Hacker News Reader

Comment by vintagedave | Hacker News Reader

I'm sad to see them fire him. I've seen far worse: I have always approached issues by asking for accountability and improvement. Frankly, he already did: he openly apologised. I was very happy with that, it demonstrated integrity and I remained respecting him.

Even worse,

> I have been sick in bed with a high fever and unable to reliably address it (still am sick) [0]

In an earlier HN thread, I saw someone ask why Ars was requiring staff work while ill. If that's true, if he posted without verification while sick and under pressure, which is implied and plausible, firing looks doubly bad.

Ars has lost a lot of my trust in recent years, with articles seeming far worse. Just like you, I'm sorry to see the editorial position here.

[0] https://bsky.app/profile/virtuistic.bsky.social/post/3mey2mq...

View on HN

You're taking his fever dream excuse at face value, and I think you probably shouldn't. It reads like a lame excuse to deflect personal responsibility, a cynical face-saving tactic.

If the illness was genuine, can he document that he advised management of this fever and they told him to submit an article anyway? It's not his bosses job to stick a thermometer up his ass every morning.

I agree. In my experience, no one cares when you are sick. No one. Maybe your mom, but that's it. Using it as an excuse when you make a mistake is even worse. People value responsibility... "Sorry, my bad, won't happen again", not excuses.

> You're taking his fever dream excuse at face value

Being sick with a bad fever is awful, it's a nightmare, and I cannot imagine making good decisions at the time.

I do not know if he was ordered to work while sick, but there are often implicit expectations in workplaces and this was a time-sensitive article.

>I do not know if he was ordered to work while sick

You don't know if they were even sick at all. In fact, when someone gets fired for cause, it's quite common for them to lie about the circumstances. That you take their comments at full value seems kinda naive.

No, but I think it's worth behaving with grace and kindness. If he claims that is the case, let's assume he is being honest. His other actions, such as proactively admitting fault, speak to honesty.

The statement also predated being fired, so far as we know the timeline.

He posted his not very impressive apology as images not text that is easily indexed. I do think that was purposeful and manipulative and very much makes me question his motivation. If I'm missing the original posting in text I'd sure like to know so I can correct this perception.

In fairness, people often do this in order to have a full statement visible, not a portion, not spread over multiple posts, etc.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I just caution that jumping to 'purposeful' (re not easily indexed), 'manipulative' etc is a very strong leap.

I also found the post by searching for a quote from it, so I think images with text likely are indexed. I can't imagine in 2026 they wouldn't be.

Ars has probably the most rabid anti-AI audience of all the tech publications

Nah, The Register is far more strongly anti-AI. Mention AI and systemd in the same article and watch them froth

Reply on news.ycombinator.com