webshit weekly
An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the second week of February, 2020.
My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file
February 08, 2020
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An academic takes notes in a single text file. And a calendar server. And an email server. Hackernews also uses text files, email servers, and calendars, but they use them better, and they're here to recommend expensive books from several online vendors who offer free shipping. The entire remainder of the comment thread is people suggesting taking notes in a notebook, but are shouted down by the ancient refrain: it's not searchable! Only a computer can organize text.
Linux 5.6 is the most exciting kernel in years
February 09, 2020
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An Internet is extremely enthusiastic about computer hardware drivers for a living. Hackernews is far more excited that they can now run their computers with a networked filesystem provided by the only company they trust with the task: Microsoft. Another pack of Hackernews are pleased that there is coming support for kernel performance improvements they don't understand and cannot use.
Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu
February 10, 2020
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Microsoft continues the war against its most entrenched and dangerous threat: a struggling webshit vendor who is hemorrhaging money. Hackernews recalls the isolated incidents when Microsoft engaged in unethical business practices hostile to community developed software. Other Hackernews indicate the infrequent nature of this continual and unending series of miscommunications, overreaches, and/or accidental attacks points to a failure of leadership, as a competent executive team would have reached total monopoly by climbing a staircase made of the corpses of copyright cultists.
How the CIA used Crypto AG encryption devices to spy on countries for decades
February 11, 2020
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The Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, recounts the story of a digital communications company with close ties to the American government that turned out to be a conduit for the world's secrets directly into United States intelligence agencies. Hackernews suspects that the events of this story are not the only instance of the United States government engaging in such fuckery, but can't seem to decide if that's the worst possible problem there could be or else probably for the best. In the end, Hackernews decides the right action to take is to double-check their AmazonSmile charity is not set to the 'Intelligence and National Security Foundation'.
Gears
February 12, 2020
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A webshit makes javascript about math. Hackernews likes the pretty pictures, but thinks they'd be better if Hackernews made them, or if they were made by Hackernews' favorite almost-identical gear-oriented webshit, or if we could print animated books. Other Hackernews just want to point out how important math is to people who need to use math.
I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit
February 13, 2020
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An Internet tries to invent digital Methadone. Hackernews recommends the same procedures for disciplining teenagers over the internet. Half of the comments are about which Python script Hackernews uses to pirate Youtube videos. The other half are struggling with the ontology of gratification. On one hand, spake Hackernews, it cannot be wise to gratify oneself instantly and frequently. On the other hand, quoth Hackernews, it's fine to jerk off constantly until you chafe your genitals to stone and die of dehydration, as long as you can quote economics textbooks to people who are only present to wait for their turn to quote their favorite folksy street philosopher.
18-year-old personal website, built with Frontpage and still updated
February 14, 2020
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A webshit encrypts their website with some kind of vowel-laden kitchen Latin. Hackernews somberly admonishes us to learn the important lesson of the long-lived website: for your message to survive unto future generations, it must be graven upon naked stone, using Microsoft software. After an interminably tedious discussion about which subset of modern webshit will survive into antiquity (defined here as five or more years from now), one Hackernews applauds the site for scoring 100 on Google's PageSpeed analyzer. Literally nobody complains that the site is linked via unencrypted HTTP. Nobody points out the site is not available over HTTPS at all. Nobody even mentions subjecting themselves to Let's Encrypt. Seems like those are all only absolute necessities when the author is peddling webshit.