Webshit Weekly

February 7, 2025

Elon Musk staff has been caught installing drives inside OPM office

2025-02-01 | comments

The federal government continues its transition into a failed startup with today’s news that Elon Musk’s personal gestapo has been installing mysterious hardware in the Office of Personnel Management, apparently because treating a democratic republic like a distressed asset to be strip-mined wasn’t getting results fast enough. The state is now just another hackathon project for the world’s richest manbaby (business model: Juicero for sovereign coups), whose supporters apparently believe that constitutional governance works best when the HR department is run by the same guy who can’t keep Twitter from recommending Nazi accounts. Hackernews immediately devolves into the world’s most tedious debate about whether this technically counts as a “coup” or if it’s just normal when a petulant billionaire decides he’s entitled to everyone’s personal data. Meanwhile, the Silicon Valley narrative machine has already pivoted to treating this as “agentic innovation” in governance rather than what it is: the digital equivalent of a junkie breaking into a pharmacy to steal the good stuff.

Tiny vanes glued to planes promise big savings for US Air Force

2025-02-02 | comments

The US Air Force, in a stunning display of engineering that actually works, has discovered that gluing tiny vanes to planes reduces fuel consumption by 1%. This represents a monumental achievement in an industry where success is typically measured by how efficiently you can extract venture capital before anyone realizes your “revolutionary” product is just Yet Another Database. Meanwhile, in the tech industry, thousands of soi-disant “disruptors” are burning through oceans of venture capital to reinvent the frontend framework for the seventeenth time, convinced that their particular flavor of CSS-in-JS will finally bring about the utopian future promised by whichever digital feudal lord they worship. While aerospace engineers meticulously calculate airflow dynamics to save literal tons of carbon emissions, webshits are arguing about whether to use tabs or spaces in their latest climate NFT platform (business model: pyramid scheme for digital Beanie Babies). One percent of meaningful improvement beats one hundred percent of meaningless innovation every time.

Inside Musk’s Aggressive Incursion into Federal Government

2025-02-03 | comments

The New York Times discovers what happens when a tech billionaire applies “move fast and break things” to actual civilization, complete with venture-capitalist buzzwords about “disruption” and “efficiency.” Hackernews, perennially confused about the distinction between a startup pivot and constitutional crisis, descends into pedantic arguments about statutory authority while carefully avoiding the obvious conclusion that the world’s richest man is running a hostile takeover of the state. The comments read like a textbook case of vibe coding applied to governance—a bunch of webshits convinced they can refactor federal agencies like it’s a legacy JavaScript codebase. Musk, having exhausted his “let’s put a car in orbit” content strategy, has moved on to the ultimate growth hack: deleting regulations with the same cavalier attitude developers have toward dependency management.

Oracle justified its JavaScript trademark with Node.js–now it wants that ignored

2025-02-04 | comments

Oracle (business model: “Digital Landlord for Legacy Enterprise Pain”) continues its glorious tradition of being the industry’s least-surprising villain, now playing both sides of their JavaScript trademark. Years ago, they clung to their legal claim by pointing at Node.js adoption, but now that someone else wants to use the name, suddenly Node.js doesn’t count. The webshits at Deno are learning what everyone else already figured out: Oracle behaves like a lawnmower because it’s a company run by lawyers who occasionally pause billing to code something terrible. Their “JavaScript usage” consists of Oracle JET—a “framework” with fewer weekly downloads than the average VC’s latest “agentic” token predictor gets in meaningless GitHub stars.

Warn HN: AI is the new Golden Calf

2025-02-05 | comments

A techbro discovers theology and immediately makes it all about themselves, comparing vaguely useful token predictors to the printing press while missing that Johannes Gutenberg wasn’t trying to automate human consciousness. Hackernews assembles to miscorrect each other on basic biblical literacy, with one commenter helpfully clarifying that the golden calf story predates Catholicism by approximately the same duration as their stock options vesting. The remaining discussion devolves into Steinerite prophecies about spider automatons, which frankly sounds more fun than whatever vibe-coding the webshits are pushing today. All this ritualistic pontification serves to distract from the obvious: venture-funded plagiarism engines are not Promethean fire but merely another way to extract value from creative workers while convincing mid-tier engineers they’re building gods.

N.C.A.A. Excludes Transgender Athletes from Women’s Sports

2025-02-06 | comments

The NCAA (business model: cartel for amateur athletics) announces they’re excluding transgender athletes from women’s sports, causing predictable outrage across the internet. The tech industry, never one to miss an opportunity to perform moral superiority, immediately rushes to condemn the decision while continuing to build platforms that enable abuse of all marginalized groups. Hackernews is undoubtedly filled with thousands of comments from tech bros who solved gender identity in a weekend hackathon and are now experts on both athletics and human rights. Meanwhile, the same companies issuing condemnations are laying off DEI teams and perfecting their algorithms for harvesting user data. Silicon Valley’s approach to social issues has always been the same: issue a strongly worded statement, donate to a nonprofit, and get back to pretending the issue doesn’t exit.

President Trump says he has directed Elon Musk to audit` Pentagon

2025-02-07 | comments

Two digital feudal lords have decided to play Great Fraud with national defense, as Trump announces he’s sending Musk to “audit” the Pentagon. The Pentagon has failed seven consecutive audits, but will now be examined by a man whose companies receive billions from it. Hackernews immediately begins miscorrecting each other about government accounting, while ignoring that putting foxes in charge of henhouses is standard American governance. Several webshits suggest this demonstrates “first principles thinking” that might solve problems stymying professional auditors for decades. The tech industry, having exhausted disruption targets, has moved on to disrupting accountability itself.