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John Dvorak: “Yesterday I was fired from PC Magazine”
- testtestla 8y agoI would only read that magazine due to him so stupid move.
- teilo 8y agoHe may always have been wrong, but he was like a lovable crazy uncle who is always wrong. This is a terrible way to treat a legend.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoThe 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.
- XalvinX 8y agoAbsolutely true. Dvorak should start his own venture...a lot of fans would jump (the sinking) ship in an instant.
- orionblastar 8y agoHe should do his own Wordpressed based blog with Adsense and other advertisment on it to earn money. Do podcasts and stuff like that.
- _mdpn 8y agoIf you didn't know, he has a blog (http://www.dvorak.org/blog/ http://www.dvorak.org/blog/) and is a co-host of the No Agenda Show Podcast (http://www.noagendashow.com/ http://www.noagendashow.com/) and DHUnplugged (https://www.dhunplugged.com/ https://www.dhunplugged.com/)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- QuinnyPig 8y agoI remember reading him decades ago. That’s beyond ignomious.
- facorreia 8y agoI remember him explaining why Microsoft wouldn't be able to ship Windows 2000.
- int_19h 8y agoWait, Greenwald is now considered faux pas?
- busterarm 8y agoHe spent a couple of years blasting Hillary for being a warhawk, for how her campaign was run and questioning the obsession with Russia. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/glenn-greenwald-the-bane-of-their-resistance https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/glenn-greenwal... Apparently questioning the party status quo is the worst thing that you can do. "Greenwald’s political writing, which focusses on dramas of strength and weakness, and on the corruptions of empires. Greenwald writes aggressively about perceived aggression. His instinct is to identify, in any conflict, the side that is claiming authority or incumbency, and then to throw his weight against that claim, in favor of the unauthorized or the unlicensed—the intruder. Invariably, the body with authority is malign and corrupt; any criticisms of the intruder are vilifications or “smears.” He rarely weighs counter-arguments in public, and his policy goals are more often implied than spoken."
- repolfx 8y agoI've been reading Greenwald for years and don't recognise that description at all. But it comes from the New Yorker so this is perhaps not a surprise. It's worth being extremely careful paying any attention to American media on the topic of Glenn Greenwald. He is essentially the only journalist in the world who routinely and strongly criticises other journalists and points out their lying and manipulations. In recent times he's written a series of articles showing how frequently US media's stories related to Russia collapse, are retracted or turn out to be fraudulent. He also got the scoop of the decade when Snowden went directly to him and Poitras, news non-entities, because he simply didn't trust other journalists at all. I suspect by now most Washington/New York based journalists hate his guts.
- paulmd 8y ago> I suspect by now most Washington/New York based journalists hate his guts. Not so - he is a regular guest on Fox News. He's become very partisan over the years, and you can guess the slant based on the media where he chooses to appear. I wouldn't say he is so much pro-Republican as anti-Democrat but it's getting really hard to say. Pro-Russian and pro-Republican politics have gotten all mixed up together since 2016. I wouldn't say he is outwardly pro-trump, but he certainly doesn't seem to criticize him to anywhere near the extent he lavishes on the Democrats. Nor does he seem to be particularly concerned with criticizing American foreign policy now that Republicans are in the drivers' seat, which was his fig-leaf back in the early teens. And in fact, he spends most of his time justifying the exact same types of behavior from the Russians. So much for "questioning the politics of the status quo and the corruption of empires". If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
- RickJWagner 8y agoWow, that is a pitiful way to let a long-term employee go.
- sumedh 8y agoThe email says outside columns, he probably was a contractor.
- gnulinux 8y agoDoes this matter on a personal level? He's been writing for PC Mag for more than 3 decades.
- kheloker 8y agoThis 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?
- kolanos 8y agoIf you need your JCD fix, he does a bi-weekly podcast with Adam Curry called No Agenda. [0] [0]: http://noagendashow.com http://noagendashow.com
- propogandist 8y agoThey don't have advertisers (listener funded) so they're able to sift through the news in a reasonably balanced way. 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.
- wnevets 8y ago>so they're able to sift through the news in a reasonably balanced way. That classic Hilary is really a lizard person balanced take on the news.
- barrkel 8y agoThey'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.
- nasalgoat 8y agoWait, PC Magazine is still a thing?
- swingline-747 8y agoHomebrew/home-assembly computing nostalgic sigh 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.
