webshit weekly

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the second week of August, 2017.

The Internet Archive has digitized 25,000 78rpm Gramophone records
August 08, 2017 (comments)
Some librarians librariate. Hackernews trades links to random entries and levels-up their hipster cred by learning about record players. Several Hackernews are excited for the incoming wave of techno.

uBlock Origin Maintainer on Chrome vs. Firefox WebExtensions
August 09, 2017 (comments)
An internet describes the five remaining differences between Firefox and Chrome, one of which is "Etc." (Latin, here, for "et cassum"). Hackernews explains that Firefox's superiority comes from its diverse collection of databases and indices, which work together to prevent the user from ever having to know or remember anything at all. Several Hackernews debate whether Chrome's ability to assist webshit in lying to the user is a good feature or a required feature. The rest of the comments are pissing matches about who has the most tabs open and which plugins are most useful for pretending browser vendors are not in an abusive relationship with browser users.

The world in which IPv6 was a good design
August 10, 2017 (comments)
An internet stares in the face of madness. In the course of confronting the darkness inside the IETF, our protagonist either careens into the abyss or mobilizes some weapons-grade sarcasm -- it's not possible to tell, but describing a QUIC/IP-only internet as 'elegant' is one or the other. Hackernews spends some time trying to shove the real world into the OSI model before deciding it would be simpler to go straight to reinventing internet protocols from first principles.

Ad blocking is under attack
August 11, 2017 (comments)
A shitware peddler wrings their hands about the rough treatment received by one of the projects on whom their "business" relies. Hackernews points fingers, and sets about inventing imaginary case law to back up whatever preconceived notions they arrived with. The Hackernews Committee for Misunderstanding the Law holds an emergency joint meeting with the Hackernews Committee for Bitching About Adblockers. After a lot of noise, the august assembly decides that the Declaration of Entitled Whining requires no major alterations in response to this development.

YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as 'extremist material'
August 12, 2017 (comments)
Google continues their long-held tradition of randomly taking shit off the internet. The latest twist is that they have advanced Tensorflow technology sufficiently that they can now blame computers for mismanagement. Hackernews tries to figure out why Google, when enforcing arbitrary and capricious termination of services, insists on being a dick about it in the process. Instead of coming to the obvious conclusion ("the user is not only beneath contempt, the user is beneath any consideration at all"), Hackernews writes fanfiction about the kind of egalitarian censorship-proof internet they'd like to have, and the imaginary incentives they would provide to bring it about. Nothing productive is said.

An Intro to Compilers
August 13, 2017 (comments)
An internet posts some Intro to Computer Science notes, complete with emojis and pointlessly hand-drawn illustrations. Hackernews posts their resumes in narrative form. The rest of the comments are whining and bikeshedding each other's whining.

I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity
August 14, 2017 (comments)
An internet points out that workplace diversity will be difficult to achieve until educational diversity exists. Hackernews gathers around the campfire to tell each other horror stories about the (possibly apocryphal) time someone they knew had to interview for a job outside of Silicon Valley. Grimly, they set about tone-policing each other and the original author -- the only safe choice. Some of the more daring Hackernews rise to battle to defend the most underserved and persecuted demographic throughout human history: themselves.