HardOCP Is Getting 'Mothballed' As Kyle Bennett Accepts Job At Intel (hardocp.com) 92
Slashdot reader grasshoppa writes: Kyle Bennett, long-time owner/operator of one of the last independent review sites, HardOCP, announced that effective April 1st he will be leaving it behind to start a new career at Intel. "Effective April 1, 2019 I will be taking on the position of Director of Enthusiast Engagement for Intel's Technology Leadership Marketing group," Bennett writes. "Intel wants to reconnect with the top of the high-performance consumer pyramid which contains hardware enthusiasts, overclockers, gamers, and content creators. This is the part of our community that has great influence through word of mouth and online engagement. I'll be focusing on helping Intel get back in touch with this audience and re-establishing a voice and dialog on where the company is going with its future technologies. If you are reading this, you are very likely already part of this group."
He goes on to say that he does not want to sell HardOCP or HardForum and see those properties turned into something that he would not be proud of. Instead, "HardOCP will be 'mothballed,'" he writes. "It will no longer publish news, editorial, or hardware review content. [...] HardForum.com will be sold to a company that I have done business with for years, one that I can trust to run it in the way you are familiar with. HardForum will be demonetized and all advertising and commission links removed. Simply put, HardForum will not make money in any way..."
You can read Bennett's full statement here.
He goes on to say that he does not want to sell HardOCP or HardForum and see those properties turned into something that he would not be proud of. Instead, "HardOCP will be 'mothballed,'" he writes. "It will no longer publish news, editorial, or hardware review content. [...] HardForum.com will be sold to a company that I have done business with for years, one that I can trust to run it in the way you are familiar with. HardForum will be demonetized and all advertising and commission links removed. Simply put, HardForum will not make money in any way..."
You can read Bennett's full statement here.
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Your story is full of shit. Kyle's an asshole, true, but he's a fair one.
You probably posted horse porn and were a dick when called out for your idiocy. That's the only way I've seen folks get a permaban.
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Corporate shlll (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, he's sure got the corporate marketroid-douchebag speak down pat.
Re:Corporate shlll (Score:5, Insightful)
The translation of what he said is roughly, "We want to infiltrate the maker community, mine them for good ideas, and then monetize the hell out of whatever we find."
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Doesn't take much to become a marketing droid. But look at all those titles, in just one line!
Re:Corporate shlll (Score:5, Insightful)
He in fact will not be a shill, since a shill by definition is someone who hides his allegiance.
Everyone needs a job and there's nothing wrong with doing marketing. Shilling is much worse, but that's not what he's doing.
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there's nothing wrong with doing marketing
Citation needed.
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there's nothing wrong with doing marketing.
Citation needed.
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There's nothing wrong with marketing in principal, it's just that most of the people doing it are evil and I'm going to do everything in my power to block them.
Re: Corporate shlll (Score:2)
Fixed that for you.
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Except it isn't is it. As the OP said, the principcal of marketing is to show what you have. If I am selling lemonade and I put up a sign saying "You can buy lemonade here" then that is marketing and it isn't lying.
What you're referring to is just lying via marketing.
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While his language is rather transparent, why shouldn't he take a job with Intel if it was almost tit for tat an enthusiast position comparable to what he presently does? While we can all bemoan Intel for a plethora of reasons, times change, and so do people.
HardOCP, has been around for what seems forever. Certainly one of the sites I stumbled onto early on. Am I sad to see it go? Absolutely. I'm losing a part of something that seemed to always be there when I wanted to check up on certain PC enthusiast con
Connecting with Enthusiasts? (Score:5, Informative)
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You said AMD in the Intel story.
Drink!
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Most ryzen boards. You can easily see this with Linux. And I've never seen a 970/990 board without it either.
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https://www.newegg.com/Product... [newegg.com]
From the first google result for "amd ryzen motherboard ecc."
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Maybe he could get them to release models with the Management Engine ripped out, or at least lobotomised.
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LOL Don't be naive.
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Why? The world has proven quite conclusively that no one cares.
Integrity (Score:1)
This decision shows a lot of integrity on his part. A "good news" story even for users of that site.
Sellout... (Score:2)
The dude could have been content being a hero in the enthusiast/IT community. He could have been remembered long after he was gone.
Now... he's killing the baby for a cash payout. He'll be remembered for this.
But who cares... it's all about the big bucks.
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Everyone's gotta eat. He didn't slap the community across the face by turning it into Intel's soapbox. He did the graceful and honest thing by stepping away when he couldnt claim impartiality.
Re:Sellout... (Score:5, Informative)
Intel has been hiring away all the tech hardware reviewers it seems. Ryan Shrout from PCPerspective, then one of the people he sold PCPer to (Alvan Malvantano) and now Kyle from HardOCP have all gone to Intel. It's quite the interesting strategy on Intel's part. On the other hand if you want to work for Intel it seems like a good idea to start a hardware review site and you'll probably get a job offer if you can attract any sort of following.
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Are they worried about AMD? Or trying to build up their GPUs to compete with Nvidia?
They already had a pretty solid reputation in the enthusiast/gaming communities due to their CPUs being the only real option for so many years, and even now being pretty competitive.
What is behind this?
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The cynic in me believes that Intel is targeting reviewers that are pro AMD. Kyle was pretty big on AMD as of late with the Nvidia NDA and Intel shenanigans.
On the other hand, I've been reading HardOCP for decades now. I can't see Kyle jumping to Intel just for a big bag of money.
Re:Sellout... (Score:5, Interesting)
The dude could have been content being a hero in the enthusiast/IT community. He could have been remembered long after he was gone.
Now... he's killing the baby for a cash payout. He'll be remembered for this.
But who cares... it's all about the big bucks.
I suspect it's less about selling out, and more about finally letting go of something that was costing him money out of pocket to run every month. There's something to be said for not having to worry about whether or not you can afford health insurance for your family.
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Now... he's killing the baby for a cash payout.
Being a hero doesn't pay bills.
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What is sub par? The 5-10% IPC ryzen is behind intel? That is due to change in july, and Intel will be behind again like in 2003. Then will you still say intel is better? Because OP is talking about zen 2, and the demoed low clock speed vs dual proc intel system. at almost half the power. Remember in gaming IPC matters, more so on the shitty single threaded games that are a decade or so behind in the times. What dirty tricks will intel resort to this time? Remember ryzen launch? All the FUD intel spread bec
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I find that the best tech "news" and reviews come from people that own the hardware on IRC. You can often get them to perform tests of your liking also. That's how we figured out the Zen NUMA latency linux issue a year after launch.
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I'm on various channels on freenode, and criten. The rest are all semi private nets so cant divulge much into that. none of the channels I frequent are really "tech" channels. but the majority of people on IRC are real nerds and would never turn down a chance to talk about the hardware they own or possibly want to own.
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Date (Score:2)
Wonder if the date is important at all?
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The bias was palpable anyway (Score:1)