webshit weekly

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the last week of September, 2019.

Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found
September 22, 2019 (comments)
Some webshit pollsters decide that 18% of men are friendless. There might be more information, but News Corp failed to make a case for getting money in return for finding out what the Times thinks about webshit pollsters. Hackernews recounts their efforts to find and foster friendship, all of which centers around internet comments. Later in this series of internet comments, some Hackernews accuse others of being deviated mutants. The largest comment thread centers around the difficulty of getting people to keep liking you as you age into adulthood but continue participating in "Hacker" "News".

Serverless: slower and more expensive
September 23, 2019 (comments)
A webshit finds some more expensive hosting. Hackernews helpfully explains that the proper way to use this kind of hosting is to throw all your shit in the trash and rewrite it to work only with this specific hosting provider. Some Hackernews suspect this is not the best possible path forward, but other Hackernews assure them that it works really well for organizations who have realized computers are hard and it's much simpler to base your entire business on blind faith in an internet-based bookstore department store freelance surveillance contractor.

Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911
September 24, 2019 (comments)
An elderly person falls off a bicycle and is rescued by jewelry. This is regarded as noteworthy, even though my butler would have worked just as well for the purpose. Hackernews tries to figure out if this is just a cynical viral marketing piece from the jewelry manufacturer, a notoriously slow-selling and impoverished business known for its inability to move product. Hackernews bickers over whether failure to acquire this specific jewelry constitutes rank negligence, then bickers over which brand of jewelry is the most responsible purchase. Poor people are, of course, welcome to just die in an alley somewhere for free.

WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
September 25, 2019 (comments)
An Internet takes a close look at a ridiculous startup (business model: "Uber for desks"). Hackernews, analyzing the analysis, consistently fails to read even one sentence past a bit that makes them mad enough to post internet comments. In particular, the author dares to compare a shitty amoral turf-building exercise with Amazon, which is an unassailably ethical and sound business which does not in any way exploit a single human being.

What do executives do, anyway?
September 26, 2019 (comments)
An internet finds out how leadership works. Hackernews knows better, and loudly proclaims the correct answers. We are treated to a lesson in effectiveness from a Y Combinator veteran founder/CEO whose publicly-traded company has never turned a profit. The rest of the comments are Hackernews naming corporate executives and then armchair quarterbacking the companies for which the executives work. No technology is discussed.

Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study
September 27, 2019 (comments)
Some scientists find some trash in some water. Hackernews tries to ascertain whether this is a reasonable possibility, relying on important scientific resources like some hiking webshit comments about cooking in beer cans, Thai street vendors, and television magicians. The rest of the comments are from Hackernews making assumptions about the study in the article, arguing with those assumptions, and never checking any of them.

Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows
September 28, 2019 (comments)
Some idiots on Reddit confuse each other about bad software. Hackernews angrily insists that the mentioned feature is not gone, it's just hidden behind a different, unrelated feature, with no indication that's where it went. Some discussion arises as to whether this is still a dick move, but Hackernews is hesitant to criticize the software decisions of a company that makes their text editor and issue tracker. The customer service decisions are a separate matter, and after several hundred comments whining about Xbox support, we're finally left with the few brave souls who remember the last six thousand times Microsoft actively abused its customers, and wonder if maybe nothing's really changed in Redmond.

Starship Prototype Unveiled
September 29, 2019 (comments)
Elon Musk teaches a remedial course designed to remind journalists how correctly to worship Elon Musk. The author of this article failed the course, because we're reminded of the fact that Musk's company is parading around intent to take randos to the moon while completely failing to deliver on government contracts to take actual astronauts into space at all. Hackernews, however, passed the course with flying colors, turgidly murmuring the engine specifications while scrambling to disregard the efforts of hundreds of real engineers and ascribe their work to some idiot who likes to argue with strangers on Twitter.

In Defense of Richard Stallman
September 30, 2019 (comments)
Some webshit is angry about an elderly moron being held accountable. The argument goes that we should tolerate decades of pedo apologism, creepy behavior, and general asshattery because the author agrees with some legal opinions of the creep in question. It is this moron's right, so the argument goes, to act and think like a shithead, because otherwise we might not have got a specific legal document, which a subset of computer nerds finds valuable. Hackernews takes this weak-ass argument and with it builds a springboard from which to dive into an open cesspit, finally freed of the requirement that they act like human beings even for a moment. None of the comments presented in this thread are new, and none of them are interesting. It's just several hundred adult human beings, furious that someone might be judged on the content of their character, instead of the topic they told you to consider.