Eric Berger has a strong pro-Musk bias (having literally written a fawning book about him). To him, Musk can do no wrong, it seems.
I also dislike Dan Goodin’s reporting. He tries to talk the talk, but nearly every article he writes has some tell that he doesn’t really understand the thing he’s reporting on. Which is fine if he was relying on third-party expertise and quoting that, but he tries to make it sound like he has the expertise and it just comes up short. I feel like he’s a good example of that old fallacy that you think the news is correct about everything, until they report about something you know.
For me, Ashley Belanger is the best reporter they have. She might not have the subject matter expertise some of the others there claim, but she has the best journalism of anybody there. Lots of direct sources, well written, and the right level of depth. I honestly feel like I’m reading a different (and better) publication when I read her articles. More than once, I’ve had to scroll up to see if the article I’m reading was one of Ars’ licensed outside pieces, as the quality bar was higher than I’m used to, only to find her name.
Beth Mole is a close second. She has subject matter expertise, good journalism, and loves to slip in some humor or justified “get a load of this idiot” comments.
I'd say if one has any interest in writing objectively about space technology, one will likely end up being perceived as having a "pro-Musk bias".
Elon himself is indeed questionable, but you really can't argue with his space-related achievements. Even other eccentric billionaires like Bezos haven't come close.
Your comment makes it pretty clear you've not read him much. He regularly credits SpaceX with specific accomplishments and rarely brings Musk into the topic unless it's about setting direction, etc.
The description is slightly backwards. The problem is you continue to trust the news after seeing how wrong they are about something on which you’re an expert.
Berger is clearly guarded and measured when he talks about Musk and SpaceX. Given the configuration of the space industry and the reality that Berger clearly needs access to make his living, I think Berger has provided generally even handed coverage of SpaceX, Musk and Musk's antics.
In his article on SpaceX's "pivot from Mars to Moon", he describes Musk as "In the last 25 years, Musk has gone from an obscure, modestly wealthy person to the richest human being ever, from a political moderate to chief supporter of Donald Trump; from a respected entrepreneur to, well, to a lot of things to a lot of people: world’s greatest industrialist/supervillain/savant/grifter-fraudster.". https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/has-elon-musk-given-up...
I think Berger got a lot of flack for not really commenting on Musk and DOGE during his articles last year, and I think it's fair to criticize him for that choice, but I don't think it's really a "Musk can do no wrong" position.
In other words, I think you really need to read between the lines for Berger re Musk.
Berger wrote 2 books about SpaceX (not Musk), and he definitely does not have a pro-Musk bias.
He's is careful not to opine on Musk's other dealings, which is fair. As someone who wants to know more about SpaceX, I don't want to read yet more about Tesla, or Twitter, or Trump, or Epstein.
Personally, one of the authors I most like to read on ArsTechnica (though he writes rarely nowadays).
CarTechnica though .. yuck. Also, Oulette reliably picks movies and TV shows I will absolutely hate, so I guess good S/N there?
Mole's coverage is great if you're into Cronenberg-but-in-real-life.
I think it's pretty widely agreed in the space flight community that Eric Berger is currently the best space flight reporter in the world. He has lots of insider sources. Several times he correctly predicted things years in advance. Most recently the Artemis III change to a LEO mission.
> He's is careful not to opine on Musk's other dealings, which is fair. As someone who wants to know more about SpaceX, I don't want to read yet more about Tesla, or Twitter, or Trump, or Epstein.
But all of those matter, and are not isolated. When the leader of an organisation is distracted by the other organisations they control, it matters. It also matters when they are repeatedly wrong about their predictions, even if on another organisation, because it helps you calibrate expectations.
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But wasn’t macOS the only major gaming-relevant platform still using OpenGL anyway? If you’re already writing a Mac-specific backend, why not just write directly for Metal instead of OpenGL? Or, at the least, write for Vulkan and use a translation layer like MoltenVK?
> But wasn’t macOS the only major gaming-relevant platform still using OpenGL anyway?
At the time, there was a decent number of non-gaming cross-platform applications that relied on OpenGL for rendering. OpenGL wasn't perfect (especially compared to DirectX 9) but it was a good-enough solution for simpler apps and games that wanted the write-once-run-anywhere treatment.
> If you’re already writing a Mac-specific backend, why not just write directly for Metal instead of OpenGL?
Because a lot of people don't write Mac specific backends in the first place. Unless the app was designed to be Mac native from the start (a rarity in the professional world), there is very little impetus to rewrite everything to work with Metal and/or AArch64 targets. OpenGL suggested a future world where this would be unneccesary, and people liked it. With Metal as the only option now, a lot of people feel like Apple slammed the door on people that wanted to write cross-platform apps supporting Mac.
> Or, at the least, write for Vulkan and use a translation layer like MoltenVK?
MoltenVK is too slow for games (compared to DXVK it is an utter slouch) so most people don't even bother. There are a few apps that you can run in it, but for the most part it is a toy that rightfully isn't relied upon to deliver industry-standard experiences.
> The data isn’t trustworthy and underestimates the true count of crime.
You’ll need to back that up with facts, not “it seems to me…”. It’s easy to say “the data are wrong, think about it,” but that doesn’t make it true. That’s just a nice way of saying, “of course those people are criminals, just look at them, but there’s a conspiracy making reality say different.”
Exactly. FBI gathers crime statistics from every police department across the nation, and most States also do an independent set of statistics on crime. There is absolutely nothing to indicate that they are lying, and their personal incentive is to the exact opposite, as they receive more funding in times where crime is higher. These institutions already make up the majority of most City and State budgets, its well into the billions. But good luck ever trying to reason with people, crime has been used for emotional manipulation on social media and news for decades now, facts don't matter to most people on this topic.
