Where is john dvorak

When it comes to specific policies and what the best policies are, Greenwald is mostly silent, except for his open dislike of mass surveillance and wars. Journalists make for an easy target for such a guy because they claim implicitly or explicitly to be neutrally documenting events, but then try to actively change the course of those events through manipulating their coverage.

He also targets the Democrats in some stories yes, but usually from the angle "they claim they support X but here they are doing not X".

Is this partisan? You could say that Republicans have the same issues, but I don't see them talk about fiscal conservatism anymore, Trump certainly didn't run on such a platform. Trump is many questionable things but most people I've heard express opinions on him say something like "I disagree with policy X but huh, it's weird to see a politician actually doing what he said he'd do for once".

That is, labelling him a hypocrite is tougher than perhaps with other politicians. Maybe that's why he's hard to pigeon-hole.

His latest article on the Intercept is about Michael Moore's new movie. The single most significant defect in U. He criticises a swathe of US policy stretching from the Bush era to the Obama era.

That doesn't sound like he's particularly partisan to me. Instead Greenwald argues for a systems-oriented take on politics. In Greenwald's world, Trump is merely a symptom or byproduct of deeper issues, and it's those issues that are the most interesting to study. This is probably why I like his writing. So the anti-war, anti-domestic spying, gay progressive duck is a conservative Trump-lover? What ducks are you looking at? Oh, well, if he's gay then it's cool.

The enemy of my enemy can easily become my friend. There is a certain segment of the left that seamlessly transitioned from criticizing Democrats and American foreign policy into cheering Russian propagandizing and backing Russian foreign policy goals "as a counterweight to American power" or similar. Greenwald is one of them. If his critical of the power of empire, now would be a good time to start criticizing the other side too. Democrats haven't held power for almost 2 years now and spending all his breath criticizing them isn't really helpful.

It is , however, revealing about his agenda. Again, I don't think he was always like this. He used to be doing legitimate journalism, deep dives into American abuses of power that nobody else was doing. It was good work, regardless of whether the expose happened under a Democratic administration. That journalism is still happening, while Greenwald is off doing Fox News segments on how bad Democrats are. He's just not involved in it.

His decline from investigative journalist into partisan shill is very, very blatant. And I do feel from him, there is no question the media gave him a very rough go after Showden. But it doesn't excuse his "activism" since One good expose doesn't beatify everything you do for the rest of your life. I think it's probably mostly him burying his head in the sand about the consequences of his activism.

I don't think he consciously wants to trade American empire for Russian empire, he just can't get past the whole "enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing, or viewing Russia as a counterbalance to American power, however you want to put it. I hope he gets back on the horse, but right now he's definitely kinda broke-brained. C'mon, the guy spends his time on his farm caring for the 40 dogs he's rescued, nobody does that who's not at least a little broke-brained.

I wish him a speedy recovery dogs help with that! Conversely, someone who agrees with my enemy on something is not automatically my enemy as well. My enemies aren't always wrong, after all. The New Yorker article is actually very interesting and pretty generous towards Glenn.

Yeah, Greenwald has gone off the deep end over the last years. He's pretty much paralleled the fall of Wikileaks, where they made some important points at the start but have fallen into the orbit of Russia specifically and anti-americanism generally.

Whatever you think of the Democrats or American foreign policy, there really is no call for actually defending Russia and their foreign policy, or downplaying their attempts to subvert our election system, and that's where Greenwald has been for the last couple years. Which, yuck. There is still important work being done on exposing American mass surveillance and other such topics, but it's not being done by Greenwald, who mostly seems concerned with sniping on Twitter at this point.

I feel like it's only true if you just assign positive and negative points to stories, and then count the balance. But that model lacks too much nuance to be useful.

You can be very much appalled at Russia, while also acknowledging that a lot of criticism that comes form the left is borderline conspiracy theory stuff with zero evidence to it. And if you're preaching to a specific audience, it might look imbalanced overall, because you don't waste time addressing the points on which your audience agrees with you anyway.

For example - and I'm saying this as a liberal - it is becoming standard fare to dismiss any criticism of any left-wing policy as "Russian bots". Does someone calling it out means that they reject the general notion that Russia employs paid shill accounts and bots for propaganda purposes?

Yap, Zizek is out too apparently. FLGMwt on Sept 22, parent next [17 more]. Are you non-sarcastically defending Alex Jones? His right to free speech? Sure I am. I'm quite certain he's still speaking, and no one is stopping him.

You just can't go to Twitter to hear it. You have the right to say almost anything you want. I have the right to tell you that you can't use my microphone. Someone else has the right to build a microphone tailored for you.

