Live data from Hacker News

Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

motherboard.vice.com

91–100 of 214 posts

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#91
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSJ has floors of smart, trained, inquisitive journalists who assemble real original data and break real original stories, and who try hard–through single, double, and triple verification–to ensure the accuracy of every single figure and fact they report. Which is why it's sometimes annoying to see people treat paywalls as though they were moral disgraces. Source: I help invest for the chairman of the company.

WSJ also has a political agenda, which requires a second source for any story in there, from the other point of view.

So do CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, Times, NPR, RollingStone, etc etc etc.

No really sure what my point is... but having bias is the norm, not the exception.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#92
post #21

What does it say about the world we live in where blogs do more basic journalism than CNN? All that one would have had to do is read the report actually provided. I don't think I'm being too extreme when I say that, apart from maybe PBS, there is no reputable source of news in America. If you don't believe me, pick a random story, watch it as it gets rewritten a million times through Reuters, then check back on the f…

Information wants to be free, so it isn't worth paying journalists for the time to do this.

I hope you're ironic, because that statement doesn't make any sense.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This line of argument really needs to be toned down. While it's obviously true that papers like the WSJ, NYT, WashPo, etc. have influential partisan editorial boards, their newsrooms are filled with reporters and editors of various political leanings. More importantly, these reporters are among the best in the country and do their very best to find and report the truth in an unbiased fashion. That's what makes these…

This article turned me off the WSJ: http://www.wsj.com/articles/price-tag-of-bernie-sanders-prop... 18 Trillion -- yikes! It's not until the 5th paragraph that we find out that this includes health insurance and that me and my employer wouldn't have to shell out for that anymore. Does it save me money overall? A question not asked. But they do make a big deal about that number and how alarmed they are at it, even if…

How could it save you money? 18 Trillion is the entire US GDP. It's literally the cost of all our products made annually in the US combined.

edit: oops. Its 18 trillion over a decade. So 10% our GDP.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#94
post #56
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSJ has floors of smart, trained, inquisitive journalists who assemble real original data and break real original stories, and who try hard–through single, double, and triple verification–to ensure the accuracy of every single figure and fact they report. Which is why it's sometimes annoying to see people treat paywalls as though they were moral disgraces. Source: I help invest for the chairman of the company.

I don't see it as a moral disgrace at all, but it really is an inconvenience. I have no way of creating this myself, but why doesn't the "Netflix" of journalism exist? Or why can't I just pay X$ more to my ISP, who has deals with publications such as the WSJ, to offer me access to their articles? I'd rather just browse and read, not manage subscriptions. EDIT: Apparently I'm replying too fast. Note that I quoted Netf…

> why doesn't the "netflix" of journalism exist? Or why can't I just pay X$ more to my ISP

There are many, many reasons.

One somewhat pedantic difference is Netflix deals with evergreen content. Any bundling of print journalism (especially with ISPs involved) is going to look closer to cable company bundling. Personally, infrastructure providers should not be in the business of selling content. I won't rehash those arguments here.

So, the ISP aside, the question becomes, who should you pay for a subscription to print journalism? Note that you already pay separately for a Netflix subscription; there would be no difference here.

Content is already bundled at the site level, eg a NYT sub gets you all the NYT articles. If we were to go up another level, eg buying a combined sub to NYT + WaPo + WSJ + Buzzfeed + HuffPo + + etc -- then people would be complaining about the opposite, paying for content that they never read. Which is effectively the complaint that many people have with cable television.

The open question for these sites is is whether lower per-subscriber revenue, from a third-party bundling service, would altogether be greater than trying to solicit subscriptions on an individual basis. That might be the case, but sites also certainly don't want to straitjacket themselves in the manner of HBO, where bundling is their only form of allowable distribution.

