AnandTech Shuts Down After 27-Year Run (anandtech.com) 71
AnandTech, a pioneering technology news website, is shutting down after 27 years on August 30, 2024. Founded in 1997 by Anand Lal Shimpi, the site earned a reputation for its in-depth hardware reviews and technical analysis.
In a final post on the site, AnandTech Editor-in-Chief Ryan Smith cited changing market dynamics for written tech journalism as the primary reason for closure. The site's 21,500 articles will remain accessible indefinitely, hosted by publisher Future PLC. AnandTech's forums will continue operating under Future's management.
In a final post on the site, AnandTech Editor-in-Chief Ryan Smith cited changing market dynamics for written tech journalism as the primary reason for closure. The site's 21,500 articles will remain accessible indefinitely, hosted by publisher Future PLC. AnandTech's forums will continue operating under Future's management.
Support AnandTech OrorElse (Score:5, Funny)
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Tell me about it! It seems like just yesterday we were there, hornswaggling some aliens into helping us build Stone Henge while we feasted and danced. Wait... what year is it again?
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Site went downhill (Score:5, Insightful)
After Ian and Andrei left the site, their articles haven't been as good. Basically you need a podcast, stream, or video channel (or all three!) to keep a tech news outlet going. See Gamer's Nexus as an example. At never modernized fully. They had a Twitter feed and some other related stuff that never caught on. Their strength was in their written articles and deep dives which were never the same once their best writers went elsewhere.
The forums are still interesting though. Lots of leaks there.
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Yeah without that core group of people involved anymore there's likely too much overlap with Tom's Hardware so it's an easy call to just consolidate under that label.
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Yeah, they really haven't had any good new technical content on the site for years now. I think that other tech sites like The Verge and Engadget replaced them for casual readers, and YouTube channels like Gamers Nexus took their hardcore tech readers.
Re:Site went downhill (Score:5, Informative)
> other joke tech sites like The Verge
FTFY.
Verge Supercut [youtube.com]
Re:Site went downhill (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have the time or patience to listen to a podcast or watch a video when I can read an article in a fraction of the time
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If all you want is raw info then an article is ideal. If you want to be also entertained and maybe get some opinion on the subject, a video is a decent option. GamersNexus is pretty good in that the videos are entertaining, to the point, have chapter markers so you can skip to the conclusion if that's all you want, and they publish all the data on their website too.
AT articles just weren't that good towards the end.
Re:Site went downhill (Score:4, Interesting)
The nitpicker in me wishes to point out that it's a shame folks no longer consider reading to be entertainment. :) But I get your point.
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"So I took this motherfucker out of the box and lo and behold, this is what the fucker looks like. Just like on the box. Who the fuck would have thought that? Jerry, you seeing this shit?"
"Yeah, fucking just like on the box. Amazing shit what they do now. This shit will kill your motherfuckin box once you get it installed. HAHAHAHAH!!!!"
"Damn straight it will. This motherfuckin board is the fuckin best shit you
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Written articles can't contain opinions or funny quips now?
Re:Site went downhill (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't have the time or patience to listen to a podcast or watch a video when I can read an article in a fraction of the time
Exactly.
The amount of engagement you get from podcast and videos is what drives revenue.
People get what they want from a written article and move on in a fraction of the time.
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I don't have the time or patience to listen to a podcast or watch a video when I can read an article in a fraction of the time
Funny you mention that. I don't have time to read an article. Podcasts or videos are ideal for multitasking. Assuming the video is largely audio only which many are, you can do it while driving, you can do it while working on your hobby, you can do it while cooking dinner.
Lack of time and patience are the reason I prefer podcasts and video news.
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it was something I needed to pay attention to and learn from.
So some people aren't good at multitasking, that doesn't change the fundamental time equation. Again there's no way you were reading an AnandTech article in 2 minutes and learning from it, and there's plenty of Youtube videos out there that don't waffle on about anything, except for the occasional sponsored segment, and that's what "SponsorSkip" is for.
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Seems a poor use of time though if you're actually trying to get relevant info instead of entertainment.
Who said anything about entertainment? Are you unable to multitask? Is there something that says you can't learn while chopping onions or stirring a pot? I learn plenty while doing other things.
Now to be fair not everyone has that capability. The wife for one bucks that typical women trend, she can't multitask to save herself.
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I don't have the time or patience to listen to a podcast or watch a video when I can read an article in a fraction of the time
THIS. OMG, This! I don't have time (or even want) to listen to someone babbling on while trying to form their next sentence -- either in audio OR video format.
I can speedread -- learned it 40 years ago. It's not a panacea, for detailed things it's absolutely horrible, but for most normal stuff I can read quickly and slow down when necessary.
