
Don’t believe everything you read - taylorbuley
http://x-surface.tumblr.com/post/41282771026/x-surface-dont-believe-everything-you-read
======
kevinalexbrown
This is why reputation and reliability matter. While the example in this post
is the equivalent of "I got major news outlets like TMZ to think that Paris
Hilton was getting married" many types of news aren't so inconsequential. In
the first few days after the Connecticut shooting, there were so many
inaccuracies it made me reconsider other "facts" I heard which were never
obviously wrong (e.g. it became obvious that the shooter's name was wrong when
he was in New York - most inaccuracies aren't like this). Like many blogs, the
"source" of misinformation often originated in a single benign inaccuracy that
was then propagated through other news agencies.

What I would love to see is a method for tracking or indexing _reputation_ of
a site by some automatic method. As it is, I can kind of infer how reliable a
site is based on the language I see, and the types of headlines, and whether
others have told me it's reputable. I would _love_ to see that automated
somehow. News aggregators try to solve this via upvotes, downvotes, or flags,
but there are plenty of reasons to upvote that have nothing to do with
_reliability_ per se, and trying to use multiple upvoting buttons seems silly,
because at the end of the day rank is a one-dimensional property, so you'll
have to combine "funny", "reliable", "interesting" into some single number.

It's a "hard problem" but since the value of information depends so heavily on
its accuracy, solving it would appear to be very lucrative and valuable to a
society in which the quantity of available information grows by leaps and
bounds each year. Google seems to have solved "relevance" and I would love to
see someone solve reliability.

~~~
VonGuard
In a way, there is already a system like this in your brain. Reputation is
something you formulate yourself based on meta-information about the outlet
you're reading. You do this already: ever read an article and look up at the
URL to check and see if it's hosted at a reputable source, like nytimes.com or
salon.com?

What would help is more meta data available to the reader. So, instead of
measuring an unmeasurable "truthiness" (because really, what is truth, in the
philosophical sense...) how about a Chrome plug-in that pulls down meta data
from other sites that have written about this outlet.

So, you read NYTimes, and your little plug-i pops up some links to
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair> or some such similar thing. You
can read up on that and see that there have been issue sin the past, but for
the most part, NYTimes remains reputable.

I guess it would need some sort of Hacker News-like inaccuracy tracker. Post
bad stories, more up-votes, more likely to be detected as relevant meta info
on the TLD it comes from.

~~~
Retric
NYTimes does not have a single unified reputation.

A front page story like "Pentagon Lifts Ban on Women in Combat" is probably
highly accurate, breaking news less so. Op-Ed, might as well be a random blog.

~~~
VonGuard
True. Add to this the fact that things like the Wall Street journal are now
Fox News puppets, and MSNBC's desire to be the liberal Fox News, and there's
almost nothing left for reliable news.

Still, BBC, Al Jazera, NPR are where I go. That, and hyper local sites.

------
mikeleeorg
A response from Rob Crossley:

<https://twitter.com/Rob_Crossley_/status/294149670496768002>

<https://twitter.com/Rob_Crossley_/status/294149784678322176>

<https://twitter.com/Rob_Crossley_/status/294149862562353152>

<https://twitter.com/Rob_Crossley_/status/294149937736847363>

~~~
ddunkin
Rob did two great things: 1) He did not trust the source, and questioned the
authenticity. 2) He actually called him out on BS when he continued

The first false message from Joe is interesting, but once Rob replies, and Joe
continues trying to push the lie, that's a little dick'ish. The second Rob
replied, with his first, and extremely professional response, I would have
apologized/congratulated him, and explained what I was doing.

Continuing the charade invites deserved anger. I don't like being lied to
either, especially when I know the person was lying and keeps pushing the lie.

------
ChuckMcM
That the news agencies are too quick to run with a story is an old complaint.
That doesn't make it any less real, it simply makes it less novel.

"Bad guys" exploit this effect to create false perceptions. It is used a lot
in politics since perception is effectively reality if the next step is
getting a vote. Sometimes it is used for espionage (corporate and
geopolitical) to create a diversion. It has been used to make money in the
stock market with option manipulation.

