webshit weekly

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the last week of May, 2018.

Winds 2.0: It’s Time to Revive RSS
May 22, 2018 (comments)
Some webshits decide it's time to bring back syndication on the web. The tools they select to accomplish this? Every last goddamn one of them, resulting in a single-purpose web browser that inexplicably relies on a dozen random webshit services, all to store small amounts of text and fetch audio files from predefined locations. The webshittery on display is so egregious that even Hackernews is embarrassed for them, but the International Brotherhood of Computer Magicians shows up to remind everyone that only a full-time professional computer toucher is capable of mastering complicated tools like feed readers. When Hackernews gets done assuring each other that non-Hackernews are incapable of using any technology that is not animated with primary colors, they remember that RSS doesn't support javascript and as such must immediately be reinvented.

Bitcoin Gold Hit by Double Spend Attack, Exchanges Lose Millions
May 23, 2018 (comments)
Bitcoin Idiots, LLC announces that once again they have lost the world's biggest game of Numberwang. Hackernews, positively gravid with carefully-Googled economic theory, sagely discusses the complex fiduciary failures of a fake monetary system invented by C++ programmers. Other Hackernews reject this reasoning, debating instead whether the real measure of success for this technology is whether or not it is as successful as AirBNB. At the time of this writing, the entire 'currency' in question can be completely fucked-out for approximately the cost of a small single-family home in Oakland.

Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact
May 24, 2018 (comments)
A consumer is startled to learn that the domesticated wiretaps voluntarily installed in homes are not only surveilling the users, but also dropping dimes on them effectively at random. Amazon takes privacy very seriously -- unless you prefer some other emotion, in which case they'll take your privacy however they can get it. Hackernews is completely unsurprised by this turn of events, given that they either live with, went to a coding boot camp with, or in fact are the party responsible for writing whatever garbage software is running on these piles of shit.

GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers
May 25, 2018 (comments)
Some webshits narrate the process of paying other webshits to keep the euro trash off of your cyber lawn. Hackernews can't decide if the new European privacy law is a noble attempt to defend the masses or a nuclear weapon pointed directly at their shitty video chat startups. Hackernews is livid that someone passed a law they can't just pay someone else for the privilege of ignoring, but are grateful for the opportunity to spend their lunch breaks writing fanfiction about what their court cases will look like when they try to Uber their way out of complying.

The Importance of Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill
May 26, 2018 (comments)
An Internet decides to instruct the world on how to learn. A Hackernews shark attack ensues, as several commenters dare to agree with anything in the article. There are no survivors.

Python’s For - Else
May 27, 2018 (comments)
An Internet posts some poorly-formatted Python tutorials as an excuse to beg for work. Hackernews is entranced that a keyword in a programming language might have behavior specific to that language. Fifty thousand comments are posted whining that the keyword should be a different keyword, with the only exceptions coming from Hackernews who actually use the programming language. The consensus is that any language feature which Hackernews did not learn about in two hours of Coursera video lectures should be expunged from the planet.

I put all my personal data on eBay
May 28, 2018 (comments)
A webshit spams eBay. Hackernews tries to figure out how to replace this idea with Dunning-Krugerrand.

AI winter is well on its way
May 29, 2018 (comments)
An academic declares the current approach to artificial intelligence, shotgun statistics, is devoid of value, except for the kind that this particular academic cares about, maybe. Hackernews thinks that most of the problem involves forgetting to aim the shotgun. After the usual corporate namedropping session and pithy quotation-pasting exercises, Hackernews decides the whole thing is a marketing issue and wanders off.

Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US
May 30, 2018 (comments)
Amazon declares that Reddit has more Internet Points than Facebook. Rounding out the top twenty are several extremely popular sites, such as microsoftonline.com and t.co. Hackernews loves Reddit, as it constitutes a much better DIY echo chamber construction kit than Facebook, caters more directly to their pornography tastes than Tumblr, and allows them to create a new account when they are no longer able to face their own comment histories in the cold light of day.

Gnome has moved to GitLab
May 31, 2018 (comments)
The least interesting possible event has occurred. Hackernews is mad about most of their bug reports being ignored, mad that GNOME isn't written in their preferred strain of javascript, and mad that they didn't move to Github. The article does not mention whether GNOME is paying for the Enterprise Edition of the software.