3 ms·

This is not great. Decades of hardware reviews all the way back to the first GPUs becoming less accessible. Why would anyone consider taking it down when there

by kcb 1y ago

This is not great. Decades of hardware reviews all the way back to the first GPUs becoming less accessible. Why would anyone consider taking it down when there was so much content that could be hosted with little effort while still making some ad revenue? Anandtech articles were still at the top of many Google searches.

halJordan 1y ago
[flagged]
- kcb 1y ago
  Ok?
nerdsniper 1y ago
Being near the top of Google means you get an incredible amount of bot and AI traffic which costs a surprisingly large amount of money.
- dangus 1y ago
  Simultaneously, the fact that anyone with any supposed business experience gifted that priceless level of ranking would decide to shut down the business is insane. Like, the fact that someone is making money off of MySpace.com right now and Anandtech couldn’t swing it makes zero logical sense. To me it feels like they tried nothing and were all out of ideas. But that’s private equity for you.
  - Scoundreller 1y ago
    I’m still upset Rakuten shutdown fatwallet. Those forums were the best. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FatWallet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FatWallet
  - kmeisthax 1y ago
    Any time private equity does something stupid or short-sighted, remember this: Private equity firms - or, at least, the ones that people complain about - don't own their own capital. They have to rent it from somewhere else, and those people get paid first. The PE firm only really gets paid for their expertise when they make their hurdle. Ergo, PE is incentivized to make terribly short-sighted business decisions, because those are the ones that will bring in the money to make their hurdle. They get caught in a loop of buying and gutting otherwise productive businesses. This capital structure made sense back when PE was a tiny part of the economy that bought and modernized small businesses, but now PE is more akin to a failing empire; with an entitled aristocratic class that will shiv any leader that tries to change the structure to be more sustainable. They are spending $2000 on candles and the candles have knives.
- bapak 1y ago
  Static hosting is essentially free. Add ads and it's a cash machine, not the opposite. Either there's something that they didn't tell us or they're incompetent. The only thing needed is a staticization of their website, which any CMS they had could very easily be set up to do. Look at the archives of NYT, they're barebone pages that preserve the content without any dynamic areas.
  - geerlingguy 1y ago
    It is certainly not free at "hundreds of thousands of requests per minute" scale.
    - doctaj 1y ago
      Wouldn’t Cloudflare’s free CDN handle that? That kind of traffic is dirt cheap.
    - hansvm 1y ago
      It's not free, but it's not expensive. Server load at that scale is measured in single-digit dollars per month, and bandwidth _might_ require two pipes with enough images being loaded. Multiply by 20 for replication and latency issues, and you're still only talking $200/month. As a ballpark, even bad ad impressions bring in $10/mille, maybe $1/mille for something unintrusive. Does Anandtech get more than 200k impressions per month? If we're talking about a "hundreds of thousands of requests per minute" scale then I would certainly hope so.
      - Scoundreller 1y ago
        That’s the irony: forum traffic has shit cpm, but that’s what they’re keeping alive (for now). Users coming direct from organic search to an article tends to have the best: they’re more likely to be buyers and/or find the ads interesting. Main downside with ads on tech sites is their users block ads a lot.
      - ivape 1y ago
        Why would anyone take down a site like this? The content is done, the site is page ranked to the top, it’s passive money.
- joks 1y ago
  I wonder if Anubis or something could have been a viable solution but I'm sure they thought of that
- vachina 1y ago
  It’s only expensive if you’re paying the AWS, GCP tax. They’re stupid expensive for simple file hosting, and for no good reason.
  - merb 1y ago
    That is only true if you not use their cdns
- CoolCold 1y ago
  I don't know how much traffic they have, but say even on overexpensive IBM servers hosting, serving ~ 100TB/month was around 5000$
Scoundreller 1y ago
Sadly, I’ve had to resort to ChatGPT for stuff like this. Their internal archive will last longer. Of course, now there’s less and less of a way to see if it’s hallucinating. Going through this with an old hardware project where ChatGPT says _____ vulnerability exists in their early units, but zeeero references, even on archive.org
Workaccount2 1y ago
Maybe they age hoping for a buyout.
- ethbr1 1y ago
  They were already bought out. By Purch in 2014, and then Future [0] in 2018. This reads like some shit-for-brains VP at the acquirer couldn’t figure out how to make it work, so they’re putting it on ice. The most destructive part of acquisitions seems to be the acquirer assigning a low-talent leader to the new acquisition, who then by virtue of no experience runs it into the ground, then blames its failure on the company itself. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_plc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_plc

by kcb 1y ago

halJordan 1y ago

[flagged]

kcb 1y ago
Ok?

