HN Reader

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.

1: https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/job/202409012...

2: https://github.com/netarchivesuite/solrwayback

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]

Originally 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

    > 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

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.

Related, I guess:

AnandTech Farewell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41399872 - Aug 2024 (598 comments)

Already got bit by this, remembered an external SSD I opened had a review there and wanted to compare hardware, and wasn't able to get to the review

A forum member says that an archive exists:

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/anandtech-editorial-ann...

Interesting, usually it's the forums of websites that die first, instead of the static content, due to requiring active maintenance and moderation...

Just learned they've stopped publishing. Sad! The old web is really dying. Seems like a bug though? They said they'll keep the site up "indefinitely".

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?

This sucks. Same with cnet, so many spec sheets for old crt monitors gone

Not even techy people can keep a list of simple URL redirects active?

did they not provide a copy of the CMS to the Internet Archive??!

It was already over when its namesake left for Apple really.

God this is sad :(

Big loss for the web.