New tech site recommendation - I rather like @gadgette

[andrewducker]

I can't remember exactly when I stopped reading The Register, finally fed up with the hectoring tone and frequent bias of writers more interested in banter than conveying tech news*.

I asked for advice at the time, and eventually settled on Ars Technica, who give a wide-ranging view on the tech world, with in-depth articles and good clear writing. And it's been my main source for tech news since - to the point whre I pay for a subscription, so that I can read it ad-free (and get complete stories in the RSS feed).

Over the last few days I've added a second site to that - Gadgette. Which I initially shied away from, even after reading a couple of good articles, because it brands itself as a women's tech-site. But actually, it's not _for_ women, it's just for people. It doesn't focus on "women's issues", it just acts inclusively, (presumably because it's written by women writers). And I've been regularly enjoying the quality of their articles.

Well worth taking a look, if you're looking for a consumer-tech-related news site.

*I liked it when it was tech news with an edge of sarcasm, knowingness, and blistering commentary. But at some point I got bored of the constant, repeated, tropes, and the feeling that they had lost control of their writers, more interested in page views than reporting.

Comments

[marahmarie]

OK, I'll bite. I haven't even looked at the site yet (but I will) but right off the bat, as a woman, I hate anything besides actual safe journaling spaces/forums/etc. that are women only. It's like pink power tools. Do not give me pink power tools. I want to use the same color power tools as all the other genders do and not *be* othered by a stereotyped color choice. I don't care if men someday happen to favor pink but until then, if you don't then I'll use whatever color you're using. There is no special color to show that it's just for me. I am simply nauseated by that sort of thing.

(I'm no regular visitor of Jezebel or JaneXoX or whatever other strictly-women blog is out there for the same reason. It's nice to have your own space, yeah. Every once in a while it's even nice to go visit it. But a steady diet of that, like a steady diet of anything biased too far in any one direction, gets to be a bit too much for me to take, after a while. The whole tone becomes too strident to keep on consuming, I guess.)

[andrewducker]

As I said above But actually, it's not _for_ women, it's just for people. It doesn't focus on "women's issues", it just acts inclusively

It's not all in pink (although the logo is more that way), or anything like that.

[marahmarie]

it brands itself as a women's tech-site means it doesn't matter what anyone thinks it is; the editors have decided it's for women (though I could find no conclusive evidence pointing to it being branded or not branded as a woman's tech site, fwiw).

After leaving my comment (which I pointed out later in a post of my own was obnoxious in my own opinion because I was just feeling the thing I feel when bias - even women's bias toward women - gets on my nerves) I checked out the site and was not impressed. The tech portion just focuses on writing about the features of some new and currently available tech. The phones they concentrate their fawning on seem to only be available to people not in the US.

There's no writing about protecting yourself online, how to hack things, how change things, how to do things at all. That's not very tech-y to me and is the exact reason I stopped reading/following TechCrunch, Engadget et al years ago. Boring. I myself favor Ars Technica, Reddit on technology, StackExchange (really my favorite, though it's more a forum than anywhere where one can make standard blog posts), Medium tech writers, Quora for tech questions/answers, and so on. Gadgette is just a lightweight compared to all that.

To keep this as sort of fair and balanced as possible, I also checked out the one portion of Gadgette that focuses on women's issues in tech, and I was kind of pleased with it. Again, I could never make a steady diet of it because it would get to me (the amount of hurdles we face in tech simply for being women seems almost insurmountable and too much reading about it tends to depress me too much to keep it up) but as a once in a while thing I wouldn't mind going back to that part to check out new posts.

It's a new site from what I can tell, so hopefully their reporting will expand in breadth and scope with time. The writers are competent enough and the editor seems like an admirable person, so I wish them all the luck in the world.