This is such a shallow comment. Regardless of how long he's written articles sponsored by PC magazine, you don't know the details of his contract or the relationship he had with that sponsorship. Why bother creating a comment if you add no content?
The funny thing is, if you gave me the option of reading a Dvorak article or an arbitrary PC Mag article, all other factors held fixed, I would pick Dvorak every time. That is, they just laid off an asset that was more valuable than the rest of the company.
They're a propagandist's take on the news, with their own slant (but probably not an agenda). Balanced, no; but not completely right wing nut job, so they're tolerable to find out what's happing in the non-right-on liberal space.
Often wrong, often hilariously so. Continually confusing personal and tribal loyalty with patriotism and idealism. For example, criticism of Trump means criticising the office of the presidency, or disrespecting the US if you are not American; or a republican showing some independence of thought is letting the team down. I don't think they understand idealism at all, they can only conceptualise self-seeking behaviour, everything is framed as that, in part because that's what sells the show as a reveal of the hidden motives.
Dvorak in particular gets extremely agitated when foreigners criticise the US, or express an opinion on US politics. He seems unaware of how much US politics directly affects other countries. He is also almost as ignorant as Trump in understanding how critical the US hegemon has been to peace (albeit on US favourable terms) after WWII.
They had no problems imputing a link between Bill Clinton as president setting the morals for the nation (and making blowjobs ok!), but completely fail to do the same for Trump. Balanced, nope.
I'm amused that JCD can look out his window at the mud flats and refute careful measurements by the NOAA. [0]
They do some interesting analysis and some digging and often paint a pretty poor picture of typical news outlets but there's a fair amount of chaff with the wheat.
Agree except for the 2x part, Dvorak has a deep, slow, gravelly delivery that does not lend well to artificial acceleration.
Also the audio production on the show is absolutely top notch for being done by one dude, the co-host, co-inventor of podcasting, and former MTV VJ, Adam Curry.
Plus the “morning zoo” bit is just a hilarious ruse; don’t let the “light tone” distract too much from the serious media deconstruction happening.
There is no "media deconstruction" happening. All they do is play cable news clips and give their uninformed and often offensive commentary. Zero journalistic work of any kind, just idiotic hot takes shot from the hip.
All those trips up and down the Valley, like was a spread out Guangzhou JDR Microdevices, NCA Peripherals, WierdStuff, Central Computers, MicroCenter, Halted, Egghead, mom&pop shareware and even the "evil" Fry's and CompUSA.
IIRC I spend somewhere on the order of $5k on basically a homebuilt workstation... Adaptec U2W, IBM Ultrastar whopping 9 GB drive, Plextor CD burner, PC Power & Coolng PSU, GUS and a Courier modem. IIRC i got tired of hearing the 7000 RPM fan droning like a 1U server and made a fanless water-cooling setup with an RV heater core and CPU cooling block. Oh and UPSes since 1986.. south San Jose had frequent power outages.
IIRc we had back issues of PC Magazines for at least the previous year. I had C++ PJ and DDJ.
Uh huh... that poem had more than one line, and if it started with your version the response would broadly be, “get back to me in a few lines and I’ll start fighting.” Even the fallacy you’re invoking is a slope and not a cliff. The republic isn’t going to implode because Alex Jones can’t use PayPal. Now if the government were throwing him in jail for what he said, I’d grudgingly support his right to be a bloviating psychopath, with rights under the 1st amendment.
Companies not wanting to do business with him? yawn
I highly recommend reading Frederick Douglass' "A Plea for Freedom of Speech in Boston." It was written after he was deplatformed by protesters shouting him down while he was trying to give a speech. It talks about how he thought it was good enough that the government could not block his speech and how wrong he was about that.
Obviously Jones is no Frederick Douglass, but the culture of deplatforming/censorship is a dangerous one nonetheless.
