webshit weekly

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the last week of September, 2017.

Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js
September 22, 2017 (comments)
Facebook pretends to care about the legal opinions of people who want free shit. Facebook explains that they're not wrong, but they acknowledge that nobody thinks they're right. Hackernews is full of outraged teenagers decrying the entire patent system -- except for the ones who are patent attorneys. Half of the comments are people arguing about how angry Wordpress was, as though that matters at all.

It’s time to kill the web app
September 23, 2017 (comments)
An internet recapitulates every complaint ever voiced about webshit. Hackernews regards these objections as wholly incompatible with reality, but happily whiles away the afternoon recounting every browser plugin they have spent their lives chewing. Breathless defense of webshit comes in the form of someone describing the web as "universal" and "the perfect platform."

Scenic Tram Simulator
September 24, 2017 (comments)
A webshit ports a minimum-wage job to javascript. Hackernews pools resources to figure out how old of an Apple product can support this staggering compute load. The average answer is "two years or newer."

China Blocks WhatsApp
September 25, 2017 (comments)
China somehow continues to exist despite end-to-end encryption. A horde of economists all log in to Hackernews and explain to each other that blocking phone apps will destroy the Chinese economy, turn China into a reclusive technostate far in advance of the guailo, hurt iPhone sales, or start a war between China and Google. The Hackernews Surveillance Circumvention Society holds a meeting to swap workarounds that will serve them well when their Valley employers learn from China's example.

React 16
September 26, 2017 (comments)
Facebook cranks out some webshit. The phrase "5 minute real-world performance test" occurs in the comment section. Some Facebooks appear to castigate Hackernews for having opinions about software licensing. Hackernews resumes the endless licensing argument from a few days back, but with less information and more passion.

Gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger observed by LIGO and Virgo
September 27, 2017 (comments)
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory observes gravitational waves using laser interferometry. Hackernews spends most of its time admiring large numbers. The remainder of the time is spent discussing the concept that adding sensors can enhance sensing.

Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee
September 28, 2017 (comments)
An asshole shits a few hundred words of context-free drivel onto a blog. Because that blog happens to belong to the very people who inspire Hackernews to beg for money to pursue webshit, it gets more attention than it deserves. That mistake won't be repeated here.

It’s time to give Firefox another chance
September 29, 2017 (comments)
An internet blogs about a new version of a web browser that might be released eventually. The traditional markers of progress are still present: removing popular functionality, breaking the extensions that reimplement it, adding shitware and disabling its removal, and adding more databases. However, in an effort to modernize the project management, much progress has been made in the most important task: being Chrome. Hackernews is dutifully impressed by all of the wonderful progress Firefox has made, but won't use it because it's not Chrome.

VLC maintainer has refused “several tens of millions of Euro”
September 30, 2017 (comments)
Hackernews links to, and discusses, a comment on Reddit. You people are on your own with this garbage.