That's a voluntary program that most large cities have declined to participate in since 2020.
And the 'standardized' form has been messed with so much that increase or decrease for any particular line item is meaningless.
Personally, I know that shootings and other crimes I've reported on my property have been white-washed and don't show up in our city's 'open data' system.
Being 'open' with statistics just means they're much more careful about manipulating them first, or about what data is allowed in.
I looked at homicide, location Louisiana, agency New Orleans Police Department for the last two years. There were multiple homicides recorded every month in 2023.
EDIT: I found that the New Orleans Police Department also publishes a daily Major Offense Log here:
Yea sorry everything was coming up zero because they didn't submit supplemental data, so all filters based on that data (including age and other demographics) come back as zero.
Which is not the way 'nodata' should be returned.
But the point stands- eg Jackson ms didn't submit this year. So your get a 'state total' that doesn't include the majority of the data for the state.
Why would you think that? Lobbying organizations exist to advance the interests of their members. Their members in this case are businesses. This will restrict the control businesses have over their former employees. Therefore, they don’t like it.
Yes, he left Vice over "creative differences" a couple of years before he founded Proud Boys. He wasn't as openly fascist while at Vice, though Vice definitely had to do some damage control over his comments.
I disagree with you here. Proud boys was originally created out of the need to protect people from the likes of Antifa, which is a facist group.
Most activists/hacktivists are fascists. If you don't agree with them, they cause issue, violence, and/or destruction until they get their way. Opposing groups like this does not make one fascist.
Lots of what Gavin does is satire...which many people apparently don't get or understand.
| McInnes, an avid boozer, has consistently maintained that he started the Proud Boys as an outlet for harmless fun: an Animal House-style drinking club for male buddies.
| "It’s a men’s organization, sort of like the Odd Fellows,” McInnes explained. “It mirrors the Knights of Columbus in many ways”–another organization that he belongs to. Only in this case,the Proud Boys subscribe to an ideology of “anti racial guilt,” that, to me, seemed to evoke white pride.
| Actually, McInnes wouldn’t describe it in explicit terms like “white pride” or “white supremacy.”
| “Our motto is that, we’re Western Chauvinists who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world,” he said matter-of-factly. “That’s really the only tenet.”
I don't think it was started specifically for that, it was just a boozer group I think. But then Antifa started bashing grandma's and someone had to step up.
I would honestly really like to read a book (or New Yorker article, but I repeat myself) about this period. Was he fascist, just not openly, in the early days of Vice? Or was he radicalized later? If he was radicalized, how did that happen?
As loathsome as I find him, he also started two well-known organizations, with very different vibes, but also a through-line you can see if you squint. It must be an interesting story, maybe even an enlightening one.
Another interesting example if you're into that sort of thing is Baked Alaska, coincidentally also from Canada, that went from being a Bernie bro working for Buzzfeed to livestreaming Jan 6th inside the Capitol.
Yeah exactly. I think that must be part of the story. I can see how doing, like, countercultural grittiness as an act could lead to cognitive dissonance and a desire to "stop being a poser".
This is why I'm skeptical of dismissing radical rhetoric as "oh that's just talk". A lot of people have a strong desire to be "real", which will drive some of them to put their money where their mouth is, even if they started out with just some "harmless" rhetoric because it seemed fun to say edgy stuff.
I had a proof of concept for us to migrate sites to a static / low / no cost hosting option.
They were unwilling to spend time "training" the team to learn react (in 2020).
They were unwilling to let their senior FE dev spend any time with me to correct the CSS issues I was struggling with.
They used this deception and dishonesty to say "it didn't work" and wasn't worth any more time. I build a prototype in a week. It's not like I spent month(s) on it without any ROI. They just wouldn't look at it because that would mean acknowledging I and or / my ideas had value.
The closest thing I got to an answer is that the CMS they preferred, which was chosen 10 years ago by people no longer working there... was the only way they could support client sites. Because that's what they've been using. Turnover means it's so hard for us to support anything new because we have no time...
Basically they Brawndo'd me.
It was hard to stomach getting fired by the incompetent people driving the business into the ground when I was literally pleading with them to implement money saving measures.
The horse sometimes would rather kill itself than drink the clean water you've found... that's just life. It's hard to accept.
It was not an issue of refining the content on one site, you make a good point though.
It was more of an issue that they had a bunch of clients on an old CMS system, and they did not want to make any changes the way that the sites were built or hosted.
I can make arguments for and against either side of this idea, it all depends how you want to run your business.
I also dislike Dan Goodin’s reporting. He tries to talk the talk, but nearly every article he writes has some tell that he doesn’t really understand the thing he’s reporting on. Which is fine if he was relying on third-party expertise and quoting that, but he tries to make it sound like he has the expertise and it just comes up short. I feel like he’s a good example of that old fallacy that you think the news is correct about everything, until they report about something you know.
For me, Ashley Belanger is the best reporter they have. She might not have the subject matter expertise some of the others there claim, but she has the best journalism of anybody there. Lots of direct sources, well written, and the right level of depth. I honestly feel like I’m reading a different (and better) publication when I read her articles. More than once, I’ve had to scroll up to see if the article I’m reading was one of Ars’ licensed outside pieces, as the quality bar was higher than I’m used to, only to find her name.
Beth Mole is a close second. She has subject matter expertise, good journalism, and loves to slip in some humor or justified “get a load of this idiot” comments.
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