Let’s make a deal, when they start to come for the modern equivalent of a Frederick Douglass, I’ll care, and we’ll still be high up on the list with plenty of time to fight. Until then this feels a lot more like a slippery slope fallacy, and not a sound argument. After all the poem is all about how many chances for intervention were passed by, not that only ideological absolutism can prevent tyranny.
Not to mention that despite attempts to silence him, Douglass was ultimately successful and still remembered.
Who gets to decide who is a Frederick Douglass and who is an Alex Jones? What makes you feel so confident that you will be on the right side of history when the modern Frederick Douglass is deplatformed?
When that modern Frederick Douglass is deplatformed, we can talk, instead of this hysterical “when the world ends where will you be?!” shit. If you have something more than slippery slopes to offer, and comparing Alex Jones to Frederick Douglass, I’m all ears, otherwise, have a good day.
I don't know if any modern Frederick Douglass' are being deplatformed. It's nice to imagine that if I lived in 1863 that I would recognize that Douglass was on the right side of history, but statistically that is unlikely. I highly doubt you would recognize a Frederick Douglass either, if I could manage to point one out. That is why everyone must be allowed to speak.
If I find someone that I think is an Alex Jones, a Nazi, etc. it's easy enough to block them. What I don't do though is tell you that you're not allowed to listen to them either. That's where sensibility turns to authoritarianism. Freedom of speech is not just the right to speak, but also the right to hear.
What I don't do though is tell you that you're not allowed to listen to them either.
No one has said that about Jones, not Apple, or Youtube, and certainly not PayPal. They chose not to publish him or process his payments, and that’s all. In the same way that a book publisher doesn’t owe anyone a book, a radio station isn’t obligated to allow everyone who wants to be a DJ on the air, and TV stations don’t owe anyone a talk show. Yet when it’s the internet people pretend that a company choosing who they do business with is something new, is censorship, etc.
It isn’t, no amount of hand waving and slippery sloping makes it that, and everyone should be sick of these canards being used almost exclusively in regards to conspiracy theorists and far right nutjobs.
For better or worse the public square now exists on FB, Youtube, and Twitter. I haven't suggested that the government should come in and force any of those companies to do business with anyone. I'm more closely suggesting that these companies are doing the modern equivalent to book burning and no one seems concerned about that.
This isn't just far right nutjobs. Youtube decided to delete every single pro-Syrian channel recently which happened to coincide with the battle for Idlib. Apparently Youtube decided anyone opposing the war of aggression being conducted by the US is "Alex Jones" territory. Alex Jones just happened to be pretty famous. Lots of smaller people are being deplatformed, it just doesn't make the news.
You have the right to say (almost) anything you want. I have the right to tell you that you can't use my microphone. Someone else has the right to build a microphone tailored for you.
So I suppose you are all for Comcast, AT&T, etc. injecting ads into your traffic, charging premium for your Netflix binges, and worse?
I mean it's their ~~microphone~~ fiber.
Oh, but this is different, I'm sure you'll say, because reasons.
Well that's why we generally, in the US at least, have always thought it was a good idea to just allow all speech, even if some awful stuff leaks out once in a while.
He's been infuriatingly wrong in every article of his I've ever read, but holy shit! He was an icon. 36 years and they "fire" him via e-mail!? Despicable.
Dvorak's greatest hits: "nobody wants a mouse", "Steve Jobs going the way of pet rocks", "cable modems are a dead end", "the mac is dead", "ipod is a niche product", "wikipedia is a dead end", "podcasting is a dead end", "linux is a dead end", "time to short apple", "the iphone's a flop", "ipad's a flop", "apple watch's a flop", etc.
When I used to listen to the TWIT podcast (its been years..), I liked Dvorak's cynical perspective vs the love everything new and tech of the other hosts. He was cranky. I give him bonus points for remembering lotus's Jazz software in the podcast (and calling it out for its problems when it came out).
I don't read PC Mag, and don't care to review so much material. Considering his long career and fame though I consider it uncharitable to assume he's made no right calls in that time.
