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Ars Technica makes up quotes from Matplotlib maintainer; pulls story

https://infosec.exchange/@mttaggart/116065340523529645
89•robin_reala•3h ago

Comments

anonnon•1h ago
Does anyone know if DrPizza is still in the clink?
Kwpolska•1h ago
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.
christkv•1h ago
Is he even a real person I wonder
anthonj•1h ago
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 flooded with "tech journalist", claiming to be "android or Apple product experts" or stuff like that, publishing articles that are 90% press material from some company and most of the times seems to have very little technical knowledge.

They also started writing product reviews that I would not be surprised to find out being sponsored, given their content.

Also what's the business with those weirdly formatted articles from wired?

Still a very good website but the quality is diving.

idiotsecant•1h ago
Oh yes, quite a controversial take.
anthonj•1h ago
Well I am calling out an entire class of journalist. Every time I've made a similar statement I got some angry answer (or got my post hidden or removed).
episode404•56m ago
> they used to write fantastical and very informative articles

> Still a very good website

These are indeed quite controversial opinions on ars.

ReptileMan•17m ago
Culture was is helluva drug. The desire of the authors to pledge political allegiance when they don't have the capacity to think of nothing original or innovative on a topic gets tiring fast. In a way Gawker won - now every media outlet is them.
embedding-shape•38m ago
> 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.

lapcat•24m ago
> What places on the internet remains where articles are written by actual experts?

The personal blogs of experts.

bloggie•22m ago
techbriefs, photonics spectra, photonics focus, EAA Sport Aviation? I don't think it's going to be anything super popular, to become popular you have to appeal to a broad audience. But in niches there is certainly very high quality material. It also won't be (completely) funded by advertising.
rfc2324•21m ago
https://theconversation.com/us/who-we-are is one of my favorites. Global academics writing about their research when something happens in the world or when they are published in a journal.
tapoxi•11m ago
> 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.

shantara•1h ago
Already being discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47009949
lukan•1h ago
The context here is this story, an AI Agent publishs a hit piece on the Matplotlib maintainer.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46990729

And the story from ars about it was apparently AI generated and made up quotes. Race to the bottom?

everdrive•1h ago
Ars has been going downhill for sometime now. I think it's difficult for a lot of these bigger publishers to be anything other than access journalism and advertising. I'm not saying Ars is fully there yet, but the pull is strong.
kethinov•58m ago
The comments section on Ars is particularly depressing. I've been posting there for two decades and watched it slowly devolve from a place where thoughtful discussions happened to now just being one of the worst echo chambers on the internet, like a bad subreddit. I've made suggestions over the years in their public feedback surveys to alter their forum software to discourage mob behavior, but they don't seem to be doing anything about it.
archerx•41m ago
Yea but doing that would decrease engagement and engagement is the only metric that matters! /s
the_biot•37m ago
They don't actually publish the comments under the article, only a link. I've long suspected sites doing that are fully aware of how shit the comment section is, and try to hide it from casual viewers while keeping the nutjob gallery happy.

Phoronix comes to mind.

embedding-shape•36m ago
> I think it's difficult for a lot of these bigger publishers to be anything other than access journalism and advertising

Maybe this is exactly the issue? Every news company is driven like a for-profit business that has to grow and has to make the owners more money, maybe this is just fundamentally incompatible with actual good journalism and news?

Feels like there are more and more things that have been run in the typical capitalistic fashion, yet the results always get worse the more they lean into it, not just news but seems widespread in life.

growingswe•45m ago
This is embarrassing :/
barredo•9m ago
archive of the deleted article https://mttaggart.neocities.org/ars-whoopsie

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Ars Technica makes up quotes from Matplotlib maintainer; pulls story

https://infosec.exchange/@mttaggart/116065340523529645
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