The article literally references the legend of John Henry, yeah.
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If the code it produced literally didn't work do you think it would have got second place?
Did you read the article? It says:
The competition required contestants to solve a single complex optimization problem over 600 minutes.
I don't see what that has to do with this. The joke is that Poilievre is being parachuted in to "represent" this riding that he has nothing to do with, just like the other hundred candidates he's complaining about.
The joke is Poilievre running in this riding in the first place. The 100 other candidates are just making sure everyone gets the joke.
No, there's ways to do this without damaging Earth. You could arrange the sphere so that there's a gap that allows light through specifically to keep Earth lit, or you could use mirrors or straight up artificial light sources to maintain Earth's sunlight levels.
Or you get over the obsession with maintaining Earth exactly as it always was and carry on without it. Once we're talking about Dyson spheres a planet like Earth would be a very minor population center. Probably more valuable as a source of additional building material than as a place to live in its own right.
For a power-collecting Dyson sphere you don't actually need all that much matter. Most of the sphere's area can be thin metal foil that just acts as a mirror to concentrate light on power converters, for example. You could build it with asteroidal material.
If you really want to get massive, then Mercury is usually the first target people propose for demolition. Lots of heavy elements and already close in to the Sun. And nobody cares much about Mercury.
Sure, what would be the obstacle? You start by building a single solar energy collector. Then build another. Then another. And so forth.
Actually, it might be worth doing this first. Once you've got even a partial Dyson swarm you've got ample energy to make interstellar travel a lot easier. You could either use beamed propulsion (lightsails or magsails), or manufacture bulk antimatter to fuel high-efficiency rocketry, or a combination of the two.
The risks of blotting out your only livable planet's biosphere is too great
If our Dyson sphere project has become large enough that this is a risk, then we've got ample energy to spare to artificially light Earth. Assuming we still want to keep it around at that point and not dismantle it for additional raw materials.
not to mention stuff like the dark forest theory.
Dark Forest only works in the context of a cheesy sci-fi story. Under real-world physics it fails utterly.
Emphasis added. If the result of not signing a voluntary code of practice is massive fines and IP blocks, was it really "voluntary?"