The author's name definitely rings a bell. I can't recall the details, but I am pretty sure she has been associated with quite a few articles like this on HN in the past, most of which were horribly written and turned out to be largely false or exaggerated. Does anybody still have a link for one of them?
I've read a few of her articles and they have all been lousy. Not spectacularly lousy, just as lousy as many mnay other articles.
But this article, although terribly written, does have so e really important information: Google has a bunch of products. I signup to them using different names. I have no idea how to control what name is used for what service. Ideally we'd have either a single control panel allowing is to set the name that is used for each service, or an easy to access control panel for each service.
In the UK I am legally allowed to use whatever name I like so long as I do not have the intention to defraud people. This makes Google's weird complicated system really annoying.
There was one posted in a comment a few days ago, where she blamed "fanboys" for something that was quoted literally her own screw up, to do with booth babes. It was pretty depressing reading. She's a shocking writer, who seems to relish controversy (something I've noticed wanna-be journalists mistake for actual respect for their writing). Which is a shame, as there seems to be an actual good point in this article, but you have to get through the emotional manipulation and twisted facts to find it.
Read it. John Gruber wrote inaccurately in a blog post that I labeled a female developer as a "booth babe" - she was not, and I had not. Unlike Gruber, I tracked down both women and asked how they felt about the whole thing, and published the results. Shawn King, who had originally told Gruber the lie, began a character attack campaign on me (calling me a whore in Twitter, etc), I believe to distract from their error. I got the usual death threats that women get, and I wrote about it (with the encouragement of my bosses at CBS) - perhaps this is the "pretty depressing reading" you indicate. Gruber never corrected his mistake. To this day, colleagues from other majors (NYT, etc.) ask me why Gruber did that. I don't know.
Now: you claim there are twisted facts in "Google outed me." What are they?
Your still posted article continues to include a passage where you call the PR person in question the "saddest booth babe in the world" So Gruber wasn't wrong, you did exactly what he claimed and you are now lying about your mistake.
It's so obvious that you were forced to add a ridiculous disclaimer where you continue to avoid any responsibility and instead assert that your original claim was "impressionistic". I posit that there's a different word for what you're doing: bullshit.
This is your modus operandi: You construct a compelling narrative first and then fits the facts to said narrative, truth be damned. Your original story is often based around very real problems in the tech community, so when you inevitably get called out for your falsities, you then attempt to shift all attention to the problem and blame those who have dared to point out your inaccuracies. Nowhere do you ever address your own terribly sad methods, instead, you continue to build a career based on being "controversial", never bothering to realize that your scorched earth approach harms the groups you write about and the tech community as a whole.
I wish we'd have a way to store such instances somewhere and connect it to a browser plugin or something, so that when one opens an article a message is shown: "The author of an article has a history of exaggerating, writing falsehood and outright lying. See [link] for details."
Hi there. Do you have a problem with OP's article itself, or just me? And is it just your personal distaste for my reputation or person, or do you have a legitimate critique about the article's citations, sources, or topic?
