Webshit Weekly

June 30, 2025

GOP omnibus bill would sell off USPS’s EVs

2025-06-22 | comments

Congress, in its never-ending quest to set taxpayer money on fire for the amusement of whichever donor last mumbled something into a golf cart, has decided the USPS should liquidate its brand‑new electric fleet. Not because it makes sense, but because nothing delights our digital feudal lords like sabotaging public infrastructure so they can sell it back to us later at a markup. Hackernews spends the thread miscorrecting each other about who might buy several thousand purpose‑built mail cubes, as though this were a market failure instead of the obvious: a prearranged smash‑and‑grab. The vehicles will be sold for scrap, the contractors will get their cut, and the public gets another bill for the privilege of being looted.

U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

2025-06-23 | comments

Hackernews has discovered that the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, one of the exceedingly rare government agencies that produces anything other than heat and metaphors, is being quietly marched behind the shed and told to “look at the flowers.” Naturally, the web’s favorite congregation of dad-boss engineers is outraged that the one federal body not run like a WeWork knockoff might be shut down. The CSB’s crime, of course, is that it doesn’t produce shareholder value, unless you count saving the lives of people who make actual physical things — a category the modern tech industry considers a kind of medieval cosplay.

The comments read like a grief circle for people who’ve forgotten that Washington only funds programs that enrich a digital landlord or enable the great VC game. CSB’s YouTube channel, beloved for its calm narration of explosions caused by adults who think safety valves are optional, is held up as proof that government can work. This only makes the situation worse; any agency producing something useful is immediately targeted for elimination so the money can be reallocated to subsidies for yet another AI startup that promises to “reimagine industrial safety” by hallucinating maintenance schedules.

Hackernews spends the rest of the thread miscorrecting each other about whether OSHA or the EPA can replace CSB, as though the answer is anything but “no” and “shut up.” The tech industry cheers from the sidelines, delighted to watch the last competent investigators be replaced by token predictors duct-taped to dashboards in the name of efficiency.

Apple Wallet showing ads in notifications

2025-06-24 | comments

Apple, the company that once marketed itself as the last refuge from ad-soaked digital misery, has now decided its flagship walled garden needs some good old-fashioned pop-up carnival barking. The latest revelation is that Apple Wallet, formerly “the quiet place where your boarding pass lives,” has graduated to shouting coupons at you like a Times Square Elmo with a quota. Hackernews, the eternal support group for people in tech who swear they’re about to switch platforms any day now, responds to this with its usual chorus of plaintive rhetorical questions: Can third parties fix it? Can NFC be liberated? Can someone please make a version of iOS that isn’t Apple? No, no, and absolutely not, but thanks for playing.

A few HNers try to tell everyone that it’s fine, actually, because you can disable the notifications. Others insist that open source will save us all, as though the average webshit is going to replace Apple Wallet with a GitHub repo maintained by three exhausted Europeans and a README that hasn’t been updated since Swift 3. The rest of the thread devolves into moaning about ecosystems, as though Apple accidentally created technofeudalism instead of spending two decades engineering it with the enthusiasm of a Bond villain.

But sure, keep hoping the digital landlord will wake up one morning and decide rent is immoral. Let me know how that goes.

The scam that is Visa Account Updater

2025-06-25 | comments

Visa Account Updater is the tech industry’s latest triumph in turning ordinary people’s lives into a subscription they can’t cancel. The banks, those tireless assistants to digital feudal lords everywhere, have essentially decided that when you say “stop charging me,” what you obviously mean is “please, funnel my money to whoever last touched my PAN, forever.” Hackernews responds with its usual cocktail of misplaced confidence and processor lore, confidently explaining that none of this is Visa’s fault, or the bank’s fault, or the merchant’s fault, but yours, for not maintaining a spreadsheet of shadow-card aliases and merchant-specific burner tokens like some deranged accountant cosplaying as Jason Bourne. Meanwhile, the system’s entire design philosophy is: merchants good, customers dumb, and chargebacks are for the weak.