Having to wait while people ummm and eeeehh in media is just annoying. I'm not spending quality time with a friend (your podcast is NOT my friend, nor your vide
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Ad impressions on articles pay significantly less than video ad revenue.
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Say you're over 30 without saying you're over 30.
Don't get me wrong, I'm with you on this.
RIP (Score:5, Insightful)
Gonna miss trustworthy reviews containing sound, technical details. Much nicer than some YouTube review of a hard drive with inane drivel such as, "...and here you can see the label. Now, I sure wish they had decided to put the label on in this direction, instead. And, while we're at it, the label is just too large. A smaller label would be much neater and still able to hold all the information."
Re:RIP (Score:5, Funny)
but... I like big lables and I cannot lie
You other brothers can't deny
Re:RIP [solutions] (Score:2)
Pretty good joke there and I hope you get modded funnier. The FP joke was seriously weak, even considering the "obligatory" time pressure.
But of course I was looking for solutions. On Slashdot? When will I ever learn. (Evidently never.) Not relying on the so-called moderators to elevate good ideas, I just did a bunch of text searches of the discussion for some of the words that seemed (to me) to be relevant to solutions. Results: Nowt.
Should I rant about solution-oriented journalism again? Nowt.
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i feel the pain,
the issue is compounded with the "al" responses on search. magazines are dying, content is generated. even vendor support is so very limited relying mostly on you tubers selling services. no good answers, enjoy the joke thats all i got left.
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You mean you don't want to watch 50 seconds of ads, 45 seconds of logos, 2 minutes of blather about sponsors, and an unboxing before getting to a badly lit, fumbling presenter showing you that the WPS button on your router is recessed slightly left of the serial number label? What king of Luddite are you?
inane video (Score:2)
my favorite was the time that I needed to look up the firing order of a ford V-8. To be clear, this is the numerals 1 to 8, in whatever order they fire in.
Once more, the search results were dominated by and flooded with dorktube videos--some of which were over five minutes!
Shame (Score:2)
That's a shame, they were worth swinging by until the end.
JMicron SSD (Score:5, Informative)
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Freezing wasn't even the worst problem with JMicron controllers. That would be your SSD suddenly turning into an unreadable 4.2GB drive named "JM loader 001".
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Not to mention the idiotic attempt the manufacturers did at fixing the problem "Through the magic of buying two of them".
The reading generation is over (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody wants to read anymore, especially younglings. Younglings much prefer "WHAT'S UP YOUTUBE! Before we begin, be sure to smash the like and subscribe buttons and leave a comment, and now I just want to call out this awesome VPN from NordVPN.... " 20 minutes of inane bullshit and advertisements and no real content. That's what they want. I don't know why. They are like mindless automatons consuming the dreck to make the algorithm happy, and rich.
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There are quite a few YouTube channels with great reviews.
Re: The reading generation is over (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of us value our time and don't want to sit through 20 minutes of some guy droning on, when we could scan through a webpage in under 2 minutes to see if an item is crap or not
Re: The reading generation is over (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is why AnandTech is gone.
100K people scanning a page in under two minutes bring exactly zero revenue.
Now you can't scan that page any more.
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Then you were looking in the wrong place.
A review isn't just a list of specs and a yes/no at the end. Ignoring 90% of the content makes that content 90% less profitable, which, in time, leads to the website's demise.
Then you are left with an aggregated score on Amazon or something.
Re: The reading generation is over (Score:4, Insightful)
And the world is worse off for it. That is bad enough when talking about some tech review but the same thing is happening with instructional material... a process you could have learned and applied by scanning a page for the relevant bits and a couple glances back during execution now takes watching an annoying video... sometimes an hour or more and there just isn't any easy way to quickly go back and reference details.
This will probably result in some kind of societal crash at some point. We are all pretty dependent on those details being there in charts and other visual/textual formats that can be found via search engines at the time of application. When it all vanishes because it didn't provide enough revenue... actually that won't happen like a switch flipped. The internet will just seem to suck more and more slowly over the course of time.
Europeans will do fine though, they never stopped valuing seemingly pointless wrote memorization.
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I don't disagree with you.
It's interesting that several YouTube channels which I keep in high regard also have websites with written reviews.
Therefore, not all is lost.
As for the current equivalent of glancing over a document and so on, I guess it's LLM chatbots.
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And the video won't get my view either.
I'll find the info, nicely aggregated, in a table, with other options and links to purchase.
Probably with reviews on each item in the table.
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I'm with you I prefer written to video 1000% but finding good written content is getting harder.
Anand used to be a place one good go for good well written intelligent content.
