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After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer offer a magazine
- interroboink 3y agoEnd of an era. Though at the same time, I guess I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. I think the covers of Popular Science were the main thing I remember about it. It seems only a couple were by Norman Rockwell, but a lot of them had a similar vibe, which I enjoy.
- JohnFen 3y agoVery sad indeed. PS was one of the publications that had a huge positive influence on me. You did good. Rest in peace.
- tkanarsky 3y agoPopSci was how I learned to read English as a kid in the early 2000s. RIP to an old friend <3
- lupusreal 3y agoGoogle Books has complete editions of Popular Science available for free from 1872 to 2010: https://books.google.com/books/about/Popular_Science.html?id=qR8DAAAAMBAJ https://books.google.com/books/about/Popular_Science.html?id... https://www.popsci.com/diy/use-popsci-google-books-archive/ https://www.popsci.com/diy/use-popsci-google-books-archive/
- paulpauper 3y agoAbout time. I don't mean this negatively, but I mean it was inevitable. this is seen elsewhere too. either magazines going away or shrinking to pamphlets. putting content online is much more scalable, cheaper, faster, etc.
- JohnFen 3y agoThey moved entirely online a couple of years ago. Now they're just shutting up shop entirely. > putting content online is much more scalable, cheaper, faster, etc. But it's a much worse format (in my opinion) for reading something like PS. When they moved online, I stopped reading them because the media itself removed too much value for me.
- massysett 3y agoYeah there is definitely value in the stapled sheaf of pages. I still read The Economist this way. It’s nice having a contained space that says: in the judgement of the editors, this is the most important stuff for the time period this issue covers. Online is a constant dribble of stuff—no snapshots. And putting magazines online in PDF is just miserable. The Economist does a not bad job of putting magazines in the app in readable format.
- Aeolun 3y agoI think that’s the whole value of magazines right? You pay them to curate for you. If the only thing they curate is print ads, then all the value is already gone.
- 15457345234 3y agoThey're still self-owned and haven't fallen into the grasp of toxic 'brand management' companies.
- JohnFen 3y agoThat, and being in paper form alone brings a great deal of value. The medium is the message, after all, and magazines in electronic form do not substitute adequately for printed magazines in many, many ways. Electronic form brings unique advantages, of course, but also removes advantages of printed form. It's a trade-off. That trade-off works very well for certain types of publications, and works terribly for others. I argue that magazines is one of the things it works terribly for.
- Covzire 3y agoWas the only magazine subscription my Dad had growing up, always loved paging through it as a kid. RIP.
- lasc4r 3y agoNot sure if we ever had a subscription but I read them a lot as a kid. Along with popular mechanics. In a waiting room nothing even comes fucking close. Or came close. RIP.
- Nifty3929 3y agoThis makes me sad, but also a long time coming. I remember reading them cover-to-cover as a kid several decades ago, but the quality went down, ads went up, etc. and I haven't read one now in 10 years or more.
- Nifty3929 3y agoJust a couple of headlines I grabbed from their home page just now: "Our favorite cannabis vaporizer is $90 off for Cyber Monday" "2024 BMW G 310 R review: A starter bike you won’t outgrow" "You can still get the best Apple products at the best prices … if you act fast" "20+ luxury items that are less pricey for Cyber Monday" "This is your last chance to save $100 on an Xbox Series X during Cyber Monday" I really just think there is no consumer market left that would support well written, long-form science journalism. So the choice is either to close up shop, or act as a front for retail outlets.
- VHRanger 3y agoOr fund with charity money, like Quanta
- nerdponx 3y ago> I really just think there is no consumer market left that would support well written, long-form science journalism Nautilus is trying to be that. It's honestly not very good writing or editing, but I still enjoy the experience of getting a science magazine in the mail every once in a while and skimming through it.
- jqcoffey 3y agoScientific American is still in print. I guess I don’t know for how long, but I love it.
- ars 3y agoScientific American publishes nonsense in the guise of science. They are not a reliably publication anymore. https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/scientific-american-goes-woke https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/scientific-american-go... https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202 https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-shameful-decline-of-scientific-american-a028b90d0bdd https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-shameful-decline...
