Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories • Hacker News Board

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#201

Post by amiga_500 » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #141

hogFeast wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go back further. They were writing articles about this in 03 and 04. They aren't right about everything but they will publish stuff about high valuations, etc. Also, just generally, they aren't particularly "neoliberal" (I am not quite sure what that means but okay). Since the editor switch, there has been a massive, massive change in style (I have been reading since the early 2000s...Mickelthwait, the guy in…

I think the Economist is pretty much the definition of neoliberal (in the old sense, before it acquired all the negative connotations). "Liberal goals, conservative means" is my over-simplified definition. A leftist would have the government build housing for the poor. A conservative would let the poor fend for themselves or rely on charity. A neo-liberal would tweak the rules so that market builds housing for the po…

They are pro financialisation and pro rentier. Both require strong government intervention, but the profits are privatised.

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#202

Post by mercer » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #194

kohtatsu wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought a lot about how Google is fucking privacy over, but I haven't appreciated how badly they've managed to hamper the web. It's not entirely their fault, SEO hacking isn't an easy problem, but the open web has certainly faltered under their stewardship. It's so incompetent it almost looks like an effort to make it harder to find things without having Google's AI cut it into small bite sized pieces. I think G…

>SEO hacking isn't an easy problem It isnt and it is. With how many employees they have, it wouldnt be that hard to come up with a "preferlist" that always outranks other content, and have that list constantly maintained, verified, and checked. Googler runs across a high quality site, it gets nominated for the preferlist. Preferred site descends into clickbait, they get removed. The problem both Google and Facebook h…

> The problem both Google and Facebook have is because of their attempt to maintain the illusion of impartiality, that they refuse to just say "we decided these sites are just better" like they should.

Isn't the problem worse than that, though? These 'SEO hacked' pages probably have google ads on them, and that seems like an even better reason for google to not lowering their ranking.

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#203

Post by doonesbury » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 5:41 PM UTC

"'Strictly speaking ... readers aren't what they used to be ... so being a writer isn't what it used to be.' J.F. Powers" [1] pg100

"We are all suckers for statements about culture - which is not surprising when culture at first glance seems so balefully homogenous, but upon closer inspection, is so unappealingly atomized. A new angle is invariably more charismatic, more assimilable, handier in every way than the work which presumably springs from it." [1] pg20

I can't lay my hands on the exact quote but in [1] the author makes an point in the context of inflation (of ideas, and everything American): when no idea is worth a anything the only thing to do in this environment is come up with an even more seriously hyped idea I presume to sooth that gnawing sense of emptiness. This feedback loop ensures each idea is inflated keeping the inflation of ideas going and thus cheapening each idea. One unintended result in my view is paranoia, alienation, conspiracy that comes from atomization which we see in spades nowadays. This also has strong connections to another HN post in the top 50 stories on creative management.

Way underneath the original article is something far deeper than I think [1] sunk his teeth into way back in 1984. The BBG editor is struggling with how to deal with the reader who deals with zillions of possible stories and how BBG will add value for time the reader will spend. The editor's stance is but only the highest ceiling on a much deeper problem. Gents, the reader has changed. And too much of today's culture coddles him (us, me) as an anxiety ridden middle-class person trying to fight the good fight. Well, I am not so generous. A lot of readers are lazy. A lot of readers want meaning handed to them because getting experience and ideas are becoming separate islands. In Reddit Pro Life Tips format: 99.9% of what you need to know you're gonna have to learn yourself.

I close with a quote from the forward in [1]:

"'No longer is it, 'When I hear the word Culture, I reach for my revolver.' We are permitted instead, 'Culture sits so well in my pock that whenever I hear the world "thought" I smile' Phillip Sollers" [1]

[1] Salmagundi "The Post-Modern Aura" Charles Newman No.63-64 Spring-Summer 1984

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#204

Post by smolder » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

whoisjuan wrote: post #186

smolder wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say it's technically unfeasible? The articles I saw "debunking" Bloomberg are pretty weak on their arguments. Even if Bloomberg got some things wrong, a tiny chip that subverts motherboard firmware to phone home for instructions is possible in something rice sized, for a sophisticated state actor. Network stacks already exist in firmware. You'd need to inject maybe 4KB of instructions somewhere, but I can'…

https://www.servethehome.com/investigating-implausible-bloom... This is a good explanation. This article is weird because it's paginated. Make sure to use the paginator below the body to read it fully. There are many good arguments in that article but the simplest one is that there's simply no modern lithography methods to produce a chip of that size with processing power, signaling interfaces and networking, which a…

The chip doesn't need networking, it needs to infect existing firmware with networking. The motherboard/nic firmwares already have that. Nor would it necessarily be limited to the IPMI side nic as they imply. Steganography could be used to get through firewalls on net facing NICs. The part about "most sensitive code" wrongly assumes that means on storage devices and not motherboard firmware.

As for the size, there are no commercial lithography methods with that capability, perhaps. It'd be possible to put significant capacitance and logic in a very tiny package with advanced lithographic techniques, say like gates printed into layers of a small cap? Yeah I'm getting really out there, but to say there's nothing so interesting in the highly compartmentalized world of spy tech is to make a claim in ignorance, naturally. Unless you're in a position to say precisely what technology they have, in which case, please contact me privately, since I'm curious. ;)

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#205

Post by bryanlarsen » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 8:43 PM UTC

amiga_500 wrote: post #201

bryanlarsen wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Economist is pretty much the definition of neoliberal (in the old sense, before it acquired all the negative connotations). "Liberal goals, conservative means" is my over-simplified definition. A leftist would have the government build housing for the poor. A conservative would let the poor fend for themselves or rely on charity. A neo-liberal would tweak the rules so that market builds housing for the po…

They are pro financialisation and pro rentier. Both require strong government intervention, but the profits are privatised.

I believe we're saying the same thing, right?

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#206

Post by puranjay » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 10:32 PM UTC

mercer wrote: post #202

basch wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>SEO hacking isn't an easy problem It isnt and it is. With how many employees they have, it wouldnt be that hard to come up with a "preferlist" that always outranks other content, and have that list constantly maintained, verified, and checked. Googler runs across a high quality site, it gets nominated for the preferlist. Preferred site descends into clickbait, they get removed. The problem both Google and Facebook h…

> The problem both Google and Facebook have is because of their attempt to maintain the illusion of impartiality, that they refuse to just say "we decided these sites are just better" like they should. Isn't the problem worse than that, though? These 'SEO hacked' pages probably have google ads on them, and that seems like an even better reason for google to not lowering their ranking.

I logged into Google Adsense again after years yesterday and good God has that thing changed radically. I remember when you would have to insert ad codes manually into each page or template. Google would discourage having more than 4 ad units/page, and 3 was recommended.

Now Google has something called Auto Ads where it automatically inserts ads in your pages. And at the default setting, it inserts a lot of ads. In my test page, there were 7 ads on the page, and not even small ones.