The World Through The Hacker News Lens

A post front-paged on HN yesterday detailing the troubles a gentleman had subscribing to a calendar event in a Google app, using a Google service, on his Google phone, running a Google operating system.

The top comment – the one that the HN community collectively decided offers the wisest observation regarding this – is that Apple is to blame.

This is not rare on HN. Somehow the root of all evil, troubles, bugs, etc., comes back to Apple1, or more recently AI2.

I replied – with well deserved sarcasm because the comment was ludicrous3 – the following:

Guy has a problem with a Google service on a Google Pixel phone running a Google made, almost 20 year old operating system that controls >70% of the global market. Alongside a web that has overwhelmingly been defined by Google. This is one situation where Google utterly owns 100% of the space. HN’s take – Clearly this is Apple’s fault.

ROFL. I mean, this is beyond parody at this point.

Quickly my comment fluctuated into the negatives and back, and then was flagged out of sight for most users. I don’t take HN too seriously – it has become a technology retirement home, where people lament the state of things and remember the good old days through a very ahistorical, fantasy-based lens – from which my account is shadow-suppressed4 (the milder cousin of shadowbanning).

And I mean…I deserve it.

On Lake Ontario

In more tantrum-based governance5, Donald Trump “renamed” Lake Ontario6 to “Lake America”. This ignorance-based renaming is legitimately hilarious, but not in a “laughs with you” way.

I keep seeing Americans saying it’s a “troll”. That boy he really got those Canadians.

This is a troll like shitting your own pants in a group is a troll. Ha ha you got them good making them smell the shit flowing down your legs!

It makes America look like a banana republic – hey remember when you guys used to talk about all your checks and balances, before congress went awol and you anointed a mad king? – and it makes it look outrageously stupid.

I never want future American governments to change it back (at least regarding your own resources). I mean the rest of the world will always call it Lake Ontario, just as it will always be the Gulf of Mexico, and it will always sit as a reminder of a very dark, profoundly stupid time in American history. You need to remember this for perpetuity. Somehow Americans forgot the disastrous first term of this maniacal imbecile, so if it needs reminders that stay around forever, so be it.

He wants to rename the oceans next. Do it, you coward! “Earth” is pretty lame, too. Make it Planet America, in the America solar system, in the America Galaxy.

Remember “freedom fries”? I mean, that remains a worldwide joke. We’re just adding to the litany at a rapidly of embarrassing debacles at an accelerating pace.

Footnotes

  1. Another recent post discussed Firefox adopting jxl-rs to enable JPEG XL support, after Chrome backtracked on abandoning JXL. Not surprisingly one of the top comments lambasted Apple for lagging by using the C++-based libjxl instead of the cool new jxl-rs.

    Here’s the funny thing about that comment-

    • JPEG XL came back to life because of Apple ↗. Apple inexplicably and suprisingly revived this format that Google had walked away from, then deploying it to billions of devices. Apple’s wide support revived a format that seemed doomed, and in the three years since it has reversed path and now is being picked up by everything.

    • libjxl remains the reference implementation for the standard. jxl-rs is still considered an experimental implementation.

    Doesn’t matter. Earned “Apple does what Apple does” derision. ↩

  2. We’ve retconned a world where there were no bugs, vulnerabilities, exploits, and so on, prior to the AI age. It’s all very comforting. ↩

  3. Don’t mistake me for an Apple shill. The company is outrageously greedy and is guilty of loads of “feed the greed” activities and anti-consumer choices. But trying to drag them in as the villain for this is so outlandishly stupid that it betrays some sort of weird mental illness. It’s especially bizarre when it’s in the service of defending yet another outrageously greedy, anti-consumer company. ↩

  4. My comments, even when highly upvoted, will sit at the bottom of peers, often falling behind light gray and dead comments. It is one of those fun narrative control devices7. ↩

  5. The whole pattern of behaviour of the United States is simply shameful. This administration has adopted the Dennis Reynolds “implication” style of trying to get what they want.

    For those who don’t watch IASIP, Reynolds is a psychopath, and he wants to bring women out on a boat because, he believes, they will give him what he wants because of the “implication”, where the implication is that if they don’t he’ll rape and murder them. He’s not going to, you see, how crazy of you to think that, but you know…there’s the implication.

    Not surprising that when you put a convicted charity-stealing rapist in charge, and then fill his administration full of garbage people, this is the behaviour you get. ↩

  6. The lake, just like the cities Toronto and Ottawa, named after aboriginal words. The province was later named after the lake. And it’s important to note that the name of the great lakes is comprehensively agreed to in many treaties and agreements, but as Carney noted, and the world has observed, the US’ signature is written in pencil, and it is a worldwide scumbag. ↩

  7. Similarly there is a group of power users that gets “+/- 2” votes. All votes are equal, but some are more equal than others. ↩

See Also