webshit weekly

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

I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
October 22, 2020 (comments)
An investigative journalist unveils the truth. Hackernews incorrects one another on fast food technology, then speculates about how to add more computers to improve the situation.

YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA
October 23, 2020 (comments)
The RIAA causes outrage and fury worldwide by listing Icona Pop in the same set as Justin Timberlake and Taylor Swift. Hackernews wrestles with their value judgments; their firm stance as bootlickers for megacorporations has finally crashed headlong into their equally firm belief that programmers should never be held to any legal or moral standards. What results is a wide-ranging display of profound confusion, as Hackernews realizes they don't have clear definitions of literally any of the words involved in internet video, copyright law, the American legal process, or website hosting.

I am an Uighur who faced China’s concentration camps
October 24, 2020 (comments)
The Chinese government continues its war against literally everyone. Hackernews suggests withholding a small amount of money as a suitable punishment for genocide, but other Hackernews sternly insist that the only correct response is withholding a larger amount of money. Facing up to the fact that the Chinese government is unrepentantly evil at a massive scale proves to be too difficult for Hackernews, so they return to their accustomed base state by whatabouting other countries instead. At some point, for some reason, Hackernews starts arguing about Trump, because although America is apparently no better than the Chinese government, it's still evidently expected that America will have to fix it. The spectre of such a horrific intervention, which would almost certainly lead to war at an unspeakable level of ferocity, could simply be avoided if the Chinese people would depose and imprison every official of the Chinese Communist Party.

I am seriously considering going back to desktop computers
October 25, 2020 (comments)
Some rando is under the impression that there is a material difference in the engineering quality of laptop and desktop computers. Hackernews isn't, but they mostly fall into the same stupid false dichotomy. Hundreds of comments are mashed into keyboards debating the specific temperature and clock frequencies of processors on various computers. Nobody seems to realize that you're allowed to use both, even though a sizeable percentage of them already do.

How journalists use youtube-dl
October 26, 2020 (comments)
A lobbyist tries to respin a popular pornography-archiving tool as the bedrock of human freedom. Hackernews chimes in to report how important the porn tool is to police, which is the first time in my life I have even considered supporting an RIAA action. Hackernews makes a long list of reasons they might want to download a video from the internet, all of which boil down to "because I want to watch it" or "because I might eventually want to watch it." There is nothing interesting about this discussion, so there are only a few hundred comments, but the article defends their favorite pornography archiver, so there are over sixteen hundred votes for the story.

Google's new logos are bad
October 27, 2020 (comments)
A trash blog bikesheds some favicons. The article is so utterly devoid of insight or interest that I would be angry about the electricity wasted in displaying it; however, since that power was renewably generated via solar panels, I must conclude that the dipshits who wrote, edited, and published this worthless drivel owe a refund to the Sun. Hackernews, however, is deeply moved by this piece, and is outraged that their telephone buttons are different colors than they were before. Some of the more devoted Google aficionados attempt to construct fanfiction to imbue these meaningless changes with deep import.

I Violated a Code of Conduct
October 28, 2020 (comments)
Some assholes bully a nerd over Zoom. Hackernews begins foaming at the mouth about codes of conduct, as usual, and immediately seize this example of a bad one poorly enforced to dunk on the entire concept of being held accountable by anyone for any purpose ever.

My Resignation from the Intercept
October 29, 2020 (comments)
Glenn Greenwald wigs completely the fuck out because some coworkers didn't like his ten-thousand-word thinkpiece about Hunter Biden chatlogs. Hackernews regards this as the death of journalism. They write fifteen hundred comments, almost all of which contain a very simple and easily-fixed reason that journalism has died. The rest are recommendations regarding which podcasts are the best ones to uncritically consume at face value.

From McDonald's to Google
October 30, 2020 (comments)
A computer nerd had a bad job, but now has a better job, and posts a story to that effect on "Hacker" "News". One Hackernews immediately demands answers regarding a perceived gap in this narrative résumé, so the computer nerd arrives in the comments to defend it. Later on, another subset of Hackernews get together to whine about companies' attempts to broaden their hiring demographics, since this is apparently some kind of threat to Hackernews.

Sean Connery has died
October 31, 2020 (comments)
A celebrity has died. Hackernews makes a list of everything the celebrity ever did. No technology is discussed.