Jon Stokes used to be my favorite tech-vulgarization writer, and he always provided good analyses. I'm bummed that he stopped writing at Ars, but I hear he's doing great stuff elsewhere (but not writing as much I'm afraid).
All the people I cared about reading are gone. It's just another tech news site now. It used to be an original content site too. There is still some original content, but it's nowhere near the caliber of stuff Stokes was putting out, and some of the newer stuff has a political slant to it that I don't care for. Jon always kept it technical.
I hadn't frequented Ars for ages when I downloaded one of their podcasts last fall. I listened for a while before I realized the cacophony of giggling and memes wasn't pre-show foolishness - it was the whole show.
Now that I know the name and look back, pretty much everything I characterized Ars with was written by Jon Stokes.
When they did their last design, it was pretty obvious. They threw out their Microsoft and open source sections, and left the Apple section. These days I sarcastically refer to Ars as an Apple blog.
The first time I came across Ars I read an amazingly detailed, multi-part explanation of the Itanium/IA-64 architecture (must have been Stokes). It was fascinating. A few years ago I tried to find it in the archives and failed (maybe only subscribers have access?). It's a shame they let pieces like that die.
Do you remember who used to cover open source for them, and where they might be writing now? I really don't feel like Ars offers a comprehensive perspective of the industry any more.
So true. Jon Stokes also wrote the great book "Inside the Machine: An Illustrated Introduction to Microprocessors and Computer Architecture" while he worked at Ars Technica. I have it still in my bookshelf. http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Machine-Introduction-Microproce...
