I'm surprised I didn't know any of that story but the biggest nostalgia hit in the article is not about early subs but about how awesome the 90s were (even if they sucked) before the world became connected. Getting an Internet connection in 96 was like the discovery age all over again.

Shouts to the long dead AnimEigo chatroom. I still talk to a few folks from there to this day.

VirtualDub is another amazing tool built out of the anime community http://www.virtualdub.org/virtualdub_history.html

That makes sense! I never knew, wow!

Aegisub is how we did it in the aughts. http://www.aegisub.org/ But fansubs are dead now.

In what way are fansubs dead now? I routinely see every show subbed by multiple groups.

Yeah I still use fansubs for everything. Unless you're only into shounen you kinda have to go to fansubs for any current shows. Some of the top groups really do a nice job as well, and the translations often feel much less bland than the commercial ones.

They probably mean there is only a small amount of groups left that aren't ripping CR's translation, for CR-licensed animes, and releasing in pace with Japan. There are still fansubbers who take their time to work on something, but I suspect this lack of exposure, or of momentum if you prefer, makes it harder for them (there are fewer people interested in helping).

Ever heard of Crunchyroll?

Anyways, anime nowadays are licensed pretty damn fast and furthermore, subs for said licensed show come out equally as fast (easily an hour or so after airing in Japan) and rather than waiting for fansubs to come out, it is significantly faster to either stream the episode or wait until Horriblesub (not a sub group, but more of a ripping group) to rip off of Crunchyroll's stream rather than wait for fansubs, which back in 2008, still could have taken half a day at the earliest.

Fansubs still exists. After all, there are many anime movies that still need subbing and some of these movies won't get licensed for a while...or ever. For example, take "A Silent Voice" which was a 2016 movie, but didn't get to the States until January of this year (possibly due to the insert song "My Generation" by The Who) or the film "Yoyo to Nene", a 2013 film from studio Ufotable.

I think it's funny that they praise the voice acting talent they got from NC because their voice acting talent was awful then.

Some of those people stuck with it though for 20+ years and now they do great dubs for "anime related games", sometimes as good as the best Japanese voice actors.