- Gibbon1 8y ago> Central Computers Is still kicking. I think their business model is you a pay a small premium for retail service and stuff that works reliably.
- sodosopa 8y agoWhat a dick move. Oh well, will the last subscriber of PC Mag turn out the lights?
- busterarm 8y agoSubscribers? It's all clickbait-driven traffic to squeeze out fractions of cents worth of ad revenue nowadays.
- oaf357 8y agoI didn't realize PC Mag was still around.
- fliesblackflags 8y agoI felt the same when Yahoo was breached.
- kolderman 8y agoFirst Alex Jones, now No Agenda. Where will it end? And if we say nothing when will they come for us?
- smcnally 8y agoIt all had to do with his keyboard. Metcalfe was the better read.
- FLGMwt 8y agoAre you non-sarcastically defending Alex Jones?
- Consultant32452 8y agoFirst they came for the bat-shit crazy conspiracy theorists, and I did not speak out because I was not a bat-shit crazy conspiracy theorist.
- GW150914 8y agoUh 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
- Consultant32452 8y agoI 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.
- teovall 8y agoHe'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.
- bredren 8y agoI read this guy back in the 90s. I think he put down mp3s. I think I emailed him and told him he was on the wrong side of that.
- Steko 8y agoDvorak'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.
- acomjean 8y agoWhen 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). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Jazz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Jazz
- SquareWheel 8y agoYes nearly 40 years of predictions will offer plenty of fuel if you're looking to burn someone.
- viburnum 8y agoI remember writing that guy off as hopelessly wrong back in the mid 1990s. Not a bad career for a talentless troll.
- iseanstevens 8y agoTalented troll I’d say
- snowflakeJOHN 8y agoJohn is a special snowflake! He needs special attention after 30 years you see.
- jack9 8y agoIf 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
- warriormonk5 8y agoDon't think that some paper equity gives your employer more loyalty to you
- jsjohnst 8y agoI agree, when the startup piggy bank runs out, the paper equity doesn’t mean much, speaking from personal experience.
- gaius 8y agoIf you're an employee (no equity), be assured your employers don't care about you when the money starts to dry up Plot twist: they don’t care about anyone holding mere common stock. That’s why “preferred stock” became a thing.
- qubax 8y ago> 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.
- temikus 8y agoHis column was the only reason I still remembered PCMag exists, that’s such a dumb move.
- busterarm 8y agoIt's worth noting that JCD had posted some tweets the day before that were critical of postmeritocracy.org and some comment by Al Gore about Trump. Looks like a de-platforming may have happened.
- lukev 8y agoYeah, not really how that works.
- busterarm 8y agoPlease 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. That's just how it appears anyway.
- Operyl 8y agoThe 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.
- busterarm 8y agoThe 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?
- samastur 8y agoBecause 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. Still, firing over email is still sucky.
- itbeho 8y agoI 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 dare you...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mc32 8y agoThis is really too bad. After 36 years, they don't have the courage and decency for a call. 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.
- bitwize 8y agoYou may be confusing him with Robert X. Cringely, which is a pen name.
- WalterBright 8y agoBack 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'.
- kgwgk 8y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_X._Cohen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_X._Cohen is actually David S. Cohen but the name was already taken.
- moss 8y agoThanks 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.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoOf course Dvorak was one of the writers on the Cringely column. So confusion is to be expected. :)
- blihp 8y agoWhile 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.
- busterarm 8y agoIs Tim Bajarin still a columnist for PC Mag? Wayne Rash? Whitson Gordon? Brent Johnson?
- blihp 8y agoNo 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.
- busterarm 8y agoThey'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. Knowledge is power.
- ternaryoperator 8y ago> (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] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributing_editor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributing_editor
- busterarm 8y ago
- vernie 8y agoHe had a good run and was getting paid for about a decade longer than he should have.
- forgotmypw 8y agoMy 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.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoIt'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.
- kylec 8y agoHe’s not 36 years old, he’s 66 years old. He’s a 36-year veteran.
- abraham_lincoln 8y agoI bet you're fun at parties.
- dang 8y agoPersonal attacks will get you banned here. More generally, please don't post uncivil or unsubstantive comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- cisco-throwaway 8y agoJohn 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.
- adamrezich 8y agoThis is a good troll post. 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...
- Simulacra 8y agoTotalDrama.net
- orsenthil 8y agoIs he related to some keyboard keymap?
