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Comment by dfc | Hacker News Reader

"Computer Shopper was like Vogue or Vanity Fair for nerds. You read it for the ads."

Someone clearly has never opened up a Vanity Fair in his entire life.

I'm not sure Computer Shopper either. There was loads to read. I used to keep them all for reference because of all the multi-part articles, which were like courses. That was the good thing about it, tons of ads and lots to read.

Frankly, I owe a lot of my knowledge and interest to that mag.

Agree. Actually hard to believe that's not just a quick mistake given that "Alexis Madrigal is a senior editor at The Atlantic".

I looked up the author's bio to check which pronoun to use and also did a double take when I saw "senior editor at The Atlantic." I am hoping it is just a case of pandering to the nerd stereotype. The only other explanation is that Atlantic's online push has dramtically lowered the bar for quality.

I fondly remember going over each page of Computer Shopper before going to the Computer Fair to price out a new 486. But I also remember subscribing to VF so I could get my Christopher Hitchens fix.

I think, perhaps, you should read some of his other articles before making a judgement call on the Atlantic's quality or Alexis' qualifications.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-t...

A decrease in quality was one of the possible explanations. The other was that he is just pandering to the nerds. That is a great article, but it still does not change the fact that I expect people in the publishing business to have a more informed opinion than "people just read VF for the ads." However if you want to make it a debate about the quality of Alexis' writings all I can say is that he is no Christopher Hitchens or Michael Lewis.

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