webshit weekly
An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the first week of October, 2018.
More than 9M broken links on Wikipedia are now rescued
October 01, 2018
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Some librarians come to the aid of hundreds of thousands of disinterested middle-school essays. Hackernews takes the mention of the Internet Archive as an opportunity to gaze into a parallel universe where people use computers in a sustainable manner to accomplish specific goals. None of them expect to live in that world, but the knowledge of its existence provides a dim flicker of optimism in the ridiculous hateful hell planet that Hackernews builds for us professionally.
Coders Automating Their Own Job
October 02, 2018
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A journalist discovers that a relatively small number of people have figured out how to use tools to do more work. Because the tools are computers, most of those people have been fired. Hackernews set out to explore the labor theory of value, but gets sidetracked arguing whether "Hacker" "News" comments are objective inquests into the nature of humanity or just a pack of assholes arguing on the internet. The next series of comments bemoan how all the bosses are mean, and all that remains is reflection on how much smarter programmers are than everyone else.
Do You Really Know CORS?
October 03, 2018
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A webshit swims into a specific corner of the cesspit of trash technology engendered by the webshit industry. Hackernews knows exactly what to do with a technical article about webshit: start a pissing match about who is the most committed to this particular abusive relationship. Some Hackernews realize what an irretrievable train wreck the web has become, but without exception they believe the solution is to tear it down and replace it ... with the exact same ass festival, only written by Hackernews.
The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple
October 04, 2018
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Some journalists declare that China is ratfucking Amazon. Hackernews absolutely refuses to believe this for several reasons, among which are "nobody told me," "Amazon pinky-swears that AWS is fine," and "this would be bad so it couldn't have happened." The prevailing opinion is that Apple and Amazon would not have issued denials if they were working with the US government, because they would be punished for lying... by the US government. The rest of the comments are a painful pageant of Hackernews pretending to understand motherboard electronics just slightly more than they actually do.
Making sense of the alleged Supermicro motherboard attack
October 05, 2018
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An academic confirms that yesterday's description of the alleged ratfucking is indeed feasible. Hackernews is so concerned about this news that they can barely muster the effort to "yes, and" the article. Furious nailbiting occurs when some Hackernews realize that none of the corporate denials actually deny the events described in the original article. A collective sigh of relief can be heard as they finally realize the proper response: whataboutism.
Microsoft open sources parts of Minecraft: Java Edition
October 06, 2018
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Microsoft takes out the trash. Hackernews is still salty that the original maker of a video game didn't give them the source code, selling them up the river for a mere billion dollars. The rest of the comments are Hackernews excitedly digging through the garbage.
Mixnode: Turn the web into a database
October 07, 2018
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Some webshits, using only a web scraper and uniform resource locators, invent a replacement for web scrapers and uniform resource locators. Hackernews grapples with the idea of a piece of software capable of searching the world wide web. What good is it? What might it be used for? What's the business model? Confused and sullen, Hackernews moves on to the next webshit trinket.