Note that most cable networks would never be viable with an a-la carte model: it is only through massive bundling across millions of users that the smaller networks can achieve enough revenue. And not everybody can be HBO. That effectively rules out micropayments for most sites, and I still have my doubts that micropayments would even be feasible at the scale of the WSJ.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#95
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't the only time s/he's done it, and it reads as unnecessary ad spam—which is frequently looked down upon here. The same thing was downvoted in another thread. And if this user is going to continue doing it, it's going to become very annoying very quickly.

Unlike Reddit, HN welcomes self-promotion when it is on topic.

Not always. I've been on HN long enough to see quite a regular rate of complaints against those who self-promote, even when on-topic. I don't think anyone wants to see self-promotional summary comments like this one regularly showing up in what are supposed to be discussion threads, all linking back to an Apply HN post. That's going to drive the quality of discussion down.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#96
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, can you cut it out with the summary advertising crap?

It's an ad, but one that's providing a legitimately useful service. Theres no conflict of interest here (the summary isn't any more biased because it's an ad than a regular commenter would be) and if it weren't an ad, it would be generally recognized as a constructive comment. There's no need to get dogmatic about advertising. If all ads were this high quality and considerate, I would have no problems with ads.

Except it's really not very constructive, is it? It's a summary with no context or part in discussing the actual article. I know we all love TL;DRs, but I don't want to see every article that takes >60s to read have promotional summaries. That will make HN rather low quality.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#97
post #21

What does it say about the world we live in where blogs do more basic journalism than CNN? All that one would have had to do is read the report actually provided. I don't think I'm being too extreme when I say that, apart from maybe PBS, there is no reputable source of news in America. If you don't believe me, pick a random story, watch it as it gets rewritten a million times through Reuters, then check back on the f…

I'm wondering when there ever was a golden age of journalism. In the 80's, I was working in an office building that had a natural gas leak for hours and then blew the roof off.

I taped the news broadcasts that evening on multiple channels. Each TV news anchor recounted a different set of facts, all them wrong. It was an eye-opener for me. And it wasn't even a case of any agenda, it was just laziness and doing as little work as possible.

It makes me wonder how much we think we know about history from the history books is completely wrong.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#98
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, can you cut it out with the summary advertising crap?

It's an ad, but one that's providing a legitimately useful service. Theres no conflict of interest here (the summary isn't any more biased because it's an ad than a regular commenter would be) and if it weren't an ad, it would be generally recognized as a constructive comment. There's no need to get dogmatic about advertising. If all ads were this high quality and considerate, I would have no problems with ads.

Every person/company that creates an ad thinks they are providing a legitimately useful service.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#99
post #56
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSJ has floors of smart, trained, inquisitive journalists who assemble real original data and break real original stories, and who try hard–through single, double, and triple verification–to ensure the accuracy of every single figure and fact they report. Which is why it's sometimes annoying to see people treat paywalls as though they were moral disgraces. Source: I help invest for the chairman of the company.

I don't see it as a moral disgrace at all, but it really is an inconvenience. I have no way of creating this myself, but why doesn't the "Netflix" of journalism exist? Or why can't I just pay X$ more to my ISP, who has deals with publications such as the WSJ, to offer me access to their articles? I'd rather just browse and read, not manage subscriptions. EDIT: Apparently I'm replying too fast. Note that I quoted Netf…

> why doesn't the "Netflix" of journalism exist?

Blendle (blendle.com) seems like it's aiming to be that

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#100
post #21

What does it say about the world we live in where blogs do more basic journalism than CNN? All that one would have had to do is read the report actually provided. I don't think I'm being too extreme when I say that, apart from maybe PBS, there is no reputable source of news in America. If you don't believe me, pick a random story, watch it as it gets rewritten a million times through Reuters, then check back on the f…

I'm wondering when there ever was a golden age of journalism. In the 80's, I was working in an office building that had a natural gas leak for hours and then blew the roof off. I taped the news broadcasts that evening on multiple channels. Each TV news anchor recounted a different set of facts, all them wrong. It was an eye-opener for me. And it wasn't even a case of any agenda, it was just laziness and doing as litt…

(For example, one reporter called it a "warehouse", when you could see it was an office building.)
Post reply on HN