webshit weekly

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

Breach exposed more than one million DNA profiles on a major genealogy database
July 22, 2020 (comments)
In a turn of events absolutely nobody on earth could have predicted, some bootlickers got their shit pushed in and lost control of all of their customers' data. Hackernews is briefly disturbed by the realization that these leaks do not merely affect the lives of those who are stupid enough to do business with internet DNA vultures, but also affect the lives of everyone related to them. This momentary experiment with empathy is quickly overshadowed by the terrifying realization that someone being an incompetent failure might prevent them from getting rich, which is obviously the most terrifying possible state of affairs, if you are a Hackernews.

Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products
July 23, 2020 (comments)
Amazon violates Microsoft's business process patents. A fight breaks out on Hackernews about whether and how deeply Amazon spies on the data that customers pay to store with Amazon Web Services, whether such shitty behavior is morally justified because money, or whether Amazon just happened to have the same ideas around the same time it talked to people with the original ideas. Several dozen Amazons arrive to insist that they were working on the garbage product in question as many as seven years ago.

Editorial board of Index and more than 70 staff members resign
July 24, 2020 (comments)

The Hungarian government continues the war against its own users. Hackernews fights about whether the United States is a democracy, then about what the European Union is, then about why journalism is circling the drain. For dessert, some Hungarian throwaway accounts show up and whatabout as many other countries as they can think of. No technology is discussed.

Doing stupid stuff with GitHub Actions
July 25, 2020 (comments)
A webshit slowly begins to discover that other people's computers are also programmable. Hackernews marvels at the concept of a computer program execution service executing computer programs. Hackernews appreciates what passes for ingenuity these days but there's nothing interesting to say on the matter, so there are almost no comments.

New ‘Meow’ attack has deleted almost 4k unsecured databases
July 26, 2020 (comments)
An Internet vigilante helpfully secures customer data around the world, for free. Hackernews is of the opinion that database vendors should be held responsible for lax security, primarily because the alternative is holding programmers responsible, and there is no way Hackernews is setting foot on that slippery slope. I cannot resist sharing this quote: "Depending on what data is being deleted, it may have real life economic consequences for individual people. What if one of the databases has a record of credits you've purchased at your local spin studio?" This is a real opinion held by an actual concerned Hackernews, followed by the most wonderful possible example of "real life economic consequences."

Intel ousts its chief engineer, shakes up technical group after delays
July 27, 2020 (comments)
Having failed to appease the Seven Nanometer Gods, the Council of Elders at Intel cast their Lead Technowizard into the void, and shatter the Magekeep into disparate pieces, entrusting their protection to a legion of Bureaucracy Golems nestled deep in the Pits of Corporate Synergy. Hackernews takes a break from furiously ordering two-hour Prime delivery of Chinese counterfeit Hydroflasks to express deep concern for the death of American manufacturing. They follow up with some noise about national defense, but soon they have to get back to work shoveling other people's information into the hands of stateless international corporations incapable of patriotism or humanity.

Historical programming-language groups disappearing from Google
July 28, 2020 (comments)
Google (business model: "Uber for shutdowns") decides the easiest way to search all of the Usenet data is to keep deleting shit. Some apostate Hackernews suggest that perhaps taking the output of years of public collaborative effort and entrusting its care to a pack of sapless profit hounds who are accountable to nobody might eventually result in sadness. Plenty of other Hackernews arrive to explain that the good people who sign their paychecks are in no way to blame for this or any other bad move, and that the fault lies squarely with people who don't run their own blogs. Somehow.

Del.icio.us
July 29, 2020 (comments)
Delicious (business model: "Uber for Ctrl+B") finally seems like it might eventually make a profit. Hackernews suffers a paralyzing nostalgia attack, which turns into complaints from old people about the webshit companies they used to work for. A side discussion occurs wherein Hackernews attempts to define racism.

Apple does not keep the 30% commission on a refund
July 30, 2020 (comments)
An Internet was wrong about something unimportant. An apology and correction is issued. Hackernews votes for the apology tweet fifteen hundred times and spends three hundred fifty comments bikeshedding Apple's terms of service.

Nvidia is reportedly in ‘advanced talks’ to buy ARM for more than $32B
July 31, 2020 (comments)
nVIDIA shops at Softbank's garage sale, and at last discovers a way to be taken seriously in the mobile market. Hackernews absolutely cannot figure out why anyone would want to own the most widely used processor technology on Earth.

Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
A Very Special Episode of Webshit Weekly
I don't normally pay attention to "Ask HN" or "Show HN" or any of the navel-gazing shitposting festivals in which Hackernews obsess over their pageantry; there are other sites focused on such autofellation, and it's generally not interesting enough to spend five minutes reading a weekly summary of some asshole's opinion of webshit forum moderation policy. But this post is special.
In it, a Hackernews makes a disposable account to report experiences at a FAANG company. In it, we are treated to a description of daily life: do jack shit, half-ass your way through everything, and try to slide past as often as possible. Our deponent expresses some concern that if one leadership-class Silicon Valley Hype Machine sucks this much... might they all?
While I can't tell whether this is Look How Much Smarter I Am humblebragging from the author or a doe-eyed naïf's first personal contact with a real live Silicon Valley treadmill, the response from Hackernews is sure to delight any spectator, as their advice ranges from "just work harder so your new masters will treat you like a human one day" to "quit all jobs and immediately borrow money to start a company and keep borrowing money until you are Jeff Bezos."