webshit leaply
An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the first week of March, 2020.
Draft of the Fast.ai Book
March 00, 2020
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Some idiots do not understand how the GPL works. The Hackernews commenting about the linked book are struggling with it as well. Most of the rest of the comments are either uncritical gratitude or arguments about whether the authors deserve to be famous or already are.
NymphCast: Casual attempt at open alternative to Chromecast
March 01, 2020
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Blogger is inexplicably still online. Hackernews argues about whether Chromecast is the most important technology ever introduced to humanity, or whether it is ineligible for that accolade because Apple didn't create it. Dozens of Hackernews bicker with one another over the precise analogy that should be used to explain Chromecast to moronic non-Hackernews, complain that this knockoff implementation isn't worth pursuing because it can't ever be flawless, or whine to the author about the name of the software.
Firefox is showing the way back to a world that’s private by default
March 02, 2020
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The Verge[who?] praises Mozilla's bold privacy-defending action: shipping all your DNS queries to a private corporation without asking you first. Hackernews, as is customary regarding any article about Mozilla, bemoans the fact that Google's search product ain't what it used to be, while all its competitors are getting better -- but not better enough. Yes, you can use DuckDuckGo, but it's not Google, but you can use Google with it, still. Additionally, you can use Firefox, but it's not Chrome, but you can spoof your user agent string to look like Chrome, still. Since the idea that users don't change their behavior because nobody actually gives a shit is antithetical to webshit self-importance, lots of excuses are made about user experience, Overton windows, and Apple's software policies.
SETI@home shuts down after 21 years
March 03, 2020
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SETI ceases to be @home. Since there's no information of use presented, Hackernews descends into nostalgia, argues about Bitcoin mining, or lectures one another on the uselessness of communicating with aliens when we can just wait a thousand years and go find some.
Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees
March 04, 2020
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France deals a critical blow to Uber (business model: "Uber for cars") by cruelly and oppressively holding it to the same standards as other companies. Hackernews can't differentiate between employment, contracting, indentured servitude, or rank slavery, and so must invent each concept from first principles. The resulting discussion does not arrive at any conclusion, but comprises half of the comments on the article. The next discussion sees Hackernews around the world discover (to much surprise) that different governments have different laws, and so taxis are not operated according to identical rules everywhere on earth.
Using Anki to remember what you read
March 05, 2020
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A webshit uses webshit to remember things. Hackernews complains about the faddish obsession with various note-taking regimens, then settles in to obsess about current fads in note-taking regimens. Later, the discussion turns to the central question: is knowing things even worth it?
DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use
March 06, 2020
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A webshit tries to search the web without using Google. It kind of works, so we get a large blog post about it. Hackernews has the same conversation it always has: you can use DuckDuckGo, but it's not Google, but you can use Google with it. The only new twist is that British Hackernews are angry that DuckDuckGo does not seem to give a shit about Britain.
I have seen things
March 07, 2020
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An academic writes a blog post about something. I'm not entirely sure what the point is, and the text is insufficiently interesting to motivate further investigation. Apparently there are old Hackernews, and they all show up to report that they are still capable of learning things, as long as those things are programming languages. Another Hackernews would like teenagers to hold regular seminars so that out-of-touch weirdos like Hackernews can understand new memes. The rest of the comments are from Hackernews assuring us they saw things before we did, and then succumbing to nostalgia about those things.