What are your rabbit holes on the internet? (For instance, HN one we all share)
If some of yours are controversial, please don't sit tight - make a throwaway account
I'm an engineer by schooling but I've worked as a quant for the past 10 years. This means that I know a whole lot of "applied" math but will get tripped up by the formal terminology used.
This usually means I google a term and end up on wikipedia, where learning that term leads me to realized I need to look up the formal definition of another term, rinse and repeat.
As an example from my browser history, I was just reading
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics
for fun which lead to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_tendency
which lead to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_mean
which lead to:
The second paragraph of the Wikipedia page on integers, about as simple a "math" page as I can imagine, as I write this, brings in "subset" and "countably infinite", and the third paragraph just goes off the rails if you're trying to use this to learn about the integers: "The integers form the smallest group and the smallest ring containing the natural numbers. In algebraic number theory, the integers are sometimes called rational integers to distinguish them from the more general algebraic integers. In fact, the (rational) integers are the algebraic integers that are also rational numbers."
I know enough of the relevant maths to actually perfectly understand that. I also remember enough about when I didn't understand the relevant maths to remember what it felt like to read stuff like that. My point here is not that it's a "bad page", just that it is very hard to learn anything that way.
So people who already understand the concepts can nod and agree "I find nothing (further) wrong with that," while learners definitely fall down a rabbit hole of successive links. At times it seems more like lawyering than teaching.
I've considered the argument that Wikipedia isn't meant for that purpose, that it's simply a repository for formulas and such, but I don't believe that agrees with any idea of human advancement and learning, and the site's own mission statement reads "to collect and develop educational content."
Wikipedia's physics articles suffer from the same problem.
https://boardgamegeek.com/ All the information about boardgames you could consume in about four thousand lifetimes.
https://security.stackexchange.com/
/r/datahoarder /r/stallmanwasright
IRC
And more recently, the homepage of some researchers, including:
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~rsalakhu/publications.html
http://web.mit.edu/cocosci/josh.html
http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/
So much good stuff
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming
https://www.reddit.com/r/coding
+ Numerous other subreddits for every language/technology.
I really wish there was something just like HN, but for videos (like hour long talks). Does anyone know of any?
Gives great insights in various matters for simpletons like myself.
Slate Star Codex: A bit out of the mainstream, and he clearly has much more contact with people far, far outside of it.
It's really quite surprising the differences you'll see as far as what is covered, how it's covered, and the placement & size of the articles. Not to mention of course the content & bias of the articles.
By combining the different views, I like to think I'm able to get a more complete picture of the "truth", although as you can see I read relatively left-leaning publications (apart from TASS, obviously) so that is not to say my worldview is completely fair and unbiased.
Other than that the usual techie stuff: ars technica, phoronix, nautilus, etc
The General Discussion forum (www.ar15.com/forums/f_1/5_General_Discussion.html) there is my primary source for breaking news. The community is big enough there's almost always someone involved in whatever is going on, but small and targeted enough that there isn't a lot of arguments and tangents in those threads.
While it is a US-centric gun forum and very heavily conservative/libertarian, the community is far more tolerant of differing views than you would think. It's been interesting watching the older members adjust as niche groups have formed and made their presence known - LGBTQ people, bronies, furries, and anarchists off the top of my head. Finally, while you may get piled on if you post anti-gun views, you're not going to be banned for not agreeing with them. It's honestly one of the more tolerant and valuable forums on the net in my opinion.
Also, AR15-toting bronies (although, my naive mind is thinking fathers with daughters).
Note the avatars and usernames: http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1887509_Score___.html
Come to think of it, the only bronies I know I met through that forum - so I can honestly say that all the bronies I know own AR-15s.
Other than that:
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/ - If you like obscure games, this will keep you reading for hours. The amount of Japan only arcade games you probably never knew you wanted is insane.
http://www.spriters-resource.com/ - And its various associates for 3D models, textures and sounds. I can easily get sidetracked just looking for examples of strange games, tilesets or enemy sprites. If you're making a fan game or game mod... you'll probably spend more time here than actually making the game.
Various Wikis in general. Super Mario Wiki, Zelda Wiki and Bulbapedia can keep you reading for weeks if you're a fan of those franchises.
https://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor - A very large wiki for unused content in games. There's a lot of fascinating stuff there, and just looking for ridiculous developer rants can take up a fair amount of my time.
For example, this rather amusing rant about warez teams and the demoscene:
https://tcrf.net/Final_Fight_(Amiga)
Forums in general. If I find a new forum, I'm probably not doing anything else for the next weekend or so while I try (and sometimes fail) at catching up on what happened over the last ten years.
http://www.suppermariobroth.com/ - Yeah, it's pretty obvious what my focus is when it comes to the internet. But it's basically one very long feed of Mario tech gimmickry and randomness and it makes for one hell of a trivia source.
A wiki of nerd fandom stretching back to the 50s. I can spend hours just hitting "Random Article" and seeing the minutes of a meeting on Starsky and Hutch slashfiction in some hotel in 1978.
We blocked it at work during one such episode many, many years ago, and got crazy complaints from the call centers about IT being part of a vast left wing conspiracy. Funny thing is that our boss was a county conservative party chairperson.
Wikipedia about random subjects I come up with
reddit.com/r/arduino and related for project ideas
hackaday.com
Edmunds.com car reviews, at least when car shopping
Random sites on Wikia about TV shows or video games.
damninteresting.com