One of my fondest personal memories is "printers and photocopiers use fundamentally different print technologies and will therefore never be integrated in one machine".
Does not in any way whatsoever justify the asshat fashion of the firing.
You could call the discontinued "edition" line (gold/ceramic) a flop but on the whole it seems fairly successful by watch/smartwatch standards if not by iphone standards.
If you look at some of those, he was right if you extend the timeline out.
"nobody wants a mouse" - True in the days of touch screens. "the mac is dead" - Becoming true as they continue with the hardware choices for their pro lines and iOS'ification of the MacOS.
"ipod is a niche product" - It is now for those who just want a music player and not a phone.
"apple watch's a flop" - That was true when it came out. Apple was expecting it to be far larger than it was. Its now starting to gain traction, but don't see it growing to the number users who have iphones.
It might be better to say he was ahead of the curve on many of his statements.
If you're an employee (no equity), be assured your employers don't care about you when the money starts to dry up. If you're overpriced for the revenue you bring in, you're gone. This is stuff everyone learned in the 90s bubble. Now the paper mags are falling over and he's acting surprised. SMH
> This is stuff everyone learned in the 90s bubble.
This is stuff every generation learns during every major recession. During the boom times, when business is good, the company treats its employees well and everyone thinks the company will always take care of them. Recession hits and reality smacks you right across the face.
Please explain. Having a strong political opinion as an editor and firing your most popular author who has the contrary opinion sounds exactly like what that is.
The email states they’re winding down more than just him. Not everything is a conspiracy, PC Mag could just be cost cutting or downsizing due to a reduced readership.
The timing looks really bad. I'm reserving judgement to see confirmation from their other columnists (whom I listed in a separate reply). His tweet also claims it to be a false pretense -- why take one person's word over the other?
Because his whole tweet stream is like that. There will be no perfect timing where you will not be able to find something political adjacent to "explain" firing.
I think you are right and it's probably the most plausible answer. But in the spirit of interpreting the parent comment with good faith, help me walk through a thought experiment:
Try getting a job or a promotion with any VC backed SV company while having a Twitter bio that indicates you voted for or support Trump. Not quite willing to do that? A bridge too far? No prob. Instead, just put that you support the 2nd Amendment. Or the military. Or law enforcement. Or smaller government.
I've never seen a problem with coworkers who loudly support any of these causes at VC backed SV companies. One of my coworkers posted about how happy he was about King Trump winning the election. He was promoted and later hired at another VC-backed SV company.
De-platforming is an explicit choice to disassociate from a particular, repugnant point of view. It's a highly visible, inherently political (and therefore public) move.
Firing your star columnist by email citing budget concerns doesn't fit the MO.
De-platforming is also not usually deployed in service of mere political disagreement (staunch conservatives speak at institutions that perform no-platforms all the time). It's reserved for positions that are perceived to be outside the bounds of what should be accepted by society such as white supremacy, blatant homophobia, etc.
As far as I'm aware, Dvorak didn't publicly hold any such positions. So even if (and that's a HUGE what-if given the facts) he were let go for ideological concerns, it wouldn't count as a no-platforming move.
I think if you were to casually browse JCD's twitter feed over the past few weeks, you might see a lot of posts and retweets that many people might find objectionable.
Look, you can believe whatever you want about why he was fired, but "no-platforming" is an actual deliberate thing and this was by definition not it.
I read over his tweets for the past couple weeks and while he comes off as your typical conservative blowhard, there's nothing worthy of public outcry and therefore worthy of a de-platforming event.
Look. I almost feel bad about myself for engaging with you on this level. But this is important. Progressives actually don't oppose the right of people to believe differently. The idea behind no-platforming is that it's not acceptable to amplify someone spewing hate. You may not agree with that, but if you can't understand that that's the motivation, then you're tilting at windmills here.