Oh, but this is different, I'm sure you'll say, because reasons. Well that's why we generally, in the US at least, have always thought it was a good idea to just allow all speech, even if some awful stuff leaks out once in a while. He still has that. Just without someone else's soapbox to stand on. Being obnoxious is a right, but it can invite consequences. The right to free speech is not the right to a platform. It all had to do with his keyboard. Metcalfe was the better read.

It's worth noting that JCD had posted some tweets the day before that were critical of postmeritocracy. Looks like a de-platforming may have happened. Quoting blihp: Note that the screenshot of the email notifying him indicated they were going to 'put all outside columns on hiatus.

It sounds like the magazine is dead or dying. Yeah, not really how that works. Please explain. Having a strong political opinion as an editor and firing your most popular author who has the contrary opinion sounds exactly like what that is. That's just how it appears anyway. Operyl on Sept 22, root parent next [—]. Not everything is a conspiracy, PC Mag could just be cost cutting or downsizing due to a reduced readership. The timing looks really bad.

I'm reserving judgement to see confirmation from their other columnists whom I listed in a separate reply. His tweet also claims it to be a false pretense -- why take one person's word over the other? Because his whole tweet stream is like that. There will be no perfect timing where you will not be able to find something political adjacent to "explain" firing.

Still, firing over email is still sucky. I think you are right and it's probably the most plausible answer. But in the spirit of interpreting the parent comment with good faith, help me walk through a thought experiment: Try getting a job or a promotion with any VC backed SV company while having a Twitter bio that indicates you voted for or support Trump.

Not quite willing to do that? A bridge too far? No prob. Instead, just put that you support the 2nd Amendment. Or the military. Or law enforcement. Or smaller government. I dare you I've never seen a problem with coworkers who loudly support any of these causes at VC backed SV companies. One of my coworkers posted about how happy he was about King Trump winning the election. He was promoted and later hired at another VC-backed SV company. Please share a link to the post. De-platforming is an explicit choice to disassociate from a particular, repugnant point of view.

It's a highly visible, inherently political and therefore public move. Firing your star columnist by email citing budget concerns doesn't fit the MO. De-platforming is also not usually deployed in service of mere political disagreement staunch conservatives speak at institutions that perform no-platforms all the time. It's reserved for positions that are perceived to be outside the bounds of what should be accepted by society such as white supremacy, blatant homophobia, etc.

As far as I'm aware, Dvorak didn't publicly hold any such positions. So even if and that's a HUGE what-if given the facts he were let go for ideological concerns, it wouldn't count as a no-platforming move. I think if you were to casually browse JCD's twitter feed over the past few weeks, you might see a lot of posts and retweets that many people might find objectionable. Look, you can believe whatever you want about why he was fired, but "no-platforming" is an actual deliberate thing and this was by definition not it.

I read over his tweets for the past couple weeks and while he comes off as your typical conservative blowhard, there's nothing worthy of public outcry and therefore worthy of a de-platforming event. I almost feel bad about myself for engaging with you on this level. But this is important. Progressives actually don't oppose the right of people to believe differently. The idea behind no-platforming is that it's not acceptable to amplify someone spewing hate. You may not agree with that, but if you can't understand that that's the motivation, then you're tilting at windmills here.

Woah, hold up there. You're speaking for some progressives as if you're speaking for all. I generally like to think of myself as progressive. Look at the internal messages of Google employees in the John Damore lawsuit documents if you don't believe me. Breitbart fired Milo over the same shit. Damore wasn't fired for having certain views. He was fired for making his feelings about his views in relationship to his company a national issue.

I think many negative things about my employer, all not ideological, but I fully expect to get fired if my rantings about it end up as national news.

On the other hand, if I act like an adult and minimize my impact, my employer doesn't give a rat's ass what my views are. I am purely speaking about the content of the internal messaging included in the court documents. It's a good read if you haven't gone through it yet. Point of order: Regardless of Damore's thoughts, he posted them on an internal message board didn't he? It was the leaker who made it a national issue, and that person remains anonymous.

Good for them" Right, he did re-tweet Greenwald apparently and something about Keith Ellison's victim's abuse medical records. Well fire him on the spot and maybe even burn him at the stake, I guess. I looked at his tweets before I spoke. He may not be a Trump supporter but he clearly is unhappy with the effort made to remove him. This absolutely has nothing to do with John's involvement with the No Agenda podcast and the talking points of this particular podcast.

