I'm not sure how you can make those claims; if anything, they've been even more active in reviewing hardware, etc. since they actually have better corporate sponsorship.

The only thing I do miss are the articles written by Jon Stokes: https://arstechnica.com/author/hannibal/

But all things change, and the heady era of technological advances that we saw in the 90s and early 2000s are long gone, at least in the desktop and server computer world.

Electronics has now become mainstream-consumer oriented and the sites reflect that interest, since after all, they only exist due to advertising funds.