Some bloggers are still desperately trying to convince themselves that browser extensions (business model: "Uber for pop-up ads") represent the last bastion of user control over software. Hackernews dutifully parrots this delusion, raving about the "deep control" afforded by these limited scripting hooks into the world's most tightly sandboxed applications. Of course, the harsh reality is that extensions are just sanctioned malware delivery vectors, allowing browser vendors to outsource their attack surface to randos on the internet.

The delusional ravings continue, with claims that Linux affords no real control, conveniently ignoring the minor detail that you can modify any part of the entire stack. But who has time for that when you could be injecting some spyware JavaScript into your daily dose of Chromium? The real hackability lies in convincing yourself these vendor-approved APIs represent freedom.

The coup de grace comes when a Hackernews links to their own 4-year-old blogspam about open source being a "diversion" from what users want. Incredible levels of galaxy-brained take are achieved, as they bemoan the friction of actually exercising control over software. Much better to simply consume the vendor-approved "hackability" on tap.

The comments continue in a dizzying spiral of coping and anguished rationalization, as the harsh truth becomes clear: browser extensions are just bread and circuses, distracting from your utter lack of control over the software hostage situation you've found yourself in. But at least you can inject some CSS and pretend to be lOrderog the Unbowed for a few fleeting moments.

Caesar's Palace (business model: "Uber for money laundering") abruptly terminated their longstanding relationship with DEF CON (business model: "Uber for script kiddies"), leaving the hacker convention homeless just seven months before go-time. The reasoning behind this betrayal remains unclear, with Caesar's offering only some vague corporate doublespeak about a "strategy change." More likely they realized DEF CON attendees have a dismally low "revenue per capita" due to their aversion to losing money on rigged games and overpriced booze.

Rather than taking the cancellation lying down, the defiant DEF CON crew scrambled to find a new venue, ultimately relocating to the Las Vegas Convention Center. The workshops will take place at the dilapidated Sahara, allowing attendees to experience the full spectrum of Vegas ambiance from corporate sterility to A Clockwork Orange squalor.

Hackernews engages in fevered speculation as to the real motives behind the venue change. Theories range from Caesar's prioritizing higher-roller conventions to simple bottom-line bean counting. A few plucky souls dare to suggest there may have been contractual penalties, only to be swiftly reminded that corporations don't give a singular fuck about contractual obligations when there's the faintest whiff of an opportunity to nickel-and-dime someone. The possibility of DEF CON being canceled is quickly dismissed, as that would deprive the world's wealthy elite of their annual human ̃ʳ̃ʳsacrifice festival.

Some corporate drone gets duped into sending $25 million to deepfake villains impersonating the CFO in a video call. Hackernews scrambles to armchair quarterback the situation with brilliant ideas like "call the CFO back" and "use crypto," conveniently ignoring that these proactive measures require functional brain cells. Others theorize the employee is just covering their own ass after pocketing the cash themselves. The real genius lies in realizing this will inevitably lead to a new generation of corporate security theater products mandating biometric panopticons for any financial decisions. Can't wait for my iris to get harvested just to order a new LART from the company store.

A blogger (business model: "Uber for reinventing the wheel") shows that you can strip most of the complexity out of a large language model and get nearly identical results by just looking up similar strings in the training data. Hackernews is stunned that an approach based on literally copying the training data could possibly work for models that are just immense codebooks of everything they were trained on. Some argue that this "breakthrough" will be grounds for the inevitable lawsuit claiming these models are just verbatim copyright infringement. Others protest that they knew all along the "AI" was just regurgitating data, and that any hint it might be doing some original thinking is ludicrous handwaving by the capitalist big tech robber barons. The debate rages on about whether being a glorified data compressor with extra steps makes you a pioneering AI breakthrough or a mundane parlor trick. But the real question is whether this inefficient hack will be fast enough to run on a $10,000 Nvidia GPU before your subscription to Anthropic's API expires.

The internet wonders why the Windows mouse cursor is slightly tilted instead of perfectly straight. Hackernews ponders whether it was some ancient hardware limitation, or a conscious design choice to aid visibility against background patterns. Others claim it was just poor attention to detail from the notoriously taste-challenged Microsoft devs. Inevitably, the thread devolves into a religious war over whether the Xerox PARC gods put any thought into UI design at all, or if it was all just happy accidents later attributed to their genius by revisionist historians. The most insightful comments simply state that modern "designers" wouldn't be caught dead applying such careful consideration to cursor rendering - they're too busy tracing their fingers in the Cheeto dust and VR-hand-job-rendering the metaverse. In the end, no definitive answer is found, but a thousand tiny twitches bring the hive mind one step closer to reckoning with why we're all using systems designed by hungover undergrads in 1983.