webshit weekly

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

Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up
September 22, 2020 (comments)
Mozilla is winning the war against its own users. Hackernews roots for the underdog, but since Mozilla insists on releasing web browsers which obstinately refuse to be Chrome, there isn't really a path forward. Much vitriol is deployed against Mozilla's recent releases, both of Firefox and of staff. Hackernews tries to point the blame at Mozilla-the-company, as opposed to its owner Mozilla-the-nonprofit, despite the fact that both organizations are run by the same people.

They're deleting my channel, but they don't know why? [video]
September 23, 2020 (comments)
Google continues the war against their own users. Hackernews is pretty sure that Google might be acting like assholes here, but after some rigorous dialectic, they arrive at a more comfortable truth: Google's not at fault, Youtube video producers are. Before this idea can be fully bandwagoned, Hackernews gets nerd sniped by trying to invent an undo button for the database equivalent of a suicide bomber.

Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes
September 24, 2020 (comments)
The Chinese government builds some kind of Avengers Initiative, except instead of superheroes the members are massive companies that profit from other peoples' content. Hackernews is respectful of Apple, since without them Hackernews would not know how or where to purchase computers or telephones, but carefully enunciate their excoriation of Apple's app market, which boils down to a glorified distribution platform, entirely unlike Epic, Spotify, or Tinder. A few Hackernews suggest that perhaps a pack of phone programmers should not have total control over what software people run on their pocket computers, but a pack of phone programmers insist that this is an absurd idea.

Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster
September 25, 2020 (comments)
Mozilla releases some software that mildly improves the performance of other people's software it silently runs on your computer. Hackernews feels weird watching the crew bolt turbochargers to the engines while there's a giant hole in the hull, but it makes sense that the people who put so much effort into Mozilla's one worthwhile product would want the wreck to look pretty when it finally sinks. The CEO of Mozilla is reprosecuted in the court of Hackernews, and is found still to be guilty.

Stop Asking Me to “Sign Up” (2014)
September 26, 2020 (comments)
A webshit bikesheds a button. The article describes an increase from 1% to 3% as "complete obliteration" of the previous button, because this is the blog of a moron. Hackernews is also mad about the button, and posts almost three hundred comments bikeshedding other buttons too.

Someone has stolen my Instagram account
September 27, 2020 (comments)
Facebook continues the war against its own users. As usual, this target gets a problem fixed by engaging with the only customer support venue offered by FAANG companies: whining on Twitter. Hackernews thinks someone should get in trouble over this, but they can't decide who.

CRDTs are the future
September 28, 2020 (comments)
An Internet has opinions about multiplayer text editor construction. A Hackernews realizes that shoveling webshit into an advertising fire for a decade is not as satisfying as understanding how anything works, and is immediately beset by other Hackernews frantically justifying their webshit shovels. Later, some other Hackernews speculate about what other software can be extrapolated to text editing. Apparently none of them have ever used Unix, which demonstrates that the correct answer is "all of it."

Social Cooling (2017)
September 29, 2020 (comments)
A webshit from the Before Times is worried about China's social credit system becoming commonplace. Hackernews tries to figure out why nobody wants to be seen shitting, whether or not Soviet Hackernews is better at thinking than American Hackernews, what the Silent Majority thinks about loud jerks, whether we might all be better off being ruled by an iron fist, how to fix racism, and whether racism should be fixed. No technology is discussed.

Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission
September 30, 2020 (comments)
Bitcoin Idiots, LLC announces that their leadership team is sufficiently rich and non-black that they no longer need to care about anything except making money (actual) off of the gullible children who play with the company's money (pretend). Anyone unwilling to ignore trivial externalities such as human rights violations is invited to fuck off immediately. Hackernews is not rich enough to make such proclamations, but hopes one day to be, and thus gives this garbage person a standing ovation. Hackernews then posts one thousand comments griping about all the horrible times that someone other than Hackernews has had the audacity to express an opinion about human society, and the disastrous effect said utterance immediately had upon the Important Business Activities that Hackernews cares about. One Hackernews explicitly compares "endangered species conservation" to "American police murdering an unarmed man in broad daylight," and finds them to be equivalently political topics. In cadence, every other Hackernews lists the specific human right they want to ignore, but can't because their coworkers will hate them.