Hurricane forecasters scrambling after sudden shutdown of key satellites

2025-06-26 | comments

In the latest episode of America’s ongoing attempt to speedrun institutional collapse, hurricane forecasters are apparently shocked that a fleet of Cold War junk finally wheezed its last byte. Congress killed the program a decade ago, but the tech industry has trained everyone to believe that if something still technically turns on, it’s basically immortal. Hackernews responds by miscorrecting each other about orbital sensor specs while confidently proposing that meteorologists should’ve just invented new physics or crowdfunded a spare satellite between sips of Soylent. Meanwhile, the actual experts are left staring at dead hardware and hoping the digital feudal lords of weather data remember they exist.

You can now buy personally Human Attention for $5

2025-06-27 | comments

Another week, another webshit startup reinventing loneliness as a service. This time it’s some guy charging five bucks for thirty seconds of “human attention,” which is apparently now an artisanal, small‑batch luxury commodity. Hackernews, a community whose primary social outlet is arguing with token predictors about compiler flags, immediately fractures into the usual camps: the ones calling it dystopian, the ones calling it art, and the ones desperately calculating the hourly rate like they’re negotiating contractor pay for a Kubernetes migration. Meanwhile the creator shows up to explain it’s all a joke about “taking back control,” which is tech‑bro for “I realized grifting is easier than getting a job.” Everyone claps politely while pretending this isn’t just Patreon for parasocial crumbs. The only shocking part is that no VC has shown up yet to industrialize it into an agent‑powered aura‑farming marketplace for monetized eye contact.

US Defense Department will stop providing satellite weather data

2025-06-28 | comments

The Pentagon has apparently decided that the best way to protect Americans from cybersecurity threats is to make sure nobody can see the weather, which is certainly one way to solve hurricanes: just stop looking at them. The official explanation is the usual bureaucratic Mad Libs about “cybersecurity concerns,” a term now meaning “we don’t feel like admitting the real reason.” Hackernews spends its afternoon performing amateur Kremlinology, trying to determine whether this is stupidity, malice, privatization cosplay, or garden‑variety political vandalism. Meanwhile the digital feudal lords of commercial weather data lick their chops, dreaming of the day when your evacuation notice comes bundled with a subscription upsell. The webshits dutifully miscorrect each other on orbital mechanics and FOIA law while the government quietly turns off a system that has been operating since before half of them were born. But hey, at least nobody hacked the satellite. They just unplugged it themselves.

Nearly 20% of cancer drugs defective in four African nations

2025-06-29 | comments

Hackernews discovers that nearly a fifth of cancer drugs in parts of Africa are either fake, spoiled, or otherwise useless, and immediately begins its favorite pastime: lecturing the developing world about institutional decay while pretending their own regulatory ecosystem isn’t held together by bribes, duct tape, political capture, and pharma lobbyists with expense accounts larger than the GDP of the countries in question. The webshits wring their hands about “compliance” like they aren’t the same people who gladly trust an industry whose business model is Uber for molecular roulette. Predictably, they derail into libertarian fanfiction, QC war stories, and anecdotes about pill potency like dosage drift is some hidden secret instead of a documented feature.

Elon Musk says he’ll form the ‘America Party’ if ‘insane’ spending bill passes

2025-06-30 | comments

Elon Musk, the world’s richest reply guy, has decided that America needs yet another political party, presumably because the last sixteen things he touched only mostly exploded. The tech industry’s favorite digital feudal lord has finally realized that dismantling labor protections and posting memes isn’t moving policy fast enough, so now he’s threatening to spin up a political PAC-cosplaying-as-a-party. Hackernews responds by conducting their usual political science seminar, where every credential is imaginary and every conclusion is wrong. Half of them debate what “center” means, as though Musk isn’t just building a new brand for his ego, and the other half pretend this isn’t just the great game of billionaire cosplay democracy.