I used to work as a technology journalist. A guy from the business side always used to say, “there’s no way we are leaving money on the table“ as justification for putting ad modules, video players, lead generation forms and other junk around our articles. We had no say in the matter.
Someone from the financial times did a test about the impact of this garbage on read times and brand loyalty. This was maybe 15 years ago. Of course the more ads shoehorned onto the page, the worse the metrics were.
developers from the West see no problem with clearly stating their opposition to a topic and listing the reasons why they oppose it—in many ways, this is seen as good, clear communication. This style can sometimes be jarring to Japanese speakers, who generally prefer to avoid anything that could be taken as blunt or confrontational.
This was buried at the end of the essay, but is one of the most important points.
I worked (not as a developer) in a company that was acquired by a Japanese company. Meetings were structured, and debate was kept to a minimum. If there was disagreement (typically framed as a difference of opinion or conflicting goals) there would be an effort to achieve some sort of balance or harmony. If the boundary was not hard, it was possible to push back. Politely.
Also, if Japanese colleagues expressed frustration, or were confrontational, that was a red flag that some hard boundary had been crossed. This was extremely rare, and replies had to be made in a very careful, respectful way.
From what I understand, it’s not so much that all disagreement is to be avoided entirely, but rather that it should be done on an individual level prior to the meeting. So the fundamental difference is that a western company may use the meeting as an opportunity to discuss and debate an issue, whereas that process is done before the meeting in Japanese corporate culture.
Yeah, the concept of "nemawashi" (根回し) is very important there, this idea that all the groundwork and decision making is agreed upon before the meeting happens.
The term literally comes from the concept of "preparing the roots", that is, the process of softening the ground and trimming around the roots of a tree (often a bonsai) in preparation for moving it safely.
> In Japan and in many East Asian cultures, debate is behind closed doors.
East Asia consists of only 4 countries, two of them (China and Taiwan) sharing the bulk of their main language.
In the other 3 East Asian countries, meetings being for ceremony isn't nearly as pronounced as in Japan. Plenty of meetings where discussion are had and new decisions are made.
> When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent.
No, it's not inevitable. What you've described is the way a lot of authoritarian states work, such as China. China attracts plenty of capital and external talent, including people from other countries such as Taiwan and the United States. You have be all-in on the CCP's rules, though.
Vietnam operates in a similar way. Untold billions of FDI in the past 20 years from Japan, the U.S. and China. Talk with top executives there, and you'll frequently find close connections or family ties with leaders in Hanoi.
Wait til you read Blood Meridian. The imagery he created with words, some of them his own creations, is just ... beyond compare. I'm reading The Road now, which comes from the same place. I can only read either in small doses. It's very intense, and the passages deserve to be read carefully.
Another contemporary writer who worked with new words in a very creative way was Gene Wolfe in The Book of the New Sun. Some were inventions using Greek, French, or Latin roots. Others were forgotten terms which he resurrected. Someone compiled a dictionary, Lexicon Urthus, which discusses the origins of certain terms and their placement within the series.
>I can only read either in small doses. It's very intense, and the passages deserve to be read carefully.
Absolutely. Similarly, I read the Tao Te Ching 4x annually, by reading the same single passage both before and after bed, daily. Both Laotzi's and McCarthy's density of construction is just soooooo human condition.
[Suttree book world] Harrington just found the eyeball in the junkyard vehicle — in a single paragraph humanity just oozes, including his toying with viscosity and shock, and re-toying again. Washes hands. The drunk boss having previously joked "yeah the driver only scraped his shinbones."
I am hooked. McCarthy's books jumped to the top of my bookqueue after reading a HN article a few months ago about his library/collections being catalogued, post-humously.
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I've just read Dave Wallace's three major novels (Jest & King & Broom, ~2000 pages) and McCarthy is absolutely the better author, not requiring hundreds of footnotes to say less with more esoteric bullshit [0]. DFW just seems like a bully to me ("wow I'm so smart"—DFW, probably), and honestly his samizdat is about 800 pages too long (myself a former bored addict prodigy with poor family comms) [1].
Mostly I read DFW because he's my judge-brother's favorite fiction author — it felt like a challenging obligation/chore, much like our personal relationship. With both, I've felt mostly emptiness. For powerful shortform pieces, both are quite capable of emotional stirring (This is Water).