Woah, hold up there. You're speaking for some progressives as if you're speaking for all. I generally like to think of myself as progressive.
I'm pretty sure that many progressives consider employing someone in your organization who posts hateful content online _is_ amplifying them. Look at the internal messages of Google employees in the John Damore lawsuit documents if you don't believe me.
Damore wasn't fired for having certain views. He was fired for making his feelings about his views in relationship to his company a national issue. I think many negative things about my employer, all not ideological, but I fully expect to get fired if my rantings about it end up as national news. On the other hand, if I act like an adult and minimize my impact, my employer doesn't give a rat's ass what my views are.
I'm not saying anything about why Damore was (deservedly) fired, I'm speaking specifically about the self-described activity of _some_ Google employees and managers to deliberately not hire or ensure the firing of non-progressives and to keep the company roster 'ideologically pure'.
I am purely speaking about the content of the internal messaging included in the court documents. It's a good read if you haven't gone through it yet.
He was fired for making his feelings about his views in relationship to his company a national issue.
Point of order: Regardless of Damore's thoughts, he posted them on an internal message board didn't he? It was the leaker who made it a national issue, and that person remains anonymous.
I was gonna say that's ridiculous, but took a second look and maybe not
> @MrNoysSky Replying to @THErealDVORAK @dancosta "Probably cuz you're a Trump supporter. Good for them"
Right, he did re-tweet Greenwald apparently and something about Keith Ellison's victim's abuse medical records. Well fire him on the spot and maybe even burn him at the stake, I guess. /s
Quoting blihp: Note that the screenshot of the email notifying him indicated they were going to 'put all outside columns on hiatus.' That sounds like pure cost cutting to me.
Back at Caltech in the 70s, user accounts on the DECSystem 10 had 3 characters, and was set as the student's initials. One fellow had no middle name, so he used 'x'.
He got so used to it he legally changed his name so his middle name was 'X'.
Thanks for this -- I can't speak for the person you're responding to, but I had the same confusion and it was definitely because I was thinking of Cringely.
While Dvorak's right that it was a shabby way to end things, it very well may be that PC Mag is on its way to shutting down. Note that the screenshot of the email notifying him indicated they were going to 'put all outside columns on hiatus.' That sounds like pure cost cutting to me.
No idea. Assuming those are all 'outside columns' (I don't know as I haven't read PC Mag in years), it seems like the veracity of the story Dvorak's been told will become clear very soon.
They're listed as Columnists (as opposed to Contributing Editor, which means you're an employee), have non-pcmag.com (unlike all of their other authors) email addresses in their Author Bios on PC Mag's site and with one exception (a twice-yearly contributor anyway) they all have published PC Mag articles within the last week. Moreover, they all have full-time jobs which are not at Ziff Davis.
> (as opposed to Contributing Editor, which means you're an employee)
It might mean that at PC Mag, but it definitely does not mean that on other magazines. In fact, at most publications it refers to someone who is not an employee. For more, see [1]
You're certainly right. In fact most authors actually have Analyst or Reporter. I was looking at Tim Gideon and a few others as an example, who happen to have a pcmag emails. Thank you for the correction.
It wouldn't entirely surprise me if this was a political issue. He's right-wing enough that he leans into, as another poster put it, "info wars lite." It wouldn't shock me if some advertisers no longer wanted to appear alongside him, pre-emptively, and his twitter thread notes that someone was complaining about him with some anti-Trump comments.
Then again, maybe not. I guess it'll become more clear once we find out the status of their other outside columnists.
My guess is they couldn't afford him anymore. As a 36-year-old star veteran, his compensation was probably a sizable chunk of production costs. Meanwhile, the magazine business is still hurting.
It's not impossible his comp was more or less frozen ten or even twenty years ago when the boom times for print were ending. I would be surprised if he was getting four figures a month, and amazed and astounded if it was mid-or-higher four figures.
In fact all freelancers are disposable in magazine writing. It was always one of the original zero hours gig economy gigs.
