webshit weekly
An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the second week of November, 2016.
IoT Goes Nuclear: Creating a ZigBee Chain Reaction
November 08, 2016
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Some internets hack into shitty wifi devices. Hackernews saw this coming, but bought the devices anyway.
Why is electricity so hard to understand? (1989)
November 09, 2016
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A kind man attempts to help people understand how technology actually functions. Hackernews thinks it can do better but gets sidetracked for four days recounting various examples of how hard it is for them to learn anything at all, much less anything mathematically provable.
“DRM is Used to Lock in, Control and Spy on Users”
November 10, 2016
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An internet devoted to piracy subverts some e-commies' message to defend its crimes. Hackernews attempts to create freedom of speech from first principles.
Announcing Rust 1.13
November 11, 2016
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God's Own Programming Language promotes error handling from 'afterthought' to 'magic macro'. The new version barely works on the most common processor on Earth. The Lisp and Go armies rally to assault. The Rust Evangelism Strike Force holds the wall, presumably with x86 devices.
The macabre fate of ‘beating heart corpses’
November 12, 2016
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Hackernews spends a couple of days inventing or recalling edge cases in the "alive/dead" determination process. No technology is discussed, except for one moonbat who thinks that cryogenics will save us Real Soon Now.
Quant Job Interview Questions (2009) [pdf]
November 13, 2016
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Someone posts the math-quiz equivalent of Google's 'how many golfballs fit on a bus' bullshit. Hackernews is delighted by the opportunity to kibbitz about how mathematicians are better than everyone else, and businessmen are better than everyone else, coming to the natural conclusion that math nerds who work at investment firms are the apogee of human achievement.
Trigger Happy: An opensource clone of IFTTT
November 14, 2016
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An internet writes a copy of a webshit. Hackernews reveals that it relies on this webshit to keep random businesses from deleting its pictures, look at the weather, track its physical movements, monitor its business services, and literally keep itself from dying of forgetfulness.