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Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

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Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

#21

Yeap, I agree. I've been reading technological news from El Reg since around 2000 and their writing style has changed a lot, it's not as humorous as it used to be. Once of the only reasons to visit them nowadays is for the BOFH (new episode every Friday): https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/bofh/

BOFH hasn't been every week since the mid-00s. I wish it were!

Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

#22
Personally I have just discovered the Register this year, and I like them a lot.

I have seen how the old style was, yes it different, but I wouldn't say its a run of the mill IT website.

Its reporting is pretty good, and they have good opinion pieces, like intel optane possible revolution for IT(1), tracking obfuscation by big tech (2) and safari WebKit limiting mobile web (3) articles.

1. https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/01/optane_intel_cancella...

2. https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/23/opinion_column/

3. https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/06/big_techs_big_privacy...

There are other website like InfoWorld, which produced articles like how docker broke in half, however their website is annoying, and in general less focus on FOSS/Linux.

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3632142/how-docker-broke-i...

Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

#23

Weirder is what happened to its successor theinquirer.net? It was bought and then erased. Who does that? Was it a copyright thing? Otherwise theregister hit that brief window between professional magazine publishing and every teenager with a phone becoming a tech blogger, the brief window when website publishing was cheap but not yet overcrowded.

if someone's website was "stealing" traffic from your website, then purchasing the offending site and shutting it down would be business move to eliminate competition.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

#24
post #11
post #9

Funny enough, I stopped reading the Register after a few attempts because I disliked its headlines and tone. "To each his own" I guess.

You have to see it in the context of British tabloids (mass-readership, low-brow newspapers), especially of the 80s and 90s. The Register was emulating this style of irreverant journalism. For example have a look at some Sun headlines: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3654446.stm

Yeah, that's exactly why I never really got into the site; I got the joke, it just seemed weirdly awkward and off-putting, like having a coworker who talks like a pirate all day, every day. It's funny at first, but it drives you crazy after a while.
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