The article has an overall feeling of wide-eyed female (because expectation is that she'd be even more alienated from technology than the regular clueless male VF essayist) journalist, ooh-ing and aah-ing her way into dark and deep geek secrets, like how you would feel if you were transported in time to a Templar secret gathering. Low-orbit ion cannon, DDoS (she even explains this for "the nerds out there"), what are these terms?

My questions are (i) Why don't magazines like VF put someone more technically knowledgeable to cover stories like these or (ii) if they're not going to bother with (i) , why even cover the story?

In this regard, the New Yorker is much better, I think. They either don't jump on the wannabe bandwagon for the latest tech meme or if they decide to do it, do a good job.