Hacker News: edavison1

New comment by edavison1 in "Goodhart's Law Comes for Every Benchmark You Trust"

edavison1 — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 01:02:28 +0000

This is the second ACM article in the last few months that was clearly not written by a human. Funny because it's against their editorial policy... what is going on over there?

New comment by edavison1 in "Oxford All Souls College General Examination (2025) [pdf]"

edavison1 — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 05:44:10 +0000

Hook me up with the password for the alternate dimension Reddit you visit, it is so much smarter than mine.

New comment by edavison1 in "Why Nietzsche matters in the age of artificial intelligence"

edavison1 — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 01:28:38 +0000

Beyond the cringe of posting AI slop that 'argues' about eroding social norms and declining trust due to AI there's also this:

"The prestige and unmatched reputation of Communications of the ACM is built upon a 60-year commitment to high quality editorial content"

Hmmm. Ok whatever you say folks

New comment by edavison1 in "AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time"

edavison1 — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 17:20:24 +0000

Ran into this the other day researching a brewery. Google AI summary referenced a glowing NYT profile of its beers. The linked article was not in fact about that brewery, but an entirely different one. Brewery I was researching has never been mentioned in the NYT. Complete invention at that point and has 'stolen' the good press from a different place and just fed the user what they wanted to see, namely a recommendation for the thing I was googling.

New comment by edavison1 in "What's happening to reading?"

edavison1 — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 15:50:55 +0000

I don't know if you're alluding to it and I just missed the sarcasm but their comment is at least partially computer generated. Last sentence is classic bot talk coded.

New comment by edavison1 in "Why I'm skeptical of Ground News"

edavison1 — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 22:53:09 +0000

Getting dangerously close to inventing editors w that idea, no good we tried that already :)

New comment by edavison1 in "HN practice of circumventing paywall on news sites"

edavison1 — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 20:39:45 +0000

Thanks, I think this answers my question, appreciate it

New comment by edavison1 in "HN practice of circumventing paywall on news sites"

edavison1 — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 20:08:24 +0000

I'm sure they are, but I don't see how it relates to my question. Like, you wouldn't see anyone posting links to download a movie, or an app, that would otherwise require people to pay. So why is the practice so common to links here? I mean, shouldn't HN users pay for the journalism they're so eager to discuss?

HN practice of circumventing paywall on news sites

edavison1 — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 19:54:51 +0000

Why is this practice allowed? Seems like every article that gets posted here has a link leading people to a non-paywalled version of the article. Does this not violate one of the rules of HN? Or I guess I'm asking, shouldn't it?

In the guidelines it specifically says "It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds." This feels weird to me because it's encouraging piracy/unauthorized viewing of paywalled content. Particularly in an age where media businesses are struggling to compete and many have instituted paywalls in order to financially support quality journalism, why is it the policy of this website to tacitly allow users to get free access?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44448099

Points: 4

# Comments: 5

New comment by edavison1 in "The game designer playing through his own psyche"

edavison1 — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 16:07:44 +0000

I get your view, read the essay years ago and we agree on the facts. I'm a journalist who gets 5-10 PR junk PR pitches a day. I don’t pitch stories from PR hacks--I pitch and write about the stuff I think is interesting and important. If I got an awesome pitch from a PR person tomorrow about something like that, why wouldn't I pursue the story?

I fully acknowledge the PR industry exists but to suggest that coverage of a beloved indie game creator by one of my industry's most respected reporters is somehow paid off or inauthentic because PR exists is such a leap. As I said earlier he's probably been trying to write about the Stanley Parable for years.

I also have firsthand experience of people I know at startups believing that their PR firm 'bought' them coverage. But if you read Paul's essay again he's careful to acknowledge that the service good PR firms are able to provide is that they can connect with journalists for stories not because of some shady undisclosed loyalty but because the PR people bring them interesting topics.

