webshit weekly

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the first week of July, 2020.

Oppose the Earn IT Act
July 01, 2020 (comments)
Mozilla (business model: "Uber for Also-rans") disagrees with the United States Government's plan to drive as much innovation overseas as possible. It's not clear why Mozilla cares, as it is not in the innovation business. The claim is that Mozilla does not want to install government surveillance colonoscopes in all its products, but given that Mozilla's share of the browser market has recently fallen behind that of Ben & Jerry's nobody knows which users the government would be spying on exactly. Hackernews shares methods for browbeating uninterested acquaintances into agreeing with Mozilla. Other Hackernews argue over which federal representatives are assholes about computers (turns out it's all of them). The United States Government continues the war against its own users.

LinkedIn is copying the contents of my clipboard on every keystroke
July 02, 2020 (comments)
Microsoft stays ahead of US Government policy by just spying on everyone in reach. Hackernews rushes to point out that this is not a case of nefarious behavior, but instead is an example of shitty programming, which Hackernews cannot in good conscience criticize, since shitty programming is the foundation of all of their jobs. Hackernews spends some time bitching about LinkedIn, which they all continue to use no matter how bad it is, until that conversation turns into a heated debate regarding exactly how big an asshole it's appropriate for phone software to be.

Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?
July 03, 2020 (comments)
An Internet is confused by Google's Amp con. Hackernews doesn't like Amp either, but Google sees it as a wonderful opportunity to replace the confusing "address bar" user experience with whatever the hell Google wants. Hackernews insists that Google is not the only Amp vendor, which we are apparently supposed to interpret to mean that Amp is not a dastardly plot where Google uses its browser and search engine to bully news sites into doing business with Google. This explanation fails to account for the fact that Amp is a dastardly plot where Google uses its browser and search engine to bully news sites into doing business with Google, but Hackernews accepts it anyway.

Websites that look like desktop GUIs
July 04, 2020 (comments)
A webshit displays an atrocity menagerie. Hackernews complains about Electron. The rest of the comments celebrate the atrocities.

The Wrong Abstraction (2016)
July 05, 2020 (comments)
An Internet suggests that the proper response to an inappropriate engine might not be adding more wheels. Hackernews can sense a kernel of wisdom here, but struggles to correctly determine what it is. Dozens of comments grapple with identifying the precise method to determine when and how your software has been written incorrectly, but since the official Hackernews selection method is "do whatever React documentation suggests" they're at a bit of a loss what to do about it. Maybe try Vue again?

Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips
July 06, 2020 (comments)
Google gives away the razor factory so they can expand the shaving cream market. Hackernews regards the sad state of computer hardware design to be the fault of people being insufficiently willing to do work for free en masse. The rest of the comments comprise Hackernews Invents Economics Episode 56,392, with an after-credits scene wherein they attempt to select the appropriate neolithic computer engineering techniques with which to assault Intel's low-earth-orbit aircraft carrier.

YouTube deleted an electronics repair channel [video]
July 07, 2020 (comments)
Youtube continues the war against its own users. Hackernews relates all of the abuses they've suffered at the hands of a faceless corporate void, but some Googles arrive in the comments to explain to us that the things Youtube does are just too hard to do because Youtube is so incredibly successful. Despite this explanation making absolutely no sense, a surprising number of Hackernews are extremely receptive to the idea that the natural evolution of rampant success is miserable failure, sustained indefinitely. Several dozen comments, as one might expect to see when Hackernews is discussing Google, constitute an extended attempt to crowdsource the nature of God. A few Hackernews suggest not using the unreliable services provided by an incompetent pack of assholes, but the Hackernews Armchair Economics League arrives to explain how impossible that is.