Ask HN: Which websites do you visit? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Which websites do you visit?

84 points_6cj761 comments

Regardless of topic, which websites/blogs/subreddits/newsletters/Youtube channels do you often read/watch (to acquire information)?

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I used to have a dozen or so sites that I visited on a regular basis, but I really grew tired of comment sections devolving into "who can post a meme the fastest" competitions. One reason why I keep coming to HN is because of the targeted discussion, and the lack of these types of cheap humor comments or karma grabs.

I find myself looking for more "adult" communities nowadays, and it has been a struggle to find them.

EDIT: Typo

It's amazing that HN (as a system) and its community actively discourage those kinds of comments. The ratio of thoughtful, insightful, and useful articles and comments (signal) to junk, spam, and trolling (noise) is outstanding. I keep coming back because of it.

It's amazing to me not that it started that way, but has mostly remained that way.

You do see some political agendas revealed here from time to time, and there are certainly a few celebrity posters who get upvoted just based on who they are not always what they are saying. But by and large it's a very flame/troll-free experience.

Kudos to dang and other mods who step in when the usual downvote/flag mechanisms aren't working.

Same here. I feel like in the early days of the web, I was able to find this kind of content on forums specific to a particular topic. Now it seems like forums are on the way out in favor of social media or social sharing sites like Reddit where as you mentioned the SNR is out of whack. I miss the smaller more intimate communities.

For some topics it feels that HN just replaces it with a "who can post a popular rant the fastest" competition.

It's mostly Youtube, Reddit, HN, ARSTechnica for tech/news.

For random comics and stuff it's Loading Artist.

Been listening to Jordan Peterson's lectures on youtube, watching video essays on films, the science/information related channels has already been mentioned here. I'd recommend "Blank On Blank" [1] it's wonderful.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pO2YNforRbdwKOh09djKA

Hacker News.

The rest of my time spent on the internet is either habitual, i.e. Reddit/FB/YouTube for my "entertainment needs", or purpose-driven, i.e. googling relevant information for whatever projects I'm working and so accordingly is largely random.

I want to go to more places like this, and I tried slashdot, but I didn't understand their comment section and am incredibly passive. So here I am.

Yeah this describes my habits as well. I used to think that reddit served a similar, though watered-down purpose that HN does. I've since accepted that Reddit is more entertainment for me, much as FB is. The comments section on popular submissions can be unbearable and it has especially been alienating with the Trump vs. Liberal hate/name-calling being spewed back and forth.

I think multi-reddits can be great, as you can isolate yourself from the mess of r/all, but unfortunately the comments sections on the subreddits I'm interested in are nowhere near parity with HN. Furthermore, the subreddits carry a lot of noise submissions that I feel aren't as strongly represented on the the front pages of HN.

Oddly, I have found YouTube has taken an increasingly large portion of my internet time. There are a ton of really informative, good quality education videos being pushed onto YT today, for example 3Blue1Brown's math content comes to mind [0]. However, the comments sections for most videos is maybe only millimeters above being worthless at best, and detracting on average.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=3blue1brown

Wait But Why, Kurzgesagt, Second Thought, SciShow Space, Geography Now, Tom Scott, Hacker News (obviously), /r/coolgithubprojects, /r/unixporn, /r/netsec, Crypto-Gram newsletter... I could go on and on.

http://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100

https://www.apple.com/itunes/charts

https://news.ycombinator.comx

https://www.youtube.com

https://www.ultimate-guitar.com

https://www.producthunt.com

https://news.google.com

http://www.nytimes.com

http://www.bbc.com/news

https://github.com

https://www.npmjs.com

https://thepiratebay.org

For news/current events, Hacker News. I quit reddit a while ago, and most of the good stuff on Reddit appears elsewhere after a couple days.

For newsletters, I really enjoy Ruby Weekly and Javascript Weekly by Peter Cooper. There is always something new to read in Ruby Weekly. I also really like the MIT Technology Review. It's a daily email that is really well written with a bunch of insightful links.

Youtube channels is a hodgepodge of whatever I am currently into. In a similar vein, I am a big fan of GoRails.

For strict information gathering, I recently got an Audible subscription and love it. I listen to music while working, but Audible I save for while I'm commuting.

Looking at ones i frequent, I have noticed a pattern to pay for services I use. I am also a privacy badger/uBlock user, but I still prefer to pay for services if it means no ads or a better experience.

