webshit weekly

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

Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life
August 22, 2020 (comments)
While you would be forgiven for assuming this is a trip report about being laid off from Mozilla, this is in fact a collection of references regarding the use of the internet without enriching a corporation that is actively engaged in sabotaging human civilization. Hackernews greatly enjoys science fiction as a genre and regards this specific website as a fine example of the craft. Those Hackernews who have survived Googledammerung invariably report that it was totally easy, you guys, just give Apple a few thousand dollars and surrender unto them instead!

Persisting as a solo founder
August 23, 2020 (comments)
A webshit approaches adulthood. Hackernews tries to reverse engineer the process. This descends into a catalogue of minor affectations seen in adults Hackernews has met before, followed by earnest discussion attempting to identify which ones are to be emulated in hopes of hurrying puberty along. The rest of the comments are trying to figure out the precise moment when you, as an entrepreneur, should start wasting your life caring about search engine optimization.

Being OK with not being extraordinary
August 24, 2020 (comments)
An Internet posts an article about aiming lower, but it gets a lot of traction since the title is, as far as Hackernews goes, clickbait. The story receives a lot of votes but the comment section is much slower-paced, as Hackernews struggles to lay out precisely which ways they're currently extraordinary and how they're working toward being even extraordinarier. One Hackernews can mystically sense the exact strengthening of a given skill, in this case "problem solving" and down to the percentage point, presumably after escaping the dungeon and calculating the experience points earned thereby. Technology is discussed, but only sufficiently for Hackernews to identify just how excellent they are at it.

Africa declared free of wild polio
August 25, 2020 (comments)
Africa wins an important war. Subsequently, the only places at risk for polio are regions with a strong culture of refusing vaccinations, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Facebook. Hackernews doesn't believe the headline, didn't read the article, thinks someone should probably worry about other diseases, and is mad about gun control. Also, says Hackernews, fighting diseases isn't worth it, because diseases still happen.

Arwes – Futuristic Sci-Fi / Cyberpunk Graphical User Interface Framework
August 26, 2020 (comments)
A webshit uses javascript to create really obnoxious CSS. Hackernews desperately wants to name the video games and/or movies it reminds them of. Since it's otherwise completely useless, there isn't much else going on in the comments.

ReMarkable 2.0 – A digital notebook that feels like paper
August 27, 2020 (comments)
Hackernews notices a product that was announced months ago and won't actually be available for some months hence. Since nobody has used it, everybody's opinion is super important. The opinions boil down to two camps: people who want it because it does some things better than competing products, and people who don't want it because it isn't an Apple product. There is a vestigal third opinion where people don't want it because it doesn't do something impossible, but even Hackernews knows better than to argue with those idiots. This time.

American Academy of Sleep Medicine calls for elimination of daylight saving time
August 28, 2020 (comments)
Some doctors express an opinion. Hackernews is fiercely enthusiastic, because they're really sick of fucking everything up the moment tzdata shows up. The implementation details of the doctors' recommendation, however, are prime bikeshedding material, leading to all kinds of hilarity, like the Hackernews who urges us to overthrow capitalism by refusing to have children for free. I am also fond of the Hackernews who endorses introducing a second, coetaneous time zone system, for that Hackernews is on the trail of uncovering the secret of nature's simultaneous four-day time cube.

I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
August 29, 2020 (comments)
Hackernews stumbles upon a lighthearted piece in the New Yorker, and tries really hard to pretend they get it. The only ones who do get it show up to complain about how long it took them to figure out sane priorities. The vast majority of comments just consist of "kids-these-days" rants about how the internet is a distraction. Not "Hacker" "News", though; that's where we go to show everyone how focused we are.

Level 3 Global Outage
August 30, 2020 (comments)
CenturyLink fucked everything up again. Hackernews buys tickets to watch.

App Review process updates
August 31, 2020 (comments)
Apple lightens the App Store review load, presumably in advance of massive layoffs. Hackernews absolutely reviles App Store reviewers, and tirelessly recounts every single injustice perpetrated against Hackernews by uncaring walled-garden tenders. I look forward to the "Cutting Apple out of your life" article detailing the process of buying a Chromebook and migrating from iCloud to Google Drive.