Apple Blog TUAW Returns as A.I. Slop ⇥ engadget.com
So someone bought the old TUAW domain name. TUAW was a site that I worked at in college, that has been dead for a decade and that I stopped working for 15 years ago. But now my name is bylined on 1500+ articles alongside an AI-generated photo. Revive the old brand. Fine. But leave my name off of it! H/t @gruber
Karissa Bell, Engadget:
Originally started in 2004, TUAW was shut down by AOL in 2015. Much of the site’s original archive can still be found on Engadget. Yahoo, which owns Engadget, sold the TUAW domain in 2024 to an entity called “Web Orange Limited” in 2024, according to a statement on TUAW’s website.
The sale, notably, did not include the TUAW archive. But, it seems that Web Orange Limited found a convenient (if legally dubious) way around that. “With a commitment to revitalize its legacy, the new team at Web Orange Limited meticulously rewrote the content from archived versions available on archive.org, ensuring the preservation of TUAW’s rich history while updating it to meet modern standards and relevance,” the site’s about page states.
OK found the connection. The people who own The Hack Post bought the TUAW site. They use the same Google ad tag.
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Notably, same dude owns iLounge.
The same advertising identifier has been used with a handful of other previously defunct publications like Metapress and Tapscape, as well as a vanity URL generator for Google Plus. Not a surprising use for domains with plenty of history and incoming links, but truly a scumbag result. Shameful.