Huh? The author is very explicitly writing first about general news, and then about tech news.
> I do like to follow tech news, and for me, this is done 98% through Ycombinator’s hacker news. But I started to get the same feeling I had ten years ago: it’s all negative.
That's followed by the list of some sample categories negative tech news that they are concerned about. Most of them have nothing to do with ads. Even for browsers only one of the things they are concerned with is ads (and it's not something that actually happened, it's something the author imagines could happen).
most of the bad news of companies is driven by the profit motive. that's where the connection to ads is. they are also driven by the profit motive. (there is also news about companies pushing more ads)
the conclusion of this author is that the profit motive will drive companies to build ads into browsers. (microsoft is already putting ads into windows. browsers will be next)
> I do like to follow tech news, and for me, this is done 98% through Ycombinator’s hacker news. But I started to get the same feeling I had ten years ago: it’s all negative.
That's followed by the list of some sample categories negative tech news that they are concerned about. Most of them have nothing to do with ads. Even for browsers only one of the things they are concerned with is ads (and it's not something that actually happened, it's something the author imagines could happen).