Youtube - Zero Books' zero squared podcast, David Parsons' Nostalgia Trap podcast, a lot of random Noam Chomsky or Slavoj Žižek lectures, even more miscellaneous hr-long lectures on any topic etc

Patreon - Chapo Trap House podcast

Other podcasts: In the News by Doug Henwood, the Kraken podcast, the Katie Halper show

Twitter

reddit - r/machinelearning, r/keto, r/sorceryofthespectacle, r/chapotraphouse

blogs - high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com, itsthewooo.blogspot.com, gwern.net

Occasionally I just browse through arxiv.org, and tbh I have a massive backlog of unread saved webpages in my Pocket account

After the whole Reddit blackout thing I started using Voat.co as my main aggregator, but it went a bit downhill and some people I know ended up making Phuks.co, I spend a lot of time there. Otherwise, Lainchan.org for mostly tech related stuff, Slashdot, ARSTechnica, occasionally SingularityHub.

I have RSS feeds for a number of different news sites including BBC, Reuters, Guardian, RT, Telegraph.

I have a number of different sites I don't visit daily, but visit regularly out of necessity, like stack overflow.

It's mostly YouTube. I've been listening to Joe Rogan's podcasts while working for some time now. I also subscribe to Joe Robinet for some bushcraft and camping stuff that I typically watch in the after-hours. DI.FM for music. Google News/Finance for news and stock updates. And HN, of course.

Slate Star Codex

Hacker News

4chan (/v/, /tv/, /pol/)

Youtube (Mainly for music)

HN (duh)

Youtube - as bad as certain aspects of YT are (eg, comments), there is a TON of great educational content on there, as well as music videos.

Reddit: Yes, the default subs are horrible, but there are a lot of great specialized subs as well.

Coursera: taking a couple of classes now

ai.stackexchange.com

Facebook - not happy to admit this, but it's force of habit. :-(

news.google.com - news

arxiv.org/corr/home - CS papers

wral.com/weather - local weather

amazon.com - I'm on there either ordering books, adding stuff to my wishlist, or just looking up a book I might want to buy "one day", or checking on the status of an order, pretty much every day.

dilbert.com - lulz

phins.com/phins-urls.html - Dolphins news

digg.com/reader - feedz

http://brutalistwebsites.com/

https://www.bloomberg.com/

YouTube - Programming talks, tech talks, documentaries and music (I have unlimited bandwidth so I mostly just leave it on OST playlists all day while I'm working).

HN.

Twitter (I have a rule of following exactly 50 accounts on a one in/one out basis because otherwise it's too unfocused to be useful the way I want to use it (which is as a quick/lazy RSS replacement)).

BBC News/The Guardian/The Daily Mail (reasonable cross section).

That's about it outside work related stuff/general programming stuff.

Listen to a fair amount of podcasts but I just go to their sites for that.

I'm involved in politics and somewhat obsessed with it. So these aren't spectacularly secret gems, but spending a few minutes with high quality news every day is actually something surprisingly few people do:

https://www.theatlantic.com

http://www.nytimes.com

https://www.theguardian.com/international

what's high quality news?

HN, youtube, windguru (weather), feedly (few niche blogs and podcasts) and pb.pl (to practice Polish). Quitted facebook.

Newsletters: javascript, ruby and python weekly

Purely for information/news?

HN, Ars Technica, TechCrunch, and the local paper's website. WaPo if I feel like making myself mad at politics.

I have a Safari bookmarks folder that I open in tabs every morning with these sites:

NOAA weather and Radar, AP News, Reuters News, Hacker News, Science Bulletin, Alltop Raspberry Pi, Facebook, and Willy n Ethel.

Sometimes I'll also take a look at Google News if I have time.

I have a pretty small and awesome group of friends on FB that share a lot of great stuff from a wide variety of sources.

Mostly HN, but have also bookmarked:

  Datatau
  Techcrunch
  Techradar
  Medium
  Product Hunt
  Popular Mechanics
  MIT Technology Review
  Hardvard Business Review
  Engadget
  Hackaday
  OReilly Radar
  The Verge
  Atlas Obscura
  Coding Horror
  Joel on Software

I lost a lot of respect for Joel Spolsky after the whole Wasabi debacle. I wouldn't recommend reading his blog anymore.

https://blog.codinghorror.com/has-joel-spolsky-jumped-the-sh...

Not sure how I missed all this, but what a fascinating read! Has there been any updates for this?

EDIT: http://blog.fogcreek.com/killing-off-wasabi-part-1/

O'Reilly Radar has become O'Reilly Ideas now, right? I used to surf Radar semi-frequently some time earlier, and got to knnow of interesting tech and other stuff there sometimes; how is it now?

HN, Resident Advisor, Bleep, Discogs, NYT/WashPo/Twitter, Facebook (less frequently, but I'm away from home so it's kind of a necessity), some of the VICE sites/YouTube channels.

Reddit, YouTube, Twitch for media.