- orsenthil 8y agoNo, that's August Dvorak - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Dvorak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Dvorak
- glandium 8y agoThey are, however, related: "nephew of sociologist and creator of the Dvorak keyboard, August Dvorak" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Dvorak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Dvorak
- wnevets 8y agoI stopped following him after he turned his podcast with curry into infowars lite.
- colordrops 8y agoThere 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.
- gaius 8y agothe HN crowd, and that is being both very wrong and very appealing at the same time I suppose like Paul Krugman is to the economics crowd
- fit2rule 8y agoI'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.
- asveikau 8y agoBeing 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.
- fit2rule 8y agoSo 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.
- doctorwho 8y agoI thought PC-Mag and Dvorak were both already dead. How long has it been since either one was actually relevant?
- ordinaryperson 8y agoAbout 12 years ago I was working for a PC Magazine competitor when they cut the Managing Editor loose, a man who'd worked there 20+ years and was in his late 50s. I ran into him in the bathroom, tears in his eyes, asking me what he was going to do now? That this is how they reward decades of loyalty? Ironically that magazine, dedicated to predicting future technology trends, would go down the toilet some years later because they didn't see technology trends like Google and internet advertising coming. Companies have no loyalty folks...neither should you.
- user5994461 8y agoHow does it have anything to loyalty? A job doesn't last a lifetime. There aren't that many company that even live a full decade.
- karmajunkie 8y agoWhen an employer will happily use up your most productive years and let you go as soon as it isn't constantly profitable... A job might as well be for a lifetime. It's not an uncommon story, true. But it's a pretty shitty one.
- yostrovs 8y agoThe firing happened because company ran out of money. That's what happened to most magazines lately.
- markoman 8y agoI totally agree. Economics in the media industry (print or web) have been hellish for 10 years or more. Paywalls are unpopular, don't work and go against the 'free information' culture of the internet. However, the email he was sent firing him which he screenshotted to Twitter, was indeed so curt as to be rude, as he said. Its just that these editors and publishers are so behind the 8-ball to be desensitized to the types of cost-cutting that they do everyday. It must have never occurred to that editor that they were in this case firing someone who is a near-institution in the PC periodical literature.
- chris_wot 8y agoIsn’t this the guy who was upset by the idle process and rubbished the mouse?
- snowflakeJOHN 8y agosnowflake crybaby didn't get fired after 30 years like he wanted.
- sleepychu 8y agohttps://mobile.twitter.com/W6VA/status/1043181935667761153 https://mobile.twitter.com/W6VA/status/1043181935667761153 Interesting exchange in the comments…
- jccalhoun 8y agoUgh. That reaffirms my dislike of Dvorak
- kapauldo 8y agoSad that actual writers are being dismissed in place of buzz feed 30 second nonsense.
- adamrezich 8y agoSad to see all these comments focusing on what Dvorak "got wrong" instead of his better columns, including recent ones: https://www.pcmag.com/dvorak https://www.pcmag.com/dvorak
- Simulacra 8y agoThat’s a real shame, he was the only reason I read PC magazine. We canceled our subscription years ago, but I’d still go to Kramers and pick up a copy to read the columns. Aging out of the tech industry is a tremendous problem, but I don’t see there’s much we can do about it.
- mindcrash 8y agoThis absolutely has nothing to do with John's involvement with the No Agenda podcast and the talking points of this particular podcast. Nope. Just budget issues which suddenly pop up after 36 years without any problems. Sure... Do the people involved really think John and his fanbase are THAT stupid?
- KarenSatantsby 8y agoActually it is not so strange I know a lot of crazy old guys who got away with a lot till now.. I remember liking Dvorak when I was in HS and reading Aplus magazine but he is way to old guy yelling at the tv crazy for me now.
- HankB99 8y agoI wonder what happened to the linked tweet.
- medortch 8y agoThose of you who are Dvorak fans (as am I) should find, read, and support the No Agenda podcast and email newsletter he's been doing with Adam Curry for about 10 years now. In the latest newsletter, John argues that he was fired for writing negative things about 5G networks -- and offers evidence that PCMag routed links away from his critical columns to more positive pieces. I got to work with John a bit over the years. He is many things, but I have never known him to lie, or get his facts wrong when reporting. If what he says about PCMag unlinking from his columns about 5G is true, it's even more rude and insidious than the way he was fired. John argues that it's more evidence that advertising drives much if not all supposed "journalism" these days. I hope he's wrong, but fear he's more right than most of us know or suspect most of the time...