webshit weekly

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the first week of January, 2021.

My Experience at Apple
January 01, 2021 (comments) (archive since the coward deleted it)
An Internet posts the heartwarming story of having narrowly escaped a career working for Apple. Hackernews relates every bad workplace experience they've ever had. Later, Hackernews decides to attack the author of the original article, including deciding that the author must be insane. Hackernews' proof? Questionable typopgraphy.

How to overcome Phone Addiction
January 02, 2021 (comments)
Hackernews is now just voting up spam blogs, just so they can talk about their favorite smartphone software. Most of it consists of programs designed to inhibit the functionality of the device you bought. One Hackernews is mad that the Marines exist, which seems like a reasonable position. This seemed to be a reasonable position until it became evident that Hackernews had the United States Marines confused with murderous robots, when the proper reason to be mad that the Marines exist is that the Army already has a perfectly serviceable infantry.

Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend
January 03, 2021 (comments)
The headline is unclear: the numbers in question involve Uber's $150MM online ad budget. In addition, Uber was in fact defrauded out of 100% of their online advertising budget, because every dollar you spend on online advertising may as well have been flushed down the toilet. Since Hackernews' entire life revolves around using Uber to commute to their adtech day job, then using Uber to get to their kickball league with their adtech startup co-conspirators, then using Uber to get back to their loft, this story captivates Hackernews wholly. Half the comments are from Hackernews who are aware that online advertising is worthless and the other half are from other Hackernews insisting the first half is mistaken.

A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
January 04, 2021 (comments)
A fraction of a percent of Google's employees build a labor union out of cardboard boxes and packing tape. Google managers begin carefully documenting all of the subpar work output and general behavior problems these employees will have demonstrated by the time someone gets around to firing them. Hackernews has some kind of emotional meltdown over the idea that anyone who knows how to type javascript into a computer would refuse to pretend they are uniquely irreplaceable golden children. Along the way, we are able to determine that Hackernews is not in fact positive what a labor union is, but is happy to tell us what they think other people assume labor unions are. No technology is discussed.

GitHub is fully available in Iran
January 05, 2021 (comments)
Microsoft expands the pool of lower-income nations they can exploit. A Microsoft arrives in the Hackernews comments to handle bug requests personally, both because there isn't anything better to do with Microsoft's time and because Hackernews comprises the majority of the population of people dumb enough to pay for Github Pro accounts. Hackernews relates every story they have ever heard involving Iran.

WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app
January 06, 2021 (comments)
Facebook continues the war on its own users. Hackernews is absolutely positive this is the most interesting and important thing to happen on January 6, 2021. There is nothing else that even comes close to being as important as this to talk about on January 6, 2021. Nothing else is even remotely this crucial -- it received 110% the votes of the next-highest-ranked story. A change in the terms of service of a fucking chat program is definitely, for sure, the most important event of January 6, 2021. What could possibly be as important as Facebook software policies? Nothing! Not on January 6, 2021, that's for damn sure!

No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees
January 07, 2021 (comments)
Gumroad (business model: "Uber for Etsy") explains why it's such a pain in the ass to interact with Gumroad in any meaningful way. Hackernews realizes this country doesn't provide health care and flips the fuck out. Then Hackernews realizes the author basically scammed some venture capitalists and gullible staff into building out a business that put the author firmly into the leisure class, and fights break out over whether this is evil, genius, evil genius, or just sort of a dick move.