We’re happy to pass along word that Paged Out! has finally released Issue #3. This online zine covers a wide array of technical topics, from software development to hardware hacking, computer security, and electronics.
It’s distributed as a PDF, and is notable for its somewhat experimental format that limits each article to a single page. The first two issues were released back in 2019, but between a global pandemic and some administrative shuffling, progress on the current release was slowed considerably.
Among the 50 articles that make up the third Paged Out! there are a number of pieces focusing on hardware, such as the serial communications “cheat sheet” from [Jay Greco], and a pair of articles covering the state-of-the-art in custom keyboards. But overall the zine does lean hard into programming topics, and is probably best suited for those with an interest in software development and infosec.
Still, the line between hardware and software is getting blurrier all the time, so we’re sure you can find something in Paged Out! that should interest you no matter which side of the fence you’re on. Here’s hoping the time between releases can be reduced a bit for Issue #4.
Ah! Our zine mentioned on hackaday again made my day! <3
Note that while Issue #3 might be leaning more into the software world, we always welcome articles on hardware hacking, electronics, PCB design, etc! We basically welcome anything geeky and computer/electronics related ;)
Interesting! The one-page per article is also interesting (and maybe a sign of the times!)
Info snacking for an increasingly A.D.D. populace.
Yes and no. The idea for one-page format is a mix between something I saw in magazines in late ’80 / early ’90 when I was just starting out with computers, and a reaction to having reviewed too many 20-page long articles in “modern times” ;)
Anyway, here’s a copy-paste from our FAQ:
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Q: Why the 1 page per article limit?
[Gynvael] While reviewing/reading/writing articles for various technical IT magazines, I realized that nowadays almost all of them are pretty long (like 10 pages in print, or 20 pages in the “source” form). The length is usually the result of the selected topic, author’s desire to explain everything in sufficient detail, and lengthy well-formatted code listings with verbose comments. That’s just how programming articles must be, right?
Well, not really. For example in the late ’80, one magazine page could house 2-3 programming articles. How was that possible? Usually, there just wasn’t a lot of text in the article – a paragraph or two of introduction, or a note on an especially tricky part in the presented code, followed by a long manually minified program listing. This required the reader to actually try to reverse-engineer the code in order to understand it – but readers are smart and that was actually pretty fun to do it too.
The selected topics were commonly also quite different – instead of “everything you need to know about XYZ”, the articles were more about individual code snippets or short programs that did or showcased something useful, fun (games!), clever or otherwise entertaining.
This led me to the idea of somehow convincing folks (hi!) to try and write short articles on different kind of topics – and thus I settled for the 1-page limit.
Actually, there is another benefit: it takes way less time to write a 1-page article than a longer one. It’s also easier to review it. And it doesn’t take too much time to read it from top to bottom.
I would also like to believe that there is less pressure to write about Typical Big Topics – there is just no way to do a complete C++49 tutorial on a single page, so how about just showcase this one fun new thing?
Of course 1-page articles will never replace full-sized ones, but then again, that’s not really the goal here. The goal is to see if we can create informative 1-page articles that are fun to make, fun to read and don’t require to allocate a lot of time on any front.
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