Considering there is actualy not an iota of technically security challenging stuff (specifically, any computer user can understand your quote that there is a log file located at some path, there is 0 security understanding required there), using your own logic we can deduce the general audience was the target

The typical/general computer user wouldn't even understand the ">" character, I think you either don't grasp the wide range of people who sit in front of computers daily, or you over-estimate their ability of grasping computer concepts, because you'd say that sentence to the typical computer user and most of them wouldn't understand most of it.

That's fine, you don't need to understand the > character, it clearly says there is some log file located at some folder.

> because you'd say that sentence to the typical computer user and most of them wouldn't understand most of it.

Yeah, do try that, just not your cut version focusing on the irrelevance of a specific path and the meaning of >, but the whole paragraph. Do see how many people fail to understand that there was some file at some folder. You could even ask extra SAT questions "what do you thing a "shutdown log" is, does it record activities during device shutdown?")

This argument seems neatly circular.

Any example where somebody says an article doesn’t do a great job defining its terms just becomes proof that the authors only wanted readers who already understand the terms.

I think it's fine for the magazine, but I would have liked to see it expanded in the HN submission title, since many of us are not cybersecurity specialists.

Some stuff is written for some people, other stuff is written for other people. This shouldn't be hard to understand, nor particularly novel either.