I laugh when I see this book on others' shelves, because they probably haven't read it and it isn't really worth the time to read [all of] it. A few simple questions of the "reader" verifies this. My own bullying is that "I have" [snooty], however much I wish for all that reading time back. Bullies making bullies =D
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By page 100 of Suttree you are hooked. By page 100 of Jest you are bored [2]. I've yet to read more than six pages of McCarthy in one day. For Wallace my eyes would constantly glaze over dozens of pages and just think: what happened here?! why did author include [all of] this!?
Although I am tired after reading either author for twenty minutes, McCarthy's doesn't feel like the author is just wasting my time.
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My McCarthy readlist is structured so: Suttree (current); Blood Meridian; The Road — is this advisable?
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[0] DFW's footnotes == even more of his esoteric bullshit
[1] If you do read Infinite Jest, absolutely use a study guide(s) (specifically Aaron Swartz's incredible breakdown... which can reduce the book just just a few hundred pages). If you've ever suffered an addiction (whether yourself or crazybestfriends's), you probably don't need to suffer through any longform DFWallace.
[2] I understand this is part of DFW's "style" : the frenzied passages of speed addicts, thirty pages into killing a dog (e.g.) when three pages would have done better, more respectful of reader's time (addict or not).
> My McCarthy readlist is structured so: Suttree (current); Blood Meridian; The Road — is this advisable?
If you've read Suttree you could do either one next.
If you were coming new to McCarthy, I would start with Blood Meridian, as there's nothing else like it (The Road invites comparisons with other post-Apocalyptic fiction).
Another defunct site is Deletionpedia, which compiled articles that had been removed from Wikipedia for not meeting various criteria (usually relating to notability IIRC). The site is dead but the HN discussion lives on:
Interesting. There was a small window of time where there was in fact a small page about me in Wikipedia (I wrote a published game for the Macintosh in 1990). And then one day my page was gone.
That must have been during the "Big Cull". It makes sense to me though. That I had a page just for having written a game made Wikipedia seem overly "nerd-centric".
A developer in my hometown tried to build a manufactured/modular housing development. He got the approvals, demolished most of the existing structure that was on the parcel, purchased the modules from a supplier in Quebec and began to assemble them. Everyone was on board.
It was a complete disaster. The developer hired contractors who didn't know what they were doing and ignored stop work orders when the city learned of the problems, which included setting the modular units on their foundations without the proper permits and in violation of state building code. A separate fire department inspection deemed the structure "unsafe for interior firefighting or for interior response by first responders." The site has been abandoned for about 5 years, and the development company filed for bankruptcy.
Sounds like a sad story, but hard to know what went wrong. Did a safe design collide with regulations that weren't written with modular housing in mind? Did the modularity cause normal approval processes to happen out of order, allowing construction to mistakenly start before fire approval? Or was this simply the often Kafkaesque permitting process actually correctly identifying serious issues?
From the description given, "The developer hired contractors who didn't know what they were doing and ignored stop work orders when the city learned of the problems" seems like it might have a lot to do with it.
Would be curious to know from other HN readers: how far back can you understand written prose of your own language, assuming the writing system uses mostly the same letter or characters?
Medieval French, Middle High German, Ancient Greek, Classical Arabic or Chinese from different eras, etc.
People read Shahname[1] regularly in Iran, and it was written at around 1000 CE, but there isn't much before 900 CE that is comprehensible to a modern day Persian speaker.
The Shahnameh is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Shahnameh is one of the world's longest epic poems, and the longest epic poem created by a single author.
Most European people know about Odysseus, but few have read Homer, even in translation.
I one met a visiting Iranian academic just after I'd learned about the Shahnameh. I'd also read the opinion of a French scholar who thought its language was, for a modern Iranian, like Montaigne for a modern French. The Iranian woman told me that very few people in Iran actually read the book. It's very long, and hard to grasp for untrained readers. But most people know some of its stories and characters, because they are often mentioned in everyday life, and because the abridged prose books are widespread.
BTW, I don't know which editions are the most popular in Iran. Wikipedia says the Shahnameh was heavily modified and modernized up to the 14th century, when its most famous illustrated edition was created. The book most read today is probably not a scholar edition.
> The Iranian woman told me that very few people in Iran actually read the book. It's very long, and hard to grasp for untrained readers.
She makes a fair point. Reading and fully understanding Shahnameh is not straightforward. The difficulty does not primarily stem from drastic linguistic change, although the language has evolved and been somewhat simplified over time, but rather from the nature of Persian poetry itself, which is often deliberately layered and intricate *.