Because being "first" on a news story conveys additional profit (views, ad
clicks, publicity) there is great incentive to be first, which will always be
in tension with being accurate. There also seems to be a sliding scale on
verification so leaking a rumor that the Prime Minister has died is less
likely to run without verification than leaking a rumor that the Prime
Minister has been photographed in a compromising situation. National impact vs
scandalous impact. No doubt every publisher thinks "Hmm, what if this is a
prank what is the worst that can happen?" Maybe I give them too much credit.

Reputation is important, takes a long time to build though. Can be lost
quickly.

------
te_platt
How many of you laughed at how credulous news sites are before verifying that
this blog post was accurate? Finding a reliable news source is hard, and not
just in the games industry. Even here on Hacker News I usually read a
headline, wonder if it's true, check the comments for contrarian views, then
read the article.

~~~
VonGuard
Journalist here. FYI, the day someone I don't know emails me with a "hot
inside tip" is a day I spend tracking down the emailer and calling my sources
within the target company.

Just so you know, even at the big news sites, good hot tips from unknown
emailers just never happen. Great hot tips come from getting corporate
employees drunk, then chasing down their leads from other directions when
you're sober. Anonymous insider emails spilling the beans only happen when a
company is about to, or currently going bankrupt, or some such other
catastrophic melt-down. Then they come crawling out of the woodwork.

~~~
adrockdust
Never underestimate the value of a disgruntled employee.

------
tptacek
I like the site that said "but we ran a prominent disclaimer at the end of the
article!", as if that made up for a lede and a series of breathless grafs
reporting the contents of an anonymous mail as fact.

~~~
DannyBee
Says the head of the new xbox division[1]

[1] According to an anonymous email I received 35 seconds ago

------
swang
It's not as though brick & mortar journalists are any better nowadays either.
See: Manti Teo

Even though one "journalist" couldn't find any evidence of the girl existing:
no birth certificate, no death certificate, no records of her existence, they
essentially let Manti Teo off the hook when he essentially told the guy to not
further into it.

Then look at ESPN. They supposedly sat on the story for under a week because
they were trying to land an sit-down TV interview with Manti Teo. ESPN the
Sports Entertainment Network, won out over ESPN the Journalistic Sports
Network.

~~~
geargrinder
It is pretty common for any news organization to embargo scoops to maximize
their impact. They might schedule additional, related stories or or a special
ad/launch campaign. These things take time and the newspaper will often work
with the source/subject to make sure they maintain exclusivity. Startups might
learn lessons on how to maximize initial launch impact by studying the
behavior of news organizations.

------
msy
Every time I hear someone say that democracy won't suffer as professional news
orgs fold and that bloggers will fill the void I think of stories like this.

~~~
jcbrand
You mean the same professional news orgs that publish 14 stories on Pussy
Riot's plight but only a brief bit of wire copy from AP concerning Bradley
Manning's first week of testimony? <http://t.co/dCsfOEsf>

~~~
mitchty
Exactly, expecting that "professional" news reporters and journalists don't
operate under other biases is also naive.

Bloggers have their flaws, but so does mainstream news.

------
mpclark
You get what you pay for. When a site's only revenue source is ads paying a
couple of bucks per thousand impressions, this is the inevitable result.

~~~
danielweber
Newspapers have a similar model. The subscription fee just helps establish
their customers as bona fide.

~~~
chernevik
Not always. Subscriptions for the Wall Street Journal are an foundation
revenue source. I think this is also the case for the FT and the Economist.

I don't think it coincidental that these are financial papers. Information is
valuable and businesspeople will pay for it. That has implications for their
reporting, too. Their stories are under pressure for accuracy, because the
readers are paying for information and will go elsewhere if they don't get
good stuff.

I think ad-first news models are more prone to some bias to generate an
audience. People generally don't like hearing things they disagree with, so
anyone requiring a large audience finds themselves pressured to adopt
particular attitudes to get and hold that audience.

Why don't business people assert the similar biases? They do. But the ones
paying up for information -- e.g. WSJ subscribers -- are almost by definition
more interested in information than people who aren't. That particular crowd
is also alert to the potential in contrarian opinion, they know people can get
_paid_ for knowing something unexpected. So they've incentive to overcome
their own cognitive dissonance.

I read recently that the NY Times was moving to more dependence on
subscription revenue. I think that would be great, the more a reader pays, the
higher the demand for accuracy.

