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?"

Comments

Analog

[j-pimp]

Analog: Science Fiction and Fact

Communications of the ACM

[larry bagina]

Proceedings of the IEEE, etc.

The one you ONLY buy in print with cash

[__aasehi2499]

2600, maybe a mask too ;D

Re:The one you ONLY buy in print with cash

[MisguidedPenguin]

Mmm, I've bought it with my Visa, and even had a subscription to it a few times, and I have since been declared Top Secret Eligible, so if you get put on a watch list for it, they apparently don't care that much about it.

Re:The one you ONLY buy in print with cash

[ebunga]

For security clearances, they don't care about what you know. Rather, they care about who you know and whether that $20,000 in unsecured debt makes you easy to blackmail.

Communications of the ACM

[sticks_us]

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.

Make Magazine

[ThoughtMonster]

Not strictly "geek" stuff, but always interesting. Though I guess you already know of it.

Linux Format Magazine?

[lucidlyTwisted]

Linux Format

For 11

[xigxag]

http://www.circuitcellar.com/

http://www.2600.com/

http://www.linux-magazine.com/ (Linux Pro)

Re:For 11

[betterunixthanunix]

Worth mentioning that 2600 magazine can be found at Barnes and Noble (so instant gratification is still possible with printed magazines).

Re:For 11

[LWATCDR]

i can not recommend Circuit Cellar enough.
You may want to add http://www.nutsvolts.com/

Makezine

[tamyrlin]

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.

WIRED Magazine

[nathanator11]

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.

Perhaps...

[jtownatpunk.net]

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.

Re:Perhaps...

[digitig]

Since geeks are the most likely target market to accept a shift to electronic distribution

I'm not convinced of that. Geeks may be the most likely to have the gadgets to read electronically distributed mags, but they're also the ones most likely to know the downsides of that and the ones most likely to quarrel over formats and possible DRM. I think it's fairer to say that geeks are the most likely market to be divided over a shift to electronic distribution.

Re:Perhaps...

[bcrowell]

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.

Yes, but the replacement has its own problems.

AFAICT, Linux Magazine is currently pretty much free online, although it looks like you may have to pay to get material older than 6 months...? The trouble with this approach is that it kills the publisher's revenue stream. It's great to cut costs by eliminating printing and postage, but cutting costs doesn't help you if you lose your revenue. This is the same sort of thing that newspapers are currently struggling with. Some are paywalled, most aren't. I'm not aware of any high-quality daily newspapers in the US that have eliminated print. Does Linux Magazine now get its only revenue from ads? If that works for them, more power to them, but I don't think it's viable for most magazines to be supported only by ads -- not if they pay professional writers and editors.

What many magazines are probably going to end up doing is switching to distribution via proprietary systems like the Kindle and iPad, with DRM. That sucks. The good thing about print is that although you can photocopy it, that would be a pain to do. As a result, people like me are willing to pay for a subscription to the New Yorker or Asimov's Science Fiction.

Re:Perhaps...

[vlm]

Photocopy the schematic, trash it all up with soldering iron burns in the basement lab... Photocopy the parts list and haul it around with me everywhere until I acquire all the parts I need from fests and whatever? Scribble notes and equations all over the printout as I modify as necessary and see fit. Scribble notes on the schematic as I build (so, the analog ground is the green wire, and the optoisolated digital side ground is the black wire, vs the RF ground that is balun xfrmr isolated to the leftmost toroid core...)

Most electronic distributions historically seem paranoid nuts about allowing purchasers to copy or print out articles, completely missing the point that if I didn't find at least one article in the mag worth printing out and hacking up, I wouldn't buy the %^&! magazine to begin with. Either you let me fire up ye olde laser printer or you go bye bye.

Re:Perhaps...

[quixote9]

"I used to work for a large magazine and their printing and postage costs are insane."

Okay. OT, I know, but I've figured this was the case. So why aren't their non-print subscription costs insanely less? I don't get it. And I don't see something else making up the difference. Server costs? Not bloody likely. Super-highly paid web designers? Yeah, right.

Re:Perhaps...

[equex]

Posting from a noscripted, flashblocked, ++ browser, I'd be careful with depending on geeks for ad revenue. I suppose most of you have similar setups.

Asimov's & F&SF

[Nova Express]

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).

HackerMonthly

[nFriedly]

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.

I also like Paper Magazines for the "Reading Room"

[sir lox elroy]

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.

IEEE Spectrum

[JohnM4]

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/

Re:Scientific American

[marshotel]

http://www.americanscientist.org/ American Scientist is a bit more like the old SA. Much smaller circulation and not as timely but most articles are written by scientists not journalists.

Geek does not mean EE anymore?

[vlm]

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.

Architecture magazines

[poity]

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

Re:Local bookstore?

[luis_a_espinal]

Check at your local bookstore? Somehow, there's always a large selection of very specific mags there that manage to stay in print.

And the majority are about Photoshop and gaming. Those might scratch the 3D Printer itch as the OP puts it, but I hardly see how these are relevant to engineering, coding or sys admin (which is what the OP is asking.)

IEEE

[ACorrosionOfDeviants]

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/).

Many thanks for the suggestions folks!

[QwkHyenA]

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