There are many potentially interesting discussions around this story. Just off the top of my head: the resilience of old hardware, the joy of rediscovering something previously forgotten, old computer games. Let's not make this about CNN's editorial choices (human interest stories have been a thing for a long time) or whether or not this is news. After all, you submitted it.
It's a reasonable topic to write a story about. However, CNN could have chosen a much better headline, one that doesn't make it sound like a 30-year old computer that still works as some kind of oddity.
We as readers (and HN participants) need to rise to it and do better than resort to knee-jerk reactions. Without excusing the behavior, CNN (and other online publications) are in a tough spot: so much of their revenue relies on eyeballs and clicks on ads, so the incentive to write headlines that drive those metrics, which is often in opposition to writing more sober, descriptive headlines.
We complain about click-bait, refuse to pay subscriptions, complain about the quality of journalism which costs money to produce, often react only to the headline, sometimes click anyway. Regardless of what CNN does, we can't abdicate our role and responsibility in the relationship, both with the media, and here on HN.
Yea I agree that the headline was a bit off. I was expecting that he found one switched on, having been running for 30+ years in a closet at the university or something along those lines. That he found one in the box in his attic and that it works is not that amazing.
They barely wrote about it though. It's a bunch of embedded tweets and an unrelated, generic video about the history of Apple at the top. The body copy of the article is copied quotes from the tweets and wikipedia-esque information about Apple.
