webshit weekly

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the last week of May, 2020.

MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?
May 22, 2020 (comments)
Apple programs their customers' computers to ask for Apple's permission before following customers' instructions. This fucks up a bunch of shit, so Hackernews whiles away the afternoon writing tools to verify the fuckery or screeds dictating terms under which it is permissible to put programs on your own computer. Later, some Hackernews express concern that their laptops are performing network traffic without being asked to, but it's never clear why this is bad from Apple but okay from every single web browser on the market.

Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down
May 23, 2020 (comments)
A webshit abandons a sandcastle when the tide comes in. Hackernews is frustrated with the arbitrary and impersonal havoc that Google wreaks among people who are dependent on Google, and issues their standard advice: switch to Fastmail and DuckDuckGo. Hackernews isn't going to make this switch, because of extremely tedious reasons, but they recommend that everyone else do so. Along the way we're treated to about six different economic theories explaining why the natural evolution of any market leads directly to browser extension vendors getting vigorously fucked by disinterested webshits.

How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users
May 24, 2020 (comments)
A parasite shits out about four thousand words of advice that boil down to "do something useful or burn venture capital for fuel." Hackernews is skeptical of the proffered advice, both because "doing something useful" isn't an inherently meaningful statement to webshits and "burn venture capital" is something they're having a really hard time doing right now. Most of the conversation lands squarely back in Hackernews' home turf: spamming people on the web and hoping some people are dumb enough to follow up.

I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something
May 25, 2020 (comments)
An Internet reminisces about writing two of the most important activities for Microsoft Windows: killing malfunctioning programs and avoiding work. The author recounts some hidden functionality present in the software. Hackernews is very sad that nobody is compiling such information, which they regard as "folklore," eschewing traditional labels for such information, like "documentation." The rest of the comments are whining that Microsoft painted the bikeshed a color Hackernews doesn't like.

AWS services explained in one line each
May 26, 2020 (comments)
A webshit tries to figure out what the fuck Amazon is selling. Hackernews votes for the article and bookmarks it in case anyone expects them to understand AWS products in the future. Another Hackernews has a similar (but less comprehensive) list of definitions, so the gang spends an afternoon bikeshedding it. Other Hackernews are insufficiently pleased with existing definitions, but don't have much else to say about it.

The Day AppGet Died
May 27, 2020 (comments)
An Internet abandons a sandcastle when the tide comes in. In a major business-process innovation, Microsoft executes all three phases of 'embrace, extend, extinguish' simultaneously. The author then shows up on "Hacker" "News" to complain about not having been awarded a participation trophy. Some Microsofts show up to nod sagely and recommend against pissing into the wind. Hackernews tries to determine the best process for a massive multibillion dollar company to assimilate some rando's code; the conclusion is "money."

Tools for Better Thinking
May 28, 2020 (comments)
A webshit illustrates some buzzwords. Hackernews declares that the best way to think is by typing things into a computer, which explains the infallibility, style, and grace of the author of Webshit Weekly. Hackernews then links to every other buzzword-illustration resource they've come across.

Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”
May 29, 2020 (comments)
The United States government escalates the now-literal war against its own users. Jack Dorsey briefly looks away from Stripe earnings reports to mute a troll post. Because there is nothing productive Hackernews could possibly have to say on the matter, there are almost fifteen hundred comments. Comments range from inventing Twitter's moderation platform from first principles, to debating whether Twitter is allowed to control its own servers or should be held in thrall of whatever asshole currently happens to shit in White House bathrooms, to why it's so damn hard to get people to stop saying dumb shit on the internet.

SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit
May 30, 2020 (comments)
Some miscreants violate the living shit out of Florida governor DeSantis' stay-home order. Hackernews is elated that someone is being personally enriched by this, rather than the suspicious and despicable "public-interest" efforts NASA has previously undertaken. This leads to a bout of eager fantasizing about what new products might enrich future muskonauts, then exploring exactly how far away Elon Musk needs to be for a given company to be successful.

A 1/48 scale model of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket
May 31, 2020 (comments)
A toymaker introduces a new model. Toys are fun and this one is topical, since it is tangentially related to yesterday's space launch, so Hackernews votes for the article, but doesn't have anything interesting to say.