Careful: that infosec.exchange link hijacks your back button and will just loop forever between the toot and their /explore page. For desktop OSes, protip: right click the back button to select two pages back in the history
An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
661–670 of 670 posts
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#662Earlier quoted context omitted.
The switch to their newest forum software seems to discourage any kind of actual conversation. If I recall correctly, the last iteration was also unthreaded, but somehow it was easier for a back-and-forth to develop. Now it is basically just reactions-- like YouTube comments (which, ironically, is actually threaded). Is HN really the last remaining forum for science and technology conversations? If so... very depress…
lobste.rs is smaller but can have good discussion.
Thanks for the tip. Sadly it appears that lobste.rs is invite only?
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#663Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#664I 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…
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Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#665I 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…
Looks they're gonna investigate and perhaps post something next week. https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/journalistic-standards...
For anyone who comes across this in the future, Ars published an official retraction: https://arstechnica.com/staff/2026/02/editors-note-retractio...
And Benj posted an explanation & admitted fault: https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p
I haven't decided whether or not to cancel, but even after these explanations I'm still pretty disappointed in this event & how it was handled.
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#666Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ken is still the EIC of Ars, and has been for nearly 30 years now, likely longer than most of people in this thread have been alive. You can literally read the staff directory without having to guess: https://arstechnica.com/staff-directory/ Most of the people working at Ars are the exact same people who have been working there for the better part of their entire existence (source: me) Most of them _are_ experts in t…
Is Ken still actively involved? He seems to appear to clarify something and then disappear into the background until the next major change (I expect the article about this to be bylined to him, as is appropriate).
He is the Editor in Chief, so yes, he is involved.
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#667Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there anything like a replacement? The three biggest tech sites that I traditionally love are ArsTechnica, AnandTech(rip), and Phoronix. One is dead man walking mode, the second is ded dead, and the last is still going strong. I'm basically getting tech news from social media sites now and I don't like that.
In my wildest hopes for a positive future, I hope disenchanted engineers will see things like this as an opportunity to start our own companies founded on ideals of honesty, integrity, and putting people above profits. I think there are enough of us who are hungry for this, both as creators and consumers. To make goods and services that are truly what people want. Maybe the AI revolution will spark a backlash that wi…
> start our own companies founded on ideals of honesty, integrity, and putting *people above profits*.
That's a non-profit charity, not a company.
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#668Earlier quoted context omitted.
> publishing articles that are 90% press material from some company and most of the times seems to have very little technical knowledge. Unfortunately, this is my impression as well. I really miss Anandtech's reporting, especially their deep dives and performance testing for new core designs.
The main problem with technology coverage is you have one of 3 types of writers in the space: 1. Prosumer/enthusiasts who are somewhat technical, but mostly excitement 2. People who have professional level skills and also enjoy writing about it 3. Companies who write things because they sell things A lot of sites are in category 1 - mostly excitement/enthusiasm, and feels. Anandtech, TechReport, and to some extent Ar…
> The problem is that category 2 is that they can fairly easily get jobs in industry that pay way more than writing for a website
This is true, but those jobs are much worse than writing jobs. So it comes down to how much you value money and what it buys. Most people earning "way more" are spending "way more" to try to pay back the soul debt the job takes away. When you dig deep, it's not "way more" utility.
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#669Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no financial stake in it at all. If anything, I'll be hurt by AI. All the same, it's very clear that I'm much more productive when AI writes the code and I spend my time prompting, reviewing, testing, and spot editing. I think this is true for everyone. Some people just won't admit it for various transparent psychological reasons.
What you are calling productivity is an illusion caused by shifting work from the creator to the reviewer or generating generational code debt. Still waiting for anyone to solve actual real world problems with their AI “productivity”.
This is a bold thing to say about someone and their projects you know nothing about.
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#670Earlier quoted context omitted.
I confess I find the growing prevalence of these sorts of errors on HN dispiriting. Programming requires precision in code; I’d argue software engineering requires precision in language, because it involves communicating effectively with people. In any single instance I don’t get very exercised - we tend to be able to infer what someone means. But the sheer volume of these malapropisms tells me people are losing thei…
Jesus christ man, you are pulling out a lot from a single typo, eh? English is just not my first language (and not the last either). Having an accent or the occasional misspelling on some forum has never impacted me professionally.
Slow down. If you read my comment it’s about an aggregate trend, not you or even your comment, which I don’t mention. Plenty of native speakers are slipping. (Fwiw the quality of your writing is pretty native feeling, so good work)