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Ask Slashdot: Geek-Centric Magazines Still Published On Paper?
QwkHyenA writes "I've recently cancelled my Linux Magazine subscription because they went paperless. I know, I'm a heartless geek and should be 'shunned,' but I enjoy the unplugged sensation of reading paper periodicals. What sort of magazines are out there that still are delivered via USPS that will scratch my Engineering, Coder, System Administrator and 3D Printer itch?"
Analog: Science Fiction and Fact
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Check at your local bookstore? Somehow, there's always a large selection of very specific mags there that manage to stay in print.
Proceedings of the IEEE, etc.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
2600, maybe a mask too ;D
Join the ACM.
This still comes on paper every month (plus a digital edition):
http://cacm.acm.org/
The articles cover a wide range of topics, including:
- Computing and society
- Legal issues
- New trends in computing
- Programming language geekery
Some of it may be too "niche" or "hardcore" (depending on your interests) but there's usually something for everybody in every issue. No, it won't be quite as task-specific as some of the mags out there (i.e., Not many articles with titles like "Turn up the Volume with LVM: twenty ways to crank up your hard drive!!") but excellent, nonetheless.
YMMV of course.
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
Not strictly "geek" stuff, but always interesting. Though I guess you already know of it.
Linux Format
http://www.circuitcellar.com/
http://www.2600.com/
http://www.linux-magazine.com/ (Linux Pro)
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
The make magazine is pretty good if you are into DIY. If you are into electrical engineering I guess Circuit Cellar or Elektor could be interesting as well.
No, strike that, Wired is gone over to the dark side of popular culture, but I read it still.
Come to think of it, been years since Wired was very geeky, or computing-centric. Feh.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
WIRED is a great magazine. They've got a paper edition ($10/yr) that includes free access to the iPad edition. They also have website, but I prefer to read their stuff on paper. Their great graphic design and looong articles are really nice to pick up and read.
Yep
Buggy Whip Monthly
Sorry but tech mags are going to be the first to drop paper distribution. I used to work for a large magazine and their printing and postage costs are insane . Like "buy a private island with a year's printing and mailing costs" insane. Each postage increase adds a nice 3-4 bedroom house to the year's overhead.
Since geeks are the most likely target market to accept a shift to electronic distribution, it's logical that they would be the first to make the move.
I know you were looking for technical magazines, but two of the most import science fiction magazines in the field, Asimov's Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction are still being published on paper (though I think both are also available in electronic format as well).
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
And, of course, time for magazines to publish things that print well on a home printer. The simplest way is "metric paper" and a printer that can do A3; fold it once and you have A4. (Also, you're the last 5% of people on earth who aren't using this sensible system, so get on with it already.) Print it booklet-wise and you have a full-blown magazine. Now for some glossy paper and a full-colour printer. Or a mini-offset press or something. Nice for the local hacker space. What better place to get your monthly paper fix, eh?
2600. You can get it via subscription, or you can buy it at your local Barnes & Noble.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
It may not be exactly what you're looking for, but it's a generally well-written a produced magazine that often features articles about computer science and engineering, along with articles about all of the other sciences. It's also unlikely to drop its print format any time soon.
http://hackermonthly.com/ They take the most popular articles from http://news.ycombinator.com/ and, with permission, republish the article in a beautiful print format.
Nathan Friedly
I was a little miffed when I got the notice about LJ going digital with 6 months left on my sub, but I have tried the Android app and have been pleasantly surprised.
Shift happens. Fire it up.
Digital versions are hard to read in the "Reading Room" with out the tablet having a chance to get wet. And a laptop on bare skin well that gets a little hot.
Kosh: "Understanding is a 3 edged sword, your side, their side, the Truth."
IEEE Spectrum is a magazine sort of like Popular Science except it's based on reality. Articles are geared for the general techie/engineer type and don't rely on you knowing specific fields. http://spectrum.ieee.org/
That, and does a family really need a tablet for every single member? Seriously. I may want to read my magazine and my wife may want to read hers at the same time! Is it more cost effective to have a couple of magazine subscriptions for 12-30 dollars a year or two tablets at ~$800 every few years?
I agree that it's sometimes better to get this information in print. Ditto for books: Sometimes I still buy two or three hard copies of books when dealing with a project I need to implement in an infrastructure, for many reasons. One is that it is better to not be chained to the desk (or a hot 17" laptop on my lap) curl up on the sofa studying the books. Kindle? Do not want. Real tablet? Sure, they're great. Ditto for my iPhone; many of the books I own in print, I also have eBooks of, and I've read many books on my iPhone. But, when I just want to concentrate and really study, or even while working at a server, or building software, unless I need bleeding-edge info or am tracking down solutions to obscure bugs, I prefer a book. They never need charging, do not need an internet connection, are more portable than a laptop, and just browsing through a book to skim through all the topics to get an overview is much more comfortable than loading page after page after page in a web browser or in an eBook/PDF reader. Highlighting in a printed book or magazine is far superior to highlighting features in Acrobat Reader.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
If geek does not equate to EE anymore, does that mean I'm one of the cool kids now? Wait; don't answer that, I know I am.