That said, Iranian students are introduced to selected passages and stories from Shahnameh throughout their schooling. Teachers typically devote considerable time to these texts, as the work is closely tied to cultural identity and a sense of historical pride.
* Persian, in particular, is often described as highly suited to poetic expression. Its flexible grammar and word order allow for a degree of intentional ambiguity, and this interpretive openness is frequently regarded as a mark of sophistication (difficult to master at a high-level for a layperson). A single ghazal by Hafez, for instance, can be read as a dialogue with God, a beloved man, or a beloved woman, with each interpretation leading to a different emotional and philosophical resonance. This multiplicity is the core part of the artistry.
Personally, I did not truly understand Hafez until I fell in love for the first time. My vocabulary and historical knowledge remained the same, yet my experience of the poetry changed completely. What shifted was something more inward and spiritual and only then did I begin to feel the full force of the verses.
For example, consider the following (unfortunately) translated lines:
O cupbearer, pass the cup around and offer it to me --
For love seemed easy at first, but then the difficulties began.
The Persian word corresponding to "cupbearer" may be read as a bar servant, a human beloved, a spiritual guide, or even the divine itself. The "wine" may signify literal intoxication, romantic love, mystical ecstasy, or divine knowledge. Nothing in the grammar forces a single interpretation, the poem invites the reader's inner state to complete it (and at the same time makes it rhyme).
I read Hebrew and I can more or less read the dead sea scrolls that I think are 250BCE. According to Google's AI from around 800BCE the alphabet was different enough that I won't be able to read those writings but given the translation between the letters you can still understand the words. While I haven't seen them or tried to read them supposedly the 600BCE Ketef Hinnom Silver Scrolls should be readable by a modern Hebrew reader.
Yes... while Hebrew has changed, it has been more of a shift in focus and an expansion and various directions - but the older stuff is still mostly usable. There was the long "Aramaic phase" though, which is weird given that we're talking about Hebrew. Bible Hebrew is, oh, 96-97% easily legible to moder readers I would say.
Of course, typical modern readers may not be able to string a full sentence of modern Hebrew, with clauses and everything, together these days, so maybe I'm overstating my point.
I think it depends a lot on the history of the language. My native language is French, and since long ago various authorities try to normalize and "purify" the language. This is why the gap between spoken French and written French is so wide. Now my experience as an avid reader...
Books written in the 17th century or later are easy to read. Of course, the meaning of some words can change over time but that's a minor trouble. I believe Molière and Racine are still studied in school nowadays, but the first name that came to my mind was Cyrano de Bergerac (the writer, not the fictitious character).
Books from the 16th need practice, but I think anyone who tries hard will get used to the language. I enjoyed Rabelais's Pantagruel and Gargantua a lot, and I first read them by myself when I was in highschool (I knew a bit of Latin and Greek, which helped).
Before that, French was much more diverse; the famous split into "langue d'oc" and "langue d'oïl" (terms for "oui" — yes — at the time) is a simplification, because there were many dialects with blurry contours over space and time.
I've read several 11th-12th novels about the Round Table, but I was already experienced in Old French when I started, and I think most readers would struggle to make sense of it. It may depend on the dialect; I remember "Mort Artur" was easier than "Lancelot, le chevalier à la charette".
"La chanson de Roland" (11th century, Old French named anglo-normand) is one of my favorite books of all times. Reading it for the first time was a long process — I learned the declensions of Old French and a lot of vocabulary — but it was also fun, like deciphering some mystery. And the poesy is a marvel, epic, incredibly concise, surprising and deep.
Before that (9th-10th), Old French was even closer to Latin.
In Italy we all study Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio in school, which are 1300, and it's quite easy to understand them beyond some unusual words. 1200 poetry is easy enough too.
There's not much literature older than that, cause people preferred to write in Latin, the oldest bit in "volgare" is the Indovinello Veronese[0] which is from the 8th or 9th century and at that point it's almost latin spelling-wise, it's understandable if you're well educated but wouldn't be understandable by everyone.
For square Hebrew (Assyrian) you can go back for about 2000 years. So for example Dead Sea scrolls are fairly readable. But old classical Hebrew impossible.
I'm studying Chinese (Taiwanese style, so traditional characters), and my understanding is anything back to about the Han Dynasty (~200 BCE) is intelligible to an educated Chinese speaker.
