webshit weekly
An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the second week of September, 2017.
Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
September 08, 2017
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The lawyers have the statisticians surrounded. Hackernews steps up to the podium to lecture about the reasons a society might choose to implement a justice system. The depths of Wikipedia are plumbed so that Hackernews may sound informed about mass tort law. In keeping with Hackernews tradition, someone suggests writing an app, someone compares everything to Facebook, and someone expresses sympathy for the noble webshits whose fault this definitely isn't.
Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
September 09, 2017
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Boilerplate advice is posted to a blog by a bronze medalist in the Hackernews Echo Chamber Olympics. The commenters trample each other in the stampede to the altar, in hopes their adulation will be noted by the sages. The author of the article insists not to be a lawyer. It's for the best.
Equifax Lobbied to Kill Rule Protecting Victims of Data Breaches
September 10, 2017
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Some assholes gave money to politicians. Hackernews is outraged, and sets about planning to replace the entire financial and political sectors of American society with blockchains. Google, Facebook, and Amazon each spent on lobbying, in a single year, more than ten times as much as these assholes did over a span of five years. Hackernews did not notice. The topic is not investigated.
Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch
September 11, 2017
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A webshit doesn't like getting popup notifications from a website. Great care is taken to detail the many ways in which this webshit feels harassed. A conclusion is reached: the webshit will continue to use the website, and will make excuses for it. Hackernews decides "I deleted my Facebook account" is the "I don't own a television" of the 2010s, and the same three comments recur as usual: "I deleted Facebook and now I am Kahlil Gibran ," "I cannot stop using Facebook or else I will be struck dead by a physical God," and "I use Facebook but have been working hard to move my personal information to another surveillance platform instead."
iPhone X
September 12, 2017
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Apple releases their implementation of the Nokia N9. The primary new feature involves mass collection of incredibly accurate biometric information, which they're pretty sure will be fine. Hackernews unleashes a litany of complaints about Apple hardware, software, and business practices, culminating in a widespread agreement that life is completely unlivable without Apple. Some Hackernews spend several hours complaining that logging into iPhones is too hard, too easy, and just right. The bottom third of the comment page is a mass grave of Suppressive Persons who did not exude sufficient enthusiasm for a cellphone.
Sublime Text 3.0
September 13, 2017
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An internet shits out a text editor, resulting in an internet thread about text editors that is completely indistinguishable from the previous sixteen million internet threads about text editors. The Hackernews twist: there are still apparently people on earth stupid enough to pay money for a text editor.
Face ID, Touch ID, No ID, PINs and Pragmatic Security
September 14, 2017
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An internet spends just under four thousand words rambling about logging into cellphones. The only interesting part is complaining about how security introduces complications, then praising a feature that allows users to manually increase complications. Hackernews reconstructs US border protection law from first principles. Then they reconstruct Apple security practice from first principles. Then they reconstruct Dropbox security practice from first principles. There are more comments about security practice on this thread about a blog post than there were on the thread about some webshits losing the personal information of basically everyone in America.