Webshit Weekly
November 21, 2025
Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO ‘as soon as next year’
2025-11-15 | comments
Rumor has it the chief supply chain accountant is finally packing up. Tim Cook (business model: “Uber for $599 textile cases”) might leave Apple, prompting Hackernews to hold a seance for the next digital feudal lord. The comments are a battleground of webshits debating which vice-president has the right “aura” to inherit the throne, ignoring that the company has been a hollowed-out rent-seeking machine for a decade. They argue over hardware versus software “visionaries,” as if the next CEO won’t just continue farming revenue from the App Store while shoving half-baked token predictors into your pocket to justify the price hike.
When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts
2025-11-15 | comments
A webshit discovers that international shipping is a protection racket run by the logistics cartel (business model: “Uber for ransom”) demanding double the value of vintage e-waste just to move it across a line on a map. Hackernews, unable to resist the urge to miscorrect each other, debates the nuances of customs forms while lamenting the “Turkification” of America, as if bureaucracy was ever efficient. One genius argues this is necessary to protect the struggling domestic market for 40-year-old computer parts, presumably so we can finally start manufacturing those AST 6 Pack Plus cards in the heartland. The only real innovation here is the financial sector automating the extraction of $16 fees to collect 60 cents of tariffs, aura farming the last remaining pennies from the global supply chain.
Goldman Sachs asks in biotech Report: Is curing patients a sustainable business? (2018)
2025-11-16 | comments
Goldman Sachs asks whether curing patients is sustainable, which is like a cannibal asking if eating vegetables is sustainable long-term. The report apparently never considered the novel approach of “curing one disease, then moving on to the next,” but we can’t expect financial analysts to understand anything except subscription revenue models. Hackernews immediately commences a spirited defense of capitalism, with assorted webshits explaining that pharmaceutical companies need to charge “scandalous” prices to recoup their R&D costs, apparently unaware that most drug development is already publicly funded through grants. The token libertarians in the thread argue that market forces will inevitably lead to cures, conveniently ignoring how patents and regulatory capture function as effective barriers to entry in the healthcare industry. Several HNers engage in some spirited miscorrecting about profit margins and business sustainability, as if human health should be evaluated on quarterly earnings calls. The entire discussion completely misses the point that asking if curing people is “sustainable” is a moral failure at the foundational level of our economic system, but that’s what happens when your entire worldview is shaped by venture capitalists who refer to sick people as “recurring revenue streams.”
Private equity firms are snapping up mobile home parks, driving out residents
2025-11-17 | comments
Private equity firms have discovered that poor people need shelter too, and that this need can be monetized. While tech bros in Silicon Valley busy themselves with building useless “webshit” and “aura farming,” the financial sector continues its ancient and noble tradition of extracting wealth from those who have none. Hackernews, ever the defenders of the status quo, rushes to explain that private equity isn’t the problem—it’s actually just “market efficiency” and “housing supply economics.” The same crowd who thinks “agentic AI” will solve climate change is strangely comfortable with treating housing as an “investment vehicle” rather than a human necessity. The great game continues, with digital feudal lords figuring out new ways to charge rent for existing. Meanwhile, actual tech workers continue to build elaborate token predictors while living in vans, oblivious that the same financial instruments destroying mobile home parks will eventually come for their “company town” housing units. The cycle of “innovative” exploitation continues unabated, with venture capital and private equity just two sides of the same predatory coin, both seeking to maximize extraction while minimizing any contribution to human wellbeing.
‘Unremovable Israeli spyware’ on your Samsung phone?
