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

Why I link to Wayback Machine instead of original web content

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A webshit doesn't like advertising. Hackernews thinks that linking to archives is mean because it deprives webshits of ad revenue and places too much trust in mysterious non-profits with decades of demonstrable good faith activities. An archivist shows up to mention that you can just provide both links and stop whining.

The Long-Term Stock Exchange Opens for Business

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A webshit tries to fix more problems with money. Hackernews doesn't really understand what the hell this is about, but since javascript and money are the only problem-solving tools Hackernews has any faith in, they're very excited by whatever this is. The webshit shows up to answer questions. It doesn't help; even Hackernews can see through the pageantry.

Relativty – An open-source VR headset

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Some dipshits have designed a product that is hundreds of dollars cheaper than its competition, presuming you have thousands of dollars of equipment, years of training, and enough free time. Rather than just enjoying their hobby, the dipshits are convinced it should sustain an entire business. Presumably they can get 100% market penetration amongst all fourteen people who give a shit about VR goggles. Hackernews greatly appreciates technological achievements combined with an obtuse assumption of marketability, so the story receives many votes, but there is no interesting application of homemade VR goggles, so there aren't many comments.

Security by obscurity is underrated

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An Internet defends the concept of 'security through obscurity' by advocating for it to be included in a range of other security measures. Hackernews completely agrees, but at least acknowledges the original admonition against obscurity involved it being the primary security measure. There follows four hundred comments from Hackernews reporting whatever is in their server logs from botnet attacks.

Super Mario Bros. 3 in 3 Minutes – World Record Speedrun Explained [video]

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An Internet makes a video explaining some programming. Hackernews is astounded that someone bothered to understand how a system worked before attempting to program it, but quickly gets distracted by other video games.

Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B

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Nvidia saves a few dollars on Tegra license fees. Hackernews cannot figure out why Apple didn't buy this company instead. The rest of the comments are Hackernews naming dead or dying processor architectures they've heard of.

Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

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Microsoft drags its science project back out of the brine, then pretends it was worth doing. There is no useful information in the news article, no actual data presented from Microsoft, and no actionable information to be had anywhere, so Hackernews posts three hundred comments speculating as hard as they can, then incorrecting each other about it.

An annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts for the twenty-eighth week of March, 2020.

Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

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Someone discovers a flight class lower than coach. Hackernews is entirely populated with aviation experts, since the recent release of Microsoft Flight Simulator, and bickers over whether air traffic controllers are more important than computer programmers.

Ninth Circuit rules NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal

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The United States Government admits that there may in fact be a war against its own users. Hackernews blames the deep state, then sets about trying to convince everyone that the actual elected officials are not culpable for any of the things that happen as a direct result of their actions. Later, Hackernews explains that it's unreasonable, in fact, to hold anyone accountable for any actions at all.

David Graeber has died

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A teacher is gone. Hackernews' response varies according to whether they were instructed to like specific books or not.

Reddit app got 50M downloads by making mobile web experience miserable

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Some webshits build a waterslide into a surveillance cesspool. Hackernews explores the borderland between basing one's business on assholery in pursuit of revenue and building a business that sustains itself without such fuckery. The consensus emerges that being a tremendous dickhead is the only way to earn money, and if you're a big enough dickhead, you might earn enough money to subsidize something that a few people find useful.

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it

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Some assholes build a waterslide into a surveillance cesspool, but people are beginning to decline free tickets. Hackernews is torn between an abiding appreciation for the needless complexity and the fact that the resulting technology kind of sucks in every possible way. If only, moans Hackernews, there were a way we could permanently ensconce forty years of Unix mistakes and still be able to scroll down without invoking thermal shutdown? Ah well, sighs Hackernews, maybe next decade.

Common color mistakes and how to avoid them

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Some Powerpoint zombies excrete Blog Lecture Nº 45,301,322 in the Pretending Color Theory Is Worth This Many Words series. Hackernews enjoys deep-dive bikeshedding about things that most people will not ever care about, but since there's so little actual content present they generally have to invent things to argue about. Everyone else on Earth continues to use the default colors of their software (or the templates provided by the corporate communications department) and it continues to work just fine.

