webshit weekly

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the first week of June, 2020.

Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead
June 01, 2020 (comments)
An Internet reports on this week's attempt to dethrone bullet journals as the hippest possible shit to scribble on your Moleskine products. Hackernews does not believe any such system could work, as it is impossible to resist bikeshedding the tools themselves. Other Hackernews very much do believe some of these systems could work, but not the one in the article; instead, you should put your faith in whatever to-do app is run by Hackernews.

Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28
June 02, 2020 (comments)
The actual headline is "U.S. police have attacked journalists at least 140 times since May 28" and is dated June 1. "Hacker" "News" is full of the sort of asshole who thinks that protesters should work very hard to enable other people to ignore them, because Tesla's Autopilot isn't good with crowds. Some other Hackernews try to explain how a free society is supposed to work, but it doesn't help; there is a significant portion of Hackernews who believe that police are completely justified in murdering or torturing people. Fortunately, a "Hacker" "News" moderator arrives to reassure us that moderating "Hacker" "News" is a paid position, and that's why the comments are so enlightened and valuable. No technology is discussed.

ACLU sues Minnesota for police violence against the press
June 03, 2020 (comments)
The American Civil Liberties Union draws a line in the sand: the Minneapolis police department is free to kill as many innocent black people as they want, but scaring journalists is just not on. Hackernews can't figure out why so many heavily-armed combat-trained police, insulated from consequences by a combination of union contracts and a willingness to murder any member who breaks the code of silence, have decided to act like total assholes to journalists, who were once perceived to be performing a crucial public service. Hackernews tries trading pop culture quotes to see if that clears up the mystery, but swarms of days-old Hackernews accounts insist that journalists are in fact deadly political operatives who will burn this country to the ground by saying things into a video camera.

SimRefinery Recovered
June 04, 2020 (comments)
An Internet finds some abandonware. Hackernews links to other examples of the 'tedium disguised as fun' genre of video games, but somehow leaves out Eve Online. Don Hopkins arrives in the comments and deposits the largest single comment, as well as the only one with any relevant information, and is greeted with "cool story."

There Are No Bugs, Just TODOs
June 05, 2020 (comments)
An Internet warns against the ritualization of Zen gardening your issue trackers. Hackernews agrees in principle but declares practical implementation impossible, because other people are jerks. Tons of solutions are proffered, any of which could be implemented in a given ticket system, but because the right HTML form elements are elided, or the wrong ones included, Hackernews invariably decides the problem is unassailable. The author arrives in the comments to join the banter, but mostly spends time noting that whatever weird-ass edge case Hackernews is complaining about is indeed a weird-ass edge case, and not really worthy of derailing the message of the article. Hackernews is undeterred.

New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie
June 06, 2020 (comments)
San Francisco makes the Golden Gate Bridge emanate the internal soundtrack of the Silicon Valley lifestyle: an unceasing otherworldly howling, disturbing the landscape for miles and miles. Hackernews, it turns out, is constantly surrounded by the shrieking manifestation of their souls, and describes them in detail.

Most tech content is bullshit
June 07, 2020 (comments)
A webshit determines and announces the core truth of webshit. Hackernews bemoans the displacement of the technical book by the shitposting factory, but fails to reinvent the industry journal as a replacement. Other Hackernews debate whether the problem might actually be those snotty kids who don't know anything. The Hackernewsest post comes as someone declares critical thought as Considered Harmful, and recommends instead pestering random experts to train you for free. The rest of the comments are mad at Google for returning shitty search results, making it too difficult to just be told what to do.