The problem in that case is that HN users commonly don’t read the article to get the full story.
From TFA:
> SpaceX staff still cheered as Starship went down in flames. Successfully lifting the 400-foot-tall rocket off the launch pad is still a big step forward to its ultimate goal of one day ferrying humans to the moon and Mars, the company said.
> "With a test like this, success comes from what we learn," the company said in a tweet. "Today's test will help us improve Starship's reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary."
I suspect HN users read the article more often than most. I sure did. I stand by my assessment that the headline invites unreasonable expectations, and that it matters. A little, not a lot. Shrug.
That's reasonable and I agree kinda. I think I'm assuming a layman seeing this headline and (unfortunately) mostly not caring one way or the other. At least this version gets them an accurate depiction. I see how it reads differently to readers here though.
There are, of course, multiple ways to describe any situation in a literally accurate way. A canonical example is "glass half empty" vs "glass half full".
If a glass is expected to be at one tenth of its capacity, but then, by surprise, it is found to be at one half of its capacity, then it is a bit odd to write the headline "Glass Half Empty". We would instead expect something like "Glass Half Full by Surprise", or at least "Glass at 50% Capacity". I don't think one has to be a fanboy of glasses or liquids to take issue with that framing.
It’s one thing to feel defensive about a misleading headline. This is just fanboyism.