BitTorrent v2

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Some Internets post an extremely detailed treatise regarding updates to software that do not in any meaningful way affect any users. Fortunately, the Internets in question are mostly sane, and so the new version can coexist with the old version, and users may continue not caring. Hackernews quietly observes the competence, then starts bitching about Bitcoin. Other Hackernews wish the software did more to foil the interference caused by the companies Hackernews pays every month.

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Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

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While you would be forgiven for assuming this is a trip report about being laid off from Mozilla, this is in fact a collection of references regarding the use of the internet without enriching a corporation that is actively engaged in sabotaging human civilization. Hackernews greatly enjoys science fiction as a genre and regards this specific website as a fine example of the craft. Those Hackernews who have survived Googledammerung invariably report that it was totally easy, you guys, just give Apple a few thousand dollars and surrender unto them instead!

Persisting as a solo founder

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A webshit approaches adulthood. Hackernews tries to reverse engineer the process. This descends into a catalogue of minor affectations seen in adults Hackernews has met before, followed by earnest discussion attempting to identify which ones are to be emulated in hopes of hurrying puberty along. The rest of the comments are trying to figure out the precise moment when you, as an entrepreneur, should start wasting your life caring about search engine optimization.

Being OK with not being extraordinary

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An Internet posts an article about aiming lower, but it gets a lot of traction since the title is, as far as Hackernews goes, clickbait. The story receives a lot of votes but the comment section is much slower-paced, as Hackernews struggles to lay out precisely which ways they're currently extraordinary and how they're working toward being even extraordinarier. One Hackernews can mystically sense the exact strengthening of a given skill, in this case "problem solving" and down to the percentage point, presumably after escaping the dungeon and calculating the experience points earned thereby. Technology is discussed, but only sufficiently for Hackernews to identify just how excellent they are at it.

Africa declared free of wild polio

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Africa wins an important war. Subsequently, the only places at risk for polio are regions with a strong culture of refusing vaccinations, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Facebook. Hackernews doesn't believe the headline, didn't read the article, thinks someone should probably worry about other diseases, and is mad about gun control. Also, says Hackernews, fighting diseases isn't worth it, because diseases still happen.

Arwes – Futuristic Sci-Fi / Cyberpunk Graphical User Interface Framework

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A webshit uses javascript to create really obnoxious CSS. Hackernews desperately wants to name the video games and/or movies it reminds them of. Since it's otherwise completely useless, there isn't much else going on in the comments.

ReMarkable 2.0 – A digital notebook that feels like paper

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Hackernews notices a product that was announced months ago and won't actually be available for some months hence. Since nobody has used it, everybody's opinion is super important. The opinions boil down to two camps: people who want it because it does some things better than competing products, and people who don't want it because it isn't an Apple product. There is a vestigal third opinion where people don't want it because it doesn't do something impossible, but even Hackernews knows better than to argue with those idiots. This time.

American Academy of Sleep Medicine calls for elimination of daylight saving time

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Some doctors express an opinion. Hackernews is fiercely enthusiastic, because they're really sick of fucking everything up the moment tzdata shows up. The implementation details of the doctors' recommendation, however, are prime bikeshedding material, leading to all kinds of hilarity, like the Hackernews who urges us to overthrow capitalism by refusing to have children for free. I am also fond of the Hackernews who endorses introducing a second, coetaneous time zone system, for that Hackernews is on the trail of uncovering the secret of nature's simultaneous four-day time cube.

I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

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Hackernews stumbles upon a lighthearted piece in the New Yorker, and tries really hard to pretend they get it. The only ones who do get it show up to complain about how long it took them to figure out sane priorities. The vast majority of comments just consist of "kids-these-days" rants about how the internet is a distraction. Not "Hacker" "News", though; that's where we go to show everyone how focused we are.

Level 3 Global Outage

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CenturyLink fucked everything up again. Hackernews buys tickets to watch.

App Review process updates

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Apple lightens the App Store review load, presumably in advance of massive layoffs. Hackernews absolutely reviles App Store reviewers, and tirelessly recounts every single injustice perpetrated against Hackernews by uncaring walled-garden tenders. I look forward to the "Cutting Apple out of your life" article detailing the process of buying a Chromebook and migrating from iCloud to Google Drive.