The real value was in building a brand that could translate to book sales, consultancy, and so on.
John runs a white supremacist podcast - NoAgenda - with noted Islamaphobe and Sandy Hook crisis actor believer, Adam Curry. John was kicked off of Leo Laportes network after years of misogynistic antics to women at the TWiT studios and stealing from the host. I’m surprised that Marco still promotes that crap on Overcast.
No Agenda is not "white supremacist" in any way shape or form, and Curry is not an Islamophobe.
Dvorak got kicked from TWiT because he (correctly) thought there was something fishy about the clock kid story... and he sure wasn't the "misogynistic" one at TWiT...
There must be something to learn from Dvorak because he seems to have done something rare among the HN crowd, and that is being both very wrong and very appealing at the same time.
I'm curious how being very wrong is a liability for a journalist? Can you give me some examples where the being wrong part violates the ideal, and maybe explain what that ideal is, in the tech world?
To me, a reader of his since the very beginning, Dvorak has been wrong about a lot of things - but him being wrong has prompted much discussion in the broader world of things, and he is truly one of the very first 'social media influencers' of the tech world. I spent many a day in the 80's and 90's discussing mag articles with colleagues, in the ops centres, the desktops, the laptop and now the pocket era's, and .. it seems .. whatever Dvorak has to say about something, is going to get a rise.
But if there is some other standard by which such a rabble-rouser might be judged, I'd like to know. I seem to have missed something.
Being wrong about tech probably has no ill consequences. But the quintessential example of journalists being wrong as a moral failure that I always think of is the lead-up to the Iraq War. Even that had historical precedents too, eg. the Spanish-American War ~100 years prior was also ill served by journalism.
So you could argue that Dvorak has been a dark influence on tech, since he convinced (by stint of his popularity) a lot of people to be wrong on things, quite a few time?
I mean, in the case of war journalism the standards are pretty high. But for computer tech .. its really more just an industrial mob being led by a malcontent loud-mouth boldly corralling the in-cognoscenti with his megaphone de-jour held high and proud? Or, at least it was.
I mean, I think Dvorak played a role in managing peoples expectations. Its interesting that for some its high, and others low in terms of journalistic decrepitude. 36 years is a long time to be wrong about it.
I would say Dvorak is a columnist not a journalist. It a columnist writes a bad column that is totally wrong it can accually be good because it gets people talking about it and to get ad buys.
If a journalist is wrong it can have very bad results. Write a story claiming someone is a murderer when the person is totally innocent for example could ruin lives.
He was so consistently and predictably wrong that it was actually useful. You could bet against him and win every time, and in a way that kind of wrongness is as valuable as being prescient. He’d proclaim the death of the mouse, or the irrelevance of the iPod and you could take the opposite to the bank. If the guy said a stock was doomed, invest!
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 249 ms ] threadHe wasn't always wrong.
[0]: http://noagendashow.com
Each show also has crowd-sourced, listener produced podcast album art that's generated about an hour after the show airs live.
Try listening to the noagendashow at 2X speed to start.
That classic Hilary is really a lizard person balanced take on the news.
Often wrong, often hilariously so. Continually confusing personal and tribal loyalty with patriotism and idealism. For example, criticism of Trump means criticising the office of the presidency, or disrespecting the US if you are not American; or a republican showing some independence of thought is letting the team down. I don't think they understand idealism at all, they can only conceptualise self-seeking behaviour, everything is framed as that, in part because that's what sells the show as a reveal of the hidden motives.
Dvorak in particular gets extremely agitated when foreigners criticise the US, or express an opinion on US politics. He seems unaware of how much US politics directly affects other countries. He is also almost as ignorant as Trump in understanding how critical the US hegemon has been to peace (albeit on US favourable terms) after WWII.
They had no problems imputing a link between Bill Clinton as president setting the morals for the nation (and making blowjobs ok!), but completely fail to do the same for Trump. Balanced, nope.