Chief Delphi for Robotics-related content (FIRST Robotics Alum, so it's an interesting thought pattern to watch as an outsider.)

HN, Hackaday and on occasion Slashdot for Tech-related content.

Here's what's in my daily website 'checklist' folder:

WSJ

Bloomberg

Fortune

Valuewalk

Techcrunch

Dealbook

Fortune's Termsheet (usually just read dan primarks pro rata)

Naked Capitalism

Hacker News

Pocket

Financial Samurai

Venturebeat

That's really all, also read Barstool Sports for fun.

Who reads Reddit these days? With the exception of some niche subreddits, it is bottom-feeder trash.

News-wise: HN, The Register, Ars Technica, Reuters, AP, Fark, Physorg. Entertainment: Reddit, Youtube, a bunch of webcomics, some forums.

I use Feedly to organize pretty much all of it.

Get to work, open folder:

Feedly (more of a web app than website), Reddit, Hacker News and Slickdeals

Now that I think of it, most of the sites I visit are content aggregators and not individual sites.

Does Stackoverflow count or is that a Google-like given?

I use the internet for that. (Seriously, 'to acquire information' is just waaaay too broad for meaningful response.)

Surprised no one said http://www.theawesomer.com

HN and Slashdot for industry news

NY times for regular news (worth paying for IMHO)

Board Game Geek for a hobby

Crunchy Roll for entertainment

NO so called "social" media sites

(edited for formatting)

https://www.metafilter.com/

ACM Queue, at http://queue.acm.org

HN, reddit/worldnews, rt, livescience, youtube, sciencemag, google news searches, the economist

HN, f1technical.net, r/formula1, f1fanatic.co.uk, lwn.net, r/physics, dedoimedo.com

news.google.com, HN, reddit, arxiv (just pick a random category and see if there is something I can read), springer (to see if there are fun books coming out that I can google hard and lift papers from .edu websites/elsewhere), digikey/mouser.

Hacker news.

It depends on how much time I allocate to catching up on information before beginning another project or providing support/conducting research for clients.

goldprice.org to find out what is happening to this baseline.

yahoo.com for s&p, russell 2000 - market review

accuweather.com to get a prediction for upcoming weather.

bbc.com.uk for world service 5 minute bulletin

npr.org for 3 minute summary from one political perspective

drudgereport.com for another political perspective

dvorak.org for humor

here (hn) for IT-related info, trends/news - lower in this list due to possible time sync hazard

qz.com for their summary

rt.com for another summary

fee.org for economic/political discussion/inspiration

thefederalist.com for economic/political discussion/inspiration

mises.org for economic/political discussion/inspiration

dave.sobr.org for Dave's round up

zerohedge to see where conspiracy theory is heading (also outliers of factual trends)

antiwar.org for world political climate reporting

noagendanewsnetwork.com for conspiracy theory and factual trend outliers

a handful of comic websites for amusement including xkcd, questionablecontent, ScaryGoRound/Bad Machinery, DresdenKodak, GirlGenius, etc.

http://slatestarcodex.com

https://www.gwern.net/

https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/

I scan RSS feeds of the obvious sites: NYT, WaPo, ZDNet, Ars, Verge etc

Otherwise I go to Twitter, HN and The Guardian every day, plus Reddit, Amazon and Facebook every few days (often it's to wish someone a happy birthday).

I also like The Wirecutter for reviews, Authority Nutrition https://authoritynutrition.com/ for food info, Dilbert and xkcd for cartoons, and YouAre Not So Smart https://youarenotsosmart.com/ for essays.

Reddit, ProductHunt, HackerNews, TheVerge

HN/Twitter/Stackoverflow

http://www.gnoosic.com to find new music

http://www.ventusky.com to check the weather worldwide

http://www.xkcd.com for a quick procrastination break

Why was this down-voted, how could an answer to this question be wrong. Imo only up-votes should occur ? Well unless this is a troll post or any other form of abuse.

Hackernews

news.google.com

getpocket.com/a/recommended

Twitter

economist.com (kindle only)

The Guardian

Twitter

The Economist (via Facebook to circumvent their 3 articles limit)

Facebook

JFL on Youtube

- Hacker News

- Reddit

- The Verge

- YouTube

1. HN

2. Getpocket.com - articles which i have saved inside of it from HN or from other places

3. https://lobste.rs

drudgereport

huffpo

my industry's subreddit

4chan /b/ /pol/ /biz/

fark

a local blogger

each site probably 4-5 times a day

digg.com

nytimes.com

qz.com

newyorker.com

twitter.com

all of them, any of them

I always thought you were a bot.

you made my day.

now you know :)

Nice try, Twitter

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