Can we have proper English at least in the HN submission titles? I know that this is a direct quotation of the original, but "confesses" is much clearer and more readable than the original slang term.
>Can we have proper English [...] , but "confesses" is much clearer and more readable than the original slang term.
I can't speak for non-native English readers' difficulties but as an fyi... "confess" is not an exact replacement for "fess up" because both have different connotations.
Therefore, if the (USA) writer is deliberately using connotations to shade the text, then the more informal "fesses up" is also proper English. E.g. respectable publications such as The New York Times have had writers and editors using the the phrase "fess up" for decades: https://www.google.com/search?q="fesses+up"+site%3Anytimes.c...
Both "confesses" and "fesses up" seem like improper English here. The article does not provide any evidence to suggest that Twitter was reluctant about sharing this information or lied about it previously.
"Disclosed" seems like a more sensible and less sensationalist word to describe an entity sharing new information. The writer knows this: "Twitter has disclosed" are the first words of the article.
Twitter also apologized, said they're taking steps to avoid making this mistake again, and provided a way to contact their Office of Data Protection for questions. That part didn't make it into the headline, though.
Monolingual Brit here with very good English. I'm happy for others to alter, amend, extend and evolve this language. I am less interested in the finer points of grammar or vocabulary than people use it properly; to put across a statement that is relevant, precise, concise and in all other ways, well-expressed.
Heh on my HN client for Android (Material) I never could open TechCrunch articles with the built-in browser. I gave up on using the built-in browser as a result. I wouldnt outright ban TechCrunch but I agree it can be entirelt unusable.
Sidenote: Wondering if anybody outside of Google offers an embedded browser component for Android like Mozilla and co. They might be able to provide a better experience.
Mozilla has GeckoView[1]. They also distribute a set of helper components for building browser-like applications on Android called Mozilla Android Components[2].
Aside from that I'm also using this client on my phone, and I stopped using the built-in browser as well. I've configured the app to use my native browser which means I now get all the benefits from that when reading articles in Material (like having uMatrix on).
Techcrunch pages seem to have the highest number of adware/spyware scripts and links attached to them. I'd be amazed if the site hasn't also got a huge number of GDPR breaches in its workings.
The linked page displays surprisingly well when visited with JS off, although it's ~10KB of article text embedded in 365KB of other (inline) crap. There's not even a nag to goad you into turning JS on.
I can't speak for non-native English readers' difficulties but as an fyi... "confess" is not an exact replacement for "fess up" because both have different connotations.
Therefore, if the (USA) writer is deliberately using connotations to shade the text, then the more informal "fesses up" is also proper English. E.g. respectable publications such as The New York Times have had writers and editors using the the phrase "fess up" for decades: https://www.google.com/search?q="fesses+up"+site%3Anytimes.c...