New comment by edavison1 in "The game designer playing through his own psyche"

edavison1 — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 19:03:22 +0000

The idea that arts criticism is somehow 'guerilla marketing' is such a deeply cynical, HN brain take. Of course the people who make things want to get the word out about what they're doing. But The New Yorker doesn't collude with PR agencies to promote things. It's news when people make new things; that's literally the whole idea in coverage of the arts. Is it really your position that when a movie, game or book is reviewed in The New Yorker it's because some PR person told them to? Chris Bryd is a well-respected games journalist, not some industry shill. He's probably wanted to write about this topic for years, and the forthcoming game is part of what makes the profile newsworthy right now.

Anyway if you believe arts criticism is 'quite gross' and want it banned, what does that world look like? Should people who make things not be allowed to tell publications about it? Will there be a cone of silence around new games?

New comment by edavison1 in "Moderators Delete Reddit Thread as Doctors Torch Dead UnitedHealthcare CEO"

edavison1 — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 04:28:08 +0000

Yeah it's unfortunate that we're in this place culturally but seems like just using the phrase suggests a lack of engagement with it so I guess it makes sense in some wacky way.

New comment by edavison1 in "Moderators Delete Reddit Thread as Doctors Torch Dead UnitedHealthcare CEO"

edavison1 — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 21:12:58 +0000

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/nyregion/social-media-ins...

New comment by edavison1 in "I Am Tired of AI"

edavison1 — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 16:20:02 +0000

This has become such a talking point of mine when I'm inevitably forced to explain why LLMs can't come for my job (yet). People seem baffled by the idea that reporting collects novel information about the world which hasn't been indexed/ingested at any point because it didn't exist before I did the interview or whatever it is.

New comment by edavison1 in "I Am Tired of AI"

edavison1 — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 16:15:48 +0000

So is the argument here that the New Yorker can make more money from AI slop writing overseen by low-wage overseas workers? Isn't that obviously not the case?

Anyway I think I've misunderstood the context in which we're using the word 'competition' here. My response was about attitudes toward AI from writers at the tip-top of the industry rather than profit maxxing/high-volume content farm type places.

New comment by edavison1 in "I Am Tired of AI"

edavison1 — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 14:30:28 +0000

>If you write regularly and you're not using AI, you simply cannot keep up with the competition. You're out.

A very HN-centric view of the world. From my perch in journalism and publishing, elite writers absolutely loathe AI and almost uniformly agree it sucks. So to my mind the most 'competitive' spheres in writing do not use AI at all.

UChicago's new geoengineering research initiative

edavison1 — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 16:36:57 +0000

Article URL: https://thebulletin.org/2024/06/the-university-of-chicago-new-climate-initiative/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40740589

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by edavison1 in "Literary Fight Club: On the Great Poets' Brawl of '68"

edavison1 — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 22:03:30 +0000

Whitman was a full-time journalist for many years, both at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and elsewhere.

New comment by edavison1 in "‘World of Warcraft’ players trick AI-scraping website into publishing nonsense"

edavison1 — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:04:04 +0000

How is exposing malfeasance and illegal corporate activity activism?

I hate to retreat into platitudes here but good journalism shines a light in the dark, it comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable, that’s kind of the name of the game.

If you’d prefer these topics go unaddressed and companies continue to take advantage of their workers or whatever, not sure we have enough in common to have real discourse on the subject. Sorry to be blunt lol.

New comment by edavison1 in "‘World of Warcraft’ players trick AI-scraping website into publishing nonsense"

edavison1 — Sat, 22 Jul 2023 16:05:16 +0000

Hey sorry, I thought we were talking journalism. Outbrain is an advertising/recommendation engine company right? Know zero about them but doesn’t look like they produce anything. Interesting you went with revenue per employee though because I think market cap tells a different story. They’re worth 256 million today and NYT is sitting at 6 billion. I don’t doubt clicky clicky makes money, just that brands in journalism that rely on clicky clicky don’t make as much as those that produce years and years of high-quality content.

I return to Buzzfeed because I think they’re a good example of a place that tried to do both but because they had so much low-brow clicky clicky, the brand ultimately suffered. Despite winning a Pulitzer in 2021 it really has a terrible reputation among non-industry folks who haven’t forgotten how the brand came to prominence.