------
gwright
> The games industry is the only one I can think of that will quite happily
> publish guesswork as news.

Ha. Ha. Assessing the credibility of news sources is far from a solved
problem. It doesn't matter if it is breaking news, business news (in any
industry), public policy news, finance news, etc.

~~~
potatolicious
This is also why journalism is an actual field of study, not just a word to
make oneself sound important. Assessing the credibility of sources is one of
many _very_ hard problems legitimate journalists face, and as a whole we have
some obligations and expectations in place to ensure due diligence is
followed.

Which isn't perfect, but certainly a good foil for situations like this.

I miss real journalism.

------
bradly
I don't want to get too meta here but...

Just as easy as someone can send out a fake news tip to a bunch of sources, a
person can just as easily pick out a piece of news story that is being covered
everywhere and write a fake blog post about how they created the news tip out
of thin air. I'm not saying (or even think) that is what the author did, but
it is interesting to think about the reverse of this.

He could have made up that he made up that news. I'm mean he could have just

------
tobyjsullivan
The author is absolutely correct that this is not "journalism," however, I
would argue that the state of the industry is not necessarily bad. What you
have to consider most is the target market of this misinformation.

If the target were industry executives and product designers then, yes,
getting accurate information on new products from competitors and the industry
would be important but this is not the case.

The target market is, instead, eager-beaver fans who are bored at work or home
and want something to entertain them and they find video game news and rumours
entertaining. I've been part of that crowd in the past. To put it bluntly, I'd
rather tons of inaccurate information constantly streaming into my RSS reader
than one or two accurate updates a month.

This is a simple case of the market shaping the product. I wouldn't be so
quick to attack the "journalists" who are simply giving their readers what
they want.

Complaining that gaming news is not validated is about equivalent to
complaining that the National Enquirer isn't top-rate journalism. We know and
that's not the point.

------
arn
fwiw, his list of "major sites" that got fooled is rather misleading and
sketchy in its own way:

"yahoo" - syndicated content

"cnet" - (UK) cnet.co.uk's crave blog

"gizmodo" - (UK) gizmodo.co.uk

not saying that you couldn't fool major sites, but this is a
misrepresentative. You say "Gizmodo' without qualification, people expect you
mean Gizmodo.com -- Not Gizmodo.co.uk. But hey, anything for a
headline/clicks/press, right?

Edit: It should also be noted that most of the sites listed are not gaming
sites despite his tirade against gaming journalists

~~~
halvsjur
If you willingly put your name on something, you have editorial
responsibility.

~~~
bnegreve
Yes, the article is on <http://uk.news.yahoo.com/>. How many people are going
to realize that it's not actually yahoo news?

~~~
aw3c2
It _is_ Yahoo News, it says so everywhere on the webpage.

------
tokenadult
This is a very important topic to discuss here on Hacker News. I'll put it out
there, as a person who had a different educational background and profile of
activities in my teen years from most hackers, that most hackers have
remarkably poor preparation in evaluating sources and figuring out which
sources are reliable sources.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources)

That's especially regretable when sources about human health and medicine are
submitted here,

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_\(medicine\))

as those sources often attract a lot of discussion, as we all desire to be
healthier if we can.

The most embarrassing example I have seen of people using a good search engine
(Google) to find lousy sources was when Larry Page posted a Google+ message

<https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LarryPage/posts/32xY3Z1zckL>

about his donation of funds to help young people in San Francisco obtain
vaccinations. That resulted in a lot of anti-vaccine cranks decrying his
donation, with one of those writing, "Just google it and do the research it's
readily available" when asked to back up a statement decrying vaccines. The
Internet is full of trash sources, and Google still spiders and indexes many
of those as it searches the World Wide Web. Without thoughtful human brains
thinking about which sources are reliable, the link structure that Google
relies on in part as a signal of quality will include noise as well as signal.

The Hacker News welcome message

<http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html>

gives an overview of the community experiment here, summarizing the site
guidelines. The welcome message distills the basic rules into a simple
statement:

"Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and
don't be rude or dumb in comment threads."

But it takes actual reading and thought to know what's a crap link. And since
stories once submitted can only be flagged (not downvoted), it is still
dismayingly easy for crap links to gain top position on the main page--I saw
it happen only yesterday.

