One of the consistencies in my news feed for well over a decade has been the venerable tech news blog, Slashdot. News for nerds, stuff that matters, as the tagline put it. My Slashdot ID isn't one of the really low numbers and I've not used it much but it's low enough to date me to the early 2000s. The site has helped shape my outlook on Internet culture and brought me first news of some of the defining tech stories of the last decade.
But all good things eventually decline. I first saw whispers that Slashdot was past it and Hacker News was the Place to Be a few years ago and though I followed HN I refused to believe that Slashdot was dead. Sure they sometimes took a day to post a story and there were the inevitable dupes, but nobody's perfect, you insensitive clod!
This week however I finally see that Slashdot, the Slashdot that I used to know, is dead. Why? I'm at the epicentre of one of their stories. Well, I should say I was at the epicentre, they're not just a day late but a whole week late on a story that was all over mainstream media last Monday. Yes, my US colleagues chose 'GIF'(verb) as their Word of the Year and like your rather out-of-touch elderly relative Slashdot has caught up with a week-old newspaper on the day room coffee table and proudly announced the story as today's news.
News for nerds, stuff that mattered a week ago. Worth following only for old time's sake.