- justinzollars 3y agoMaybe some rich VCs should buy this thing, and convert it into a tech publication that is pro tech.
- sadhorse 3y agoVC tend to invest in things going the opposite way.
- qudat 3y agoHN eats that lunch
- manicennui 3y agoAnd fill it with even more ads and clickbait articles.
- eropple 3y agoIf "tech", as you define it here, was doing things that were good for people, would a party-apparatus publication be necessary? This is obvious, of course, but rarely do socially valuable innovations require captive media to substantiate them to the body public. When the body public actually wants to hear about them, there's money to be made by educating them. Real "are we the baddies" energy here.
- h2odragon 3y agoAlso, "Wired" has been filling that slot
- excitom 3y agoIt will be interesting to see if the revival of the printed Rock & Roll magazine Creem https://www.creem.com https://www.creem.com will find enough Boomer nostalgia to succeed. If so, then maybe PopSci too. Not holding my breath, however.
- dottjt 3y agoI remember I used to fervently read this in the library in high school (~2007). Haven't read it since lol.
- android42 3y ago> After 151 years ... needs to “evolve” beyond its I can't be the only one who noticed "151" and it definitely sounds like the author was alluding to it (pokemon) as well. Coincidentally Popsci and Nintendo Power were the only magazines I ever read and owned physical copies of.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoI don’t get the reference.
- android42 3y agopokemon 1st gen had 151 pokemon, making it a pretty recognizable number for pokemon fans, and nothing else of comparable notoriety for 151, and the word choice of "evolve" plus the added emphasis of the quotes in the article, I admit it was subtle and may not have been intended, but my mind instantly made that connection, but on second thought I guess they could have also simply intended "evolve" as a subtle science pun as well
- HumblyTossed 3y agoAh, okay. Thanks for this.
- atonse 3y agoI don’t know if this is a self selecting group on HN but I’d think a disproportionate amount of us read it growing up. Even the sections that talked about cool (and futuristic) stuff were great. This and Popular Mechanics, I’m not sure how we got them in our house in India growing up but I fondly remember both of them. Have we lost something? Where will future hackers get their inspiration from? Maybe a million different YouTube channels and proliferation of cheap ways to learn and tinker are fueling the next generation. Let’s hope so.
- sneak 3y agoMore people are reading more things more often than ever before. Indie hackers (as well as anyone else) can now cheaply publish their own magazines to the globe. I don’t think we lost something other than paper and postage. Pretty soon (in the scheme of things) they’ll stop printing books and paper money too. (I say this as a vinyl and book collector. It’s just facts. Our great grandchildren will not use physical books.)
- nerdponx 3y agoI don't think it will disappear entirely. Just like vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs, some people deliberately choose to buy dead tree media for one reason or another. Maybe print magazines will go first, and maybe print newspapers at some point in the future, but actual books will probably never go away.
- HomeDeLaPot 3y agoYes. Books might go the same way the horse has gone. No longer dominant, but still occupying niches.
- sneak 3y agoVinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs will also be unused in 100 years. Cassettes and VHS will by then be unreadable, just as most floppies are now. Hell, in 100 years, there won’t even be the mp3 codec anymore. You don’t need to tell me that people deliberately choose dead trees; I am one of them: I collect books and have more than most collectors. Same goes for vinyl. The writing is on the wall, however. In 100 years it won’t be a thing, just as fountain pens and wax seals aren’t today. Yes, they will still exist, and yes, people into whatever type of historical reenactment that is will still have them, but there will be no industry around them like there is now.
- underseacables 3y agoI was a subscriber for maybe 25 years, but the magazine got progressively light on content and heavy on ads. The articles became more like blurbs. This is sad to see but not unexpected for print media.
- huytersd 3y agoIt’s sad because you know they were internally fighting that change but just had no choice, financially.
- casefields 3y agoWe should look at this as an old long term relationship where you only remember the good times. The magazine we all grew up reading isn’t the same one it was today.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- xvector 3y agoEvery time I got this magazine as a child it was like Christmas!
- jamestimmins 3y agoBetween this and today's news about Sports Illustrated using AI-generated authors, today marks an unexpected decline in two the defining magazines of my childhood!