To follow up on this topic, I'll mention that other Hacker News participants
have informed us all about two frequent sources of submissions that really
aren't much good at all, namely the press-release aggregation sites PhysOrg
and ScienceDaily. PhysOrg appears to have been banned as a site to submit from
by Reddit. ScienceDaily is just a press release recycling service, nothing
more. Users here on HN think there are better sites to submit from.

Comments about PhysOrg:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3077869>

"Yes Physorg definitely has some of the worst articles on the internet."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3198249>

"Straight from the European Space Agency, cutting out the physorg blogspam:

<http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1116/> (press release),

<http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1116a/> (video),

[http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/scien...](http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/science_papers/heic1116.pdf)
(paper).

"PhysOrg: just say no."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3611888>

"The physorg article summary is wrong, I think."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108857>

"Phys.org is vacuous and often flat wrong."

Comments about ScienceDaily:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992206>

"Blogspam.

"Original article (to which ScienceDaily has added precisely nothing):

[http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/abundance-of-rare-
dn...](http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/abundance-of-rare-dna-changes-
following-population-explosion-may-hold-common-disease-clues)

"Underlying paper in Science (paywalled):

[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/05/16/science.1...](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/05/16/science.1219240)

"Brief writeup from Nature discussing this paper and a couple of others on
similar topics:

[http://www.nature.com/news/humans-riddled-with-rare-
genetic-...](http://www.nature.com/news/humans-riddled-with-rare-genetic-
variants-1.10655)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108603>

"Everything I've ever seen on HN -- I don't know about Reddit -- from
ScienceDaily has been a cut-and-paste copy of something else available from
nearer the original source. In some cases ScienceDaily's copy is distinctly
worse than the original because it lacks relevant links, enlightening
pictures, etc.

" . . . . if you find something there and feel like sharing it, it's pretty
much always best to take ten seconds to find the original source and submit
that instead of ScienceDaily."

Comments about both PhysOrg and ScienceDaily:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3689185>

"Why hasn't sciencedaily.com or physorg been banned from HN yet?"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3875529>

"Original source:

[http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinode/news/pole-
asymmetry...](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinode/news/pole-
asymmetry.html)

"What ScienceDaily has added to this: (1) They've removed one of the figures.
(2) They've removed links to the Hinode and SOHO websites. (3) They've added
lots of largely irrelevant links of their own, all of course to their own
site(s).

"Please, everyone: stop linking to ScienceDaily and PhysOrg."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3867361>

"Those sources don't have RSS feeds, and ScienceDaily and PhysOrg have a bad
habit of not linking to such things."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4083766>

"Added value in PhysOrg article: zero.

"Please, everyone, stop submitting links from PhysOrg and ScienceDaily. I have
never ever ever seen anything on those sites that isn't either (1) bullshit or
(2) a recycled press release with zero (or often negative) added value.
(Sometimes it's both at once.) It only takes ten seconds' googling to find the
original source."

To sum up, yes, as the interesting original blog post kindly submitted here
points out, it is EASY to fool online news sites. And it is easy to fool whole
groups of bloggers, and thus to fool news aggregation sites. Read a source
carefully before submitting. Don't submit at all if the source is dodgy. Save
the submissions and the upvotes and the comments for reliable sources that
take care to verify factual statements.

~~~
alexholehouse
I try and debunk/explain [shady] biological science news wherever possible
here. In fact, it's typically my only contribution, but one I feel is highly
important.

Your perpetual (and totally correct) crusade against PhysOrg reminds me there
are others doing the same, and for that I thank you.

------
d0m
Am I the only one thinking it's a very selfish and unfunny move? What if I
call him saying I'm a physician from hospital X and announce him that his
father just died. Oh, and then, I'll post a blog explaining how you shouldn't
trust people calling you and post that on HN. _Obviously_ there is a chain
reaction when a big news comes out. You don't want to have a reputation for
the _latest in the known_ news website. And, furthermore, it's very common for
journalists to receive anonymous posts.. It's explicitly said in their news
that it came from an anonymous source and that it wasn't totally trust-able;
yet they admitted that what was said had much chance to be real because of
some already known facts.

