4 ms·

Thank you for making these available. What's the alternative for "Byte" magazine today? Where do you go to read similar stuff?

JKCalhoun 4y ago
Perhaps the field has become too fragmented. The MagPi Magazine [1] comes to mind, it focuses on hobbyist uses of the Raspberry Pi with articles on programming, projects. But as I say, m that's pretty niche. And even then I feel like any sort of magazine is anachronistic in this day and age. Too bad too because unlike the various far flung forums, slack channels, or subreddits, a magazine was a nice centralized melting pot where even the cover of the magazine could ignite an entire electronics revolution (and here I'm thinking of course about the Popular Electronics cover [2] that featured the Altair 8800). We've lost our "pulp watercoolers". [1] https://magpi.raspberrypi.com https://magpi.raspberrypi.com [2] http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/13/32/product-111332.jpg http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/13/...
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
HN, a few subreddits, and a few specialised sites. There isn't a lot of long-form technical journalism happening in print today. Web distribution is cheaper and simpler. With print you have to lay out a page by hand - and I have no idea what they used before Quark/InDesign, but it can't have been easy to work with - get it printed to film for litho, sometimes with a few iterations, handed over to a trad printer, then distributed physically. With the web you can upload text and images to a CMS and the layout can be handled automatically. And you're done. Ad revenue can also be automated, with manual exceptions for sponsorship deals. Ironically producing videos for YT is a much more labour-intensive process, and therefore more like print, than plain web content.
dark-star 4y ago
In Germany, c't and ix by "heise Verlag" are still pretty popular. That's the same "heise" where the somewhat-famous h2testw (for testing counterfeit USB sticks etc.), windows-offlineupdate (wsusoffline.net, now not very useful anymore) and umbpci (for those who remember the DOS days ;-) came from
- janandonly 4y ago
  I can second this. In Holland, we get a translated C'T which is the only high-quality general “computer magazine” still existing.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

Perhaps the field has become too fragmented. The MagPi Magazine [1] comes to mind, it focuses on hobbyist uses of the Raspberry Pi with articles on programming, projects. But as I say, m that's pretty niche. And even then I feel like any sort of magazine is anachronistic in this day and age. Too bad too because unlike the various far flung forums, slack channels, or subreddits, a magazine was a nice centralized melting pot where even the cover of the magazine could ignite an entire electronics revolution (and here I'm thinking of course about the Popular Electronics cover [2] that featured the Altair 8800). We've lost our "pulp watercoolers". [1] https://magpi.raspberrypi.com https://magpi.raspberrypi.com [2] http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/13/32/product-111332.jpg http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/13/...

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago

HN, a few subreddits, and a few specialised sites. There isn't a lot of long-form technical journalism happening in print today. Web distribution is cheaper and simpler. With print you have to lay out a page by hand - and I have no idea what they used before Quark/InDesign, but it can't have been easy to work with - get it printed to film for litho, sometimes with a few iterations, handed over to a trad printer, then distributed physically. With the web you can upload text and images to a CMS and the layout can be handled automatically. And you're done. Ad revenue can also be automated, with manual exceptions for sponsorship deals. Ironically producing videos for YT is a much more labour-intensive process, and therefore more like print, than plain web content.

dark-star 4y ago

In Germany, c't and ix by "heise Verlag" are still pretty popular. That's the same "heise" where the somewhat-famous h2testw (for testing counterfeit USB sticks etc.), windows-offlineupdate (wsusoffline.net, now not very useful anymore) and umbpci (for those who remember the DOS days ;-) came from

janandonly 4y ago
I can second this. In Holland, we get a translated C'T which is the only high-quality general “computer magazine” still existing.