TL;DR: author did some gambling in casinos and got drunk in strip clubs, barely attended any talks because he doesn't understand the jargon, almost got pwnd by connecting to the wrong WiFi.
Things like this make me wonder if paid writers for (in this case) Motherboard ever know what the fuck they're talking about.
As an active DEF CON attendee and seeing the press coverage over the years, I can start to "see the matrix" of how to lazily assemble a news story. He even links to the Hacker Manifesto FFS. I thought VICE was aiming higher than this kind of trash.
It makes me distrust reporters. Do they just turn off the "I'm a noob" angle, assume the standard authoritative tone they always use and cover other topics with just as flimsy of an understanding?
>Do they just turn off the "I'm a noob" angle, assume the standard authoritative tone they always use and cover other topics with just as flimsy of an understanding?
Yes. See [Murray] Gell-Mann Amnesia:
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
As an active DEF CON attendee and seeing the press coverage over the years, I can start to "see the matrix" of how to lazily assemble a news story. He even links to the Hacker Manifesto FFS. I thought VICE was aiming higher than this kind of trash.
It makes me distrust reporters. Do they just turn off the "I'm a noob" angle, assume the standard authoritative tone they always use and cover other topics with just as flimsy of an understanding?