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

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

#141

Post by lukesed »

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #139
malchow wrote: 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.

are those the guys who said it's a myth that the government played a central role in the development of the Internet? http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100008723963904444643045775390... WSJ is not even a shadow of what it once was.

That article is in the opinion section.

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

#142

Post by scholia »

jkoebler wrote: post #124
st3v3r wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really doesn't seem like a lot of time for them to respond. Especially given that for 10 or so of those hours, people are probably at home, asleep, or with their families.

I see what you're saying—but companies regularly respond to things like this very quickly. At least to say "we're looking into it" or "can you give us some time to respond." Apple and every other major company has people on call for things like this 24 hours a day, they have email on their phone ... the company saw my questions and chose not to respond. They still haven't responded or acknowledged it.

Apple's approach is to pick favorites, like Walt Mossberg, and then to play its handful of favorites off against one another. (Time gives you a bad review, Newsweek gets the next exclusive interview; or it's NYT vs WSJ.)

The rest of us are generally ignored, so we have to pick up scraps from the chosen few.

Obviously the big titles get more attention than small ones -- nobody has an infinite supply of time -- but companies like Google, Microsoft and Intel cope with dozens if not hundreds of journalists worldwide. They even deal with journalists that they think view them unfavorably.

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

#143

Post by eru »

the0nly0ne wrote: post #135
wolf550e wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

only way to get unbiased news is from a source that doesn't have advertisers, so they can truly speak their mind and report on the real news. No Agenda Show [1] (podcast) is pretty reliable source of information as they're 100% listener funded. They basically 'deconstruct' traditional news media, politics and world events and go above and beyond anything that will be ever produced by 'mainstream news' The show is hos…

What makes you think advertisers are the only bias? Listeners want to hear what they want to hear, too.

What does help is getting some news from outside the country. At least that will give you a different view.

(Eg I remember all the German newspapers blowing in the same direction about something Deutsche Bahn did a while ago, while only the Neue Zurcher Zeitung (from Switzerland) dissented.)

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

#144

Post by mikekchar »

bduerst wrote: post #60
wolf550e wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What about Reuters and Associated Press?

I was absolutely shocked by the abysmal coverage by Reuters of the Fukushima disaster. Many "quotes" from Tepco and the Japanese government were blatantly mistranslated to the point where Reuter's version was the opposite of what was said. I used to keep links to some of those stories, but I seem to have misplaced them. If you dig back into the archives of the wikipedia page you can still find them. One of the most notable incidents was when Tepco was first considering whether or not there had been a meltdown, Reuters reported that Tepco had said that there was no meltdown. What they actually said (in Japanese) was, "There is a possibility that there is a meltdown. We have to wait because the data is consistent with there not being a meltdown as well."

I'll have to apologize for not digging up good references because I don't have time. Several years ago there was a scandal in the Japanese press where one of the news outlets admitted to printing fictitous stories with an anti-nuclear agenda. This was before Fukushima (and I'm struggling to remember which news outlet it was, so I won't try to guess). I suspect that what is happening is that Reuters (and probably other news aggregators) are quite happy to take stories from established reporters on the ground. I think they do not rigorously check the facts, though. I have occasionally noticed other similar mistranslations, for example when the Japanese finance minister speaks at G8 summits, etc. Surprisingly often the report that gets picked up in the English news services is virtually the opposite of what is actually said.

My rule of thumb: If it is a contentious issue and it is happening in a country where English is not the main language, the odds that you will get an unbiased report in English media is virtually 0. The closer to home you get, the more likely you are to get good reports, but even then if you actually check the sources yourself you can find glaring errors in a shockingly large percentage of the stories.

People are people. People are busy. People don't check other people's work. Entertaining fiction sells better than complicated fact. It's really never going to work out. As long as you know that, it's fine.

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

#145

Post by zatkin »

In Apple's defense, I would imagine that most people who are getting rid of old Apple devices don't think about taking the devices to the Apple Store because that's where they buy new products. They typically take their products to an electronic recycling center, or even worse, they just throw it away in the garbage. Apple may be 'cheating the system' by paying these companies to receive credit for some X amount of pounds, but it's not like they're able to force their customers to return old Apple products to their stores.

