Now That’s What I Call Ars Technica, Volume 1: Favorite stories from Ars’ 20 years

Actually, I think that was a popular timepiece style when the site first started.
Enlarge / Actually, I think that was a popular timepiece style when the site first started.

It’s true—Ars Technica is in the process of turning 20 years old throughout 2019. If you’ve ever looked at the whois info, our official birthday hits on December 29. But Ars was really birthed all throughout that first year, as Editor-in-Chief Ken Fisher (err, Caesar) and his fellow computer prosumers figured out how to start the most comprehensive PC enthusiast outlet around. “Our love for the PC is gonna lead us into bad, bad things like NT, Linux, and BeOS content under the same roof,” as the original Ars Mission Statement noted. “Please don’t report us!”

Since then, well, Ars has definitely expanded. You can find anything from LARPing to archaeology industry trends alongside the latest Linux review on the site today. But throughout these past two decades and the site’s numerous evolutions, Ars still feels like it has stuck with the ethos of that initial public declaration—”having fun, being productive, and being as informative and as accurate as possible,” as Caesar put it.

So to cap off this week (itself likely a small start to what will inevitably be numerous trips down memory lane during our 20th anniversary year), we recently polled the Ars community—aka, staff and readers—to find out what folks consider some of the site’s greatest hits. The first batch of story suggestions is below, but don’t be shy about starting a second list in the comments.

Judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on October 1, 1982, the day they were sworn in by Chief Justice Burger. In the front row are Circuit Judge Giles S. Rich, Chief Judge Howard T. Markey, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, and Circuit Judge Daniel M. Friedman.
Enlarge / Judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on October 1, 1982, the day they were sworn in by Chief Justice Burger. In the front row are Circuit Judge Giles S. Rich, Chief Judge Howard T. Markey, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, and Circuit Judge Daniel M. Friedman.

Patent problems

I’ve been helping Ars cover the problems with the patent system for over a decade, but one of my all-time favorite Ars Technica pieces was this one: “How a rogue appeals court wrecked the patent system” (2012). I argued that most of the patent system’s problems can be traced back to a little-known court called the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. Created in 1982, this court has become dominated by the pro-patent worldview of the patent bar. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the appeals court started to chip away at legal doctrine that put sensible limits on the patent system, leading to the explosion of low-quality patents and frivolous patent lawsuits we’ve seen over the last 15 years. One more thing that stands out: in 2002, four engineers wrote a classic paper arguing that digital rights management software was doomed to failure. Remarkably, all four of those engineers worked for Microsoft, which was simultaneously trying to sell digital rights management technologies to copyright holders. In 2012, I talked to the paper’s lead author, Peter Biddle, for “How four Microsoft engineers proved copy protection would fail.” He told me why he decided to write the paper, how he got it past Microsoft’s brass, and how the four engineers almost got fired as a result.
—Timothy B. Lee, Senior Tech Policy Reporter

Sometimes, the path to good science is the one you least expect.
Sometimes, the path to good science is the one you least expect.

Bigfoot and sound science

I’m going to say my favorite Ars piece was probably one of the strangest I’ve written: a deconstruction of the bigfoot genome, “An honest attempt to understand the Bigfoot genome and the woman who created it” (2013). It almost didn’t happen. When a press release announced that bigfoot had supposedly been sequenced, I got in touch to get a copy of the paper and ended up being offered an interview with the person behind it. But while the material was fantastic, I couldn’t figure out what to do with it for awhile. An “isn’t this nutty?” piece wouldn’t really do anyone any good, but I was at a loss to do anything more than that.

A couple of months later, inspiration struck. I gradually figured out I could use this as a way of looking at how a bit of misplaced confidence can lead people to look at scientific data and see things that just aren’t there. I got to reason through what a bigfoot genome should look like and contrast that with what this group reported as a way to examine how science works using a topic that’s free from any cultural or political baggage.

Or at least I thought it was free of political baggage. Oddly, just this year—five years after it was published—the woman I interviewed got in touch and unloaded on me via email, suggesting I might be a “paid government troll,” among other things.
—John Timmer, Science Editor

Lyft drivers sport "carstaches" on their vehicles while on duty.
Enlarge / Lyft drivers sport “carstaches” on their vehicles while on duty.

The birth of ridesharing

Back when Lyft was brand new, rather than simply repeat the news of the service, I wanted to see what it was like from behind the wheel. So, I wrote this: “My life as a high-tech, part-time, not-quite taxidriver” (2012).

The story was my experience as one of the first Lyft and Sidecar drivers in San Francisco—ultimately, I made $40 and donated it to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Re-reading this now, it’s amazing to remember there was a time before these services became ubiquitous. After all, it wasn’t obvious that they would succeed in the way that they have now. There are quotes directly from Lyft co-founder John Zimmer that didn’t require me to go through an extensive PR process. Heck, my passengers tended to be early employees and investors, too. (And man, where’d that fist bump go?)
—Cyrus Farivar, Senior Tech Policy Reporter

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1431613