~~~
apl

      > And, furthermore, it's very common for journalists to
      > receive anonymous posts.
    

Publishing implies validation, at least to a certain extent. Otherwise media
become nothing more than a fully transparent channel; there's nothing useful
about that in this day and age. This prank (which doesn't resemble the
physician example you mention in the least) shows two things: First, fact
checking and double or triple sourcing appear to be a thing of the past.
Second, on the internet, anonymous tips mean nothing. Even if you disagree
that the former point is an issue, you'll have to grant the latter.

~~~
d0m
The thing is: How can they check or double check? It's a confidential memo
from an anonymous user. If it was possible to check it, that wouldn't be a big
news ;-) And yes, I do agree that anonymous tips have no credibility. However,
experience shows that some anonymous tips were true and, especially when it's
the only information you have, might become relevent.

------
zobzu
This reminds me, a few years back, I wanted to have a site linked and spoken
about on major internet news (tech) sites.

Submitted the story, never saw anything about it. Probably not
sensationalistic enough. Then I figured.

Sent the story to a few smaller news sites. ONE took the story. Next day, ALL
sites including major news sites had the story.

Of course, these days its expected that news site leech stories and perform
zero journalism, but back them, even thus I wouldn't say it surprised me a
lot, it felt wrong hehe.

------
opminion
I see some sort of duality between this (feeding fake information to news
sources to then show them up for not fact checking), and email spam.

It comes at a small cost per news item, just like email spam costs, which
added up would make it very annoying to work as a journalist.

In order to avoid getting spammed, they would have to do exactly what we would
like them to do, which is to fack check.

Besides, contrary to what happens with spam, it is not cost-effective for a
single individual to do this on a regular basis.

However, I wonder if it _might_ be cost efficient for a community to do this,
and whether it is done in any other community to keep the quality up.

------
frendiversity
Pfft. Any game site worth their salt would have negotiated the embargo period
on releasing the "news" before providing this free advertising in exchange for
those addicted fanboy clicks.

Real journalism is the advertising industry now. "Real" journalism (old-
fashioned "journalistic integrity") is a good way to get squeezed out and
blacklisted from the industry.

Keep in mind this isn't "real" news or journalism, it is treated as
entertainment and there is no integrity assumed, there are justifications in
place for this stuff.

Also, there have always been press hacks and tabloids. Most popular internet
"news" is far more tabloid than newspaper.

~~~
nawariata
“You kid come into this business thinking you’re going to make a difference.
Pretty soon you find out, you’re just filling the space around the ads.”

Source <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2666870>

------
munificent
> How would people react if they found out the BBC got all their news third-
> hand from a copied article that had been changed twice along the way? It is
> not reliable. No other industry works like this.

I got bad news for you buddy...

------
rayiner
From TFA: "The games industry is the only one I can think of that will quite
happily publish guesswork as news."

Yeah, it's not just the gaming media. The 4th estate is pretty much just a
rotting corpse, and online media isn't any better (but at least it's free).

