Live data from Hacker News

5G Got me Fired

medium.com

61–70 of 130 posts

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He may be a troll but that doesn't discount the point he's addressing that in the absence of subscription model, content will be driven by who pays for it (ie. other than the readers).

It’s been decades since subscription revenue drove the majority of magazine and newspaper revenue - probably about the time most of use were in diapers...

>It’s been decades since subscription revenue drove the majority of magazine and newspaper revenue

Yeah no. If you’re going to make claims like that you better source it. Source for the NY Times says the exact opposite: https://www.statista.com/statistics/192911/revenue-of-the-ne...

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#62
post #7

>This is a cautionary tale. Anyone writing for any publisher in today’s commercial market, where the managed advertorial and native ad seems to be the only way to make money, needs to be cautious. More importantly today’s readers need to be a little more than cautious when believing anything. Native advertising is a most insidious concept and should be rejected by every publisher. Instead it is welcomed by the broadc…

"The power of advertisers over television programming stems from the simple fact that they buy and pay for the programs-they are the "patrons" who provide the media subsidy. As such, the media compete for their patronage, developing specialized staff to solicit advertisers and necessarily having to explain how their programs serve advertisers’ needs. The choices of these patrons greatly affect the welfare of the medi…

This makes me think that, besides the fact that Elon Musk seems to constantly has his foot in his mouth nowadays, this may be partly why Tesla has been getting so much negative press coverage (particularly headlines, which are usually written by editors, not the journalists who seem more objective to me). Tesla doesn't advertise. Everyone else in the industry does, bankrolling the press.

I know the press will deny this motive, but how can it not be a factor, even slightly?

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#63
post #23

Am I missing something? He says PC Magazine fired him because he was critical of his 5G article and that rankled the magazine's sponsors. Who specifically are the sponsors he's thinking of? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this is what happened? So they linked his article about 5G to a different one. Why does that mean he was fired for writing the article? I feel like an application of Hanlon's Razor (not quite…

Having run a newspaper, I can confirm that advertisers do contact management and say "I didn't like that article, do something about it or we won't be advertising with you again". And the financial pressure is intense. You have many, many staff to pay, and the commercial pressure to keep advertisers happy is real and difficult to manage. I can totally believe that the magazine caved in to pressure from an advertiser…

> I can totally believe that the magazine caved in to pressure from an advertiser to sack a journalist and pull a story.

As an example of where it has happened:

> Gerstmann revealed that his firing was in fact related to the low review score he had given to Kane & Lynch, though his explanation cited other similar events that led up to the termination, including a 7.5 (good) rating given to Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction by Aaron Thomas, then an employee under Gerstmann. Events such as these led to him being "called into a room" several times to discuss reviews posted on the site. Gerstmann went on to lay the blame on a new management team that was unable to properly handle tension between the marketing and editorial staff, laying additional blame on the marketing department, which he claimed was unprepared in how to handle publisher complaints and threats to withdraw advertising money over low review scores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gerstmann

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#64

This is John C Dvorak style. I guess if they don't like it, they had to fire him. But, if this gets you fired, how can you write about anything. I hope he gets hired quickly somewhere much nicer. Really concerned about 5G now that I connected the dots. I don't mind 4G being branded as new 5G and being always connected.

There's already loads of millimeter wavelength gear deployed : P2P links between buildings; TSA machines at airports. So..although some caution is of course appropriate, it isn't like this stuff isn't already irradiating humans widely.

Disclosure : based on my understanding of EM radiation as an EE and person who deploys microwave gear around my own house, I'm fine with anything non-ionizing. I'd like to see the general public more educated on this subject. Obfuscation is not in anyone's interest.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#65
post #9

With respect to the actual post, the issue has come up, e.g. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pa8bpk/5g-wireles... (And, yeah, Marin County.) Even if it represents a minority viewpoint, 5G health concerns aren't quite crackpot theory land. That said, column seems more than a bit sensationalistic and one-sided --but not really all that different from many things that Dvorak has written over the years.

