[hylaride]

To be fair, the tone is supposed to be that way. It was designed as a UK-tabloid style IT news source, which have informal and opinionated tones (I don't know if it was originally done in jest or not).

The fact that it publishes in a low-brow, combative style in an industry that is (historically, anyways) mostly educated is part of the "joke", especially has most other tech press at the time it was created in the 1990s had conflict of interest relationships with tech companies (mostly relying on the same companies for advertising) - which is why the tagline is "biting the hand that feeds IT". It's easy to forget that most tech news sources were overwhelmingly uncritical to even bad tech. For those of us who had to actually deal with it, it was refreshing to know other people hated <insert vender product here>. For a good while in the 1990s (before it could stand on its own) it was a site written by people who actually worked with products from the tech companies (with their sales people) and could comment if they were going downhill or got screwed by pricing changes.

Is it possibly outdated and tiring now? Sure (it stopped being a daily news source for me around 2010), but it helps to understand the history and why it is or was popular.

[alephnerd]

The issue is these old school blogs aren't some random dudes eating ramen who love technology for the sake of technology anymore.

They are now owned by press wire publishers and corporate conference owners, and as companies have increasingly moved away from both these options, the tone has become increasingly uneven.

Look at how much RSA flamed Palo Alto Networks for deciding to quit RSA and how Register never uses snark in the articles it writes with CEOs, leadership, or companies who invite Register to their conferences.

It's basically an attempt at extortion, not the truth. The practitioners who are technical don't write for these rags. And most of the Register's (and at all their parent companies publications) are non-technical journalists for whom this is a dayjob which they'll inevitably leave to become a Comm Marketer at a Vendor like the dozens I've worked with.

> especially has most other tech press at the time it was created in the 1990s had conflict of interest relationships with tech companies

So does The Register. I've literally wined and dined their writers at RSA years ago.

[AtlasBarfed]

You might be right, but at least it is SOME skeptical source to fight back against the unending gusher of marketing bullshit.

The fact they may preferentially apply the snark based on "extortion" isn't great, but at least they are SOME voice, and like comedy some snarky sarcasm is often much more incisive that (shockingly) fluff.

And considering the gushing amound of shadow-sponsored fluff in other magazines, aka the flip side of your alleged "extortion". If anything, the non-snark is an honest signal to an informed reader.

[alephnerd]

> is SOME skeptical source to fight back against the unending gusher of marketing bullshit.

They aren't though. They are also marketing bs. If you work at a vendor, go slack your content marketing team for a coffee chat to understand how it works.

This is the managing company for The Register [0]. We'd work with AMs at Situation Publishing to be looped to the right magazine (Register, Next Platform, Blocks and Files, etc) and could complain to them if we gave enough business to them.

[0] - https://situationpublishing.com/

[hylaride]

You're complaining about the news/publishing industry in general, though.

As I mentioned earlier, the register isn't on my radar anymore and obviously sold out. In your original post, you had a hate-on with their tone, but it was their tone that (originally) made them refreshing. The discourse without it would be have reporting on corporate release announcements and various reviews by people who don't use the products day-to-day in their actual job.

Snarky tones about Larry Ellison needing yacht money or referencing whether a good or useful IBM product was worth having to deal with their aggressive sales people was the indications that the writers (again at one time) got or understood the industry.

Of course, that's not sustainable as a business model...

Anyways, my main point is that it's not the tone that's the issue, it's the publication industry for reasons that you stated.