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0 pointsmbreese1mo ago0 comments

I think the fact that they one of the last places surviving from that generation of the Internet says a lot. The Condé Nast acquisition may have been a tragedy, but they managed to survive for this long. They’ve been continuously publishing online for about 30 years. It’s honestly amazing that they’ve managed to last this long.

Yes, it’s very different than it was back in the day. You don’t see 20+ page reviews of operating systems anymore, but I still think it’s a worthwhile place to visit.

Trying to survive in this online media market has definitely taken a toll. This current mistake makes me sad.

0 comments

krull101mo ago

Their review of MacOS 26 is 79 pages when downloaded as a pdf, so they still sometimes have in depth articles. But I agree that that level of detail isn’t as common as in the past.

Barbing1mo ago

It’s good, too.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/09/macos-26-tahoe-the-a...

x0x01mo ago

Everyone's dancing around the problem. People refuse to pay the cost of producing high quality news. Advertising doesn't come close to cutting it.

You can see a new generation of media that charge subscribers enough to make a modest profit, and it's things like Talking Points Memo ($70 base cost per year), Defector ($70 or $80 I think), The Information ($500), 404 ($100), etc.

mbreeseOP1mo ago

ArsTechnica has had subscriber tiers for quite a while. I am one. I’m not sure how many people subscribe or what their numbers look like, but I’d hope that Ars will be able to still be able to keep going in whatever the new media market looks like.

Josh at TPM has actually been quite open/vocal about how to run a successful (mildly profitable) media site in the current market. I think we are seeing transitions towards more subscriber based sites (more like the magazine model, now that I think about it). See The Verge as a more recent example.

DANmode1mo ago

Operating systems are fading to the background; even technical users can lose track of what version of the OS they’re currently using.

anonymousiam1mo ago

100% agree. I still have Ars Technica and Slashdot in my RSS feed list, but both are paused. Every now and then (maybe once a month) I'll take a peek, but it's rare that I'll find anything really worthwhile. About 10% of the content is slanted to push their desired narratives, so objectivity is gone.

shantara1mo ago

I still had Slashdot in my RSS feed, purely out of inertia. I don’t even interact with it much other than occasionally marking it as read. This was the push I needed to unsubscribe from it.

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