webshit weekly

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

Linux Mint drops Ubuntu Snap packages
July 08, 2020 (comments)
The maintainers of an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution mistrusts Canonical. Hackernews erupts into civil war over the correct way to install a web browser, to which corporation it is appropriate to swear fealty, and whether or not some rando's spider sense is the proper method to measure software performance. Nobody hits on the real answer, which is to immediately stop using anything Canonical touches and install software provided by anyone else at all. Hackernews has all the necessary opinions to come to this conclusion, but for some reason they can't quite cross the finish line; the general consensus is that using Linux is impossible without some manner of downstream Ubuntu molester getting involved.

U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation
July 09, 2020 (comments)
The United States Government continues the war against its own users. In this episode, a toddler rapist's conviction is overturned, and as a side effect, all of Tulsa soon'll be living in a brand new state. Hackernews declares the decision to be a fine lecture on the topic of standing behind a promise, and immediately begins arguing about the war on drugs. Later Hackernews very carefully construct internally-consistent logical frameworks which allow them to continue not giving a shit about poor people, especially ones who are not white, and most especially of all nonwhite poor people whose families have been ratfucked by the United States Government for centuries.

Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera
July 10, 2020 (comments)
Apple continues the war against its own users. Hackernews' attention is piqued by the mention of their laptops. Some Apple apologists insist that a half-millimeter pinhole with a light in it is sufficient for the purposes of knowing if your laptop is looking at you, but nobody is very excited about this plan. In order to decide what the right answer is, Hackernews explores the reasons someone might want to exert control over their own computers. Later, some Hackernews report that their metal-and-glass portable computers can be effectively destroyed by a piece of plastic the thickness of a business card, or by abusive violence such as "picking it up."

How to Understand Things
July 11, 2020 (comments)
A servant of actual evil declares moral virtues to be critical to intelligence. Another claim is that understanding comes to those who pursue it, and naturally the people pursuing it are the people who do not feel that they have sufficient understanding. Hackernews takes the hint and starts listing all the shit they don't understand, so that we may marvel at how intelligent they are. Technology is discussed, but not coherently.

Your DS18B20 temperature sensor is likely a fake, counterfeit, clone
July 12, 2020 (comments)
Buying cheap garbage from shady grifters might land you with flimflam gizmos. Hackernews dimly recalls another hardware manufacturer combating counterfeit gear, and spends some time arguing what hardware programmers should be allowed to break. The rest of Hackernews trades horror stories about trying to buy things over the internet.

Grant Imahara Has Died
July 13, 2020 (comments)
A celebrity passes away. Hackernews was a fan.

Etcd, or, why modern software makes me sad
July 14, 2020 (comments)
An Internet doesn't like a piece of software. Hackernews concludes that disliking trendy software is the surest sign that someone is a tremendous asshole who should not be trusted to make decisions. After a while, some other Hackernews consider that maybe the needs of global megacorporations with billions of dollars of computers scattered across the entire actual planet don't promote simplicity as a driving quality of software development. It's fine, decides Hackernews, because it's not like anyone is learning any of this shit anyway. As long as Stack Overflow provides sufficiently novel copy-and-paste fodder, things will probably keep working.