They do some interesting analysis and some digging and often paint a pretty poor picture of typical news outlets but there's a fair amount of chaff with the wheat.
[0] https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_update.s...
Also the audio production on the show is absolutely top notch for being done by one dude, the co-host, co-inventor of podcasting, and former MTV VJ, Adam Curry.
Plus the “morning zoo” bit is just a hilarious ruse; don’t let the “light tone” distract too much from the serious media deconstruction happening.
Twice weekly on Thursdays. ;)
All those trips up and down the Valley, like was a spread out Guangzhou JDR Microdevices, NCA Peripherals, WierdStuff, Central Computers, MicroCenter, Halted, Egghead, mom&pop shareware and even the "evil" Fry's and CompUSA.
IIRC I spend somewhere on the order of $5k on basically a homebuilt workstation... Adaptec U2W, IBM Ultrastar whopping 9 GB drive, Plextor CD burner, PC Power & Coolng PSU, GUS and a Courier modem. IIRC i got tired of hearing the 7000 RPM fan droning like a 1U server and made a fanless water-cooling setup with an RV heater core and CPU cooling block. Oh and UPSes since 1986.. south San Jose had frequent power outages.
IIRc we had back issues of PC Magazines for at least the previous year. I had C++ PJ and DDJ.
Is still kicking. I think their business model is you a pay a small premium for retail service and stuff that works reliably.
And if we say nothing when will they come for us?
Companies not wanting to do business with him? yawn
Obviously Jones is no Frederick Douglass, but the culture of deplatforming/censorship is a dangerous one nonetheless.
Not to mention that despite attempts to silence him, Douglass was ultimately successful and still remembered.
If I find someone that I think is an Alex Jones, a Nazi, etc. it's easy enough to block them. What I don't do though is tell you that you're not allowed to listen to them either. That's where sensibility turns to authoritarianism. Freedom of speech is not just the right to speak, but also the right to hear.
No one has said that about Jones, not Apple, or Youtube, and certainly not PayPal. They chose not to publish him or process his payments, and that’s all. In the same way that a book publisher doesn’t owe anyone a book, a radio station isn’t obligated to allow everyone who wants to be a DJ on the air, and TV stations don’t owe anyone a talk show. Yet when it’s the internet people pretend that a company choosing who they do business with is something new, is censorship, etc.
It isn’t, no amount of hand waving and slippery sloping makes it that, and everyone should be sick of these canards being used almost exclusively in regards to conspiracy theorists and far right nutjobs.
This isn't just far right nutjobs. Youtube decided to delete every single pro-Syrian channel recently which happened to coincide with the battle for Idlib. Apparently Youtube decided anyone opposing the war of aggression being conducted by the US is "Alex Jones" territory. Alex Jones just happened to be pretty famous. Lots of smaller people are being deplatformed, it just doesn't make the news.
I mean it's their ~~microphone~~ fiber.
Oh, but this is different, I'm sure you'll say, because reasons.
Well that's why we generally, in the US at least, have always thought it was a good idea to just allow all speech, even if some awful stuff leaks out once in a while.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Jazz
Does not in any way whatsoever justify the asshat fashion of the firing.
It might be better to say he was ahead of the curve on many of his statements.
Plot twist: they don’t care about anyone holding mere common stock. That’s why “preferred stock” became a thing.
This is stuff every generation learns during every major recession. During the boom times, when business is good, the company treats its employees well and everyone thinks the company will always take care of them. Recession hits and reality smacks you right across the face.
Looks like a de-platforming may have happened.
That's just how it appears anyway.
Still, firing over email is still sucky.
Try getting a job or a promotion with any VC backed SV company while having a Twitter bio that indicates you voted for or support Trump. Not quite willing to do that? A bridge too far? No prob. Instead, just put that you support the 2nd Amendment. Or the military. Or law enforcement. Or smaller government.
I dare you...
