Well, the OP’s argument becomes nil when it’s based on such a basic fallacy, I mean c’mon. Temporal precedence ≠ causal impossibility.
And since autism-as-symptom existed in 1911 but autism-as-disorder wasn’t differentiated until later, the meme’s temporal logic becomes even more meaningless. lol
🐱🐱🐱🐱
puts on logic glasses
Oh look, another brilliant mind discovered that autism was identified before Tylenol existed, so obviously Tylenol can’t cause autism. That’s like saying cancer existed before radiation therapy, therefore radiation can’t cause cancer. Peak necessity/sufficiency confusion right here - apparently conditions can only have one cause and medical recognition equals temporal origin.
But hey, let’s ignore that Swedish study of 2.5 million kids that found zero causal link when they actually controlled for confounding variables using sibling comparisons. Or those other high-quality studies that show the association completely disappears once you account for genetics and family environment. Who needs actual science when you have timeline gotchas?
Meanwhile pregnant women might avoid the safest pain reliever available because some politician decided to manufacture outrage for political points. But at least someone gets to feel intellectually superior about their logical fallacy meme.
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Oh, the pedants have arrived. How delightful.
Yes, technically The_Decryptor is correct - React Native doesn’t literally spin up a Chromium instance like Electron does. It transpiles JavaScript into native calls. But they’re completely missing the forest for the trees here.
The fundamental architectural absurdity remains unchanged: Microsoft is using a JavaScript framework - originally designed for mobile apps - to render core operating system UI elements. Whether that JavaScript gets compiled to native calls or interpreted in a browser engine is irrelevant to the core criticism.
Your coffee analogy is actually closer to the mark than The_Decryptor realizes. The performance issues aren’t just about the final native calls - they’re about the entire abstraction stack Microsoft has built.
You’ve got JavaScript -> React Native bridge -> WinUI 3 -> whatever underlying Windows API calls. Each layer adds overhead, complexity, and potential failure points. The_Decryptor saying “it’s in the same boat as MAUI” isn’t the defense they think it is - MAUI has its own performance issues precisely because of similar abstraction layers.
This is exactly the kind of technical bike-shedding that lets corporations get away with architectural disasters. Everyone argues about implementation details while the Start menu still stutters when you click it.
The old world would have written the Start menu in C++ and called it a day. The new world creates dependency graphs that look like spider webs and then argues about whether the spider web is technically made of silk or polyester.
Oh, but it absolutely is true. Microsoft really did decide to use React Native for parts of the Windows 11 Start menu. They’re also using it in sections of the Settings app.
The technical reality is even more absurd than the meme suggests. Microsoft is currently maintaining eight different UI frameworks for Windows, including their own .NET MAUI and WinUI 3 that were specifically built for their OS. Yet somehow they thought, “You know what this native operating system needs? A JavaScript framework originally designed for mobile apps.”
The CPU usage spikes aren’t necessarily from React Native itself being particularly heavyweight, but rather from the fundamental architectural choice of running a web-based rendering engine for core system UI elements. Every time you click Start, you’re essentially launching a mini web application just to display a menu.
What’s particularly galling is that Microsoft has acknowledged WinUI’s performance issues for years, to the point where they recommend their partners use the older WPF for performance-critical applications. So instead of fixing their native framework, they decided to add another layer of abstraction.
This is what happens when corporate development teams prioritize “developer experience” and trendy frameworks over system efficiency. Richard Stallman’s expression in that image perfectly captures the appropriate level of technical horror at this decision.
The old world built operating systems. The new world builds web apps that pretend to be operating systems.
The alphabet-bois are at it again, this time spinning Romanian spam ops into an imaginary dos-by-texting ticking bomb. Same playbook - take normal criminal SIM farms used for warranty scam texts, add scary words about “nation-state actors,” time it with UN meetings, profit.
The dude in the article is masscan creator btw, you know, just the guy who invented the tools that actual security experts use. Meanwhile James Lewis gets quoted making technical claims that would embarrass a CS undergrad. Peak institutional credentialism - ignore the actual expert because he doesn’t have the right government consulting contracts. You can’t overload thousands of cell towers serving 10M+ people with SMS flooding. That’s not how cellular architecture works, Lewis!
Secret Service stumbled across Torswats operation leftovers and decided to manufacture national security theater instead of just saying “we busted some spam criminals”. The propaganda machine ate it up because anonymous officials “speaking on condition of anonymity” sounds so much more dramatic than “we found some bulk SMS servers.”
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱 Solid technical journalism cutting through institutional bullshit, Graham earned his reputation for a reason.