Betting it's not him but his publisher. There is a massive industry dedicated to this sort of guerrilla marketing these days. If a company of a certain size is putting out a press release they will coordinate to have seemingly-unrelated articles show up in various news sources (think New Yorker but also, like, ArsTechnica, or even the HN frontpage.) Even though the articles aren't technically ads, they get the name out there so it's on people's minds, making them more susceptible to hearing about/engaging with the news.
I've seen this happen internally at my last employer, but have the impression that it's standard operating procedure in corporate marketing these days. It is quite gross and I'd like to see it banned wholesale (or at least the relationship should be mandatorily disclosed). But... we would need to believe as a country in regulating ourselves to do that.
I've seen this happen internally at my last employer, but have the impression that it's standard operating procedure in corporate marketing these days. It is quite gross and I'd like to see it banned wholesale (or at least the relationship should be mandatorily disclosed). But... we would need to believe as a country in regulating ourselves to do that.