Ars Technica

Ken Fisher, who serves as the website's current editor-in-chief, and Jon Stokes created Ars Technica in 1998. Since 2024, Condé Nast, Ars Technica parent company, has entered a bilateral deal with OpenAI. The terms of this deal have not been publicly disclosed, but The Guardian reported that it is more than just access to Condé Nast publications and extends to the usage of AI in the news cycle to "ensure that as AI plays a larger role in news discovery and delivery, it maintains accuracy, integrity and respect for quality reporting". On February 13, 2026, Ars Technica published an article on how an AI agent seemingly wrote a hit piece on a software maintainer after the maintainer rejected the agent's code. The article was retracted the same day after several of the quotes that were falsely attributed to the maintainer were found to be fabricated by AI. One of the journalists who wrote the article was subsequently fired from Ars Technica. ==Content==

The content of articles published by Ars Technica has generally remained the same since its creation in 1998 and is categorized by four types: news, guides, reviews, and features. News articles relay current events. Ars Technica also hosts OpenForum, a free Internet forum for the discussion of a variety of topics. Originally, most news articles published by the website were aggregated from other technology-related websites. Ars Technica provided short commentaries on the news, generally a few paragraphs, and a link to the original source. After being purchased by Condé Nast, Ars Technica began publishing more original news, investigating topics, and interviewing sources themselves. A significant portion of the news articles published there now are original. Relayed news is still published on the website, ranging from one or two sentences to a few paragraphs. Ars Technicas features are long articles that go into great depth on their subject. For example, the site published a guide on CPU architecture in 1998 named "Understanding CPU caching and performance". An article in 2009 discussed in detail the theory, physics, mathematical proofs, and applications of quantum computers. The website's 18,000-word review of Apple's first iPad described everything from the product's packaging to the specific type of integrated circuits it uses. Ars Technica is written in a less-formal tone than that found in a traditional journal. Many of the website's regular writers have postgraduate degrees, and many work for academic or private research institutions. Website cofounder Jon Stokes published the computer architecture textbook Inside The Machine in 2007; John Timmer performed postdoctoral research in developmental neurobiology; Until 2013, Timothy Lee was a scholar at the Cato Institute, a public-policy institute, which republished Ars Technica articles by him. Biology journal Disease Models & Mechanisms called Ars Technica a "conduit between researchers and the public" in 2008. On September 12, 2012, Ars Technica recorded its highest daily traffic ever with its iPhone 5 event coverage. It recorded 15.3 million page views, 13.2 million of which came from its live blog platform of the event. ==Staff==

Jennifer Ouelette, the former science editor of Gizmodo, contributes science and culture coverage. Beth Mole, who has a PhD in microbiology, handles Ars health coverage. She was formerly at Science News. Eric Berger, formerly of the Houston Chronicle, covers space exploration. John Timmer is the science editor for Ars. He earned his undergraduate degree from Columbia University and his PhD from University of California, Berkeley and worked as a postdoc at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Benj Edwards worked for Ars as senior AI reporter until March 2026, when he was fired over his role in the publication of a now-retracted article that included AI-generated quotes. ==Revenue==

The cost of operating Ars Technica has always been funded primarily by advertising. The block and article were controversial, generating articles on other websites about them, and the broader issue of advertising ethics. Readers of Ars Technica generally followed Fisher's persuasion; the day after his article was published, 25,000 readers who used the software had allowed the display of advertisements on Ars Technica in their browser, and 200 readers had subscribed to Ars Premier. In February 2016, Fisher noted, "That article lowered the ad-block rate by 12 percent, and what we found was that the majority of people blocking ads on our site were doing it because other sites were irritating them". In response to increasing use of ad blockers, Ars Technica identify readers who filter out advertisements and ask them to support the site by several means. ==See also==