webshit weekly

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

Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)
March 01, 2021 (comments)
The Chinese government continues its war against its own users. Hackernews acknowledges the slimy business practices of this specific shit factory, but decides that this is the only possible way it's possible for a technology company to survive. In the long run, the technocrats are savvy enough to block the surveillance at the router, so nobody important will be affected by this. The rest of the comments, both on "Hacker" "News" and the original article, are shitbirds whatabouting other companies.

Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut
March 02, 2021 (comments)
A popular cardboard manufacturer is uniquely well-positioned to help several megacorporations cater to current fads. Hackernews are thrilled by this news, as they all have profound emotional investment in the idea of solving global warming by making slightly different orders at drive-through windows. Because every single Hackernews has an agribusiness/nutrition double major from the University of Netflix, hundreds of comments are devoted to incorrecting one another on the supply side of the global meat market. The actual experts on massive meat markets, specifically Tinder devs, were apparently not available for comment, but this one Hackernews who went vegan because Harambe got shot is absolutely on hand to educate us.

It Can Happen to You
March 03, 2021 (comments)
An Internet read a story about some software being slow and discovered other software being slow for the same reason. Hackernews is bemused at this strange new concept -- learning from someone else's programming without directly pasting anything from StackOverflow -- and tries to extrapolate other applications of this technique. Since the software in the article is written in C, however, everyone gets bogged down trying to understand how C works. Later, a breakout room fills with people waiting in line to make excuses for video game programmers routinely producing shit software.

Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay
March 04, 2021 (comments)
The Wall Street Journal closely examines eBay listings for discontinued children's books. Hackernews is extremely disappointed that both Random House Books for Young Readers and eBay are willing to take even the slightest action to even marginally improve the life of any nonwhite child. In order to ensure that this concern is taken seriously, Hackernews rants about Obama, free-market economics, In-Q-Tel (the CIA's capital investment firm), and lynching. A few Hackernews claim to have actually read the obscure books in question, but nobody believes them. The Hacker News Hall Monitor intervenes in the ensuing shitshow precisely twice: once to warn off someone for pointing out that lynching happens outside the US, and once to ban someone whose username was that of a convicted Nazi war criminal.

30k U.S. organizations newly hacked via holes in Microsoft Exchange Server
March 05, 2021 (comments)
Microsoft continues the war against their own users. Hackernews debates exactly how fucked your software needs to be before you should consider turning it off. The consensus emerges that you should never turn it off, ever, no matter how bad you are hemorrhaging private information. Later Hackernews try to invent new software to help them rewrite the old software faster. Finally, a small contingent of Hackernews demands that the United States government should act as a safety net to protect Microsoft from the consequences of writing garbage software.

Dolt is Git for Data: a SQL database that you can fork, clone, branch, merge
March 06, 2021 (comments)
Some Internets have a hammer, and identify some new nails. Hackernews loves the idea but can't figure out what the hell it's good for.

Why I rewrote my Rust keyboard firmware in Zig: consistency, mastery, and fun
March 07, 2021 (comments)
An Internet ETSes out of the Rust Evangelism Strike Force and enlists in the Zig Foreign Legion. In the comments section, Hackernews divide up and argue about which sets of compiler abstractions are necessary to support human life.