webshit weekly

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

The Framework Laptop is now shipping
July 22, 2021 (comments)
Some Internets decide that the missing piece from whitebox laptop offerings is bespoke usb modules. Hackernews is convinced the ability to exchange a USB port for a slightly different USB port is the quantum leap in personal computing for which the world has been waiting. The rest of the comments are feature requests nobody wants.

AWS's Egregious Egress
July 23, 2021 (comments)
A pack of webshits compose a hitpiece on their competitors. Hackernews sets about to deliberately construct a Stockholm Syndrome analogue which will allow them to rationalize being locked into an abusive business relationship. Other Hackernews think the hit piece is unfair because other hyperscale cloud providers are also abusive. Whether or not this is acceptable for a given provider seems to depend on how long a particular Hackernews worked for that provider.

Introduction to open source private LTE and 5G networks
July 24, 2021 (comments)
Canonical (business model: "Uber for Debian") continues its search for a source of actual revenue. Hackernews is interested in the MacGuffin, but not the actual target of the marketing blog. Better luck next time, Ubuntu!

Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
July 25, 2021 (comments)
Bicycling enthusiasts try to figure out why someone without even a Serfas sponsorship has managed to win. Hackernews knows it was because the professional collusion tools failed the old guard, creating an opening for someone to win based on actual physical exertion. One Hackernews is mad that women are allowed to ride bicycles, but it's not clear if the anger is about the competitive aspect or that a woman has a bicycle at all.

The Insecurity Industry
July 26, 2021 (comments)
Edward Snowden would like everyone to recognize that nothing has got better since diming out the NSA, either for Edward Snowden in particular or anyone else in general. Hackernews warns us that Snowden's unhinged ideas, such as holding people and companies responsible for the products they sell, would immediately lead to the complete and immediate collapse of the First Amendment. Other Hackernews misinterpret this warning as a directive to get angry about the C programming language.

Element raises $30M to boost Matrix
July 27, 2021 (comments)
Some web programmers go into debt in the pursuit of a more perfect chat app. Hackernews thinks the big difference that will make this chat app win over the six million nearly-identical chat apps is their approach to copyright licensing. Other Hackernews think the lone thing preventing the chat app from global market domination is some CSS.

The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway
July 28, 2021 (comments)
Google, the world's largest repository of algorithmic search expertise, gets trick-fucked by blogspammers and doesn't notice because nobody at Google both speaks Norwegian and gives a shit about search results. Hackernews is overrun by Nordic commentors decrying their universal inability to get Google to lift a single finger to help anyone, anywhere.

How Dwarf Fortress is built
July 29, 2021 (comments)
An Internet interviews the developer of the second-largest text-based adventure game (behind Linux). Hackernews recounts every experience they've ever had with the game.

Who Owns My Name?
July 30, 2021 (comments)
A person who was famous is angry that continued fame is at someone else's discretion. Hackernews recognizes the name from the original controversy and now wrestles with the idea that other people are allowed to make art about actual events even if that art doesn't reflect the actual series of events which occurred. No technology is discussed.

Faster CRDTs: An Adventure in Optimization
July 31, 2021 (comments)
A webshit is mad at a peer-reviewed paper for impugning a favored algorithm. Instead of just writing a letter to the journal pointing out the problems, or even citing the actual goddamn paper, the chosen solution is to whine a lot in a blog post and conclude that science is flawed. Hackernews splits attention evenly between the claims made in the blog post and ranting about how 'academics' aren't as good at programming as, say, Hackernews.