nerdsniper 1y ago

Being near the top of Google means you get an incredible amount of bot and AI traffic which costs a surprisingly large amount of money.

dangus 1y ago
Simultaneously, the fact that anyone with any supposed business experience gifted that priceless level of ranking would decide to shut down the business is insane. Like, the fact that someone is making money off of MySpace.com right now and Anandtech couldn’t swing it makes zero logical sense. To me it feels like they tried nothing and were all out of ideas. But that’s private equity for you.
- Scoundreller 1y ago
  I’m still upset Rakuten shutdown fatwallet. Those forums were the best. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FatWallet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FatWallet
- kmeisthax 1y ago
  Any time private equity does something stupid or short-sighted, remember this: Private equity firms - or, at least, the ones that people complain about - don't own their own capital. They have to rent it from somewhere else, and those people get paid first. The PE firm only really gets paid for their expertise when they make their hurdle. Ergo, PE is incentivized to make terribly short-sighted business decisions, because those are the ones that will bring in the money to make their hurdle. They get caught in a loop of buying and gutting otherwise productive businesses. This capital structure made sense back when PE was a tiny part of the economy that bought and modernized small businesses, but now PE is more akin to a failing empire; with an entitled aristocratic class that will shiv any leader that tries to change the structure to be more sustainable. They are spending $2000 on candles and the candles have knives.
bapak 1y ago
Static hosting is essentially free. Add ads and it's a cash machine, not the opposite. Either there's something that they didn't tell us or they're incompetent. The only thing needed is a staticization of their website, which any CMS they had could very easily be set up to do. Look at the archives of NYT, they're barebone pages that preserve the content without any dynamic areas.
- geerlingguy 1y ago
  It is certainly not free at "hundreds of thousands of requests per minute" scale.
  - doctaj 1y ago
    Wouldn’t Cloudflare’s free CDN handle that? That kind of traffic is dirt cheap.
  - hansvm 1y ago
    It's not free, but it's not expensive. Server load at that scale is measured in single-digit dollars per month, and bandwidth _might_ require two pipes with enough images being loaded. Multiply by 20 for replication and latency issues, and you're still only talking $200/month. As a ballpark, even bad ad impressions bring in $10/mille, maybe $1/mille for something unintrusive. Does Anandtech get more than 200k impressions per month? If we're talking about a "hundreds of thousands of requests per minute" scale then I would certainly hope so.
    - Scoundreller 1y ago
      That’s the irony: forum traffic has shit cpm, but that’s what they’re keeping alive (for now). Users coming direct from organic search to an article tends to have the best: they’re more likely to be buyers and/or find the ads interesting. Main downside with ads on tech sites is their users block ads a lot.
    - ivape 1y ago
      Why would anyone take down a site like this? The content is done, the site is page ranked to the top, it’s passive money.
joks 1y ago
I wonder if Anubis or something could have been a viable solution but I'm sure they thought of that
vachina 1y ago
It’s only expensive if you’re paying the AWS, GCP tax. They’re stupid expensive for simple file hosting, and for no good reason.
- merb 1y ago
  That is only true if you not use their cdns
CoolCold 1y ago
I don't know how much traffic they have, but say even on overexpensive IBM servers hosting, serving ~ 100TB/month was around 5000$

Scoundreller 1y ago

Sadly, I’ve had to resort to ChatGPT for stuff like this. Their internal archive will last longer. Of course, now there’s less and less of a way to see if it’s hallucinating. Going through this with an old hardware project where ChatGPT says _____ vulnerability exists in their early units, but zeeero references, even on archive.org

Workaccount2 1y ago

Maybe they age hoping for a buyout.

ethbr1 1y ago
They were already bought out. By Purch in 2014, and then Future [0] in 2018. This reads like some shit-for-brains VP at the acquirer couldn’t figure out how to make it work, so they’re putting it on ice. The most destructive part of acquisitions seems to be the acquirer assigning a low-talent leader to the new acquisition, who then by virtue of no experience runs it into the ground, then blames its failure on the company itself. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_plc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_plc