No it's not the tech news that he's saying is bad, it's the ads.
> I do like to follow tech news, and for me, this is done 98% through Ycombinator’s hacker news. But I started to get the same feeling I had ten years ago: it’s all negative.
That's followed by the list of some sample categories negative tech news that they are concerned about. Most of them have nothing to do with ads. Even for browsers only one of the things they are concerned with is ads (and it's not something that actually happened, it's something the author imagines could happen).
Especially giants like China and India are doing very well.
the conclusion of this author is that the profit motive will drive companies to build ads into browsers. (microsoft is already putting ads into windows. browsers will be next)
> the ONLY thing you hear on the news.. any news.. are bad things(tm). War, corruption, you name it.