Resiliency is one of the weird beneficial side-effects of having a writing system based on ideas instead of sounds. Today, you've got a variety of Chinese dialects that, when spoken, are completely unintelligible to one another. But people who speak different dialects can read the same book just fine. Very odd, from a native English speaking perspective.
Written Chinese stayed the same while the spoken language evolved from the 5th century BC until the 1911 revolution, after which people began writing Chinese the way it's spoken in Beijing. So there's a sharp dividing line just over 100 years ago; Literary Chinese is still taught in school but without that you'd have trouble understanding it.
They don't contain the publisher name, but ISBNs are usually purchased in blocks of 10 or 100 or 1000 or whatever by a single entity, which is often a single publisher or corporation.
However, within the block publishers can assign ISBNs to different imprints.
For ISBNs from the big 5, the number really does indicate the publisher. I think the 5th digit (second after 978) can indicate at least some of the big publishers. Smaller ranges are available for purchase from the brokers. In Canada, the national library will even issue you one for free, if you self-publish.
The ISBN always indicates the country it's from, the United States getting the biggest block, other European nations and Japan getting their own, with Africa, the Middle East, and so forth all getting a block in common.
ISBN prefixes does not always indicate a country. They may be are indeed countries, but others are language areas (e.g. 0/1=English) or "regions" (groups of countries) or even other subjects.
My view of Amazon's decline comes from being a "partner" in their seller and publisher ecosystems for years.
The seller platforms in particular (Brand Registry, Vendor Central, Seller Central, Transparency, etc.) have crippling levels of technical debt. The situation has only gotten worse with Jassy's reckless directive for the entire organization to push into Generative AI (https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-ceo-and...). So much basic stuff is just breaking down, and seller support is overwhelmed or unable to intervene to fix the mess.
You can see a small sample here involving problems with product attributes (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions?s...). Google "Amazon AWD delays" or "Amazon CSBA problems" or "Amazon remote fulfillment problems" to see examples of programs that are unable to provide even basic levels of the services promised to sellers.
Meanwhile, Amazon has been so greedy with fees since Jassy took over that sellers of all sizes and many small to midsized brands are being squeezed out of existence or driven off Amazon. Its PPC ad platform is completely predatory, loaded with dark patterns and hidden defaults that add billions to top-line revenue while strip-mining the accounts of sellers who often have no choice but to participate in the auctions.
It's clear that Amazon is running scared when it comes to dealing with new competition, including the Chinese shopping sites and the looming prospect of agentic AI and other new AI-powered shopping tools eating its lunch. For the first time ever last month, I saw an Amazon search results (via Rufus) that actually directed shoppers to third-party brand sites. This would have been heresy 5 years ago.
Amazon turned me off selling completely. I was subjected to an obvious fraudulent buyer on a high value item ($5k) and they did everything in their power to make it as painful as possible for me to fight:
- An A-Z claim from the buyer was denied by Amazon for fraud (supposed non-delivery of the item), yet their returns department auto-approved a return for the same order just 12 days later.
- The customer returned a completely different item with documented serial number/weight discrepancies and seller-provided video evidence, yet I was left with no recourse.
- The customer then filed a fraudulent credit card chargeback. I won the first round, but Amazon refuses to participate in second-round disputes - so despite overwhelming evidence of five separate fraud attempts, they sent a generic email and docked $5k from my seller account.
- Amazon then refused to answer any further communications, including basic disclosure of which card issuer was involved or what evidence was submitted - making any independent appeal impossible.
- Every dispute stage (A-Z, returns, chargebacks) required rebuilding the fraud case from scratch. Zero continuity, and zero care for an independent seller with a strong track record of sales and feedback.
Blaming AI for Amazon’s accelerating downturn is a cop-out. This has been going on long before genAI was allowed there. Even now many teams within the products you called out aren’t using it at all.
> Its PPC ad platform is completely predatory, loaded with dark patterns and hidden defaults that add billions to top-line revenue while strip-mining the accounts of sellers who often have no choice but to participate in the auctions.
At least they mark ads as 'sponsored', even though it isn't super prominent.
I always scroll until I see organic results, myself.
