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I recently dropped my NYT sub; jetbrains nonsense was the straw that broke the camel's back. I know it's a meme to bring up Gell-mann amnesia here, but I will

by nxc18 6y ago

I recently dropped my NYT sub; jetbrains nonsense was the straw that broke the camel's back. I know it's a meme to bring up Gell-mann amnesia here, but I will raise it as a basic test for quality in journalism. When NYT writes about something I know about, I almost always have serious problems with it. Jetbrains in particular. And honestly some of the writing is so bad that even without knowing about the subject, I can tell it is crap, like the article about the SlateStarCodex. I had never read it before that post, but had heard it mentioned in passing. Also, NYT Opinion is Hannity/Shapiro level crap and should be dumped. Stick to the facts please. On the other hand, The Economist has consistently impressed me; I read/listen with a critical ear and they do a wonderful job even with very niche topics. I've worked on some AR tech and they had a special report that just really nailed it and got into the weeds. Every time I thought "but they didn't mention..." they would mention or clarify a paragraph later. Economist has a liberal viewpoint and they're not shy about it. I prefer that approach and accept that I disagree with the conclusions/advice from time to time, but the facts are right and error corrections are almost always very minor in nature. There is good journalism out there, just maybe not from NYT. Please don't give up hope.

lasagnaphil 6y ago
Yeah, the Jetbrains article (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/russia-cyber-hack.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/russia-cyber-...) was just too over-the-top conspiracy fluff. It’s sad to see some liberals critiquing QAnon and then immediately eating any kind of Russian conspiracy shit without any doubt.
- sjg007 6y ago
  It's not really. SolarWind uses a JetBrains component as a critical piece of infrastructure in the government which may have basically been built by Russia. Now maybe everything is above board but JetBrains does employ developers in Russia and was originally a Russian company. We don't run Kaspersky in the government either. More to the point this should never have happened.
  - kodah 6y ago
    JetBrains was started in the Czech Republic [0] by three Russians. The same people who started it no longer run it. Calling it a "Russian" company would be totally inaccurate. The hack that I saw cited, though I believe it was an unidentified source, was one that was injected at compile time. That would be very difficult to notice for any programmer. So, here's my question: Why did you refer to them as "Russian" when it's obviously not true? [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBrains https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBrains
    - sjg007 6y ago
      The CEO operates from St. Petersburg. I mean check his Twitter. They also have three dev offices in Russia. "Among its customers is SolarWinds, JetBrains Chief Executive Maxim Shafirov said from St. Petersburg, Russia, where JetBrains has offices." https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-cyber-jetbrains/fbi-probe-of-major-hack-includes-project-management-software-from-jetbrains-sources-idUSKBN29B2RR https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-cyber-jetbrains/fb... I mean everything might be above board but it's probably bad or lax US policy and/or regulations that Solarwinds was deployed through out the government.
      - kodah 6y ago
        Yeah, none of that is accurate to the phrasing of "a Russian company" as a rhetorical device. This kind of quasi-hyperbole about Russians is also getting old. Russia has been an ideological enemy for a long time, maybe even as long as time. I've never second guessed the motivations of business owners and citizens from Russia the way certain crowds do. That's pretty tantamount to something dubious. Does the government need to be scrupulous in whatever open and closed source software it chooses to vend? Yes. Do we need to be chiding about the motivations of every day Russians as one of our first order investigations? Probably not.
        sjg007 6y ago
        Yet you clearly second guess and misunderstand my intentions. The real problem is the threat vector. Where is it is easier for intelligence services to operate?
drdeca 6y ago
I wonder if anyone has done a kind of scientific/statistical study of the whole gell-man amnesia idea?
- Smaug123 6y ago
  Could you discuss in a bit more detail what you might want from such a study? My first guess was simply that you want a newspaper to be fact-checked from beginning to end.
  - drdeca 6y ago
    I guess I was thinking, get a random sample of newspaper issues from each of a number of newspapers, and for each article in each of them, get a subject matter expert (or, not necessarily an expert, but someone knowledgeable in the field), and give a random ordering of (a selection of) the articles in the issue, and have them read them in that order, reviewing how accurate they think the information is before going on to the next one, And then evaluate whether, if they thought any inaccuracies they found in the article about the topic that they have a good understanding of, whether that influences the accuracy they estimate of the later articles. Or something like that. Maybe have them answer some other questions about the articles other than just accuracy, such as quality of writing, in order to be less likely to cause them to re-consider how they are estimating accuracy? And I suppose by “accuracy” I mean to also include “not misleading”, in addition to just “not false”.