> not really all that different from many things that Dvorak has written over the years

Dvorak's writing has always been about being contrarian and kicking up controversy.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The power of advertisers over television programming stems from the simple fact that they buy and pay for the programs-they are the "patrons" who provide the media subsidy. As such, the media compete for their patronage, developing specialized staff to solicit advertisers and necessarily having to explain how their programs serve advertisers’ needs. The choices of these patrons greatly affect the welfare of the medi…

This makes me think that, besides the fact that Elon Musk seems to constantly has his foot in his mouth nowadays, this may be partly why Tesla has been getting so much negative press coverage (particularly headlines, which are usually written by editors, not the journalists who seem more objective to me). Tesla doesn't advertise. Everyone else in the industry does, bankrolling the press. I know the press will deny th…

Maybe Tesla receives negative press coverage for its poor workmanship, constant delays, near-unrepairability, bad labor conditions, union-busting, the CEO lying to investors, the CEO being unstable, precarious financial state, unfulfilled promises, reckless deadly computer-assisted driving sold as if it were self-driving, lack of independent competent management, a valuation highly dependent upon retaining a single executive, a valuation wildly overinflated by any objective measure, nonsensical acquisition of a failing home solar company run by a family member of the CEO, nonsensical and distracting forays into products unrelated to building and selling cars, it goes on...

This is not to mention the constant good press it receives.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#67

John C. Dvorak is a troll and the record holder of being wrong. He is almost everything that's bad on "tech journalism" concentrated in one. Specially regarding his brand of hate, Apple. He mentioned that the "mouse" of the Macintosh was bad ("There is no evidence that people want to use these things."), he claimed that Apple was going to discontinue OS X and switch to Windows (according to his "sources"), he argued…

You know that saying controversial things about Apple has basically always been his schtick. It drives pages views when people get all upset and flood into the site to read the article so that can go back to Hacker News/SlashDot/Reddit/Digg/Fark/Facebook/Twitter/whatever to argue about it.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#68
post #29

>Addendum — the original 5G column is still up in India! Click here. Then the dreaded "403 Not allowed". Archived here: http://web.archive.org/web/20180913212959/https://in.pcmag.c...

Thanks for that!

Here's the critical bit...

Because the industry is too cheap to study the health effects of the technology itself, it lets this sort of product out the door despite the fact that it has already been weaponized by the military

http://web.archive.org/web/20180930061356/https://jnlwp.defe...

These frequencies are so poor at travelling long distances, they need a transmitter on nearly every telephone pole and light pole to make 5G work.>

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5g affecting health isn't crackpot theory?

Unknown. There is an impressive-looking group of credentials behind a petition[1] to halt 5G rollouts in the EU until more research can be done. The science just isn't settled yet, partly because doing a rigorous controlled trial in real world conditions is just about impossible. Keep in mind it's not just about cancer, it's any health effect of any kind . The nature of the shorter wavelengths of 5G means that more t…

Any name in particular you consider impressive? I don't know anybody on that list, but see several people associated with "electrosensitivity" organizations, which I don't associate with high quality science.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#70

This is John C Dvorak style. I guess if they don't like it, they had to fire him. But, if this gets you fired, how can you write about anything. I hope he gets hired quickly somewhere much nicer. Really concerned about 5G now that I connected the dots. I don't mind 4G being branded as new 5G and being always connected.

There's already loads of millimeter wavelength gear deployed : P2P links between buildings; TSA machines at airports. So..although some caution is of course appropriate, it isn't like this stuff isn't already irradiating humans widely. Disclosure : based on my understanding of EM radiation as an EE and person who deploys microwave gear around my own house, I'm fine with anything non-ionizing. I'd like to see the gene…

> I'm fine with anything non-ionizing

Marie Curie was also fine with working with Radium... until we found out that it wasn't good for you. The thing about stuff like cancers is that it's really difficult to say "this person's cancer was caused by X." The best we can do are wide spectrum studies about cancer rates, and try to use statistics to limit the variables.

Post reply on HN