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HardOCP Is Getting 'Mothballed' As Kyle Bennett Accepts Job At Intel (hardocp.com)
Slashdot reader grasshoppa writes: Kyle Bennett, long-time owner/operator of one of the last independent review sites, HardOCP, announced that effective April 1st he will be leaving it behind to start a new career at Intel. "Effective April 1, 2019 I will be taking on the position of Director of Enthusiast Engagement for Intel's Technology Leadership Marketing group," Bennett writes. "Intel wants to reconnect with the top of the high-performance consumer pyramid which contains hardware enthusiasts, overclockers, gamers, and content creators. This is the part of our community that has great influence through word of mouth and online engagement. I'll be focusing on helping Intel get back in touch with this audience and re-establishing a voice and dialog on where the company is going with its future technologies. If you are reading this, you are very likely already part of this group."
He goes on to say that he does not want to sell HardOCP or HardForum and see those properties turned into something that he would not be proud of. Instead, "HardOCP will be 'mothballed,'" he writes. "It will no longer publish news, editorial, or hardware review content. [...] HardForum.com will be sold to a company that I have done business with for years, one that I can trust to run it in the way you are familiar with. HardForum will be demonetized and all advertising and commission links removed. Simply put, HardForum will not make money in any way..."
You can read Bennett's full statement here.
He goes on to say that he does not want to sell HardOCP or HardForum and see those properties turned into something that he would not be proud of. Instead, "HardOCP will be 'mothballed,'" he writes. "It will no longer publish news, editorial, or hardware review content. [...] HardForum.com will be sold to a company that I have done business with for years, one that I can trust to run it in the way you are familiar with. HardForum will be demonetized and all advertising and commission links removed. Simply put, HardForum will not make money in any way..."
You can read Bennett's full statement here.
Everyone in the industry knows the big tech sites like Toms Hardware, Anandtech, and (once) HardOCP have always been in Intel's pocket- indeed these sites rely on the regular payments from Intel's slush funds.
Remember Intel's Netburst- 100 times worse than AMD's Bulldozer? Well at the time AMD had the vastly superior AMD x64 chips and true dual core, yet the big sites all told readers that Intel's Netburst (and Intels race to 10GHz) were the future.
Today AMD has the vastly superior Zen architecture, so the same sites tell readers only games matter- and then only the games so badly coded they rely on single threaded performance.
Zen 2 (Ryzen 3)- released a few months from now- sees AMD reach 5GHz, 16 cores, and use a fraction of Intel's power consumption when doing the same amount of work. So Intel needs some super special shilling, and the ultra corrupt Kyle is the man for the job. After all he has years of experience doing exactly this.
Many years ago I was just getting in to the hardocp scene. In a forum post I made a simple joke. Nothing distasteful or derogatory. A mod then bans me temporarily. Surprised, I posted in the mod forum asking what I had done wrong so I could avoid such mistakes in the future. Afterall, I'm just a normal human will no ill intent. Mr. Kyle the dickhead then comes along and perma-bans me for that post. To this day I have no idea why other than he is a jerk.
From that day on I have had hardocp blocked in DNS on all my networks.
The dude could have been content being a hero in the enthusiast/IT community. He could have been remembered long after he was gone.
Now... he's killing the baby for a cash payout. He'll be remembered for this.
But who cares... it's all about the big bucks.
I suspect it's less about selling out, and more about finally letting go of something that was costing him money out of pocket to run every month. There's something to be said for not having to worry about whether or not you can afford health insurance for your family.