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

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

#411

Post by zahlman »

anthonj wrote: post #236

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…

> the acquisition from Condé Nast

By Condé Nast? Or did they get acquired again?

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

#412

Post by doyougnu »

I'm honestly shocked by this having been an Ars reader for over ten years. I miss the days when they would publish super in-depth articles on computing. Since the Conde Nast acquisition I basically only go to ars for Beth Mole's coverage which is still top notch. Other than that I've found that the Verge fulfills the need that I used to get from Ars. I also support the Verge as a paid subscriber and cannot recommend them enough.

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

#413

Post by cubefox »

Kwpolska wrote: post #235

The story is credited to Benj Edwards and Kyle Orland. I've filtered out Edwards from my RSS reader a long time ago, his writing is terrible and extremely AI-enthusiastic. No surprise he's behind an AI-generated story.

> his writing is terrible and extremely AI-enthusiastic

I disagree, his writings are generally quite good. For example, in a recent article [1] on a hostile Gemini distillation attempt, he gives a significant amount of background, including the relevant historical precedent of Alpaca, which almost any other journalist wouldn't even know about.

1: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/attackers-prompted-gemini...

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

#414

Post by mistercheph »

miltonlost wrote: post #410
somenameforme wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are basically the embodiment of the fact that sites and organizations don't matter, but individuals do. I think the overwhelming majority of everything on Ars is garbage. But on the other hand they also run Eric Berger's space column [1] which is certainly one of the best ones out there. So don't ignore those names on tops of articles. If you find something informative, well sourced, and so on - there's a good c…

Ah, and here my problem with Eric is he basically never criticizes Elon and only calls him "controversial". He's just a Musk mouthpiece at this point.

What would you do if you loved space as much as he does? There are no other heroes to cheer for

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

#415

Post by webXL »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #223
bombcar wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just one of the reasons archiving is so important in the digital era; it's key to keeping people honest.

Yes, Wayback machine/archive.org is one of the best websites on the whole world wide web.

Agreed and that's why there's an incentive to DDoS it and degrade the quality. Are there any p2p backup solutions?

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

#416

Post by anthonj »

caminante wrote: post #405
tapoxi wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I checked and was also expecting something different based on parent's comment. Happened 18 years ago. This is a hot take that has become room temp.

The transformation has been very slow I believe. They didn't really intrude too much the first few years. But maybe I remember wrong.

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

#417

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

anthonj wrote: post #236

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…

Yeah, I was very active on the ars forums back in the day, and after the buyout things initially were ok, but started go do down hill pretty clearly once the old guard of authors started leaving.

It's a shame because the old ars had a surprisingly good signal to noise ratio vs other big sites of that era.

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

#418

Post by c22 »

caminante wrote: post #405
tapoxi wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I checked and was also expecting something different based on parent's comment. Happened 18 years ago. This is a hot take that has become room temp.

Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas almost 30 years ago, but that's still a major reason they suck today.

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

#419

Post by internet2000 »

acdha wrote: post #397
g947o wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard agree. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/06/meta-debuts-playstati... is an example I remember. The subject matter of the is not controversial (just another Game Pass like subscription), but the comment section is full of -- yes you've guessed it -- Meta BAD! There is absolutely no meaningful discussion of the service itself. I mostly stopped paying attention to the comment section after that, and Ars in genera…

Philosophically I want to agree with you more but Meta is the informational equivalent of RJ Reynolds. They’ve facilitated crime waves (remember all of the hand-wringing about shoplifting which died down when the government went after Facebook marketplace and Amazon?), supported genocide, and elevated some of the worst voices in the world. Giving them more money and social control is a risk which should be discussed.

You're doing it too. Please don't.

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

#420

Post by kbutler »

herodoturtle wrote: post #385
BruceEel wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tragedy, yes. I can't be the only old fart around here with fond memories of John Siracusa's macOS ("OS X") reviews & Jon "Hannibal" Stokes' deep dives in CPU microarchitectures...

Certainly not the only old fart ‘round these parts. Your comment reminded me of Dr Dobbs Journal for some reason.

I finally subscribed to Dr. Dobbs for the Michael Abrash graphics articles, about a month before he ended them.
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