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The first sentence is absolutely true. And frankly, unsurprising to anyone who has been around the magazine industry for longer than a week or two. As they use

The first sentence is absolutely true. And frankly, unsurprising to anyone who has been around the magazine industry for longer than a week or two. As they used to say of computer magazines in their heyday, “Everything in the magazine is an advertisement, some of which are labeled as such.” Paul Graham wrote an essay about PR in this site’s early days called “The Submarine,” where he credited PR for the success of his own startup that he sold to Yahoo. PR is part of the game, and recognizing it as such is part of the game. BUt with respect to your second sentence, just because it’s PR doesn’t necessarily mean it is false or misleading. That assumption would be an ad hominem fallacy. A PR piece planted in Jalopnik isn’t that much different than an interview with the CEO. You know the CEO is stating their company’s official position, but you may still want to hear their point of view. I 100% agree it is useful to make sure that everyone reading this be aware that it is mostly ghost-written by VW Group. But once you are aware of that, it is still useful to read it and debate amongst ourselves whether their claims are reasonable and informative. Personally, I thought the article did a good job of explaining that they were repeating VW’s claims. It did not feel like they were pretending to print the views of a so-called “independent think tank.️“ JM2C.

Benjammer 7y ago
I just honestly don't think it's even worth it for us to discuss this article on a somewhat technical, popular discussion forum like HN. It doesn't make any attempt to give background/contextual information about any of the specific issues discussed, it simply jumps right into pushing the Audi features and openly bashing Tesla with vague generalizations; for example: "Motor cooling is the weak link in the Tesla Model S, with motor heat soaking usually responsible for power reductions under hard driving." It doesn't explain the motivations of either company's designers and engineers, it doesn't give background science on cooling technologies, and it doesn't even really explain why Audi's system is better. It just says Audi has "more aggressive and redundant cooling systems," and that Tesla's cooling, "is the weak link in the Tesla Model S," with little-to-no further explanation. If you are talking about an interview with a CEO where they focus on how they are better than one specific competitor, and come off petty, shallow, and unreasonably biased, then I would have similar feelings about that content. A bunch of us here talking about this article is what a marketing analyst's or PR agent's dreams are made of.
- braythwayt 7y ago
  One of the pleasures of HN for me is that when a shallow article is published, sometimes a bunch of people chime in and give more thorough explanations, e.g. the discussion here about the tradeoffs between the battery technologies used by Tesla versus Audi (and just about everyone else). If the article serves as an invitation to a good conversation, I’m all for it. But of course, sometimes an article is so bad that the entire conversation is composed of people debunking its nonsense. Or worse, certain highly emotional topics get posted, and everyone just yells past each other. Regardless of the quality of the OP, the conversation makes me feel like I lose 50 points of IQ when I read the comments. I sum, I agree that sometimes, bad articles make for bad conversations. Did this one? Maybe, maybe not, I’ll accept your word for it if you think poorly of the quality of conversation around it.

Benjammer 7y ago

I just honestly don't think it's even worth it for us to discuss this article on a somewhat technical, popular discussion forum like HN. It doesn't make any attempt to give background/contextual information about any of the specific issues discussed, it simply jumps right into pushing the Audi features and openly bashing Tesla with vague generalizations; for example: "Motor cooling is the weak link in the Tesla Model S, with motor heat soaking usually responsible for power reductions under hard driving." It doesn't explain the motivations of either company's designers and engineers, it doesn't give background science on cooling technologies, and it doesn't even really explain why Audi's system is better. It just says Audi has "more aggressive and redundant cooling systems," and that Tesla's cooling, "is the weak link in the Tesla Model S," with little-to-no further explanation. If you are talking about an interview with a CEO where they focus on how they are better than one specific competitor, and come off petty, shallow, and unreasonably biased, then I would have similar feelings about that content. A bunch of us here talking about this article is what a marketing analyst's or PR agent's dreams are made of.

braythwayt 7y ago
One of the pleasures of HN for me is that when a shallow article is published, sometimes a bunch of people chime in and give more thorough explanations, e.g. the discussion here about the tradeoffs between the battery technologies used by Tesla versus Audi (and just about everyone else). If the article serves as an invitation to a good conversation, I’m all for it. But of course, sometimes an article is so bad that the entire conversation is composed of people debunking its nonsense. Or worse, certain highly emotional topics get posted, and everyone just yells past each other. Regardless of the quality of the OP, the conversation makes me feel like I lose 50 points of IQ when I read the comments. I sum, I agree that sometimes, bad articles make for bad conversations. Did this one? Maybe, maybe not, I’ll accept your word for it if you think poorly of the quality of conversation around it.