Just budget issues which suddenly pop up after 36 years without any problems. Hacker News new past comments ask show jobs submit. AtlasBarfed on Sept 23, root parent prev next [—] You didn't mention a single counterexample. LinuxBender on Sept 24, root parent prev next [—] I believe it is healthy to take at least some aspect of their mind-set on this. Karunamon on Sept 22, root parent next [—] Your relationship to your coworkers is entirely contextual, varies from person-to-person and company-to-company, and doesn't lend itself well to pithy broad brush statements.

AtlasBarfed on Sept 23, root parent prev next [—] That is junk economics and libertarianism. XalvinX on Sept 22, parent next [—] Absolutely true. HankB99 on Sept 25, parent next [—] I won't have that! WalterBright on Sept 22, root parent next [—] Back at Caltech in the 70s, user accounts on the DECSystem 10 had 3 characters, and was set as the student's initials.

NeedMoreTea on Sept 22, root parent prev next [—] Of course Dvorak was one of the writers on the Cringely column. GW on Sept 22, parent next [—] He was so consistently and predictably wrong that it was actually useful.

TheOtherHobbes on Sept 22, parent next [—] It's not impossible his comp was more or less frozen ten or even twenty years ago when the boom times for print were ending. Steko on Sept 22, root parent next [—] Dvorak's greatest hits: "nobody wants a mouse", "Steve Jobs going the way of pet rocks", "cable modems are a dead end", "the mac is dead", "ipod is a niche product", "wikipedia is a dead end", "podcasting is a dead end", "linux is a dead end", "time to short apple", "the iphone's a flop", "ipad's a flop", "apple watch's a flop", etc.

SquareWheel on Sept 22, root parent prev next [—] Yes nearly 40 years of predictions will offer plenty of fuel if you're looking to burn someone. SquareWheel on Sept 22, root parent prev next [—] I don't read PC Mag, and don't care to review so much material. Hamuko on Sept 22, root parent prev next [—] Apple Watch isn't a flop? RickJWagner on Sept 22, prev next [—] Wow, that is a pitiful way to let a long-term employee go.

QuinnyPig on Sept 22, prev next [—] I remember reading him decades ago. For the worse. I have always said, I was doing this from the beginning.

I jump in once in a while as a mistake. But from the early days, I have said that they should shut down the Internet and redesign it. What a joker, this guy. I mean, the New York Times is a good example. But you just have to wonder, at some point when are they going to pull the plug on the print? When they do that, print is still important. They start piling up, especially the Sunday ones or the magazine. It produces guilt. John Geddes : Yes, announced yesterday.

Now with your Bay area history, what is your reaction? John Dvorak : The funny thing was, I got a long lecture. I had a long discussion with one of the principles, and he was going on and on about why they will always be in business and he had a very unique argument that was maybe deluded. I blame a lot of this, of the folding of print media on the advertisers.

I would blame, for example, the lessening impact and influence of the big computer magazines on Intel. I blame Intel for this whole fiasco because they stopped advertising in these magazines and the way they used to, because they would subsidize other advertisers in a big way, Dell would get a piece of the action.

Intel is throwing tons of money into the business, keeping a lot of them doing well and creating a focal point of influencers that were mostly pro-Intel.

You had all the writers in any of the magazines because there were only a couple of chip makers, you had Intel and AMD. You would be promotional and once they scattered on the Internet with all these little sites and everybody saying their own opinion then that impact was gone. That whole thing was disappearing.

And it also disappeared partially because of the editors themselves. I always blame the editors for the demise of their own publications, because they never adopted the diversity model where they would really go and look at every word processor, for example, that came out of the woodwork.

There would just be Microsoft Word, Microsoft Word and Microsoft was never an advertiser, to any extent, anywhere. So instead of diversifying, instead of taking the focus off of one company and building them up so they are so huge and they never advertise, you might as well just shoot yourself in the foot. You should have been talking about anything but Microsoft Word just to keep these little companies in business. John Dvorak : This has always been an interesting point of contention.

It is debatable among the various philosophies, amongst the writers themselves like myself. I was never told by anyone not to write about General Electric. You would have to be an idiot to write it. If I want to get called to the carpet, I will write about this. Apparently not. They would just talk to everybody and they were never advertisers. John Dvorak : From your perspective, a lot of these things are probably violations of some sort of thought process. It was amusing.

Now, you might not think writers, the argument would be whether the writers self-censor. You would not want to ever say that the New York Times ever did that, which is something if you found a guy did that, they would get called to the carpet. How well did we see, did anybody see this thing coming in to destroy our planet?

John Geddes : It comes in to destroy our world. I have written a bunch of negative pieces about the iPhone because I never saw once. I had to eat crap for that among other gaffes. But I think the Internet did creep up. When that happened is the time that everybody should have gotten a clue, because of the nuttiness and the Internet sneaking up like this. And I think right now the clueless ones are the broadcasters.

