anandtech.com now redirects to the forums instead its front page of articles. Here is what the website previously tweeted about its future a year ago after winding down operations.[1]
"And while the AnandTech staff is riding off into the sunset, I am happy to report that the site itself won’t be going anywhere for a while. Our publisher, Future PLC, will be keeping the AnandTech website and its many articles live indefinitely. So that all of the content we’ve created over the years remains accessible and citable. Even without new articles to add to the collection, I expect that many of the things we’ve written over the past couple of decades will remain relevant for years to come – and remain accessible just as long."
> AnandTech will stay online so readers can continue to access articles from our archive, and the forums will remain active to serve our community. Our sister site Tom's Hardware, will also continue to publish all the latest news, reviews and more from the PC world. Thank you all
Future PLC seems to be gradually shutting down all of its activities, one publication or site at a time.
It's a shame because many of them had been publishing for decades. Were they really completely unsustainable? The ads in magazines like Computer Music and Future Music were actually interesting and relevant, unlike typical garbage web ads.
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.
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
Archiveteam did a full site crawl[1] when Anandtech announced they were stopping. You can browse the warc.gz files like a regular web page using https://replayweb.page
Alternatively you could use solrwayback[2] to index and browse the warc files.
I honestly don't understand why companies do this. There's still SO MUCH traffic from Google for these things.
I've routinely went to AnandTech EXCLUSIVELY from Google. This means that their "news" and new content is of little relevance to me, as it's usually something from a few years prior that I'm reading over there. Yet somehow, "have to publish every day"?!
Part of me thinks that this is related to the inefficiencies of all these CMS, where it costs too much to run the site compared to the revenue from the ads.
Or is there another reason?
Frankly, as an nginx "practitioner", all of these sites could basically be cached and served from a single $50/mo server from Hetzner, Online or OVH. Aren't they're getting far more in ad revenue than that? How does it make any sense to close the shop when you've got such a treasure trove that you could continue milking easily for at least like half a decade?
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 43.4 ms ] threadOriginally heard this via https://x.com/System360Cheese/status/1951501044875477254.
The latest indexed frontpage in the Internet Archive is from July 28: https://web.archive.org/web/20250728143805/https://www.anand....
The original farewell article, which is now only readable through the IA: https://web.archive.org/web/20250726035557/https://www.anand.... One paragraph reads:
"And while the AnandTech staff is riding off into the sunset, I am happy to report that the site itself won’t be going anywhere for a while. Our publisher, Future PLC, will be keeping the AnandTech website and its many articles live indefinitely. So that all of the content we’ve created over the years remains accessible and citable. Even without new articles to add to the collection, I expect that many of the things we’ve written over the past couple of decades will remain relevant for years to come – and remain accessible just as long."
[1]: https://x.com/anandtech/status/1829489697384706555
It's a shame because many of them had been publishing for decades. Were they really completely unsustainable? The ads in magazines like Computer Music and Future Music were actually interesting and relevant, unlike typical garbage web ads.
Seems people focused too much on the phrase "I am happy to report".
When the actual key phrase people missed was "for a while".
In hindsight, that implies knowledge it would be shutdown at some future date.
And while many people understand "indefinitely" to mean "unlimited", it also has a secondary meaning of "unspecified period of time".
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
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/anandtech-editorial-ann...
It’s sad because I miss printed content like tech magazines.
AnandTech Farewell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41399872 - Aug 2024 (598 comments)
Alternatively you could use solrwayback[2] to index and browse the warc files.
1: https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/job/202409012...
2: https://github.com/netarchivesuite/solrwayback
I've routinely went to AnandTech EXCLUSIVELY from Google. This means that their "news" and new content is of little relevance to me, as it's usually something from a few years prior that I'm reading over there. Yet somehow, "have to publish every day"?!
Part of me thinks that this is related to the inefficiencies of all these CMS, where it costs too much to run the site compared to the revenue from the ads.
Or is there another reason?
Frankly, as an nginx "practitioner", all of these sites could basically be cached and served from a single $50/mo server from Hetzner, Online or OVH. Aren't they're getting far more in ad revenue than that? How does it make any sense to close the shop when you've got such a treasure trove that you could continue milking easily for at least like half a decade?