Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?
What are your favorite blogs run by individual people?
For example, some of the ones I like are:
For example, some of the ones I like are:
[0] https://acoup.blog/category/collections/siege-of-gondor/
[1] https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-battle-of-helms-...
[2] https://acoup.blog/category/collections/teaching-paradox/
The Paradox ones are OK but I haven't played the games so I kind of trailed off on those.
I'm not disappointed.
The guy thinks and that's fun to watch.
Unfortunately, this writer is seriously overusing parentheses and this disrupts the reading flow.
I find his parentheticals, italics, and bolding, make the structure of the thoughts behind his words more clear to me.
I appreciate this style of writing, at least for these sorts of topics.
People are different.
This is part of a longer paragraph with some more context but it is indicative of the treasures to be found:
"So, we have a doubly difficult time understanding what medieval medicine was, because the people who practiced didn’t write about it, and the people who wrote about medicine thought practice was beneath them."
Some recommendations if you want to get started:
1. What's in the box? - https://fasterthanli.me/articles/whats-in-the-box
2. Making our own ping - https://fasterthanli.me/series/making-our-own-ping
3. What's in a Rainbow table? - https://fasterthanli.me/articles/whats-in-a-rainbow-table
4. Working with strings in Rust - https://fasterthanli.me/articles/working-with-strings-in-rus...
5. I am a Java, C#, C or C++ developer, time to do some Rust - https://fasterthanli.me/articles/i-am-a-java-csharp-c-or-cpl... OR A half-hour to learn Rust - https://fasterthanli.me/articles/a-half-hour-to-learn-rust
Not only are all their articles super in-depth, but they have a real talent for making the content both accessible and (most importantly) interesting.
Each post is a real treat!
It partially inspired me to start keeping a list of similar learning content over at https://github.com/b0o/awesome-by-example
- https://martin.kleppmann.com/archive.html
- https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing
- https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/
- https://www.johndcook.com/blog
- https://ridiculousfish.com/blog/
- https://blog.andrewcantino.com/
- https://nickcraver.com/blog/
- https://blog.codinghorror.com
I have been also building a developer blog aggregator called https://diff.blog to make it super easy to disover and follow dev blogs. Would love if you folks can give it a try :)
A little feedback would be to add an "About page" so I can understand what is it without having to login.
And a pat on the back for not abusing Github access permissions. Felt really good to see "email (read-only)" access.
Keep the good work!
I had a cheap five-byte domain once, but the registrar decided one day to up my renewal fee to five figures, so I don't any longer.
.tt domains are quite expensive in general so I think he got a pretty good deal for ma.tt
https://ma.tt/2008/01/on-matt/
Interesting conincidence, the .blog TLD used by diff.blog, is owned by Automattic, the company started by Matt Mullenweg :)
But anyway, is there a way I can suggest blogs to diff.blog? (including my own). Or, if you'd like to just scrape the ones I've already "curated", feel free. http://rubyland.news/sources.opml
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23914685
> But anyway, is there a way I can suggest blogs to diff.blog? (including my own).
Yes. You can suggest new blogs at https://diff.blog/suggest. The recommended way to add your own blog is by going to profile settings since that allow you to change the URL as well as refresh the feed. But both are fine :)
> Or, if you'd like to just scrape the ones I've already "curated", feel free. http://rubyland.news/sources.opml
Yeah. I will give it a go one of these days. Hard part is I need to get the GitHub handle of each of these blogs since all the blog in diff.blog should have an associated GitHub account.
You have definitely taken it a bunch of steps further with diff.blog! I thought about that but definitely didn't have the free-side-project time for it.
I love all efforts to keep blogging and RSS feeds alive, in the world of gated social media!
[0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/ [1] http://noahpinion.substack.com/ [2] https://taipology.substack.com/
http://ranprieur.com/ -- Ran Prieur. Frugality, societal collapse, "dropping out", and beyond. Has been constantly blogging for ages; it's really interesting to see how his views have changed in time.
http://joeyh.name/ -- Joey Hess, former long-time Debian developer, author of git-annex. Frugal living and computing in the wilderness (he used to do everything on a 9-inch Dell Mini 9).
https://datagubbe.se/ -- Carl Svensson. Great long-form essays on frugal computing and, uh, what has gone wrong after 1994 or so.
http://len.falken.ink/ -- I just really like the "layout", even if it feels a little pretentious to some. IIRC, his essay "Writing for the Internet across a Human Lifetime" also had some feedback on HN.
http://viznut.fi/en/ -- Viznut. Demoscene, "low-end technical extremism", permacomputing. Updates are rare, but the older pieces are well worth a read.
