webshit weekly

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

Thank you to dang and sctb
November 22, 2018 (comments)
Y Combinator Dipshit in Chief Sam Altman remembers there's a forum long enough to give a pep talk to its herders. Hackernews, predictably, circles up to congratulate each other on the warmth and timbre of their echo chamber. Most of the comments are people fondly remembering their behavioral conditioning on a web forum, except for the people responding to (and angrily debating) censored posts.

Every 7.8μs your computer’s memory has a hiccup
November 23, 2018 (comments)
An Internet breathlessly reports a major discovery: it is possible to understand how computers work. This is primarily an excuse for those Hackernews who curate vintage computer hardware to talk about curating vintage computer hardware, while the rest paste excerpts from computer memory whitepapers in lieu of insight. Because this is a technology-related post, there are fewer than a hundred comments.

Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research
November 24, 2018 (comments)
An anonymous Internet wants to tell researchers what to do. Those Hackernews who live in academia cry out with a single voice that the current system must be destroyed, because it is hard and requires them to do things. Someone shows up to defend academic publishers, but all chances at discourse are drowned in the noise of people from different disciplines incorrectly assuming that all academic fields operate like the one in which they live.

Dive – A tool for exploring each layer in a Docker image
November 25, 2018 (comments)
An Internet makes a program to investigate a container image. Because the container software in question is Docker, Hackernews mashes the upvote button as hard as possible, but because the purpose here is understanding how the technology actually works, there are fewer than fifty comments.

Richard Stallman: We Can Do Better Than Bitcoin
November 25, 2018 (comments)
Some fuckwad interrogates a dimwit about ridiculous trash. Because none of the participants matter, their opinions are meaningless, and the topic is irrelevant to human society, Hackernews goes into an absolute frenzy of pompous lecturing. In accordance with tradition at Bitcoin Idiots, LLC, the entire field of economics is derived from first principles (again) and then furious partisan bickering dominates the threads, as Hackernews furiously incorrects one another on why money exists at all.

Backdoor in event-stream library dependency
November 26, 2018 (comments)
A webshit fucks up a lot of other webshits' day. Hackernews disagrees with the obviously correct conclusion that the webshit should be held responsible for making stupid decisions. The fact that such a wide swath of the internet seems to think people should exercise caution and judgment when collaborating profoundly disturbs Hackernews, causing them to enumerate every single time any programmer has ever made a mistake: a thousand-post session of whataboutism. This does more to ensconce computer progammers as a class of rudderless morons than N-Gate ever could.

We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly
November 27, 2018 (comments)
If you hold medium dot com up to your ear, you can hear the faint cries from the depths of the ad mines. Hackernews tries to reinvent labor unions in a way that would give the union members power over their employers without changing anything else at all. The other half of the comments are other Hackernews musing that Google should ignore the plebians and launch into China anyway. After all, who cares about human rights when there's just so God damn much money to be had?

NES.css: 8-bit style CSS framework
November 28, 2018 (comments)
A webshit likes video games. Hackernews musters enough energy to bikeshed some 1980s nostalgia whimsy on the basis of Section 508 compliance, but in the end this is a technological topic, so there are fewer than a hundred comments.

Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
November 29, 2018 (comments)
A Google job interview finally serves a purpose, albeit an evil one. Several Hackernews arrive in the comments to corroborate this pattern of shitty behavior, and the rest of Hackernews wrestles with the idea that the company they trust with basically every single piece of information they possess has a habit of using information against its originator. Some Hackernews sagely explain that being a revolting weasel is the only path to business success, other Hackernews (using Google search) try to figure out who the real villain is, and one very special Hackernews notices that Google even stole the 'stealing ideas from potential collaborators' idea... from Microsoft.

Marriott hack hits 500M Starwood guests
November 30, 2018 (comments)
A hotel chain left the light on for you. And also a lot of other things, for a lot of other people, for half a decade. Hackernews bikesheds the corporate damage-control protocols, then begins the philosophical inquisition: should programmers care about security? Even if it means they have to do more work? Even if it takes longer to make hotel reservation website satisfaction surveys? What price safety? Blockchain?