Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, dearly missed. As is John Siracusa’s Mac OS reviews.
Most of these people left because the Ars readership is insanely toxic as evidenced in this thread.
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Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes
371–380 of 409 posts
Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was using a common "phrase" that highlights individual human error vs systemic failures Since you are stuck on the semantics allow me to rephrase - "if a single developer is able to delete your entire production db, that's an org failure"
Specifying a junior dev on his first day is a plain deliberate rhetorical ploy to frame systemic blame as more legitimate than individual blame. If not, then why not make it a senior developer? Anybody can fuck something up, but we give special consideration to noobs who make noob mistakes, and that's what is being implicitly appealed to, illegitimately. This journalist wasn't a noob, and using ChatGPT to write his a…
The original author clarified and you are still stuck here? Take a step back dude it's not that serious.
Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
Specifying a junior dev on his first day is a plain deliberate rhetorical ploy to frame systemic blame as more legitimate than individual blame. If not, then why not make it a senior developer? Anybody can fuck something up, but we give special consideration to noobs who make noob mistakes, and that's what is being implicitly appealed to, illegitimately. This journalist wasn't a noob, and using ChatGPT to write his a…
The original author clarified and you are still stuck here? Take a step back dude it's not that serious.
"You disagree with me? Whoa dude, you need to relax and touch grass."
Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
A/B headline testing is just scientific clickbait.
I disagree. You could A/B test two good, accurate, well-written headlines and stay clear of clickbait altogether. Sure, you're still optimising for the most popular, but "clickbait" doesn't just mean "well performing", there's also an implication of duplicity. I have a modicum of experience here. I write for another online media company and, although we produce our own headlines, we are 'strongly encouraged' to write…
Sure, you can be above board (and perhaps they even try) but that recent “WiFi is broken wide open” headline that turned out to be something about device-to-device and not wargaming told me where their hearts lay (in being paid, understandably).
Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't state that Ars Technica specifically mandate LLM use for their authors. What I did state about them is that their editorial standards are lacking, and they tend to produce a lot of clickbait. IMO the industry is in crisis
> I'ts an open secret that even the larger news outlets mandate LLM use. Given the context, if you didn't intend for this to imply that Ars mandates LLM use, you should probably rewrite it.
I definitely interpreted his original post as suggesting that Ars also mandates LLM use, even if the words didn't say that explicitly. "even the larger news outlets" implies "in addition to the one we're already talking about"
Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks! and indeed - here's the sequence (in the usual reverse order). If there are missing threads we can add them... An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083145 - Feb 2026 (501 comments) OpenClaw is dangerous - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47064470 - Feb 2026 (93 comments) An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fal…
There’s also “ An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083145
Great catch. Added. Thanks!
Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks! and indeed - here's the sequence (in the usual reverse order). If there are missing threads we can add them... An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083145 - Feb 2026 (501 comments) OpenClaw is dangerous - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47064470 - Feb 2026 (93 comments) An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fal…
dang, we appreciate all you do. thanks
that's nice of you to say! I must add that tomhow is holding so much of this effort that I can't imagine what it would be like solo
Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
>his whole job Possibly akin to a roofer taking a shortcut up there, then taking a spill? You knew better but unfortunately let the fact that you could probably get away with it with zero impact decide for you. IIRC hallucinations were essentially kicked off initially by user error, or rather… let’s say at least: a journalist using the best available technologies should have been able to reduce the chance of this big…
Alternatively… there was no AI error, the reporter made up the quotes, and lied when they were challenged.
Are you familiar with the reporter's work & reputation?
Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
also how the heck do you pull all these related things, do you have a semantic/agentic search bot by now or is this all just from your head?
It should be a semantic search bot and maybe will be in the future, but for now I rely on the method described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45546715 and the links back from there.
i vaguely recall about 2 years ago some RAG startup or other did do one for you. i mean this is nothing for a startup and they could use the endorsement ha
Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The US mentality might be different, but at least having grown up and living in Germany, such an annoying hustler who wants to use some journalist as a marketing influencer for his private project is a huge no-no. In other words: it is a very reasonable decision (perhaps even the only right one) for any journalist to fob off such a hustler. Yeah there seems to be a thing where in the US, what's seen as "selling your…
Slightly off topic: Why is excessive self-promotion considered "putting your best foot forward"? I understand that you need the money, so you do self-promotion. But this is clearly not "putting your best foot forward", but a "put a bad foot (annoy other people by excessive self-promotion) forward because you need the money", i.e. what many US-Americans do is by my understanding the opposite of this life advice which…
I could equally well ask why putting your best foot forward would be considered excessive self-promotion. Consider the example of contacting a journalist. Why would it be a huge no-no? Why can't the journalist just treat it as any other lead? Skim the email, if they're not interested, ignore or delete. That's not a significant burden. If they are interested, such emails actually help the journalist do their job, by providing ideas for stories.