by nxc18 6y ago

lasagnaphil 6y ago

Yeah, the Jetbrains article (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/russia-cyber-hack.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/russia-cyber-...) was just too over-the-top conspiracy fluff. It’s sad to see some liberals critiquing QAnon and then immediately eating any kind of Russian conspiracy shit without any doubt.

sjg007 6y ago
It's not really. SolarWind uses a JetBrains component as a critical piece of infrastructure in the government which may have basically been built by Russia. Now maybe everything is above board but JetBrains does employ developers in Russia and was originally a Russian company. We don't run Kaspersky in the government either. More to the point this should never have happened.
- kodah 6y ago
  JetBrains was started in the Czech Republic [0] by three Russians. The same people who started it no longer run it. Calling it a "Russian" company would be totally inaccurate. The hack that I saw cited, though I believe it was an unidentified source, was one that was injected at compile time. That would be very difficult to notice for any programmer. So, here's my question: Why did you refer to them as "Russian" when it's obviously not true? [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBrains https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBrains
  - sjg007 6y ago
    The CEO operates from St. Petersburg. I mean check his Twitter. They also have three dev offices in Russia. "Among its customers is SolarWinds, JetBrains Chief Executive Maxim Shafirov said from St. Petersburg, Russia, where JetBrains has offices." https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-cyber-jetbrains/fbi-probe-of-major-hack-includes-project-management-software-from-jetbrains-sources-idUSKBN29B2RR https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-cyber-jetbrains/fb... I mean everything might be above board but it's probably bad or lax US policy and/or regulations that Solarwinds was deployed through out the government.
    - kodah 6y ago
      Yeah, none of that is accurate to the phrasing of "a Russian company" as a rhetorical device. This kind of quasi-hyperbole about Russians is also getting old. Russia has been an ideological enemy for a long time, maybe even as long as time. I've never second guessed the motivations of business owners and citizens from Russia the way certain crowds do. That's pretty tantamount to something dubious. Does the government need to be scrupulous in whatever open and closed source software it chooses to vend? Yes. Do we need to be chiding about the motivations of every day Russians as one of our first order investigations? Probably not.
      - sjg007 6y ago
        Yet you clearly second guess and misunderstand my intentions. The real problem is the threat vector. Where is it is easier for intelligence services to operate?

drdeca 6y ago

I wonder if anyone has done a kind of scientific/statistical study of the whole gell-man amnesia idea?

Smaug123 6y ago
Could you discuss in a bit more detail what you might want from such a study? My first guess was simply that you want a newspaper to be fact-checked from beginning to end.
- drdeca 6y ago
  I guess I was thinking, get a random sample of newspaper issues from each of a number of newspapers, and for each article in each of them, get a subject matter expert (or, not necessarily an expert, but someone knowledgeable in the field), and give a random ordering of (a selection of) the articles in the issue, and have them read them in that order, reviewing how accurate they think the information is before going on to the next one, And then evaluate whether, if they thought any inaccuracies they found in the article about the topic that they have a good understanding of, whether that influences the accuracy they estimate of the later articles. Or something like that. Maybe have them answer some other questions about the articles other than just accuracy, such as quality of writing, in order to be less likely to cause them to re-consider how they are estimating accuracy? And I suppose by “accuracy” I mean to also include “not misleading”, in addition to just “not false”.