webshit weekly

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

Rockstar thanks GTA Online player who fixed load times, official update coming
March 15, 2021 (comments)
Rockstar Games (business model: "Uber for microtransactions") ships an update suggested by a stranger on the internet, futher confirming everyone's suspicions that all the programmers left the company. Hackernews can't decide if ten thousand dollars is the appropriate reward to issue, and opinions generally depend on whether one believes that every software update should be worth ten thousand dollars, or whether one believes that every Grand Theft Auto player now owes this person royalties for the rest of their lives. Other Hackernews are furious at Rockstar Games for not having fixed this longstanding problem before now.

Google Play service fee reduced to 15% for the first $1M/year
March 16, 2021 (comments)
Google (business model: "Uber for spyware") lowers the rent on the also-rans. Hackernews pouts that Android users are less apt to shit money into the app-store toilet than Apple users are; the resulting debate tries to get to the bottom of why. Is it because Android users are skinflint pirate bastards who want everything handed to them for free? Or is it because Apple customers are elegant and attractive benefactors who understand the value of a really high quality to-do app?

GitHub, fuck your name change
March 17, 2021 (comments)
An Internet is still, for some reason, angry about a minor change to one website's default settings approximately a year ago, and cites (among other things) The Daily Stormer. Hackernews is not merely angry, they are pants-shittingly outraged, frothing-at-the-mouth write-two-thousand-comments pissed off. The Hacker News Hall Monitor repeatedly insists that personal attacks are disallowed and the goal is civil, thought-provoking discussion. The results are civil, thought-provoking discussions regarding why liberals are trying to destroy America, how no amount of money can fix schools that have been tainted with minority students, how to deal with PTSD generated by having to change keywords in git hooks, and, of course, whether immigration should be allowed. Days later, someone notices the Nazi link in the article and the Hall Monitor waffles about it. No technology is discussed.

Interview with CEO of rsync.net: “no firewalls and no routers”
March 18, 2021 (comments)
Some webshits interview a computer person, but forget to ask any interesting questions. Fortunately for Hackernews, the computer person shows up in the comments to answer further, even less-interesting questions.

Click
March 19, 2021 (comments)
A webshit turns the volume up on analytics. Hackernews plays around with the source code a bit, then lists as many other websites as they can which also break the fourth wall.

Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in Germany
March 20, 2021 (comments)
At long last, the Fins and the Germans find common ground. Hackernews misses the old days when people would mail things to one another, and some other Hackernews recommend regaining that close sense of community on Reddit (business model: "Uber for Digg"). At the bottom of the page are several comments ranting about non-fungible tokens, but even Hackernews can tell those people are idiots.

Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
March 21, 2021 (comments)
A webshit just absolutely hemorrhages words -- four thousand of them -- advising us that doing shit is not enough; we must be seen to do them, or else we are nothing. Hackernews votes for the word salad since its author is a former medalist in the Hackernews Beauty Pageant, but doesn't seem to have the fortitude to wade through the rambling, barely-coherent lecture in the link. As a result, they spend most of the time arguing about whether podcasts should exist and how to automatically transcribe the ones that insist on being produced.