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> I'm shocked that you would say that about LWN, or Ian Lance Taylor's blog, or Landon Dyer's blog, or James Hamilton's blog, or Google Research Videos. It's so

> I'm shocked that you would say that about LWN, or Ian Lance Taylor's blog, or Landon Dyer's blog, or James Hamilton's blog, or Google Research Videos. It's so far from reality that I feel compelled to ask if you've actually read them. I have read them. I think that even the byte examples you linked are better than 99% of the articles that appear even on HN and certainly what passes for tech journalism. They don't stir the heart but they are informative and concise - reading them even now doesn't feel like I've wasted my time. I disagree about the lasting value - they are concise and provide a very quick way to get an understanding of what was going on in the industry at the time. Mocking them for using terminology which now seems dated is out of place. There simply isn't a place now where I can even pay to get this kind of concise but technical view of what's going on. The LWN stuff is narrow and much less concise, and although the blogs you mention do have very good stuff, they are also narrow and also have some intensely time wasting hobby horses. BUT I will concede: most of the individual pieces you list in your penultimate paragraph are indeed excellent. Even though even some of them are surrounded by time wasting random personal fluff, and a couple of them take 10 paragraphs to beautifully make a single emotive point. Which frankly, I can do without most of the time. It's quite possible that there wasn't even one article per issue on average that compares favorably to the very best blog pieces. But none of that changes the fact that there is no source for this kind of concise and consistent material anymore. I want a magazine (electronic is fine) that gives good technical coverage of the industry with concise articles that don't waste my time, where every piece is of reasonable quality and some special pieces are really great. Monthly would be fine. What I have is tens of sites that give narrow coverage, and are mostly full of dross. In order to find the good material (none of which is the concise cross-industry coverage mind you), I have to visit all of them every day and sift through hundreds of pieces of rubbish looking for the odd gem. Oh - and guess what? I have to read a lot more rubbish to even know whether it was good or not. As I said originally, the web has brought us stuff we didn't have before - volume, and I'll concede some higher quality stuff than we ever had before. But we've also obviously lost something. I honestly don't know why you're so trying so hard to claim otherwise.

kragen 16y ago
> Mocking them for using terminology which now seems dated is out of place. I wasn't mocking the autoconf article for using dated terminology. I was criticizing it for containing serious factual errors in its main points. I didn't even mention the terminology of the encryption-software article and the laptop-review article I was mocking. > I think that even the Byte examples you linked are better than 99% of the articles that appear even on HN and certainly what passes for tech journalism. Better than 99% of what appears on HN is no great feat, but earlier in the thread you seemed to be saying that Byte "add[ed] breadth and perspective gathered from multiple domain experts and synthesize[d] it", and by contrast, what is available today was "typically narrow, sensationalist, or self-serving. …[sometimes] informative but most of them lack perspective," but the Byte articles I mentioned were for the most part extremely narrow, often written by a single domain expert and completely lacking in any larger perspective. Many of them were also indirectly self-serving — they read like sales brochures for certain Byte advertisers. > Even though even some of them are surrounded by time wasting random personal fluff, and a couple of them take 10 paragraphs to beautifully make a single emotive point. Which ones are you talking about? I went back and followed the links and read the articles in depth (which I hadn't done the first time) and I'm completely mystified by your assertion. It's as if you're writing your comments from a parallel dimension with a completely different set of articles. Those articles, by the way, aren't cherry-picked from among the best; I just went to the home page of several of the sources I'd mentioned earlier and picked the first article that looked like something good. It is true that the articles in Byte were very short, and the average quality was okay. > But we've also obviously lost something. I honestly don't know why you're so trying so hard to claim otherwise. I was going to agree with you, because my memory of Byte was of some extremely high-quality and pioneering articles. But then I dug the old Byte issues out of the Wayback Machine, and it turned out that the problems you were complaining about were worse in late-1990s Byte than in the current web — at least the parts of it that I read. I'd forgotten all about the endless piles of reviews of insignificant graphics cards from now-defunct manufacturers. > In order to find the good material (none of which is the concise cross-industry coverage mind you), Can you point me at an example or two of what you're talking about from the Byte archives? I'm not sure what you mean by "cross-industry coverage". Maybe if you give me an example I can tell you where to find similar stuff on the current web. > I want a magazine (electronic is fine) that gives good technical coverage of the industry with concise articles that don't waste my time, where every piece is of reasonable quality and some special pieces are really great. Monthly would be fine. I'd like that too. It seems like to the extent that the articles already exist, you could put it together simply as an RSS feed of links. Maybe you could do it as a Delicious tag.

kragen 16y ago

> Mocking them for using terminology which now seems dated is out of place. I wasn't mocking the autoconf article for using dated terminology. I was criticizing it for containing serious factual errors in its main points. I didn't even mention the terminology of the encryption-software article and the laptop-review article I was mocking. > I think that even the Byte examples you linked are better than 99% of the articles that appear even on HN and certainly what passes for tech journalism. Better than 99% of what appears on HN is no great feat, but earlier in the thread you seemed to be saying that Byte "add[ed] breadth and perspective gathered from multiple domain experts and synthesize[d] it", and by contrast, what is available today was "typically narrow, sensationalist, or self-serving. …[sometimes] informative but most of them lack perspective," but the Byte articles I mentioned were for the most part extremely narrow, often written by a single domain expert and completely lacking in any larger perspective. Many of them were also indirectly self-serving — they read like sales brochures for certain Byte advertisers. > Even though even some of them are surrounded by time wasting random personal fluff, and a couple of them take 10 paragraphs to beautifully make a single emotive point. Which ones are you talking about? I went back and followed the links and read the articles in depth (which I hadn't done the first time) and I'm completely mystified by your assertion. It's as if you're writing your comments from a parallel dimension with a completely different set of articles. Those articles, by the way, aren't cherry-picked from among the best; I just went to the home page of several of the sources I'd mentioned earlier and picked the first article that looked like something good. It is true that the articles in Byte were very short, and the average quality was okay. > But we've also obviously lost something. I honestly don't know why you're so trying so hard to claim otherwise. I was going to agree with you, because my memory of Byte was of some extremely high-quality and pioneering articles. But then I dug the old Byte issues out of the Wayback Machine, and it turned out that the problems you were complaining about were worse in late-1990s Byte than in the current web — at least the parts of it that I read. I'd forgotten all about the endless piles of reviews of insignificant graphics cards from now-defunct manufacturers. > In order to find the good material (none of which is the concise cross-industry coverage mind you), Can you point me at an example or two of what you're talking about from the Byte archives? I'm not sure what you mean by "cross-industry coverage". Maybe if you give me an example I can tell you where to find similar stuff on the current web. > I want a magazine (electronic is fine) that gives good technical coverage of the industry with concise articles that don't waste my time, where every piece is of reasonable quality and some special pieces are really great. Monthly would be fine. I'd like that too. It seems like to the extent that the articles already exist, you could put it together simply as an RSS feed of links. Maybe you could do it as a Delicious tag.