There is an awesome insider book about media manipulation:
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-church/ryan-holiday-
tru...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-church/ryan-holiday-trust-me-im-
lying_b_1715524.html).

~~~
philwelch
I hope you were being wryly ironic posting a Huffington Post link. The best
part of the review was this:

"The way the media is organized today is bad, he argues, because it no longer
cares for quality journalism. Sources aren't checked. Facts are dubious
guesses at best. Mistakes are never corrected. No, the media cares more for
gossip and things that make readers emotionally charged -- as that's what
makes us share stuff."

Describes HuffPo to a T.

------
nullc
What he's missing is that he seems to think this is unique to gaming or tech
news. It's not. I've worked with 'Journalists' from prestigious institutions
like the New York times and the New Yorker, and it's little better.

Collect some dirt, regurgitate some quotables with a little polish, copy some
"facts" from Wikipedia (without attribution, ensuring that Wikipedia
eventually cites the crap news article for non-factual facts), and we're off
to the races.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Relevant xkcd: <http://xkcd.com/978/>.

------
jacques_chester
> _The games industry is the only one I can think of that will quite happily
> publish guesswork as news._

I take it that this person doesn't read political journalism.

------
aba_sababa
This validates most of what Ryan Holiday says in "Trust Me, I'm Lying." Was
wondering what extent his account of the media is actually true.

------
pippy
There's a couple of problems with this post:

1) what if an employee really wanted to leak information anonymously?

2) rumors like these are fun, and let's face it, the subject matter isn't very
important.

If it were someone embezzling millions in a company it would be a different
story.

------
dachan
The fact he calls out a guy by name and then remains anonymous is pathetic.

------
javajosh
It's remarkable to me that the demand for gaming news is so high (and that
it's lucrative enough to pay people's salaries). I'd expect gamers to spend
their time, you know, gaming.

------
ddunkin
This is what draws the line between bloggers and reporters.

Sadly, the news industry is trying to be as fast as the bloggers to be hip and
cool, and getting just as sloppy as hell in the process.

------
nirvanatikku
HAH, this is _awesome_!

I've been feeling this way for some time.. moreover, I feel like HN and Reddit
seed a lot of articles nowadays. Either way, thanks for taking the time and
posting this.

------
njittam
srry but accidently pressed send. but one episode was about the liability of
the media. and they did the same thing you did. it was just before the
eurosongfestival and the made a song wich was really similair to the song we
would send to the songfestival. then they sent it to some newspapers. and if
there wasn't a article about in their paper it was on their website. and they
have even a hint because in the name of the mp3 stood rambam.

------
macco
Isn't it obvious? It's one of the first things I learned in school. Be
critical about what you read!

------
randall
The Verge / Engadget didn't run with it. Just saying.

------
njittam
this isn't only in gaming. I'm from the Netherlands and here used to be a tv-
program called rambam

------
3327
Great work this should fix the issue for a few weeks. But really this is how
things are exposed. SO great work!

------
Roelven
This is hilarious, thank you.

------
venomsnake
Or this is a brilliant cover up from Microsoft on a genuine leak. That is the
fun with paranoia - there is always one more level of distrust.

Also specs of next gen devices are not that hard to guess.

Assuming goals are 1080p x 60FPS:

If you aim for sub 500 USD of production cost that retail at 350-400 there are
not many balanced hardware solutions that could fit. My wild guess is that we
will have 6GB of ram (it is dirt cheap so it makes no sense to have much
less), because the invisible walls are something players and developers has
complained a lot. 2GB of video ram and four core cpu. And maybe 7870/660ti
class GPU and what is left of the budget for storage.

~~~
TheCapn
I'm not an expert on this but my gut tells me that Microsoft/Sony/whoever,
when specing the device will make a bulk contract purchase for their
equipment. So although retail market for cpu/gpu/ram may be so much right now
they'll be able to get better hardware at a cheaper rate than any consumer
wishing to build at the cheapest price avaiable. I would _hope_ at least that
next-gen aren't building at 660ti grade GPU.

~~~
gav
I'm also assuming that if you are building a device that has a multi-year
lifespan you can factor in the ever decreasing cost of components. Maybe the
price of the components on day-1 are $500, but day-730 $350.

~~~
jspaur
MSFT has stated multiple times that their goal is over the lifespan of the
hardware to break even on it. (So 1mil units at -200 and 10mil units with at
+20)

How this works with devices such as Kinect though I'm not sure. It's about
attachment rates (extra controllers, batteries, etc.) on the hardware side

Then the software side has fairly obvious goals.

------
ianstallings
What I find hilarious about journalists in general is they wrap themselves in
"truth" when in reality they basically will do _anything_ to get your
attention for just long enough to pawn off some product in a 30-45 second ad.
The only reason they seek the "truth" is so advertisers will buy another slot.

------
kordless
In summary, author blames gaming sites for lack of journalistic integrity at
the same time he fails to notice he is a liar and a snark.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance>

~~~
gwern
He didn't notice it?

> I feel bad for lying, but it proves the point very well.

~~~
mfringel
In sentences like that, I tend to ignore everything before the 'but'.

To my admittedly uneducated eye, nothing in the rest of that article indicates
any kind of remorse or regret over the author's actions.

The clause before the 'but' is how the author gives themselves permission to
say what's after the 'but'. This does not necessarily impart any emotional (or
even semantic) meaning onto the first clause.

~~~
jacalata
You can argue over how much he really felt bad, but you can't argue that he
'didn't notice he was lying'.

