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webshit weekly

%operator-noreply@n-gate.com () — Sun, 1 Jul 2018 02:12:02 PDT

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the last week of June, 2018.

Supreme Court Rules Police Need Warrant to Track Your Cellphone
June 22, 2018 (comments)
The United States legislative branch decrees that the one-time must ask permission to use other people's surveillance networks. Hackernews marvels at the rank inefficiency of the spying tools used by 20th-century law enforcement, but the majority of the comments focus on the nature of the Supreme Court. Scads of barely-relevant case law appear, based on which case names any given Hackernews can remember at the time the comment was typed.

Teens Who Hacked Microsoft's Xbox Empire and Went Too Far
June 23, 2018 (comments)
Some kids fuck around on the internet. Hackernews debates whether people should still be punished for crimes if they're really good at committing them.

How SQL Database Engines Work, by the Creator of SQLite (2008) [video]
June 24, 2018 (comments)
A programmer holds forth on programming. Hackernews doesn't like the resolution of the video clip and begs for Deckard to enhance 224 to 176. Afterwards, several Hackernews argue about whether it is fundamentally crucial that all programmers know how to write a relational database management system from scratch or whether it is criminally irresponsible to acquire this knowledge unless you already work for SAP SE.

Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall
June 25, 2018 (comments)
An Internet dishes on a grift. Hackernews argues about mattress prices. No technology is discussed.

Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]
June 26, 2018 (comments)
Some euros assert that technology companies are all out to get you. Hackernews has well-informed and comprehensive knowledge of this specific brand of trickfuckery, since they all worked on it for a living and regard it as an inescapable aspect of human society. Because most of them work at Google or Facebook, they spend the afternoon shitting on Microsoft, for daring to do with desktop-computer software the things that Google and Facebook do on the web and on cellphones.

Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard
June 27, 2018 (comments)
Some DIY electronics-repair people write a hit piece about a company that makes difficult-to-repair products. Hackernews can no longer ignore the fact that their favorite computer manufacturer hasn't manufactured a useful computer in several years, and spends yet another afternoon mourning the death of the person who made the trains run on time. In the end, the consensus is that they'll only spend a few thousand more dollars on this shit, and if it doesn't get better, they'll go buy Macbook clones from Dell instead.

Amazon buys PillPack, an online pharmacy, for just under $1B
June 28, 2018 (comments)
Bezos bids big on a benzo broker. Some suspect certain stock slumps seem silly. Most mull mailorder medicine; might marketers mete out mimics? Hackernews hates has-been hucksters -- hails heros helping haul healthcare.

Apple is rebuilding Maps from the ground up
June 29, 2018 (comments)
Over half a decade later, Apple addresses the fact that its mapping software is garbage. Apple doesn't have any fixes or even improvements to release; they're just addressing it. Hackernews is deeply concerned that Apple is getting into a fistfight with Google instead of whoever designed their keyboard. One Hackernews is mad that "Asia" is regarded as a geographic cue instead of a restaurant search.

Why you should not use Google Cloud
June 30, 2018 (comments)
A dipshit spends a paragraph describing how important a task is, describes dumping the whole operation into Google's lap, then gets mad when the house of cards can't stand up to a gentle breeze. Hackernews agrees with the outrage, and trades horror stories of when the bad company didn't hold their hands when they were scared. The rest of the comments are an argument about whether an advertising agency, a retail store, or an office software company is the best organization to trust with your entire business.

webshit weekly

%operator-noreply@n-gate.com () — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 21:37:06 PDT

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the third week of June, 2018.

GitLab Web IDE
June 15, 2018 (comments)
Some webshits strike one more task off the list of things they have to do outside a browser. Hackernews, longtime fans of text editors that are essentially web browsers to begin with, are all super excited about a future in which they don't even have to pretend to use non-browser programs. A few sullen reprobates are not immediately overjoyed with the news, but they're quickly shouted down by professional computer programmers explaining that nobody likes to use computers because they're inexplicably hard.

Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist
June 16, 2018 (comments)
Some idiots declare that everyone's sleep schedule is 5% wrong, and that more sleep would make everyone happier, except sad people, who need less sleep. Hackernews nods along to the story and recounts stories about all the times they were too oblivious to realize their health was fucked. Fortunately, each Hackernews has a unique and unassailable recommendation for an ebook, podcast, or religious experiment guaranteed to fix what ails you.

Forgotten Employee (2002)
June 17, 2018 (comments)
Somebody lies on the internet. The lie details a situation in which the narrator doesn't do anything productive, spends the days deceiving colleagues to engender respect, and is paid well for no reason. Hackernews relates to this narrative spectacularly well, and is eager to contribute their autobiographies to the burgeoning folklore of corporate parasites, bureaucratic bottom-feeders, 'founders,' and other complete wastes of Bay Area bunk space. Afterwards, Hackernews links each other to other stories of people being clever enough to extract low-effort money from people who trusted them.

YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Videos, and More
June 18, 2018 (comments)
Google thinks that's some nice content you've got there, and it would be a shame if something were to happen to it. Hackernews agrees, but doesn't think strongarming the content creators is enough -- what's needed is revocation of entire sections of European copyright law, for some reason. Apparently the law as written would unfairly require YouTube to perform automatic content scanning it already performs. Hackernews acknowledges that this has nothing to do with Google demanding that content owners opt into Google's advertising program, but it's easier for them to envision overthrowing every government on the entire European continent than it is even to consider challenging Google's behavior out loud.

The Machine Fired Me
June 19, 2018 (comments)
A computer-toucher describes being inconvenienced by a computer. Hackernews debates whether webcams are racist, then pedantically sifts through the original story to find things to be outraged about. The rest of the comments are similar stories about even more people unwilling to interfere with obviously idiotic practices.

Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide
June 19, 2018 (comments)
Some video creators decline to be extorted. A Hackernews who appears to defend Google for a living arrives to accuse the rest of Hackernews of being unreasonably mean to an eight hundred billion dollar global corporation. The rest of Hackernews frantically tries to find anything at all to focus on except how quickly Google will take a shit on anyone who isn't making them enough money.

Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try
June 20, 2018 (comments)
A journalist, deep in the middle pages of the New York Times, pretends that we can fix the unending hell of modern webshit by using a slightly different web browser. Hackernews agrees, and encourages all of us to use every piece of software we can find to counteract the shitty tracking and autoplaying video that Hackernews makes for a living, because if you stopped fighting it, the arms race would end and Hackernews would have to do something productive for a living instead.

I discovered a browser bug
June 21, 2018 (comments)
A bureaucrat wastes everyone's time. Hackernews complains that they don't get enough attention.

webshit weekly

%operator-noreply@n-gate.com () — Thu, 14 Jun 2018 22:54:25 PDT

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the second week of June, 2018.

Chatbots were the next big thing: what happened?
June 08, 2018 (comments)
Some parasites desperately try to explain away the complete failure of their entire product segment. Hackernews bickers over whether humanity's disinterest in conversing with addled javascript-based toddlers was in any way foreseeable. Those who declare the idea obviously doomed explain to us that it's a user interface problem, and Hackernews narrates accounts of every phone call any of them have ever had. The rest of Hackernews insists that everything will be great if we could all just wait a few years and keep giving money to spammy fuckers like the authors of this article.

Why does a spray bottle work?
June 09, 2018 (comments)
A webshit gets fantastically bored. Hackernews is also bored, so they bikeshed the design of common household items for a few hours, diverting along the way to reinvent various barely-related things they saw once. Periodically, Hackernews pauses to reflect on how smart they all are.

Alternatives to Google Products
June 10, 2018 (comments)
Some well-meaning idiots recommend a pile of Android software you can install on your Android device in order to pretend that Google doesn't have your entire life in a vice. A Mozilla shows up to warn everyone that using Firefox features will probably cause websites to behave strangely, but no explanation is offered regarding how this is any different from using a Mozilla product at all. Hackernews pretends to reverse engineer the tracking methods they all create for a living, then gets angry that the idiots didn't just recommend buying Apple products instead. After a while, the Google apologists arrive to explain to everyone that it's in their best interest to relax and just let it all happen.

The Repeal of Net Neutrality Is Official
June 11, 2018 (comments)
Some bureaucrats exert the will of their masters. Hackernews is entirely populated with telecommunications policy experts, all of whose opinions are firmly rooted in the current contents of the Wikipedia article on net neutrality. Some Hackernews are outraged at the very notion that the ruling party might use executive fiat to flagrantly destroy hallowed laws of nature (installed via the previous ruling party's executive fiat). The rest are relatively collected, presumably because the Hackernews Popularity Contest finalists haven't yet issued position statements on medium.com.

Id Software
June 12, 2018 (comments)
Hackernews notices some software, and maintains a respectful reverence for the software and hardware of the respective era. Nobody misses the opportunities to rattle off the games they loved in their youth, or the computers that ran them. Absolutely none of the technical lessons available from examining any of the mentioned technology are considered or even noticed, except for one Hackernews who thinks we can build a better personal computer if we'd just leave out the CPU and connect the keyboard via gigabit Ethernet.

Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say
June 13, 2018 (comments)
Some academics realize that Bitcoin Idiots, LLC can easily manipulate the pretend value of fake money. Hackernews is ecstatic that anyone is paying attention and misconstrue the bemused analysis of academia as external validation of the core concepts. Some full-on conspiracy theorists arrive, chanting the international nutjob mantra, "media narrative," not explaining what possible reason anyone in the media has to take any position at all regarding what nerds do with ASICs in the night. Most Hackernews are content merely to opine that the contents of the newspaper article and the research it describes must be wildly off-base, because Hackernews didn't write it.

Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
June 14, 2018 (comments)
A city decides to build some infrastructure. Hackernews still has the telecommunications Wikipedia articles open from earlier in the week, so they take a day off to incorrect each other about how much it costs to dig ditches and drop cables into them. A sidebar is held for those Hackernews who are considering moving cities just to get a faster internet connection. A handful of locals whine about traffic.