Comment by vintagedave
9 hours ago
I'm sad to see them fire him. I've seen far worse: I have always approached issues by asking for accountability and improvement. Frankly, he already did: he openly apologised. I was very happy with that, it demonstrated integrity and I remained respecting him.
Even worse,
> I have been sick in bed with a high fever and unable to reliably address it (still am sick) [0]
In an earlier HN thread, I saw someone ask why Ars was requiring staff work while ill. If that's true, if he posted without verification while sick and under pressure, which is implied and plausible, firing looks doubly bad.
Ars has lost a lot of my trust in recent years, with articles seeming far worse. Just like you, I'm sorry to see the editorial position here.
[0] https://bsky.app/profile/virtuistic.bsky.social/post/3mey2mq...
You're taking his fever dream excuse at face value, and I think you probably shouldn't. It reads like a lame excuse to deflect personal responsibility, a cynical face-saving tactic.
If the illness was genuine, can he document that he advised management of this fever and they told him to submit an article anyway? It's not his bosses job to stick a thermometer up his ass every morning.
I agree. In my experience, no one cares when you are sick. No one. Maybe your mom, but that's it. Using it as an excuse when you make a mistake is even worse. People value responsibility... "Sorry, my bad, won't happen again", not excuses.
He posted his not very impressive apology as images not text that is easily indexed. I do think that was purposeful and manipulative and very much makes me question his motivation. If I'm missing the original posting in text I'd sure like to know so I can correct this perception.
Ars has probably the most rabid anti-AI audience of all the tech publications
Nah, The Register is far more strongly anti-AI. Mention AI and systemd in the same article and watch them froth
[dead]