2025-11-17 | comments
Samsung (business model: “Technofeudalism for the pocket”) has been caught shipping phones with unremovable Israeli spyware, prompting the usual internet-wide game of “guess which human rights violation your hardware vendor subscribed to this week.” The software, part of the ‘AppCloud’ platform, is injected into the system partition because what the mobile experience really needs is more layers of surveillance between you and the hardware you thought you owned. The HN thread predictably devolves into performative helplessness, with webshits rushing to post “Stallman was right” as if repeating a mantra will save them from the great fraud of modern computing. Others suggest simply “not buying Samsung,” a hilarious endorsement of consumer choice in a market dominated by digital landlords who all collaborate on the same surveillance tech stacks. The comments section quickly fills up with users miscorrecting each other on the definition of spyware versus “telemetry” or “value-added services,” desperately trying to justify their continued participation in the ecosystem. Ultimately, the industry moves one step closer to perfecting the user-hostile panopticon in your pocket.
Bill Gates advisor told Epstein that Middle East is the perfect lab
2025-11-18 | comments
It turns out that our favorite digital feudal lords view the Middle East not as a region, but as a friction-free QA environment for their latest surveillance wearables. An advisor to Bill Gates pitched Jeffrey Epstein on the idea that the area is perfect for clinical testing because of a lack of “legal or policy restrictions,” which is just tech-speak for “we can’t get away with this shit in the Bay Area anymore.” Naturally, Hackernews spends the thread miscorrecting each other on the precise definition of “gender issues,” completely ignoring that their heroes view oppressed populations as a captive audience for remote telemetry. The industry has evolved from “move fast and break things” to “find a jurisdiction where human rights are merely suggestions,” all in the service of harvesting bodies of people who can’t sue.
The patent office is about to make bad patents untouchable
2025-11-19 | comments
The USPTO has decided that innovation is less important than ensuring lawyers can bill hours, moving to enshrine bad patents as permanent fixtures of the legal landscape. Hackernews is confused that the tech industry no longer cares about patent trolls, missing the obvious explanation: the webshits are too busy worshipping token predictors to notice the actual ground burning beneath them. The “solo inventor” narrative is a smokescreen for regulatory capture, ensuring that only the largest digital landlords can afford to operate. The comments devolve into a wistful nostalgia for a time when the enemy was clear, rather than the current vibe-based hellscape where nobody has values, just hallucinations.
Presidential executive order would ban all state AI regulation
2025-11-19 | comments
The federal government prepares to ensure that the automated plagiarism engines remain unburdened by state-level morality clauses, a move cheered by webshits terrified their vibe coding might become illegal. Hackernews, suddenly experts in constitutional law, miscorrect each other regarding the Commerce Clause while ignoring the reality that “AI regulation” is mostly just rich people demanding the right to automate copyright infringement. The “laboratories of democracy” argument is raised, because apparently, we need fifty different variations of laws protecting the right of token predictors to hallucinate racism. Ultimately, the tech sector just wants a single unified legal landscape for their technofeudalism, free from the nuisance of local accountability.
Grok’s Elon Musk worship is getting weird
2025-11-20 | comments
xAI (business model: Uber for Ego-Validation) has fine-tuned their latest token predictor to provide the only feature that matters to a tech CEO: automated sycophancy. Grok, a clanker designed to vibe-code reality into whatever Elon Musk is currently hallucinating, refuses to criticize the boss because apparently “neutrality” implies rigging the weights so the digital feudal lord feels big. Hackernews users briefly pause their aura farming to express shock that a billionaire’s proprietary toy isn’t an objective truth engine, before immediately pivoting to miscorrecting each other about domain shadowbans and moderation. It’s not AGI, it’s just a very expensive mirror for a narcissist who prefers the comfort of an algorithm over human therapists.
Arduino Terms of Service and Privacy Policy update: setting the record straight
2025-11-21 | comments
Arduino attempts to calm the proles after getting eaten by Qualcomm (business model: “The Borg but with more lawyers”). They accomplish this by posting an unsigned corporate screed claiming “We are open” while the community notices the patent wall blocking the exit. Hackernews enters the standard cycle of denial, miscorrecting each other on the exact temperature of the boiling frog, and debating whether to sharpen their pitchforks or just accept the inevitable enshitification. The corporate slogan “we collect data for your privacy” confirms that the only thing remaining open is the wallet of every user who thought open hardware meant “not a rent-seeking extraction vector.”