QST QEX Elektor nuts-and-volts monitoring-times if these titles mean nothing to you then turn in your soldering iron.
If you get the "proceedings of the whateverconf from 20-whatever" from the ham radio guys that is pretty good reading. "Proceedings of Microwave Update Conference 2011" was just released a week or two ago and you can get it from Lulu POD for about $20. I personally recommend the article about the 3 GHz 1 watt amplifier, and the waveguide-horn EME antenna article was a fun read. Yes there is only one "Microwave Update Conf" per year, but there are a couple conf proceedings that I purchase annually, so that every couple months I get a proceedings of the digital conf, proceedings of the various VHF conf, etc, you get the idea. Its.. kind of an expensive habit, but then again, its a heck of a lot cheaper than actually attending the conf, so...
I would not count MAKE, its cool and I read it and like it, but I don't think of it as a "magazine" anymore. MAKE is more like a short story non-fiction anthology that happens to be published on a very regular schedule. Then again "best science fiction of year X" seems to be published on a schedule too, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, and I don't know why people don't call it a "annual magazine". On the magazine side of the argument, MAKE does have regular columnists, but I counter that "best scifi of 20--" also have certain author names that seem to show up every year. Also I forgive them for having columnists simply because I enjoy reading Doctorow's column. Maybe its because I read and toss out magazines, but I have kept every single issue of MAKE on my bookshelf as a source of project ideas, just like I keep books. A complete set of MAKE is about 20 lineal inchs at this moment, I'd estimate just under two feet. Two feet of bookcase well spent.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
http://www.nutsvolts.com/
Comes each month on paper but has an electronic version available to subscribers. A good mix of electronics and electro-mech projects and articles, some simple and some advanced. One of the few places left where projects that are hardware and not just software are published, although there are many microcontroller projects as well.
I think Babbage Machine Monthly is still in print, along with the Gutenberg Times.
Hehehe, reminds me of one of my System/Business Analyst's calling it "the Christian Sciences Reading Room" (where the BEST thinking gets done!)... & yes: I keep "geeky mags" (Windows IT Pro &/or EWeek) next to the "throne" when doing business in "the Christian Sciences Reading Room" (lol) - because even THERE? You can keep learning... especially on computing (changes SO fast constantly).
A "real-world e.g." on that note as to my guests' comments on that note also?
My nephew (RIT student/undergrad senior in Computer Security related major) said once:
"I like your 'Christian Sciences Reading Room' material - always a good thing to pick up on in what we do for a living in computing..."
* He's a fellow "geek/nerd" though, so it makes complete sense.... & reading about what you're into in computing beats the snot outta reading shampoo ingredients off the bottles, imo @ least, for instance, lol...
APK
P.S.=> Anyhow/anyways - Thanks for "striking a chord" in the brain here that's from 1999-2000 in fact (that made me laugh way back then, & now, because of you)...
... apk
They have been very responsive to readers' objections in developing more usable formats/methods for electronic viewing - i.e. Android and iOS apps, as well as a better web-viewable mode (although I think it uses Flash - would need to poke that one around a bit more) as well as the original PDF (although that has been, and still seems to be, very unwieldy in terms of file size - usually a dozen MB or more - and thus slower to process with a tablet PDF viewer, and image-heavy articles not fitting well on anything less than 1024x768 screens). We tech readers are more demanding about our electronic publications it seems.
It is a work in progress that they are dead serious about getting right since they realize the magazine's survival depends on it.
QST,the journal of the America Radio Relay League, is still paper, as is the much more technical QEX, their radio experimenter's high tech journal.
I am a member of The IEEE Computer Society (slight discount from full IEEE membership) and get IEEE Computer in hard copy for no added cost. I also subscribe to the Computer Graphics and Applications, and Computing in Science and Engineering journals in hard copy. Good articles, some of which I even understand.
Beautiful, and enough technical detail to tickle your engineering bones without boring you to death
Some of the popular heavyweights:
http://archrecord.construction.com/
http://www.architectural-review.com/
http://www.japan-architect.co.jp/en/
http://www.detail.de/rw_3_News_En_Index.htm
http://www.elcroquis.es/Home.aspx?lang=en
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
If you like game development, GDM still does a paper issue.
http://www.gdmag.com/
I'm on your lawn! Nee-ner nee-ner!
http://www.popsci.com/
Yes, I complained about Linux Journal stopping the print edition too, but I broke down and bought a tablet and reading LJ there is great. (happens to be an iPad, so I guess my geek card is cancelled?)
What the heck else can you do for 20 minutes in the crapper ... browse Readers Digest.
That's the real reason geeks are willing to pay extra for paper magazines...
Wired is very popular magazine still mailed still has big name Technology players on the cover and 2600 magazine still has it's 2 times a year release on paper.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
I too like the permanence of paper magazines, plus if I skip an issue, I don't have to worry about making backups or that it might disappear from somebody's web site. My favorite magazine focusing on IT issues is ;login:, the magazine of the Usenix Association. I find it surprising and hard to explain why it's not more popular among IT professionals.