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

#146

Post by bobwaycott »

dang wrote: post #118
bobwaycott wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not complaining about the summary, of course.

HN threads are supposed to be conversations, and summary comments don't fit with that. Reciting a summary into the public record is a boring addition to conversation in its own right—imagine someone doing this in person—and makes the discussion more shallow, since it's no longer grounded in people having read the story. HN readers can, should, and do read articles, find out what's interesting about them for themselve…

Oh, I definitely agree, dang. I was just trying to clarify that I wouldn't have left such a comment for a summary only. I get that people sometimes unfortunately want to have a Reader's Digest abridged version of an article so they can, I guess, distill key points without investing the time to read. But I spend every day on HN because it's usually not the regular thing that happens. Sure, some might find it valuable. But I commented because I don't want to see that kind of thing posted into every article thread here, and I especially don't want to see it with a promotional link for a startup. I obviously don't have a comment history of complaining about people offering summaries. I'm sure I've done something similar here or there. But I really want to see thoughtful, insightful discussion. That's what's made HN such a great place to spend hours a day for years. I (thought obviously) only commented because this particular thing was done on two articles I hit consecutively, and I really didn't want the OP to think that was a good practice here. I guess next time I'll take the time I should have to provide a less reactionary comment, since I seem to have bothered a number of other readers with the way I spoke.

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

#147

Post by aljones »

eanzenberg wrote: post #127
morcheeba wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

More importantly, the current deficit is ~1 trillion / year. Adding Sanders' proposals will increase this by ~200%. I would like to see an analysis of how to make up that extra ~2 trillion / year in spending by increasing taxes and closing loopholes. Include the savings from not paying for healthcare. I would bet the median taxpayer would see their costs go up.

Current deficit is actually about 500 billion per year.

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

#148

Post by awinder »

Symbiote wrote: post #79
ktRolster wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds about as serious as this article from Vice. It's just click-bait. The worst thing they found (as far as I can see) is that the government required Apple to have a recycling program. What a horrible thing the first article was hiding from us.

The point is, that every manufacturer in the USA has a recycling program, as required by law. Why does Apple's press release get published as news?

Because one way of making new things is to take two existing things and combining them into some new arrangement. It's pretty much humanity in a nutshell. So they took "the us govt requires companies of a certain size to set up recycling programs", combine it with "Apple sells a lot of stuff", and bingo, you've got "apple recycles a ton of stuff" as a new story. It's kinda lazy, but it's low hanging fruit.

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

#149

Post by awinder »

Symbiote wrote: post #79
ktRolster wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds about as serious as this article from Vice. It's just click-bait. The worst thing they found (as far as I can see) is that the government required Apple to have a recycling program. What a horrible thing the first article was hiding from us.

The point is, that every manufacturer in the USA has a recycling program, as required by law. Why does Apple's press release get published as news?

Because one way of making new things is to take two existing things and combining them into some new arrangement. It's pretty much humanity in a nutshell. So they took "the us govt requires companies of a certain size to set up recycling programs", combine it with "Apple sells a lot of stuff", and bingo, you've got "apple recycles a ton of stuff" as a new story. It's kinda lazy, but it's low hanging fruit.

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

#150

Post by nommm-nommm »

WalterBright wrote: post #97
c3534l wrote: 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…

In the early 90s there was an incident that happened to my house that ended up in the local news. The details reported in the news seemed like they were totally made up from someone who happened to be driving by and then told someone else what they thought might have happened. They reported the house was vacant rather than interviewing my family or the other tenants of the not at all vacant 6 family house! We were home the whole time! We didn't see a single reporter or news station even do a drive by of the house before running the story. They would not even have had to knock to ask us what happened - we were outside cleaning up for most of the day as the incident caused a huge mess.

It shocked me that such little effort was made to actually find out what happened before reporting it as fact to the public.

I actually think that they would be less likely to do that today with social media.

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