4 ms·

Does anybody care about Slashdot this decade?

by moonbug 11y ago

cactusface 11y ago
To their credit, they were (apparently) the first blog / news aggregator. R.I.P.
- moonbug 11y ago
  Yes, but even back in '96 it was as dumb as a box of hammers.
  - cactusface 11y ago
    Thinking about a box of hammers makes me smile.
mdeeks 11y ago
Strangely, yes. I still read it daily believe it or not. It's like a lighter version of hacker news or arstechnica. Ars and HN are usually too deep and suck away my time and brain power (in a good way!). But sometimes I just want to spend a couple minutes reading tech news without having to think too hard. That's slashdot. But stay away from the comment section. It's horrible to navigate and lacks any interesting content at all. Seriously, don't even think about clicking into it.
- moonbug 11y ago
  Stick "127.0.1.1 slashdot.org" in your /etc/hosts. I promise you'll have forgotten about its very existence within a week.
  - mdeeks 11y ago
    My point is I don't want to forget. It still serves a purpose. I'd get over it if it vanished but I'd rather it not. I'm sure there are other alternatives out there though. Speaking of... any recommendations? I just want an on topic, light reading, tech news site. No machine learning, Markov chains, or "How we at company X solved Y" articles. Also not interested in "random gadget Y that has X more pixels than the last" articles. Know anything that fits the bill?
    - papaf 11y ago
      Soylent News is OK and meant as a Slashdot replacement. Its suffering from a lack of community though.
- amelius 11y ago
  The way I see it, slashdot is like hacker news, but with humor :)
papaf 11y ago
I still visit daily. The occasional brilliant comment makes it worth it.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  I guess FOMO is a thing. And at one point the amount of brilliant comments is not enough to justify filtering through the noise
bane 11y ago
I was blown away a few weeks ago when I came to chat with one of our tech leads during a lunch at his desk and he was reading slashdot. I asked him about it, doesn't read HN, reddit or really much else unless it's linked to from /. Weird. I don't think I've found a reason to go there in the last 2 years and even before then it was a struggle to find something that wasn't already reported elsewhere days or weeks before. It's kind of turned into my parent's facebook posts, echoing memes that have long come and gone but they think is new and original.
JeremyNT 11y ago
I still like slashdot because it covers a slightly broader range of subjects than HN. I feel like there's still some value in a curated aggregator like Slashdot. The list of topics will reflect the interests of the editors, which in turn will influence the kind of community which forms around it. HN and some subreddits are "better" than /. at garnering useful discussion for popular subjects which reach the front page. However, I still subscribe to slashdot's rss feed, and sometimes I discover items I find to be of interest there which do not interest the HN community generally (or are outside of its scope).

Does anybody care about Slashdot this decade?

by moonbug 11y ago

Does anybody care about Slashdot this decade?

cactusface 11y ago

To their credit, they were (apparently) the first blog / news aggregator. R.I.P.

moonbug 11y ago
Yes, but even back in '96 it was as dumb as a box of hammers.
- cactusface 11y ago
  Thinking about a box of hammers makes me smile.

mdeeks 11y ago

Strangely, yes. I still read it daily believe it or not. It's like a lighter version of hacker news or arstechnica. Ars and HN are usually too deep and suck away my time and brain power (in a good way!). But sometimes I just want to spend a couple minutes reading tech news without having to think too hard. That's slashdot. But stay away from the comment section. It's horrible to navigate and lacks any interesting content at all. Seriously, don't even think about clicking into it.

moonbug 11y ago
Stick "127.0.1.1 slashdot.org" in your /etc/hosts. I promise you'll have forgotten about its very existence within a week.
- mdeeks 11y ago
  My point is I don't want to forget. It still serves a purpose. I'd get over it if it vanished but I'd rather it not. I'm sure there are other alternatives out there though. Speaking of... any recommendations? I just want an on topic, light reading, tech news site. No machine learning, Markov chains, or "How we at company X solved Y" articles. Also not interested in "random gadget Y that has X more pixels than the last" articles. Know anything that fits the bill?
  - papaf 11y ago
    Soylent News is OK and meant as a Slashdot replacement. Its suffering from a lack of community though.
amelius 11y ago
The way I see it, slashdot is like hacker news, but with humor :)

papaf 11y ago

I still visit daily. The occasional brilliant comment makes it worth it.

raverbashing 11y ago
I guess FOMO is a thing. And at one point the amount of brilliant comments is not enough to justify filtering through the noise

bane 11y ago

I was blown away a few weeks ago when I came to chat with one of our tech leads during a lunch at his desk and he was reading slashdot. I asked him about it, doesn't read HN, reddit or really much else unless it's linked to from /. Weird. I don't think I've found a reason to go there in the last 2 years and even before then it was a struggle to find something that wasn't already reported elsewhere days or weeks before. It's kind of turned into my parent's facebook posts, echoing memes that have long come and gone but they think is new and original.

JeremyNT 11y ago

I still like slashdot because it covers a slightly broader range of subjects than HN. I feel like there's still some value in a curated aggregator like Slashdot. The list of topics will reflect the interests of the editors, which in turn will influence the kind of community which forms around it. HN and some subreddits are "better" than /. at garnering useful discussion for popular subjects which reach the front page. However, I still subscribe to slashdot's rss feed, and sometimes I discover items I find to be of interest there which do not interest the HN community generally (or are outside of its scope).