These days most most written 'reviews' and 'comparisons' are just pages of verbal diarrhea. At some point watching a few 10 minute reviews from reputable sources becomes more productive than spending 20 minutes paging through search results scanning through 100s of written trash reviews, half of them scraped from each other and mostly
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>My wife commented on the state of recipes on the web these days,
>a recipe for peanut butter cookies -- leads off with a page on the
>"history of peanut butter cookies"...
I actually came across a diatribe by a recipe authress downright *raging* at people who scroll down to the recipe instead of reading all of her pages of prattle!
when I search for a type of meat to grill, my interest generally begins and ends with heat and time, by flip.
The only extra information I recall ever reading, ever, is that
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Some of us value our time and don't want to sit through 20 minutes of some guy droning on, when we could scan through a webpage in under 2 minutes to see if an item is crap or not
Your experience is based on some really crap videos. There are many websites providing video / podcast content that run for 20 minutes where you may be trying to get the same content from a webpage in 15 minutes at best, not 2 minutes, not unless you're not actually interested in the content and skimming it.
But who has time to read all that. Listening is something I can do while cooking, while driving, while walking. Reading is not. The podcast / video format is taking off precisely because people don't hav
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Goodbye old Friend (Score:2)
Bummer! (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to read that site everyday. (Score:3)
learned things (Score:4, Insightful)
I always enjoy sites where I learn things. Anandtech always had great detail and I could learn things.
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Lasted longer with Anand than I thought! (Score:4, Interesting)
In any case, sad day as it was a great resource. I am glad the articles will stay online for some period of time.
Oops, lasted WITHOUT Anand it should have said (Score:2)
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The important thing (Score:3)
And while the AnandTech staff is riding off into the sunset, I am happy to report that the site itself won’t be going anywhere for a while. Our publisher, Future PLC, will be keeping the AnandTech website and its many articles live indefinitely. So that all of the content we’ve created over the years remains accessible and citable. Even without new articles to add to the collection, I expect that many of the things we’ve written over the past couple of decades will remain relevant for years to come – and remain accessible just as long.
Most journalism fails to be as profitable as owners want. But it costs virtually nothing to run an ad-supported archive. If there's no traffic, there are no big expenses. If there is traffic, the ads pay for it. The last thing we need is more good content dropping off the face of the earth because it's not archived anywhere.
Though the current parent company owns several tech themed web sites like this. It makes more sense to just fold up all the writing into one or two anyway rather than dividing the audience across multiple brands.
Best articles (Score:3, Insightful)
They are the only site with deep articles on CPU subsystems. Is there anywhere else that I can find that same type of Zen architecture research? I will miss them. I can't watch videos for tech new. Long live long form tech content...if Arstechnica goes away, not sure what I will do.
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Chips and Cheese [chipsandcheese.com]
Can't Survive On Praise Alone (Score:5, Insightful)
Folks don't want to pay for quality journalism and they don't want ads on a website, which pay those bills. Then they're surprised when such sites close down. It's no surprise. You want to be paid for your work, just like they do. They can't keep providing that great work for free. And yet, people of the internet today expect that.
"But I turn off my ad blocker for them." 1 out of every 10,000 visitors doing that still isn't gonna pay the bills.
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Ads aren't the problem. Hell, I don't even mind (well-)targeted ads. What are the problem are pop-ups, pop-unders, modals, interstitials, ads disguised as content, auto-playing audio or video, stupid animations that rigger when you scroll, java or .net (at least Flash is finally dead.) in any ad for any reason, and stupid javascript tricks like triggering ads when you scroll or mouse or which (And this is the one I really hate, Hate, HATE.) interfere with standard UI elements like the back/forward buttons
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basically anything that blinks, moves, or tracks me gets blocked.
Static ads, no (except for those that load slow and block loading of content, but those have become rare the last five years or so. Maybe all the 386dx servers finally died . . .).
I also block so-called "content" that moves. No, I *don't* want a carousel spinning other articles while I try to read, or horizontally scrolling "breaking" news on every page.
Money... (Score:3)
As others have pointed out print journalism, even on the net, is going the way of the dodo.
And as others have said it's the video format that is ascendant.
The thing that bothers me is that the bandwidth that video provides for technical information is quite smaller than print.
I hate being slowed down.
Edutainment- I suppose it's the new format. And it might make less intelligent people more educated.
At the same time. I AM old as I creep up to 60. I don't like it.
There's still the german magazine c't (Score:3)
I have never discovered anything better than c't. While it was arguably better 20 (and 40) years ago, it's stil very very good. If you don't speak german, you can still get their articles through an online subscription and feed them into the translation tool of your choice.
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Is it UN approved?
Goddammit! (Score:1)
Been reading that site for decades.
Sad day. What is a worthy replacement site?