- nimish 3y agoWhere will I get my crank science ads on the H-bond angle of water?
- pyrophane 3y agoAt least National Geographic, Wired, and 2600 all still have print editions.
- mindcrime 3y agoOn a related note... one of my favorite parts of magazines like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics was always the ads in the back of the magazine. You could always find all sorts of weird shit advertised back there. Anti-gravity mechanisms, Tesla coil kits, ultrasonic weapons, "free energy" stuff, plans to build your own log-splitter, forge, plasma cutter, whatever. And one of the top places selling some of the cooler stuff was an outfit called "Information Unlimited". They, sadly, went the way of the dodo recently themselves. Apparently due to the death of the owner. :-( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38329274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38329274
- HPsquared 3y agoAlso the ads on old VHS recordings. I don't think many people save ads these days, I guess the equivalent is banner ads caught in screenshots, that kind of thing.
- godzillabrennus 3y agoI saved this ad when I was a kid: https://i.imgur.com/npMzu3i.jpg https://i.imgur.com/npMzu3i.jpg Loved the slogan. Vintage tech ads can be fun.
- Kye 3y agoThen there's the rare ad meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/its-more-likely-than-you-think https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/its-more-likely-than-you-thin...
- Loughla 3y agoI bought plans to build a log splitter back in the day. It sucked until I upgraded it with a hydraulic cylinder from an old d4. Now it can split granite I think.
- mindcrime 3y agoSee, this is why I love HN. You can pull the most ridiculous, obscure, unlikely thing out of the air... like "ordering log splitter plans from Popular Mechanics magazine ads" or whatever... and without fail, there will be somebody in the comments who actually did that. And then actually built the thing. And upgraded it to an even higher level!! You can't beat this place. :-)
- marifi 3y agoAs someone who never had a subscription, but would always thumb through when given the opportunity, that's a bummer.
- JWLong 3y agoI ran to the mailbox for these. Sad day. And yet, as others have said, “It felt inevitable.” Popular Science was never the bastion of journalistic integrity, and yet this leaves me worried about print publishing in general. If a periodical can’t make it, what happens to print news?
- rjh29 3y agoPrint news is only a matter of time, right? The US daily newspaper circulation declined 30% between 2016 and 2020. UK newspapers are dropping 10-20% in circulation in 2023 -alone-. Most of our magazines are already dead or extremely low quality. Japan is doing well though. The Yomiuri Shimbun is published twice daily and has a morning circulation of 7 million. Magazines and periodicals are very much alive, including 500+ page manga magazines and the weekly Famitsu gaming magazine.
- sourcecodeplz 3y agoOnce the Internet came I didn’t really read anywhere else but there.
- zombiwoof 3y agowithout Popular Science Popular Mechanics , I'm not sure my childhood would have even existed
- benrapscallion 3y agoOnly those who were paying for a print subscription have the right to protest this move. And the shuttering of other newspapers and magazines.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoSigh. I’m getting old. Everything I once loved is dying.
- pico303 3y agoI agree. Started subscribing to magazines again because trying to read articles online is such a nightmare.
- liquidpele 3y agoIt’s the ciiiiiiiircle of liiiiife… We lost magazines, and gained YouTube channels that are WAY better.
- gnicholas 3y ago> In addition to dropping its magazine format, PopSci laid off several employees earlier this month, leaving around five editorial staff members and “a few” workers on the publication’s commerce team, according to Axios. Does this mean they no longer have any writers? Or are they saying that the editorial staff has been cut to five? Do they just oversee freelance journalists?
- user3939382 3y agoMy father and I always loved it. He would buy me copies and subscriptions as gifts. We’d look at it together and share excitement and interest over its articles. The best part was the section showing off the coolest new gadgets. My dad’s been gone a long time now, seeing this thread disappear is very sad. I guess just another step toward the inevitable future in which we ourselves belong only to the past.
- MR4D 3y ago> PopSci will continue to offer articles on its website, along with its PopSci Plus subscription, which offers access to exclusive content and the magazine’s archive. So they’ll still publish, just not in “magazine format”. Freakin clickbait. God I hate the Verge.