TechCrunch scooped a story about ArsTechnica being purchased by media outlet Conde Naste. If you are interested in the nuts and bolts of technology I highly recommend Ars and hope it continues to progress under CN stewardship.
Beginning in the spring of 1998 I was involved with a pilot Cisco networking program at my high school. And with a bit of spare time on my hand I began reading several geek web publications during class time. This included the then-new Slashdot, ArsTechnica, News.com and the now defunct Aces Hardware.
I credit the combination of all four of these as having the most influence on my geek upbringing and cite them as the main reason I decided not to study IT in college — why pay for old news from a ancien professor when you can read all of the latest and greatest for free each day at home?
And because you’re sitting at the edge of your seat, for the record: I didn’t care much for either AnandTech or TomsHardware as the years went by. Anand had to always talk about the latest AP test he took and Tom seemed shady with his metrics. Conversely, too bad JC News disappeared, John always had interesting insights (see his old pages at the Internet Archive).
Anyways, I think my favorite contributor at Ars is Jon Stokes as he single handidly taught me everything about the last three generations of CPUs, GPUs and bus interconnects.
In addition Ars has some other neat RSS feeds for the science buff (Nobel Intent) and gamer (Opposable Thumbs). And I’m hoping their new Storage/Datacenter/Networking channel will feed my HPC-loving mind.
At the same time I’d like to tip my hat to Paul DeMone, Johan De Galas, Brian Neal and others over at the extinct AcesHardware. If for no other reason than they got me to appreciate the DEC Alpha, CISC/RISC wars, and pipeline stages. Remember, not every stage is created equal. In fact, for shits and giggles check out old pages of Aces over at the Internet Archive.
If you’re interested, RealWorldTech and TechReport have picked up where Aces left off. And the Chip Architect has good stuff too when he decides to post something once every other year.
See also:
A Belated Farewell to the DEC Alpha
What a difference 36 years make
So, you want to make a computer chip
What do Botnets and GPGPUs have in common?
GPU versatility
Seth Lloyd’s Million Megahertz CPU
What is wrong with Moore’s Law?
Specialization, Centralization, and the Future of Chip Integration
Intel Has a Small Urethra
The great thing about Conde Nast is they know how to treat the technology sites they buy up. The two compliment each other, as can be seen with wired.com and reddit. Too often an old media company tries to spruce up its online image by purchasing a popular online destination, but the collaboration just seems forced.
Comment by Simon Owens — May 17, 2008 @ 1:10 pm