I was happy to pay a buck a day for that service, but to pay for it and then see them run misleading clickbait makes me feel dumb for paying.
Cancelled subscription.
I thought even without the word 'these', the conversational context suggested the topic was relative rates of an activity, or within an implied reference class (potential "but for this one factor" founders/YC-applicants).
It's often possible to clip phrases out of a discussion so that standing alone, they sound unqualified and extreme... when in fact the establishing context, perhaps paragraphs or pages earlier, set limits on what was meant and renders the words reasonable.
Yet, in the modern link/referral/social-news economy there are big rewards for removing context, adding new spin, and sending the result out for amplification (and further modification) by those already primed to express outrage.
"It's not that we were trying to be malicious. It's just that we're incapable of parsing spoken English"
Followed up in a tweet with "To clarify, even after reading several detailed explanations of the spoken English in question, we're still unable to parse it".
So either way, malicious or dim, it's hard to imagine considering them a trustworthy source of news after this.
[Note: some of the above quotes have been edited slightly for compactness and clarity, as is common practice in such things.]
I guess their promise of high-quality tech coverage was a welcome change. Seems like a good idea; hopefully someone else will deliver it.
I'm constantly impressed by the quality of these site's articles (although I find The Register difficult to get on with for the same reasons I find Private Eye difficult to get on with).
What's interesting, at least on this thread, is that people aren't analyzing the raw transcript for themselves: (http://jessicalessin.com/2013/12/31/on-the-information-and-h...) Or did I miss someone doing that, under the weight of all the fluffy, useless rhetoric?
One poster's brief, lucid point about journalistic practices is buried by lots of useless rhetoric. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6989348)
Everyone should know this is true here even on technical topics. People commonly point out a lack of critical thinking on HN, weak at discussing tradeoffs.
Reading the raw transcript, seems to me Paul's comment about "these women" doesn't show him in a better light. But even if you disagree, doing the analysis is important, rather than echo Michael Arrington's and Paul Graham's rhetoric.
Like so many things, free press in general is being disintermediated, since "leaks" happen without it, outside of it, and many times despite its best efforts to ignore them.
Still, one can imagine there's value to the business of keeping the government accountable -- if the business gets done.
But in tech? What secrets are there to uncover? As this story shows, the only "secrets" left are those made up by the press to try and justify its existence.
It's just more of the same tech writing, wrapped in WSJ-like finance reporting.
Instead she tries to justify it and says 'Paul Graham was not misquoted'. Or at least that is what the ValleyWag troll tweeted https://twitter.com/Valleywag/status/417093209886846976
http://jessicalessin.com/2013/12/31/on-the-information-and-h...
I, in turn, feel dumb asking, as I would have liked a subscription to a service like that. I wouldn't want to encourage this sort of nonsense, either.
I wouldn't hold my breath for a retraction/apology. It sounds like they have dug in their heals.
EDIT: yes, I am clearly mistaken on a second glance. I hadn't actually reached the end of the article's updates (curse browsing on a phone and careless reading).