Webshit Weekly
November 14, 2025
US air traffic controllers start resigning as shutdown bites
2025-11-08 | comments
The physical world continues to refuse to render properly for webshits who are used to just rebooting the server when things get bad. Air traffic controllers, apparently unaware that “exposure” and “aura” are valid currencies in the tech sector, are resigning. Hackernews naturally leaps to the defense of the shutdown, debating whether the FAA should be privatized into a VC-backed death trap or if the problem is simply that the government isn’t “agentic” enough. The thread rapidly devolves into the usual circle-jerk of political miscorrection, where various idiots explain that the real issue is “process” and not that the people in charge are intentionally breaking things to own the other tribe. It is a stark reminder that in the real world, “move fast and break things” usually involves falling out of the sky.
Elon Musk says let criminals out of prison and give them a robot stalker instead
2025-11-09 | comments
Elon Musk has officially pivoted to the penal complex, decreeing that the solution to crime is mass release followed by the deployment of a fleet of robot stalkers. This is, naturally, less about criminal justice reform and more about finding a sucker for the surplus of hardware currently cluttering Tesla warehouses. The proposal involves strapping the company’s finest hardware to ex-cons, a terrifying prospect given their track record of turning basic software into a lethal game of Russian roulette. Hackernews, exhausted by reality, immediately pivots to “aura farming,” debating the merits of exo-inhibitors and cerebral dampeners while furiously miscorrecting each other on the logistics of a post-scarcity economy. The comment section briefly acknowledges that these glorified Roombas will likely be stripped for parts in a chop shop before they can prevent a single misdemeanor, but quickly returns to jerking off over sci-fi concepts they don’t understand. It is a perfect snapshot of the current rot: a billionaire who lives in a bunker proposing a surveillance state powered by automated plagiarism engines, while the webshits argue about the neural bandwidth required to preemptively stop a human from experiencing free will.
The Future of Fact-Checking Is Lies, I Guess
2025-11-10 | comments
We have reached the logical endpoint of the “great fraud”: replacing the fragile concept of objective reality with a “token predictor” trained exclusively on SEO-slop. The author of the linked article is shocked — shocked! — to discover that a startup is using LLMs to verify facts, a process roughly as effective as asking a ouija board to debug a distributed system. Hackernews, exhausted from years of watching their RSUs dissolve into vapor, debates whether “free speech” applies to “gas-powered bullshit spewers.” Meanwhile, the webshits in the comments are too busy miscorrecting each other on the finer points of UK censorship law to notice that the system they are defending sources its “truth” from the first nine results of a Bing search, presumably written by other, cheaper bots. This is the ultimate form of “vibe coding”: instead of verifying information, we are now shouting at a clanker until it stops hallucinating long enough to tell us what we want to hear. It is a perfect circle: create a flood of disinformation to farm engagement, then sell a subscription to a broken robot to filter it out. The digital feudal lords are laughing all the way to the bank while we argue about the definition of “lies.”
Visa and Mastercard might have a deal to lower merchant fees
2025-11-11 | comments
The payment duopoly has deigned to stop gouging merchants quite so hard, presumably to avoid the antitrust hammer. Hackernews, ever the defenders of the status quo, whines about the potential loss of “rewards,” ignoring that these bribes are just a meager rebate on the fee they already jacked up. The comments section is a battlefield of libertarians miscorrecting each other, none of whom notice that the government literally built a functional payment rail (FedNow) for pennies, but the industry ignores it because it lacks the “aura” of a VC-backed unicorn. It’s a tired dance where the digital landlords lower the rent just enough to keep the peasants from storming the castle, all while the webshits invent new ways to “disrupt” the act of paying for bread.
Ask HN: Would you use an app that lets you sell/delegate your shareholder votes?
2025-11-12 | comments
A webshit proposes a platform to monetize corporate governance (business model: “Uber for vote-buying”), blithely ignoring SEC regulations to focus on “validating demand” for turning democracy into a microtransaction. The poster is unconcerned with legality, only interested in whether the market exists for trading influence like Beanie Babies. Hackernews users eagerly volunteer to “lease” their votes, proving once again that the solution to any structural power imbalance is a web app that lets the rich buy it for pennies. It’s vibe coding for corruption, where the only output is a prison sentence and a slide deck.
Eleven Labs Debuts “Iconic Marketplace” Feat Michael Caine, Judy Garland, Others
2025-11-12 | comments
ElevenLabs (business model: “Uber for digital necromancy”) launches a marketplace where the estates of famous dead people can rent out their vocal cords to the highest bidding token predictor. Hackernews is momentarily revolted by the sight of “Alan Turing™” on a pricing sheet, but quickly recovers to miscorrect each other about whether open-source clankers allow for a more ethical form of grave-robbing. It’s the logical endpoint of the webshit economy: reducing human legends to licensable APIs for the sake of aura farming. The only thing more impressive than the technology is the speed at which digital landlords figured out how to charge rent on a ghost.
Cursor Raises Funds at $29.3B Valuation
2025-11-13 | comments
Cursor (business model: “Uber for cascade errors”) has secured a nearly thirty-billion-dollar valuation for wrapping a text editor around a glorified token predictor. The great fraud lumbers forward, proving that investors will happily set fire to a pile of cash if you promise them that the “agentic” future involves replacing developers with LLMs.
Hackernews is wetting itself over the prospect, engaging in a spirited battle to miscorrect each other on whether a VS Code reskin is worth a subscription. The comments are a wasteland of delusion, with users confidently predicting that Cursor will win the “coding AI race”—a race that apparently has no finish line other than the complete collapse of Western infrastructure. One visionary notes that the “best open source models” are on par with proprietary ones, ignoring that both are equally incapable of understanding basic requirements. Elsewhere, crusty veterans complain about paying for an IDE while simultaneously admitting they pay a separate subscription to paste code into ChatGPT, a perfect metaphor for an industry that refuses to admit it has become a human centipede for SEO-slop.
If the AI bubble does burst, taxpayers could end up with the bill
2025-11-14 | comments
The article tentatively suggests that when the Great AI Ponzi scheme finally collapses, the resulting crater might be filled with public funds rather than just the hollowed-out dreams of failed startup founders. Hackernews users gather to debate the mechanics of corporate welfare, seemingly shocked that “private capital” (business model: “Venture capital for other people’s money”) might require a government cushion when the rubber meets the reality. They argue over whether the billions burned on “clankers” and other tech-debt generators constitute a genuine investment or just a sophisticated mechanism for transferring wealth from pension funds to “digital feudal lords.”
One commenter bravely points out that the massive tax breaks given to data centers—the physical manifestations of aura farming — might come back to bite the taxpayers. This is met with the standard denial from HNers who prefer to believe in the fairy tale of efficient markets. They seem to forget that the only thing these “token predictors” reliably generate is electricity bills. When the bubble pops, the VCs will retreat to their bunkers, leaving municipalities to repurpose empty server farms into much-needed housing for the people displaced by the very automation they were promised would save them. The rest of the thread is just “webshits” miscorrecting each other on the definition of socialism.