Welcome to Chips and Cheese

I am pretty sure that I’m not the first person to say that 2020 has been a bad year. A bad year is probably a gross understatement. But even with all that has happened in the world outside of tech, there have been quite a few disappointments and controversies within the tech sphere over the last 12 months. Whether it be the recent controversy surrounding NVIDIA and their questionable PR practices or the honestly astounding levels of PC component shortages, it has undoubtedly been one of the most frustrating and outraged years that I and many others can recall.

One thing though stands out for me. Over this past 18 months, many new media outlets, YouTube channels and social media personalities have popped up, many of which covering the very lucrative and controversial space of technology leaks. To various degrees, people either love them or loathe them, with many of them obtaining thousands if not hundreds of thousands of followers in quite a short space of time. I was among those following a number of these new sources, eager to learn about all the latest technology hidden up the sleeves of the many technology vendors, ready to purchase what was promising to be the best new components seen in nearly 2-3 years. But I think it would be fair to say that many of us have been left with a rather sour taste in our mouths. Much of the information released by these outlets proved to be incorrect or exaggerated to the extreme, leading to widespread disappointment and in some cases outrage.

To that end, I think it is time I explained what this site is. Whilst I was immersing myself into the communities surrounding these outlets and the technology space in general, I met a few people who I am now happy to call friends. While we know each other by our real names, on this site, they are  Nexus (myself), Cheese, and Sask. All four of us spent a good chunk of the year following the leaks that came out, analysing them for ourselves and doing the research to try and make sense of them, so that we could distinguish the plausible from the absurd. We met many others, discussed details at length, and acted as a filter for some of the leaks people have seen online. We all came to similar conclusions: something new is needed in the amorphous realm of technology leaks.

These are the reasons why we decided to start Chips and Cheese. We were tired with the overhyped products and exaggerated information that seemed to be pouring out over the past year. So we decided to try and provide an alternative. The goal of this website is to provide news, leaks, reviews, analysis and opinions that are well-sourced, well researched, transparent to the greatest extent possible, and most importantly, without the exaggeration and spin doctoring that has lead to much disappointment in the last 4-6 months.

One of the fundamental principles we wish to commit to is meeting the NewsGuard journalism rating criteria with all the content we publish. It should be clear to you, the reader, what our background is, who controls the site, how we are funded and why we are doing this. You should feel able to trust the information we publish, with clear indicators of how reliable the information is, what it means in context, and how we have come to our conclusions. For our leaks and news content, we are also committing to clearly separating the information we have received and gathered from the analysis that we perform so that those of you with technical knowledge can draw your own conclusions without our analysis and the bias that may be seen to come with it.

It should be clear from what I’ve said that we are serious about being different. We don’t want to be the site that is always the first to the finish line when something new is announced, or some information is leaked. We want to ensure the content we publish is ethical, thought out, and not misleading. There are many sites and content creators who already do this, and we wish to add to that list, to ensure that the integrity of this space is maintained and that it continues to grow. Whilst I have only really discussed news and leaks and the principles we wish to follow with those categories of content, we will follow up later with our principles for other content including reviews and opinions, and details on our ownership and funding, to ensure you understand how we operate as a site.

I hope that what you have read here is encouraging and that you are willing to view our content with an open mind. Please feel free to comment below with feedback and suggestions about what content you want to see in the short and long term. While at the time of writing we have yet to publish any content, we look forward to hearing your feedback on it so that we can grow together as a community.

All this leaves me to do is say, welcome to Chips and Cheese!

Thank you for reading and happy holidays.

Nexus