Slashdot Mirror
The H Shuts Down
TexasDex writes "After years of providing great news reporting to the open source community, including interviews, great Linux kernel update summaries, and even breaking the Skype spying story well before it was leaked, The H Online is closing down due to lack of profitability. I've checked them daily for years, so it's sad to see them go."
I guess that was part of their problem. Too bad - it's a great resource.
No wonder profitability is down, you kind of have to get the word out that you exist.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
...truly shutting down or announcing a shutdown so the news can give free advertising.
The H was probably one of the best tech/security sites around.
The writers and editors were well educated, rational and not prone to sensationalism like many others.
There was no fanboism; just impartial, well written journalism. A real "News for Nerds" site.
You'll be sorely missed, lads. Thanks for all the hard work.
...truly shutting down or announcing a shutdown so the news will give free advertising.
Their stories were posted on slashdot pretty regularly, at least weekly if I had to guess. I don't know how to search slashdot just for links in articles, but a general search brings up quite a few of them.
Who's going to buy the domain and turn it into a Hentai site?
Must be poorly managed.
I'm really sad to see them go.
I usually visit "The H" daily (along with sites like lwn.net, Slashdot, and Groklaw), because they had lots of interesting stuff.
Sounds like a lot of people who would have liked them didn't know about them. I don't know if that would have helped with monetization, but it might have.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
...but its definitely be sad to see them go.
RIP HardOC--wait H-online?
I believe that most of the stuff on H Online is also available through the newsticker of Heise (http://www.heise.de/newsticker) in German. Which should not be such a surprise considering that H Online is/was operated by Heise (their UK part in this case) as well.
Heise is the publisher who publishes for example the well respected computer magazine c't in Germany.
... no big loss. Like many, I had never heard of them either. Lots of non-stories and speculation, and nothing I really would have spent time reading if the story had been on Slashdot's front page. And this is the best of four years of stories. Potentially world-changing projects ... other desktops besides Unity ... history of GNU Hurd ... I can see why this went nowhere.
The what shut down, exactly?
#DeleteChrome
In vaguely related new, unfortunately, the rapper D'ache (pronounced D H but not spelled as such) is still around
http://www.reverbnation.com/dache
Assholes everywhere scream out in horror.
I read h-online on a regular basis and will miss it. Always read the What's new in Kernel *.* features for example.
A give-away that the site didn't have high readership was the very low number of comments added to the articles - often none and sometimes might get as high 3 or 4.
I'm seeing a lot of snarky "well, I never heard of them so ..." posts here. The fact is, the H was a source of some pretty great journalism. They're German and they had a lot of German content too. I discovered them through some insightful articles about SUSE Linux, which was (obviously) closely linked to Germany at one point.
This week I've seen several niche news providers I like shut down, always because they find it's too hard to make money off it. I can relate - I've got a site that struggles too.
I wonder if we're not headed to a generation of uninformed people and shitty, community-run group-think blogs straddled by a couple of old-school, pandering-to-the-masses traditional media.
What happened to the Internet? Oh yeah, everyone decided they should be able to have things - especially information - for free.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
when the uninformed people who never heard of the H are prevented from commenting.
There should be a yearly exam that must be Aced for the privilege of not posting as
Anonymous Coward.
The Hentai Online?
for reals...
why didn't they post stories on slashdot?? then they would have got some attention. in fact... hang on: why have i *never* seen an article on h-online cross-referenced anywhere, and why have i *never* seen them in a google search??
Says more about you than them
Besdies, how do you know it's such a great resource if this is the first you've heard of it?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Kickstart the revival now! Marketing experts, get your asses into something worthy of attention, will you? Go talk to The H
If asked, I would have said that they were in my top 5 IT sites, but the fact is that I rarely actually went to them. I don't know why exactly I didn't go more. What makes a site be at the forefront of somebody's mind when they sit down with coffee in pursuit of their daily news? The best reason I can come up with is that the name wasn't quite as punchy as "slashdot.org" or "ars technica"...
And never heard of them till now.
Half of these jackasses commenting here supposedly haven't even heard of The H!
They were a pretty decent news site. And I say that as an English speaker. (I do speak a little German as well but not enough to read the news in German.) Just a bit too populist to get the highest score.