alt Hacker NewsI’m curious, has the author seen or read any of Joanna Stern’s other reporting before? Her stories are often silly frames that explore the experience of using consumer technology. She’s not an aggressive industry reporter, her purpose is to explain or reveal what the user experience of new technology is, often for an unsophisticated audience. See for example her story about using conversational chatbots while out camping[1] or how to use tech to unplug from tech[2]. This seems like a perfectly fine niche for a writer and the vending machine story is of a piece with her past work.
This article can serve both her beat and also, this story in its specifics and that she/her editors chose to report it, self-congratulatory and also advertisements for Anthropic and WSJ itself. Both your statement and this blog can be in agreement.