webshit weekly

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the last week of May, 2021.

Working at a startup is overrated, both financially and emotionally
May 22, 2021 (comments)
An Internet explains why so many people have jobs. Hackernews struggles to conceive of a world populated by people who are not willing to perform whiteboard tricks in order to be allowed to work. Later, the Hackernews Poopy Semantics Club show up to remind everyone that they're not entirely sure what any of the words in the article really mean, y'know, since everyone's trip is unique and therefore attempts at communication are futile and beneath contempt.

One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks
May 23, 2021 (comments)
A student posts a book report about a Youtube channel. Hackernews doesn't believe we need any more rights to fix things; everything is so much easier to do in an unregulated free-for-all whose only price of admission is bootlicking for a genocidal government -- specifically that of the Communist Party of China, which has done for crimes against humanity what steam did for the industrial revolution, and which must be deposed as quickly as possible. Rules, decides Hackernews, are for losers, and fixing computers is something only poor people would resort to.

DOOM Captcha
May 24, 2021 (comments)
A webshit confuses Doom with Duck Hunt. Hackernews debates the security of the resulting toy.

M1racles: An Apple M1 covert channel vulnerability
May 25, 2021 (comments)
An Internet hops on the Branded Vulnerability bandwagon. Hackernews doesn't realize the nature of the described vulnerability is relatively minor and easy to work around, and the author keeps modifying the article text while Hackernews is trying to argue about it. But it has Apple's new laptop CPU in the title, so the end result is a thousand points awarded to a story with a couple hundred confused or contradictory mutterings, half of which are from the original author.

Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022
May 26, 2021 (comments)
Some programmers decide what the IT industry needs is low-density commodity hardware with lots more software in your firmware. The resulting company (business model: "Uber for casemods") has a laser focus on solving the problems that nobody has at scale, and as an extra feature, really leans into cramming webshit pegs into any SNMP-shaped holes it can find. Hackernews doesn't believe this company will be around for long, since its founders are Extremely Online People, but this also means the founders show up to reassure everyone: in the finest tradition of computer hardware businesses, they have taken a crapload of venture capital and the ensuing debt will ensure the health and fitness of the company for many years.

How I, as someone who is visually impaired, use my iPhone (2020)
May 27, 2021 (comments)
An Internet dabbles in recreational Apple marketing. Hackernews decides that "don't roll your own UI toolkit" is the new "don't roll your own crypto," assuming your platform has any meaningful accessibility features, which turns out to be an assumption other Hackernews are not willing to make. The rest of the comments are bickering about specific accessibility failures or Hackernews declaring they're just about to solve all the problems. One, in fact, is going to solve all the problems by "starting with 1st principles," which is an unheralded approach in the annals of "Hacker" "News".

I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time
May 28, 2021 (comments)
An Internet takes a pay cut to pursue more enjoyable work. Hackernews interprets any "I quit my job to X" posts as startup narratives, and so upvotes the story, but X here is a niche operating system, and so there are not too many comments about it.

Trials begin on lozenge that rebuilds tooth enamel
May 29, 2021 (comments)
Some scientists try something new. Hackernews has more to say about enamel-rebuilding lozenges than they had to say about actual computer software yesterday. Unfortunately, this mostly involves Hackernews complaining about their teeth, other Hackernews recommending Botox injections, and yet more Hackernews declaring an intent to follow this advice and/or expressing excitement about how much medical advice they've followed from random assholes on web forums.

Amazon Prime inflates prices, using the false promise of ‘free shipping’
May 30, 2021 (comments)
Amazon continues the war against its own users. Hackernews is about evenly split between angry declarations of refusing to do business with Amazon because of counterfeit goods and angry declarations that corporations are the Lord your God and thou shalt fear Them, if thou know'st what's good for thee. A random sampling indicates about a fifth of the anti-Amazon crowd use AWS at work, which sounds like a gratifyingly small number until you consider the Hobsonian state of cloud computing.

The most expensive number in engineering
May 31, 2021 (comments)
Another day, another substack blog. This one is about questioning long-established safety practices, then being too timid to stand behind your assessment. Hackernews doesn't know shit about engineering, so there are lots of strident opinions to read in the comments, including a long thread about science fiction, which Hackernews is at least relatively qualified to discuss.