Hacker Read top | best | new | newcomments | leaders | about | bookmarklet login

Wirecutter seems to "lean", where the original site, before NYT purchase, was (much) more balanced. Knowing this, I thought the blog post write-up dove tailed nicely.


sort by: page size:

Wirecutter has gone downhill rapidly, to the extent that I wouldn't trust it anymore. Which is a shame, since it used to be my go-to for nearly everything.

Here's an article about it:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/08/wirec...


I haven't heard that about Wirecutter, and I think that would devastate their brand (and maybe hurt NYT's) if true.

I dunno, I gave up on Wirecutter for anything I actually cared about almost 10 years ago - I found that for anything that I had actually done even basic research on, the Wirecutter was always wrong (and not just like sort of wrong, but like completely missing the point/out to lunch wrong): https://randomfoo.net/2014/03/22/the-wirecutter-is-always-wr...

I only read Wirecutter when Ars Technica would host their occasional article, and came to the same conclusion as you. Any time they covered something that I had experience with, it was painfully obvious that they had barely used the damn thing. If you were in to their house style, they picked things that fit in that sense, but a solid meh for the review side of things.

The rest of the Wirecutter article where it backtracks?

Not a great story but also not as hysterical as the headline implies.

1. Man/most/all wirecutter links are relatively benign "affiliate" links, mostly to Amazon.

2. Wirecutter updates review, usually annually, and frequently selects a new #1.

3. Price is a key component of Wirecutter selections. They are not just picking "the best" but instead, "the best for most people".


As an aside, if you actually want to ask the wire cutter random questions, you can check out the green bubble in the lower left here: https://askthis.site/nytimes.com/wirecutter

FYI if your browser zoom isn't the default 100% all the graphics on the page have their sides clipped....

At first I thought the publisher had changed their name to just "WIRE" as part of a rebranding.


Ah, nothing like a good old-fashioned brouhaha over angle of attack vs. the Bernoulli principle. This same argument was going on when my Dad was training as a private pilot back in the 60's. Tastes great! Less filling!

Personally, I think they're facets of the same thing, but I don't know anything about it. Beyond that the piece seemed a bit of a mess to me. The content has not aged well. I usually expect Wired to do a better job of conserving the state of what they publish.


I feel like Wired goes back and forth a lot - some of their articles (on a number of topics, not just computer-related) are pleasingly technical and I've really enjoyed them, and some feel really watered down. Probably, it depends on the individual writer.

I subscribed to Wire because I remember how awesome the articles were at my tech-industry family member's house. It has definitely gone downhill from what I had remembered, all ad selling articles.

Wired gets some flack these days but that was a thorough article. Maybe I need to read the actual paper now instead of just dismissing it off-hand.

Previously on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4223269

Wired one is a much better reporting.


It's not the first time when HN stories are doubled with Wired articles. I had one blatantly replaced. This site has a preference for fear-mongering reporting... I mean Wired.

Nice to see Wired rewriting HN submissions about blog posts.

That's my impression of Wired as well, but this still seems a bit egregious even for a layman's tech news site.

I agree, wired is atrocious these days. The whole article is an attempt at manipulation using rather cheap tricks.

Yes, it is more informative. Does Wired just steal the content by adding the words, "according to Aviation Week and Space Technology", to their own article. Or do they pay a fee to Aviation Week to license the content? If it's the latter, why don't they just reprint the original and better article? Can anyone familiar with the magazine business explain this?
next

Legal | privacy