;login: is still pretty good, and on dead tree. It's the journal of USENIX/SAGE.
I have an entire shelf of the things going back to Babbage-knows when.
There's always something in there that trips my trigger. And it's published weekly, so the content is fresh.
Linux Magazine (at least the US version) has been gone for a couple years now. I’m guessing that the OP meant to write Linux Journal, which recently went digital?
AFAIK, the only remaining US print magazines, other than the ones associated with professional organizations, are:
Linux Pro Magazine
Ubuntu User
Admin magazine
These three have digital (PDF, DRM-free) and print subscriptions.
I maybe old school but I really miss Byte and PC magazine paper editions.
Two magazines that are great fun for anyone who likes electronics related things:
Nuts & Volts
Servo Magazine
E-pubs are cool too but I understand the joy of dead tree reading. A few that I get (aside from the ACM/IEEE/Make mentioned above) are:
Nuts & Volts : electronics hacking of all sorts
Servo : - sister pub to N&V focus on robotics
Home Shop Machinist
Machinist's Workshop
http://www.digitalmachinist.net/"> Digital Machinist :
three print mags directed at makers in metal. Latter focuses on CNC. Lots of projects of various levels
What's so special about being 'unplugged?' I never understood what fascinates people when they do enjoy something solely because it doesn't use electricity.
Skeptical Inquirer
http://www.nutsvolts.com/
Another relatively inexpensive option is the IEEE.
http://www.ieee.org/
Although the IEEE is encouraging members to switch over to digital only to reduce costs and waste, IEEE Spectrum and many of the technical society journals are still available on paper for those who want them.
- The society journals can be quite technical and specialized, but IEEE Spectrum maintains a broader focus.
- The IEEE Computer Society (www.computer.org) is the largest society in the IEEE, with lots going on and lots of publications.
- Other groups that might be of interest include the communications society (http://www.comsoc.org/), the robotics and automation society (http://www.ieee-ras.org/), or the society on social implications of technology (http://www.ieeessit.org/).
The following three are available in most decent newsagents:
Linux User & Developer
Linux Magazine
Linux Format
The above three all have programming articles of varying quality.
ACM (subscription)
I think there's also an Ubuntu magazine in most newsagents, but I'm not an Ubuntu fan, and generally ignore that one.
Comes every other month; can be MIT-centric, but is generally a good read.
IEEE Spectrum Magazine: A highly accessible magazine for the lay person and well in front of technology issues: http://spectrum.ieee.org/
Machine Design Magazine: http://machinedesign.com/?p=1 (and coincidentally, first story is about 3D printers)
It's not as good as I remember, but the writing is more engaging / less dry than Scientific American, and is actually somewhat useful in everyday life. Also tends to have wonderful explanatory graphics. Gives you a bit more coverage of biological sciences than some of the other recommendations I've seen here.
But really, just go to the periodical stacks at your nearest University Engineering library, I almost always find something completely random that engages me there.
Servo and Nuts & Volts are still on paper, I do believe.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
The real problem I have with magazines going digital isn't the loss of paper; it's the loss of freedom. Many magazines (Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, CQ, etc.) have handed their digital operations over to Zinio, which heavily DRMs their content. Don't renew your subscription? - lose access to previous copies you've already paid for.
If you want me to buy your eMagazine, give it to me in PDF, epub, or some other format where I can keep it and view it where I please.
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
c't and it's related magazine iX from Heise, if you can read German
Have been getting it since issue 3, and love every one.
Before 3D printers, there were 2D printer. It's a great invention that brought an end to the book manufacturing industry (publishing, printing and distribution) because people could now print 2D based products from the comfort of their home. The machine used simple materials such as paper and coloured ink and could transform them into book and magazine, given the proper blueprints which you can buy from the Internet. There might even be 3D blueprints to create such a machine
Oh wait... But as someone who lovingly memorized every page of those old 8 bit mags, I still love reading my periodicals in print. This new fangled inter web techo whizzery is to much for old dogs like me. Msdn and MacTech are two fun ones to read while fishing or camping or otherwise unplugged from skynet...
you should be shunned. why are you here?
I sincerely appreciate the suggestions folks and you've given me a number ideas I honestly hadn't even thought of!
And, Yes, I'll even buy a tablet in the future and probably restart my subscription to Linux Journal (I had that wrong in the OP.) But as a couple of you have pointed out, electronic devices are not compatible with all situations and sometimes I just need to take a break from an LCD screen.
-Qwkhyena
LFS. Have you built your system today?
I was so hoping to get my n3rd on ala showing up with only a kindle + some dice + paper + pen.
Science News: http://www.sciencenews.org/
Biweekly newsletter covering all areas of science at the "informed and intelligent layperson" level. Several feature articles each issue too. Dropped Scientific American long ago, kept this one.
Sky and Telescope: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/
If you live where the night sky is dark, this is the magazine. If you live where the night sky is full of light pollution, this lets you know what's going on out there in the dark. Mission updates, news clips, feature articles on latest research and technology both pro and am.
Check out Linux Pro, ADMIN, and Ubuntu User published by LinuxNewMedia.