intended meaning.