Do not adjust your monitor. If you’re a regular reader of Ars Technica, you’ll notice that this new site looks very, very familiar. That’s entirely by design: The purpose of Ars Technica UK is to provide the same excellent reporting and commentary that you’ve come to expect from Ars over our 17-year history, but with more of a focus on the UK, Europe, and the rest of the world.
You may have noticed that we have a different domain name from the US site: They have arstechnica.com, while we are on arstechnica.co.uk. If you visit .com while you’re in the UK, you will be redirected to .co.uk. If you would prefer to read the US site, you will always have that option: just click the American flag up in the top right corner.
If you’re not happy with how we’re handling the redirects, or you have another technical issue with Ars Technica UK, please mention it on our help forum and we’ll get it fixed quickly.
At this point, feel free to head back to the Ars Technica UK homepage and start reading some stories. May I recommend our launch feature on the UK's safest ISPs? It provides some very interesting insight into the current state of the Internet in the UK.
If you're interested in the nitty-gritty details of the launch, read on!
Two households both alike in dignity
Operationally, the main difference between the two sites is that Ars Technica UK will get started much earlier in the day. Rather than waiting for the US to wake up, UK readers will now have a steady flow of news, reports, and features from early in the morning until the end of the day. The UK team will focus on stories originating from the UK and Europe, but we will also be using our time zone advantage to bring you breaking news sooner.
You will also be pleased to hear that both sites are very closely bonded, both technologically and editorially. We share the same back-end systems, so every story that is published by the US team can be brought over to the Ars Technica UK homepage, and vice versa. No matter where a story originates, however, it will only ever have one commenting section. Likewise, if you’re a registered user, your credentials will work across both sites. The forum will remain as-is, too.
Ultimately, we want the launch of Ars Technica UK to be as seamless as possible. From the outset, the purpose of this project was to expand Ars Technica’s coverage of the UK and Europe, so that readers can get a more complete view of what’s going on in the world. If you ever feel like we’re straying from that path, and that your reading experience has been detrimentally affected by our launch, please drop me a line: sebastian@arstechnica.co.uk.
The editorial team
Here on Ars Technica UK you'll see all of your favourite authors from the US, plus lots of news and features written by our own editorial team of myself, Mark Walton, Glyn Moody, and Cathleen O'Grady. (And likewise, if you decide to stay on the US site, you'll see posts from the UK editorial team.)
Me: I am a technologist of the nerdiest, geekiest degree. I don't care who made it or why or what—if there's a computer chip or some other sufficiently advanced technology hidden within, I want to know all about it; in fact, I usually want to disassemble it to find out what really makes it tick. I have a background in low-level things—programming, system administration, chemistry, electronic engineering—and that usually shows in my approach to writing about technology: I'm not easily fazed by new cores and extra gigahertz, preferring instead to look at the gadget or gizmo in a more holistic, big-picture sense. Always feel free to email me if you have feedback/compliments/hate mail for Ars Technica UK, or you can find me at @mrseb on Twitter.
Mark Walton is our Gaming and Hardware Editor. He has been writing about video games and tech for about 10 years, most recently for GameSpot. Mark is of the old school: He knows a lot about computer components, building computers, and overclocking—and he'll be bringing those to bear by bolstering Ars Technica's hardware coverage. Mr Walton is also keen musician, having studied music at university, and still holds out hope that one day the music industry will recognise him for his "mad guitar skills." Expect a lot of cool gaming content from Mark, along with a new area for Ars: audio gear reviews! If you want to reach Mark, you can email him at mark.walton@arstechnica.co.uk, or hit him up on Twitter: @markalexwalton.
Glyn Moody is our Contributing Policy Editor. He is tasked with making this website the best place in the world for UK and European copyright, patent, and digital policy coverage. He's been writing about the Internet, open source, and other similar topics for the last 20 years or so. (He even wrote a book about the open source movement.) Glyn can be emailed at glyn.moody@arstechnica.co.uk, or you can follow him on Twitter: @glynmoody.
Cathleen O'Grady is our Contributing Science Reporter. While Mark, Glyn, and I live in London, Cathleen is up in Edinburgh, where she did a Master's degree in evolutionary linguistics. She has actually been writing for Ars Technica for the last eight months or so, but is now moving over to focus on science from the UK and EU. Ars Technica sets itself a very high bar for science journalism, and I assure you that Cathleen is more than up to the task. You can email her at cathleen.ogrady@arstechnica.co.uk, or find her on Twitter @monkey_in_shoes.
Hit up our staff directory for more information about the Ars Technica UK team, including contact details and hot beverage preferences.
Subscriptions, giveaways, and meetups
Because Ars Technica now has an official presence in the UK (we have an office and everything), there are a few other interesting aspects of the launch that I’d like to briefly mention.
First: subscriptions! We are in the process of creating an Ars Premier subscription for UK readers. It will hopefully include a subscription for the Wired UK magazine. If you are currently subscribed to Ars Premier in the US, the plan is to bring you over to a UK subscription plan, so that you're billed in pounds rather than dollars. All of the existing perks—no ads, full-text RSS feeds, etc.—will also be available through the Ars Technica UK subscription.
An official presence in the UK means we should be able to run competitions and giveaways on this side of the Atlantic, too.
Second: community events! On the 7th of May, just a couple of days from now, we’ll be hosting a meetup in central London. I will be in attendance along with some other members of the Ars Technica UK team, and to celebrate the rather unique auspiciousness of the Ars Technica UK launch, our editor-in-chief Ken Fisher is flying over from the US to attend. Demand was so high that we ran out of tickets in about three hours—but rest assured that we'll be doing more events in the UK soon. If there’s something you’d particularly like to see from an Ars Technica UK event, email me.
And now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to put on my hat as editor of Ars Technica UK and get on with creating the best technology website in the UK and Europe. We have some exciting stories that will be published over the next few months. Please update your bookmarks, brew yourself a cup of tea, and get comfy. Here we go!
Listing image by Aurich Lawson
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