webshit weekly
An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the third week of April, 2017.
Disclaimer
Nobody mentioned Rust this week. FEMA advises all internet forums to remain calm and seek shelter if municipal typecheckers fail.
Golang SSH Security
April 15, 2017
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An internet notices that a library bypasses security measures, then notifies a company and the library's vendor. The company explicitly states they do not give a shit about security measures because they are hard and everything will probably be fine. The vendors of the library, Google, respond by instructing the reporter to bypass other security measures*. Both organizations defend their bullshit on Hackernews. Hackernews accepts the bullshit.
How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)
April 16, 2017
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An internet writes sixteen thousand words without meaningfully expanding on the headline. Hackernews believes that mediocrity is preferable. In addition, all of the problems their kids have, as well as all of the problems they had when they were kids, are your fault. Some Hackernews debate whether it's even worth the effort of being good at something, since AI and robots will take all the jobs next week.
Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US
April 17, 2017
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A rich guy makes a webshit about money. Hackernews lists similar webshits about money, then launches into the usual posting-flood of misunderstanding tax law, governance-from-first-principles, and bad economic theory.
USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
April 18, 2017
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This is the webshit from the previous day's rich guy, because Hackernews wasn't done misunderstanding everything. Now that they've got some hard data to ignore, they have another shitfest of lies, confusion, and using the word "generally" to mean "in the cases I have noticed." One Hackernews wonders what the big deal is with the Constitution. Someone shows up to compare it to software.
Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser
April 19, 2017
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Google, an advertising agency, sets about blocking content from competing advertising agencies. Some Hackernews think that maybe Google's motives are a little selfish here, but by and large Hackernews is incapable of thinking negative thoughts about Google. Other Hackernews suggest using software that Google didn't make, such as software that Apple made. The end result: everyone agrees it's going to be great.
Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]
April 20, 2017
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A Hackernews posts a link to a scanned copy of a math book. Hackernews compiles the usual list of not-particularly-relevant "see also" URLs. One Hackernews points out that there's a very nicely prepared copy of the book available, both in source code and typeset forms, but that is derided. The scanned copy of course has brighter highs and a better soundstage in the mids, without confusing or dry bass timbres or ruining the pace, rhythm, and timing of the original master. The rest of the comments are people demanding to know why nobody showed them this specific book before someone showed them this specific book, and ignoring any answers to such a stupid question.
What Happens When You Send a Zero-Day to a Bank?
April 21, 2017
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An internet posts about bank security to a blog. Hackernews demands an ombudsman to handle computer security problem reports, suggests several organizations that exist for exactly this purpose, and determines that they're all doing it wrong. Several Hackernews come forward to report they entrust similarly incompetent banks with their money, but everyone is too cowardly to name any. The rest of the comments are people speculating about contract law.
* - Imagine that. Vendor-related problems with Go. For a change, this one couldn't have been trivially solved with plain old package management.