Can´t be more frugal than that. Add irc on top, and maybe some usenet client.
https://dcgross.com/ - good design, smart guy
http://www.paulgraham.com/ - classic
https://mtlynch.io - love the openness
https://www.gwern.net/ - love the design. very well organized
https://coderscat.com/ - some fun projects
https://shauninman.com/ - simple but good
And shameless plug of my own: https://www.hugomontenegro.com/
I wonder if they wished they’d hyphenated that domain
https://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/posts
https://computinged.wordpress.com/
https://blog.sigplan.org/blog/
https://blog.paranoidcoding.com/
https://eli.thegreenplace.net/
https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/
https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog.html
https://100r.co/site/home.html
https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/index.html
It's fascinating to see how dependent modern tech is on a constant, or at least semi-regular, internet connection for tokens, etc., and how that "model" fails completely on the open ocean.
- Dan Luu [1]
and for design and insights in that discipline:
- Arun Venkatesan [2]
I first saw Dan Luu's list of programming books (https://danluu.com/programming-books/) when researching CLRS during my sophomore year of high school. This list and his insights on pure CS are really enjoyable to read and pique my interest. Also, his post on latency [4] secured the idea that minuscule UX improvements is as important as UI and that we should optimize for both. jvns introduced me to the Recurse Center and dluu confirmed that I could, in fact, participate and do something cool. (I also took his Hugo template for my own blog which has served me well though this week I'll be designing my own with cues from the latter.)
Arun is a physical/digital design nerd and someone I read religiously. From photography to the design minutiae of the Apple Card [5] /Mac Pro [6] /iPod HiFi [7] his in-depth posts really allowed me to appreciate even the smallest of design choices and how they play into the larger, big picture, design system as a whole.
[3] https://danluu.com/programming-books/
[4] https://danluu.com/input-lag/
[5] https://www.arun.is/blog/apple-card/
https://www.tanyakhovanova.com/
[2] Filippo Valsorda (cryptography)
[3] David Wong (cryptography)
[4] OpenBSD everything
[5] blog with some funny articles
[6] Might need a proxy/VPN to access this site
[7] Not a blog but something nice
Edit:
[8] weekly useful/curious datasets
https://www.data-is-plural.com/archive/
[9] documenting startups getting swallowed by the big fish
1. Applied Divinity Studies. Rationalist adjacent. Obviously influenced by Scott Alexander, but less optimistic, a bit more cynical. - https://applieddivinitystudies.com/
2. Scott Locklin's blog. He used to post on HN. Mostly covers tech related things (but physical tech, not web stuff). Many HN readers will find him too abrasive and will miss the point. - https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/
3. Granola Shotgun. Hard to pin down what this blog is about exactly, but generally focused on tradeoffs between different configurations of the built environment. The author will baffle the ideologically prejudiced. He's a gay guy in SF who has nice things to say about Mormons and rednecks. - https://www.granolashotgun.com/
I can also recommend the books he have made so far on Wolfenstien 3D and Doom.
- Kevin Kelly: kk.org
- Patrick Collison: patrickcollison.com
- Patrick McKenzie: kalzumeus.com
- David Perell: perell.com
- Berthub.eu
- Alexey Guzey: https://guzey.com/
- https://astralcodexten.substack.com/
- Paul Graham: paulgraham.com
- Laura Deming: https://www.ldeming.com/
- Sam Altman: https://blog.samaltman.com/
- Casey Handmer: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/
https://marginalrevolution.com/ - on economics but so much else
https://avc.com/ - Fred has some of the best startup insights
https://abovethecrowd.com/ - Gurley doesn't blog much but when he does it's great
https://feld.com/ (VC, but wide ranging)
https://mapbrief.com/ Snarky GIS content
https://randsinrepose.com/ Management advice for a level I'll never get to :)
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/ Right of center economics
https://www.eugenewei.com/ Big pic tech and society
- https://www.windytan.com/ (windytan: signal processing)
- https://www.righto.com/ (Ken Sheriff: IC reverse engineering, vintage computing, misc)
- https://jvns.ca/ (Julie Evans: software development, particularly networking)
And even though it's not a written blog, a special mention goes to Ben Eater's website, which links to his fantastic YouTube series on building an 8-bit CPU from logic chips, and on building a 6502 computer.
Surprised to see no one has yet mentioned https://filfre.net — The Digital Antiquarian — a frequently upvoted domain: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=filfre.net
I would love to just download them onto my Kindle and enjoy them out in the sun with a [insert beverage].
if you like melting asphalt (probably the best blog I've ever read) you'll probably also like:
- Venkatesh Rao's https://ribbonfarm.com (it's very much a diamonds-in-the-rough type blog imo)
- the farnam street blog https://fs.blog/ consistently puts out good content
- /sometimes/ lesswrong puts out good ideas when they're not busy modelling spherical cows in a vacuum - https://www.lesswrong.com/
- if you're really into systems theory and don't mind reading strongly management-consultant oriented prose (can't abide it myself but the content is good), https://thesystemsthinker.com/
Luke Smith has some interesting ideas about free software and his Linux/Vim tutorials are very good. However, he's someone who harbors a lot of racist and hateful views. Don't believe me? Watch his livestreams.
