webshit weekly
An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the third week of June, 2017.
Developers who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs
June 15, 2017
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Some asshole draws invalid conclusions from a dataset comprised entirely of morons. A few Hackernews realize what a ridiculous waste of energy this was, but most set about earnestly defending their meaningless preferences regarding trivial bullshit. One idiot declares the preferred whitespace to be "more egalitarian." Hackernews takes this claim seriously, and has opinions about it.
Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
June 16, 2017
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Amazon buys some grocery stores. Hackernews pontificates about the social implications of this uninteresting development. Along the way it is decided that Whole Foods is the reason that video game programmers should unionize. The rest of the discussion comprises this week's "let's invent economic theory from my personal experience as a cashier" party.
Your own company? You can do it (2011)
June 17, 2017
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An internet relates an utterly pedestrian life story. Hackernews stumbles across it half a decade later and uses it as an excuse to promote whatever self-help book happened to make them feel smartest. The rest of the comments are Hackernews recounting their own boring existence or else yelling about how hard everything is.
Georgia Tech's free math textbook collective
June 18, 2017
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An internet posts links to math books. Hackernews recommends the math books they wrote and/or read instead. A few people make excuses for why they claim to want to do things but do not do them. The remainder of the conversation involves bitching about the formatting of the website.
Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak
June 19, 2017
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A cybersecurity company peddles its services. Hackernews opines that everything is fine because most of this data was public to start with. Some Hackernews spend a while playing fantasy football with the constitution of the United States. The rest spend all day explaining to each other why personal data must be protected at all costs, except when it interferes with internet advertising.
Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.
June 20, 2017
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An asshole quits a job. Hackernews absolutely explodes, because Uber's business model ("fuck you and your laws") aligns perfectly with Hackernews' most firmly-held convictions. Many thousands of words are deployed to explain carefully to each other that a jitney-cab with a smartphone app is the most monumental societal development in the history of humanity, and that it is absolutely criminal that an executive should be forced out of a cushy job for trivial transgressions like "building an entire corporation on the idea that women are not people" and "abusing your own employees." Most Hackernews hold the opinion that this one person leaving the company will destroy the company, never pausing to wonder how great the place must be if one asshole going home is all it takes to burn everything down.
My Uber driver robbed me, so I took Uber to court and won
June 21, 2017
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An idiot gets robbed by a jitney driver. Hackernews, seeing that the idiot pursued legal remediation and succeeded, decides that everything the idiot did was totally wrong, and they have all the right answers. In addition, Hackernews concludes that Uber was unfairly treated by everyone involved and should have been allowed to lie to the police.