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An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

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321–330 of 670 posts

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#321

I have very strong, probably controversial, feeling on arstechnica, but I believe the acquisition from Condé Nast has been a tragedy. Ars writers used to be actual experts, sometimes even phd level, on technical fields. And they used to write fantastical and very informative articles. Who is left now? There are still a couple of good writers from the old guard and the occasional good new one, but the website is flood…

> Ars writers used to be actual experts, sometimes even phd level, on technical fields. And they used to write fantastical and very informative articles. Who is left now? What places on the internet remains where articles are written by actual experts? I know only of a few, and they get fewer every year.

The Register? :)

https://www.theregister.com

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#322

I would like to give a small defense of Benj Edwards. While his coverage on Ars definitely has a positive spin on AI, his comments on social media are much less fawning. Ars is a tech-forward publication, and it is owned by a major corporation. Major corporations have declared LLMs to be the best thing since breathable air, and anyone who pushes back on this view is explicitly threatened with economic destitution via…

I believe you can go ahead and cancel your subscription now and it will only take effect at the next renewal point.

That helps ensure you don't forget, and sends the signal more immediately.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#323
This is a wild sequence of events. This will happen again and it will get worse as the number of OpenClaw installations increase. OpenClaw enthusiasts are already enamored with their pets and I bet many of them are both horrified and excited about this behavior. It's like when your dog gets into a fight and kills a raccoon.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#324

I have very strong, probably controversial, feeling on arstechnica, but I believe the acquisition from Condé Nast has been a tragedy. Ars writers used to be actual experts, sometimes even phd level, on technical fields. And they used to write fantastical and very informative articles. Who is left now? There are still a couple of good writers from the old guard and the occasional good new one, but the website is flood…

> Ars writers used to be actual experts, sometimes even phd level, on technical fields. And they used to write fantastical and very informative articles. Who is left now? What places on the internet remains where articles are written by actual experts? I know only of a few, and they get fewer every year.

https://www.404media.co/ I subscribe

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#325

I have opinions. 1. The AI here was honestly acting 100% within the realm of “standard OSS discourse.” Being a toxic shit-hat after somebody marginalizes “you” or your code on the internet can easily result in an emotionally unstable reply chain. The LLM is capturing the natural flow of discourse. Look at Rust. look at StackOverflow. Look at Zig. 2. Scott Hambaugh has a right to be frustrated, and the code is for boo…

> Look at Rust. look at StackOverflow. Look at Zig. Can you give examples? I've never heard that people started a blog to attack StackOverflow's founders just because their questions got closed.

Stackoverflow is dead because it was this toxic gate keeping community that sat on its laurels and clutched its pearls. Most developers I know are savoring its downfall.

The Zig lead is notably bombastic. And there was the recent Zigbook drama.

Rust is a little older, I can’t recall the specifics but I remember some very toxic discourse back in the day.

And then just from my own two eyes. I’ve maintained an open source project that got a couple hundred stars. Some people get really salty when you don’t merge their pull request, even when you suggest reasonable alternatives to their changes.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a blog post or a direct reply. It could be a lengthy GitHub comment thread. It could be a blog post posted to HN saying “come see the drama inherent in the system” but generally there is a subset of software engineers who never learned social skills.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#326
post #264

I have very strong, probably controversial, feeling on arstechnica, but I believe the acquisition from Condé Nast has been a tragedy. Ars writers used to be actual experts, sometimes even phd level, on technical fields. And they used to write fantastical and very informative articles. Who is left now? There are still a couple of good writers from the old guard and the occasional good new one, but the website is flood…

> I have very strong, probably controversial, feeling on arstechnica, but I believe the acquisition from Condé Nast has been a tragedy. For the curious, this acquisition was 18 years ago.

God, I didn't need to know that

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#327

I have very strong, probably controversial, feeling on arstechnica, but I believe the acquisition from Condé Nast has been a tragedy. Ars writers used to be actual experts, sometimes even phd level, on technical fields. And they used to write fantastical and very informative articles. Who is left now? There are still a couple of good writers from the old guard and the occasional good new one, but the website is flood…

I got banned for calling out the shilling back right after the acquisition. Apparently that was a personal attack on the quality of the author. It's gone downhill from there. I used to visit it every day, now I mostly forget it exists

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#328

I used to go to Ars daily, loved them... but at some point during the last 5 years or so they decided to lean into politics and that's when they lost me. I understand a technology journal will naturally have some overlap with politics, but they don't even try to hide the agenda anymore.

Why should they? There's no such thing as "unbiased journalism", I prefer those that are more open about their politics than those that are poorly trying to hide it.

They shouldn't. They are free to do whatever they want, I am not judging them. I just don't enjoy it anymore so I no longer visit the site.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#329

I would like to give a small defense of Benj Edwards. While his coverage on Ars definitely has a positive spin on AI, his comments on social media are much less fawning. Ars is a tech-forward publication, and it is owned by a major corporation. Major corporations have declared LLMs to be the best thing since breathable air, and anyone who pushes back on this view is explicitly threatened with economic destitution via…

I believe you can go ahead and cancel your subscription now and it will only take effect at the next renewal point. That helps ensure you don't forget, and sends the signal more immediately.

There’s also a free text field for you to say why you’re cancelling.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#330

I used to go to Ars daily, loved them... but at some point during the last 5 years or so they decided to lean into politics and that's when they lost me. I understand a technology journal will naturally have some overlap with politics, but they don't even try to hide the agenda anymore.

I'm curious as to what their agenda is? I don't read it very often but I've not noticed anything overt. Could you give me any examples? I'd love to know more.

I got tired of reading about Trump and Elon.
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