They mark some of them. Not all of them. Last article I read said 80% of placements on the search results page are paid ads. And they only mark like 4-5 of them as "sponsored"
If you want to experiment with reported news using untested tools that have known quality problems, do it in a strictly controlled environment where the output can be carefully vetted. Senior editor(s) need to be in the loop. Start with something easier, not controversial or high-profile articles.
One other thing. If the author cut corners because he's too sick to write, but did so anyway because he thought his job would be in jeopardy if he didn't publish, maybe it's time for some self-reflection at Ars regarding the work culture and sick leave/time-off policies.
> One other thing. If the author cut corners because he's too sick to write, but did so anyway because he thought his job would be in jeopardy if he didn't publish, maybe it's time for some self-reflection at Ars regarding the work culture and sick leave/time-off policies.
It sounds like you're implying that's what happened here, but I don't see any of that in the article. Was additional info shared elsewhere?
Edit: oh, I see links to the article author's social media saying this. Nevermind my question, and I agree.
looking at the statement, I find it weird that Benj Edwards is trying very hard to remove the blame from Kyle Orland, Even if he is not directly responsible.
Not weird. Kyle will take a massive career hit, as a result of this.
I’d say that some of the onus is on Kyle, anyway, as he should vet anything he slaps his name on (I do), but it sounds like he really didn’t have anything to do with it.
Despite the aspersions against the company for their sick time policy (which might actually be valid), the other corporate pressure might be to force their employees to incorporate AI tools into their work. That’s become quite common, these days.
He is taking responsibility because it is by his omission his mistake. That is what grown ups do. He probably feels an immense sense of guilt, even if it was an honest mistake.
Not sure how widespread an occurrence in the industry at large, but in two slowly dying publications I'm familiar with, the editors were the first to be let go.
Quality took a nosedive, which may or may not have quickened the death spiral.
All that to say, there may not even be senior editors around to put in the loop.
The good news is that there are 3 senior editors (though none tasked with AI specifically), the bad news is that one of them was the coauthor. Their staff page does list two copy editors (variously labeled "copy editor" and "copyeditor" which is unfortunate) but no one assigned to fact checking specifically.
I think this is entirely plausible lapse for someone with a bad fever, especially if they routinely work from home and are primarily communicating over text-based channels. Personally I'm much more inclined to blame the organization, as it sounds like they knowingly accepted work from someone who was potentially going to be in an altered mental state.
Those are exactly the types of jobs that have been disappearing for years (not because of AI, but because of Internet). Same with editors. I regularly see embarrassing typos in major publications.
It is a very visible indicator of the quality of the whole. If the spelling is frequently not correct, which a reader can detect relatively easily, how many more mistakes are hidden in the content, which a reader can not detect easily? Are these completely independent variables? I do not think so. Therefore, I also assess the reliability of an article based on the frequency of careless mistakes.
What is an even larger warning sign, are cliches used to spice up an article. Ars Technica is hardly to blame here, but the Smithsonian magazine is full of it.
My mother[0] was a scientific editor, and she was brutal. She was a stickler for proper English, as well as content accuracy.
She once edited a book I wrote. It was humbling as hell, but it may be the only "perfect" thing that I've ever done (but it did not age well, and has since gone the way of the Dodo).
> strictly controlled environment where the output can be carefully vetted
I don't know journalism from the inside, though of course it's one of those professions that everyone things they understand and has an opinion about. Realistically, is it especially careful vetting to verify the quotes and check the factual statements? The quotes seem like especially obvious risks - no matter how sick, who would let an LLM write anything without verifying quotes?
That seems like not verifying currency figures in an estimate or quote, and especially in one written by an LLM - I just can't imagine it. I'd be better off estimating the figures myself or removing them.
I can't help but think this is a reflection of the unwillingness of most people to actually pay for journalism online — and worse, the active and intentional effort to subvert copyright, making it more difficult for journlists to actually earn a living from their work.
People don't value journalism. They expect it to be free, generally. Therefore, companies like Ars are put into a position of expecting too much from their journalists.
HN is rife with people with this attitude -- frequently linking to "archive" sites for otherwise paywalled articles, complaining when companies try to build email lists, charge for their work, or have advertising on their sites. The underlying message, of course, is that journalism shouldn't be paid for.
Yes, Ars is at fault if they have a bad company culture. However, the broader culture is a real factor here as well.
Someone from the financial times did a test about the impact of this garbage on read times and brand loyalty. This was maybe 15 years ago. Of course the more ads shoehorned onto the page, the worse the metrics were.
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