Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ozumandias | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, people on here don't seem to understand that you read the New Yorker for narrative and literary craft, not for getting information as fast as possible.

View on HN

And New Yorker article submitters don't understand that the HN crowd tends to prefer the Register style, at least for providing a focal point where everyone can get up to speed quickly for a productive discussion.

> And New Yorker article submitters don't understand that the HN crowd tends to prefer the Register style

Speak for yourself, buddy.

No one is taking away the New Yorker article. OP merely shared a link that’s better for those who want a short form version.

Nothing wrong with having both. TLDRs will always be popular.

I'm speaking for the quality of discussion that happens when everyone is aware of the all the facts presented in the article, vs when everyone is mired in unproductive guesswork because they missed the critical details of the threat vector because it's wedged between a description of some boss's pursed lips and the coffee used that in that office.

Edit: And "buddy"? Really?

Alternatively, The Register article contains so little information you can't discuss much and hners create their own "facts".

Only if the debate hinges on the idiosyncratic mannerisms of the subjects of the story. I saw plenty of substantive facts in the Register article, with less filler.

Just accept that not everyone wants the same as you.

I like brevity but the first article painted a much better picture. The second one barely a dip into the most pertinent facts. This company is unknown to most and without the backstory my care level was at 0.

And yet you can’t give examples of the relevant facts that are in the NYer but not the Resgister (style of CEO’s jacket doesn’t count).

I know people have different preferences. But beliefs —about which articles lead to productive discussions — can be confused. No one is spending the hour to read this before commenting. Expecting that is a bad idea.

I didn't care about this based on the register's reporting because they are nobodies. I cared about it based on the newyorkers because they told me the whole story.

Different things are useful at different times. Today that useful thing happened to be the long form journalism rather than than the twitter form journalism.

I don't think that's true and there appears to be room for both. I read both, one is good for quickly understanding what's happening / happened and the other is a much richer and interesting story. Twitter can exist in the same universe as novels you know.

I didn't say no one should ever enjoy NYer style articles, only that the Register is better for getting everyone to the point where they can productively discuss the article. A flowery style no one will ever finish isn't as good for that.

But the Register article is from 2016, when the firm had recently been raided. The New Yorker article covers the years afterward, including how the firm managed to sell its assets to Kroll, a well-known private-eye/corporate-intel firm.

I can't speak for the average HN reader, but I honestly don't give a shit that a small cybersecurity firm I've never heard about got raided and shut down, whether it was in 2016 or 2019. I am much more interested in the story of the people who created the firm, how they managed to find success, and what led to their downfall. Such information is often not satisfactorily communicated in a news brief style.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com