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Comment by xref | Hacker News Reader

I see Ars Technica taking a lot of flak in the comments but lawdy, they’re still pretty great and one of the news sources I actually pay for (full-text rss feeds are a nice bonus).

Just to pick a few of their writers who still kill it: Lee Hutchinson for anything sysadmin related, Eric Berger does the best space/rocket coverage on the entire internet, Jonathan Gitlin does a ton of in-depth automotive coverage and his passion for it bleeds through in every article, Andrew Cunningham’s insane macOS reviews that he took over from John Siracusa. I could go on but would basically be copy-pasting from their staff directory…

https://arstechnica.com/staff-directory/

If Condé Nast eventually kills the site so be it, but its been 16y since their acquisition and still a daily read for me.

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Their automotive industry coverage is pretty good, but their car reviews are pretty awful. I'm not sure what value they add to the automotive review world -- they could carve out a niche of very detailed infotainment reviews, for example, but they don't.

To me, it seems that word came down from high that "you must do auto reviews at Ars" and they are complying with the least amount of effort possible.

Jan 9, 2020, I was sitting in the break room scrolling through Ars when I read this article.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/never-before-seen-vi...

It scared the shit out of me. If it wasn't for Ars coverage, and specifically Beth Mole, I would have been caught up in the TP panic with everyone else. But I had stocked up early haha. What a weird time.

Does anyone remember a website with videos from China of people passing out in public and streets being cleared?

That last paragraph though.

That last paragraph didn't age well:

Regardless of the cause, health experts in China are optimistic that the outbreak will be contained and that response efforts will be better than they were during the SARS outbreak. Xu Jianguo, a former top Chinese public health official, noted to The Washington Post in a report today, "More than a decade has passed. It's impossible for something like SARS to happen again."

Comedy gold.

When did Peter Bright leave?

In 2019, after some pretty shocking charges: https://nypost.com/2020/03/19/ex-conde-nast-tech-reporter-pe...

All his old articles had their byline removed.

Whoooooa, did not know this

Well there are signs. There have been less in depth articles in the past years.

And they have started pulling in the occasional Wired article, most of the time digital security fearmongering with zero to negative value. They're clearly marked as Wired on the front page now, I think because people complained, but I'm guessing Conde Nast is forcing them to keep pulling them, which is worrying.

I'm still paying for a subscription though.

The terms of the Conde's acquisition state they are not allowed to interfere with the operation of the site.

The depth of articles or the decision to pull in Wired content is strictly an editorial decision made by Ars editorial leadership.

Got a bridge to sell to you then. Or if you live at the north pole, a refrigerator?

Very insightful piece of analysis. Why don’t you email the Ars editors your theory that they are corporate Condé stooges and see what they say? As I mentioned in a sibling comment it’s actually Advance that owns Ars, not Condé, and it’s a different leadership group.

Here's more insightful analysis:

Go to the bottom of the Ars Technica page, behold the Conde Nast logo and the following text:

CNMN Collection WIRED Media Group © 2024 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 1/1/20) ... blah blah, no more company names.

They publicly wave around the Conde Nast name. Not Advance. Not anything else except WIRED.

Your revised theory is that Ars is actually a Condé company because of the logo in the footer? Not sure that’s how corporate law works.

Take a minute and do some research. Advance owns Ars and the terms of the acquisition allow it to have total independence.

But again, I recommend you contact the Ars editors directly and share your theory that the Condé logo at the bottom of the page proves that they are in fact Condé stooges and have no editorial independence. See what they say. Their DMs are open.

And editorial leadership isn't dependent on Condé for their employment?

No. It’s run as a separate company inside the company.

And technically Condé does not own Ars, Advance does. Different leadership group.

This company in a company idea reminds me of the classic "The Front Fell Off" sketch (3 minutes you won't regret on YouTube if you haven't seen). The oil executive explains that the leaking oil tanker is no longer in the environment--"It's been towed outside the environment."

Do you have any opinions on the retro game value pumping scheme that ars had a few articles involved in it. I've only seen half sided pieces from them on those sorts of articles, I mentioned in the article having been made aware from a Karl Jobst video but they just tore me to shreds about the Karl getting canceled/nazi stuff. Like sure, he may or may not be whatever, but the information he put together was pretty convincing and didn't have anything to do with that.

Honestly I've felt Ars' community has been almost completely useless since the last update to the comments system. They removed the ability to tag comments with "Interesting" "Knowledgeable" "funny" whatever, I would just cut through the dunking on elon posts and get to the meat with top most knowledgeable.

Not to say that isn't a fun time to dunk on elon.

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