Why Ars Technica Still Ships PDFs of Every Article

Ars Technica launched in 1998 with exactly one reading surface: a web browser on a PC or a Mac. By the turn of the millennium the site was already selling an exit from that surface — a subscriber perk that let people read Ars without a browser at all. In 2026 both alternatives are still standing: ArsPro subscribers get PDFs of every article and full-text RSS feeds. That's a small, durable point about formats. A file and a feed each solve a problem a page doesn't — one is portable and printable, the other drops the article into whatever reader you already live in, without the site's furniture around it.