Shitposts Weekly

Medium articles neither rare nor well-done for the week ending 22nd December 2018.

Simply JavaScript: a straightforward intro to Mocking, Stubbing, and Interfaces: A webshit shits webshit about shit that’s only necessary because JavaScript is a Superfund site of a language and environment.

How this drawing changed me as a developer: A webshit shits webshit about the production of his webshit.

JavaScript Essentials: Types & Data Structures: A webshit shits webshit about the peculiarities of data structures in JavaScript. You’d be better off learning a real language and looking for a tool that compiles code in that language into either JavaScript or WebAssembly.

Understanding Design Patterns in JavaScript: A webshit shits webshit about common patterns in programming. This would be a decent tutorial if not for the part where it’s webshit all the way down.

The Golden Age of the iPhone Is Ending: A journalist has a very US-centric view of the smartphone market. (Globally, Android has 80%+ of the smartphone market; only in the US is the iPhone competitive, and a lot of that has to do with boutique hardware being unaffordable in most of the world.)

Recession-Proof Your Finances: A writer is about two weeks late to the party, given recent trends in the stock market. Then again, the ad tech industry (aka Dot-Com Bubble 2.0) is likely to pop in the next few years, so perhaps there’s still some time for people to take this advice to heart. Make yourself safe while you can.

Rare articles which are well-done.

When Self-Help Just Makes Your Life Worse: A writer pens a much-needed reminder that you shouldn’t dive in to self-help booklets all at once. Instead, figure out where you’re lacking and look for tools that could help shore it up.

Nintendo’s New Games Are Miserable for People With Disabilities: A developer notes that Nintendo’s track record for accessibility is pretty abysmal in recent years, what with the relentless focus on motion controls (see Pokémon Let’s Go for an egregious example; it’s nearly unplayable when docked if the player can’t flick their wrist, and requires the use of a single joycon in an unusual (for the Switch) configuration to play at all).

Antitrust’s Most Wanted: A professor takes a look at ten (wannabe) monopolistic companies deserving antitrust investigations. I can’t disagree with any particular choice, but there are a few companies I feel deserve honourable mention (Oracle, for instance).

How a Phone Glitch Sparked a Teenage Riot: A journalist looks back on a 36-year-old event in Sweden.

How to Spot a Sketchy Spiritual Guru: A journalist looks at gurus and spiritual mentors, and how they can abuse a very human need for guidance.

How to encrypt your entire life in less than an hour: A turbo-nerd offers tips on securing your devices. Probably the most important tip, albeit one most turbo-nerds trying to help us plebes neglect to consider, is this: use computers as little as possible. If you absolutely do need to use a computer, use a PowerPC computer; OEM hardware from Dell, Lenovo, Samsung, and other companies typically incorporates closed-source software which can do things without the user being able to prevent it. Only Raptor (so far) lacks this problem, since they produce hardware which is as open-source/libre as it is possible to make. One more thing: Tor isn’t as secure as most people think it is, even if you do adapt your behaviour to maximize its anonymizing faculties.