The newspapers are doing what they can and I think some will survive. With newspapers, it was cheaper to go online or magazines mainly to go online, do your magazine there, cut costs all over the place. All of that stuff, gone. Look at all the money. The Internet takes care of it. The Internet does the same thing to broadcasting, only the difference between broadcasting and the newspapers, I just wrote a column about this, it runs today in PCMagazine.

With broadcasters, they probably think something like that is going to happen, but no. The Netflix guy is the only guy who has a clue about this. He is all over it with those little productions. Unlike the newspapers, where you go from a newspaper that you have to look at and it gets all over your fingers, to an online thing.

John Geddes : The reader experience is different. With the broadcast it is the same. They can do productions the way they want. They keep hiring these amateur new media people in there. You probably can never say what you think. John Geddes : What do you think happens to journalism? Are you optimistic? People do certain things because they really like it. The best journalists have always been journalists.

They like reporting. They like to go and report. They go digging around. They come up with stuff and then they report on it. The Washington Post for sure, now that Bezos owns it.

That may happen to some other publications, where a rich. John Dvorak : I want to call them rich fucks. Some rich fuck will buy the place, which is not unusual. In California, the Tribune used to be owned by Knowland, who became the governor. That always made for, to me, a good newspaper.

John Dvorak : Yeah, the tension is perfect. As opposed to everybody being in the same boat. Radio changed with television, television changed. I know too many people that are natural journalists. John Dvorak : They like to write it so everybody can see that they dug it out. They can work for the Plain Dealer, they could work for the Times, they could work for the Inquirer whatever and they would fit in. Putting these people in these jobs. They get a desk. John Geddes : But still, at some point, Esther Dyson said that the best thing she learned from journalism was skepticism, to check the facts.

Esther always demanded demos. This was a matter of point. Esther, I love you, you see this. I do know Esther quite well, but she always demanded demos. I have to thank you, this is been a wonderful chat. An important note : These transcripts of our interviews have only been lightly edited — there may be typos, incorrect names, and the like. See something that needs fixing? Let us know.

Start reading Explore interviews. An oral history of the epic collision between journalism and digital technology , to the present. Dvorak started his career as a wine writer. He was the creator and lead judge of the Dvorak Awards — He is listed as a minister of the Universal Life Church. This is one of more than 80 in-depth interviews that are part of Riptide.

John Geddes : Once you surmount that? John Geddes : You promote corruption? John Geddes : You want to move on. John Geddes : Self-interest.

I used to be, when I was the editor of InfoWorld, we used to do — This is an example of the way we think about these things — The problem with this magazine during this era, when it was growing fast was the page count would jump all over the place. John Dvorak : More than that. John Dvorak : Right. John Dvorak : Oh, yeah. John Dvorak : I know. John Geddes : Good point.

John Geddes : Shadow. John Dvorak : I did not know this. John Dvorak : Yes. John Geddes : No distribution. John Geddes : One of the Dow, as it were. John Geddes : It always created tension. John Geddes : They need to ask questions. John Geddes : You know it did. Dvorak is a "great packager of himself, and no one else has the stature [in the computer industry] of his instant name-recognition.

Turns out books where chapters are largely written - and donated - by vendors. Once turned out an advertorial for Barron's where he asked PR firms to ghostwrite white papers for free, with the material then OCR-scanned into his computer and cleaned up.

Clearly into writing for the money, his next venture may involve the creation of airport novels. Admires Danielle Steele's use of structure. To avoid California taxes, recently bought a former timber-baron mansion replete with indoor swimming pool overlooking Washington State's Straits of Juan de Fuca - ironic because, according to San Franciso Examiner publisher Will Hearst, the Walter Winchell of computer journalists has famously trashed Seattle as "the stupidest city in America.

Once posed for a print advertisement for now-bankrupt Everex Computer Systems, but only accepted a standard modeling fee for the gig. The ads, however, ran for months on the pages near his columns for PC Magazine. Routinely goes on junkets paid for by computer vendors or trade associations; defends junketeering by saying that it gives him greater exposure to the wide wicky-wacky world of computing, thus enabling him to make more informed judgements about products and technologies. The horror other journalists express at his junkets may be in part jealousy he can get away with breaking the rules and they can't and part the pot calling the kettle black computer journalists routinely engage in kindred ethically questionable practices such as taking speaker's fees, consulting, or having vendors pick up the dinner tab.

Hangs with comedians; former rival-columnist and current Infoworld Editor in Chief Stewart Alsop says people "read Dvorak's columns for their entertainment value.

How often he's right is not the key issue. Now acts as a show pony for Ziff-Davis' own Comdex parties.