I didn't say the intersection was virtually zero, just that NYT articles are a fraction of the most interesting stuff that appears online on any given day. If I had to guess I'd say the intersection is on the order of 5%, based on what appears on the HN frontpage.
I think the context was a remark about Reddit. I was saying that the frontpage of a good aggregator would always be more interesting than the frontpage of the NYT, because the aggregator could have a list of all the most interesting stuff that day, whereas the NYT was limited to the subset written by people employed by the NYT.
oops sorry, I was remembering your talk from IT Conversations. If it was text I would have looked up the exact quote first. I'll fix it.
edit: "The Times front page is a list of articles written by the people who work for the NYT. Delicious is a list of articles that are interesting. And it's only now that you can see the two side-by-side that you can see how little overlap there is."
I think the context was a remark about Reddit. I was saying that the frontpage of a good aggregator would always be more interesting than the frontpage of the NYT, because the aggregator could have a list of all the most interesting stuff that day, whereas the NYT was limited to the subset written by people employed by the NYT.