Firing your star columnist by email citing budget concerns doesn't fit the MO.
De-platforming is also not usually deployed in service of mere political disagreement (staunch conservatives speak at institutions that perform no-platforms all the time). It's reserved for positions that are perceived to be outside the bounds of what should be accepted by society such as white supremacy, blatant homophobia, etc.
As far as I'm aware, Dvorak didn't publicly hold any such positions. So even if (and that's a HUGE what-if given the facts) he were let go for ideological concerns, it wouldn't count as a no-platforming move.
I read over his tweets for the past couple weeks and while he comes off as your typical conservative blowhard, there's nothing worthy of public outcry and therefore worthy of a de-platforming event.
Look. I almost feel bad about myself for engaging with you on this level. But this is important. Progressives actually don't oppose the right of people to believe differently. The idea behind no-platforming is that it's not acceptable to amplify someone spewing hate. You may not agree with that, but if you can't understand that that's the motivation, then you're tilting at windmills here.
I'm pretty sure that many progressives consider employing someone in your organization who posts hateful content online _is_ amplifying them. Look at the internal messages of Google employees in the John Damore lawsuit documents if you don't believe me.
Breitbart fired Milo over the same shit.
I am purely speaking about the content of the internal messaging included in the court documents. It's a good read if you haven't gone through it yet.
Point of order: Regardless of Damore's thoughts, he posted them on an internal message board didn't he? It was the leaker who made it a national issue, and that person remains anonymous.
> @MrNoysSky Replying to @THErealDVORAK @dancosta "Probably cuz you're a Trump supporter. Good for them"
Right, he did re-tweet Greenwald apparently and something about Keith Ellison's victim's abuse medical records. Well fire him on the spot and maybe even burn him at the stake, I guess. /s
It sounds like the magazine is dead or dying.
On a side note, I had always assumed 'Dvorak' was a penname --however, I've learned he's actually related to the actual Dvorak Keyboard creator.
He got so used to it he legally changed his name so his middle name was 'X'.
So confusion is to be expected. :)
Knowledge is power.
It might mean that at PC Mag, but it definitely does not mean that on other magazines. In fact, at most publications it refers to someone who is not an employee. For more, see [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributing_editor
Then again, maybe not. I guess it'll become more clear once we find out the status of their other outside columnists.
In fact all freelancers are disposable in magazine writing. It was always one of the original zero hours gig economy gigs.
The real value was in building a brand that could translate to book sales, consultancy, and so on.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
No Agenda is not "white supremacist" in any way shape or form, and Curry is not an Islamophobe.
Dvorak got kicked from TWiT because he (correctly) thought there was something fishy about the clock kid story... and he sure wasn't the "misogynistic" one at TWiT...
"nephew of sociologist and creator of the Dvorak keyboard, August Dvorak"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Dvorak
I suppose like Paul Krugman is to the economics crowd
To me, a reader of his since the very beginning, Dvorak has been wrong about a lot of things - but him being wrong has prompted much discussion in the broader world of things, and he is truly one of the very first 'social media influencers' of the tech world. I spent many a day in the 80's and 90's discussing mag articles with colleagues, in the ops centres, the desktops, the laptop and now the pocket era's, and .. it seems .. whatever Dvorak has to say about something, is going to get a rise.
But if there is some other standard by which such a rabble-rouser might be judged, I'd like to know. I seem to have missed something.
I mean, in the case of war journalism the standards are pretty high. But for computer tech .. its really more just an industrial mob being led by a malcontent loud-mouth boldly corralling the in-cognoscenti with his megaphone de-jour held high and proud? Or, at least it was.
I mean, I think Dvorak played a role in managing peoples expectations. Its interesting that for some its high, and others low in terms of journalistic decrepitude. 36 years is a long time to be wrong about it.
If a journalist is wrong it can have very bad results. Write a story claiming someone is a murderer when the person is totally innocent for example could ruin lives.