No doubt the guy is competent but this just smells like a poorly executed attempt to move traffic to the blog. I fully expect it to get ignored as such despite the PBS article being good.
As I said, I don't doubt his ability. Its the presentation I object to. The HN blog leads to some random blog that barely touches on the topic that the headline promises and the core of the story is in a link contained in the blog. By any sane definition that is blog spam, MIT professor or not.
>>Many readers of his blog are also well known
So? Its linked to his blog, not to his readers. I don't care if his readers include Albert Einstein himself. The link did not deliver despite the authors (proven) ability to deliver on the content.
EDIT: And a blog without advertisements at that.
Remember what I said...one of the first responses (3rd at worst) is someone posting the "proper" link to the actual article. That was there before I posted - someone else read the blog extracted the relevant info and concluded that the single link is the core content of the blog post. Then I put the same thing into words and go downvoted to hell. Oh well.
OP has since altered the link to point at the PBS article.
As I said before I don't doubt the technical ability or integrity of Mr Aaronson. I was commenting purely on the HN submission because I felt both the HN submission and blog were subpar & did an injustice towards the actual content (the PBS post). Downvote away...