His recent crusade to get many people on Monero likely stems from him getting busted[1] for accepting a $30,000 donation in Bitcoin from a French white nationalist who donated[2] $500,000 in Bitcoin earl to far-right groups last year, some of whom were directly involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/12/far-right-open...
[2]: https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/capitol-riot-bitcoin-do...
Tom Murphy https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/
Cathy O'Neil https://mathbabe.org/
Peter Woit (Not Even Wrong) https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/
Autumn Gearhart Rain https://rainintheforecast.wordpress.com/
I like the design a lot.
Also worth reading is Seth’s top 100: https://seths.blog/top-100/
- https://www.taniarascia.com/
Shameless plug, I quite like my own: https://ruairidh.dev
South East Asian Affairs, a collation of a scholars own writings and compliaiton of others that they find interesting: https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/
and of course WaitbutWhy for the joy of reading about the universe as it relates to ourselves, all through great doodles: https://waitbutwhy.com/
Christian Robert https://xianblog.wordpress.com/
Andrew Gelman https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/
Deborah Mayo https://errorstatistics.com/
Frank Harrell https://www.fharrell.com/
Radford Neal https://radfordneal.wordpress.com/
Variance Explained http://varianceexplained.org/
Larry Wasserman (inactive) https://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/
20% Statistician https://daniellakens.blogspot.com/
Jim Albert https://baseballwithr.wordpress.com/author/bayesball/
The R blog https://developer.r-project.org/Blog/public/
Graphic Detail, by The Economist https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/rss.xml
The Royal Society Data Science Section https://rssdss.design.blog/blog-feed/
Many statistics journals also offer RSS feeds. These feeds are sometimes hidden, but an RSS reader like NewsBlur can discover them for you. This post[1] is a good starter collection of statistics journal RSS feeds.
Of those posted, I will +1 daringfireball, jwz, idlewords, filippo, and danluu as people worth reading.
Scott Galloway is also a great read. He writes about the digital economy and tech. (https://www.profgalloway.com/)
I also enjoy reading Martin Tournoij's blog whenever he updates it (https://www.arp242.net/). He's the author of goatcounter and writes about tech and sometimes certain social issues in tech.
Vedica Kant and Anmol Maini write about the Indian startup ecosystem at https://www.kuwi.news/ (it's a substack newsletter). I don't read it all the time but certain pieces are pretty good.
And, finally, to plug my own self, I write about health economics, health policy, and systems thinking at Hawk Radius (https://hawkradius.com)
by Eric Lawrence of Fiddler fame, who's worked for last two decades on IE, then Chrome, then Fiddler, then Chromium-Edge.
A mine of knowledge on browser internals, networking, web compat.
- https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/
by Gergely Orosz, on mobile dev & big tech from European point of view
This post is my favourite and had me hooked from the first sentence:
He talks about systems performance and it's super deep and detailed. Highly respectable and inspiring.
1. Oren Eini - Creator and CTO of Raven DB - https://ayende.com/blog
2. Tyler Neely - Creator of Sled DB - https://medium.com/@tylerneely
3. Philip O'Toole - Creator of rqlite - https://www.philipotoole.com/
4. Martin Kleppmann - Author of Designing Data-Intensive Applications - https://martin.kleppmann.com/archive.html
5. Glauber Costa - worked on glommio, scylla DB - https://glaubercosta-11125.medium.com/
Do recommend me if you know more!
https://kentcdodds.com/ Is also great for JS, React especially testing opinions
https://scattered-thoughts.net/
https://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/
- https://www.kalzumeus.com/archive/ a couple things on here I would say you actually need to read if you want to write code for a living
- https://lethain.com/ great insights on engineering management patterns and antipatterns
convinced me to begin marketing the little projects I make :) very fun, informative, and inspiring
"Every investor is making bets on the future. It’s only called speculation when you disagree with someone else’s bet.
In hindsight there was as much speculation in the 1990s that Kodak and Sears would keep their market share as there was that eToys and Pets.com would gain market share. Both were bets on the future. Both were wrong. It happens.
Of course there’s a speculation spectrum. But let’s not pretend that others speculate while you only deal with certainties."
https://cryptohayes.medium.com/ - Arthur Hayes blog. Crypto trading mostly.
"I am an arbitrage trader at heart. In May 2013 brimming with my experience as a delta one trader, I entered the crypto capital markets. The first trade I ever put on was buying Bitcoin from Mt. Gox, depositing them on ICBIT, then selling BTC/USD June 2013 inverse futures contracts at a premium. My first trade captured a premium of 200% per annum (PA). When the futures expired, and my PNL matched my spreadsheet calculations exactly, I thought to myself, holy shit, “Bitcoin is LIT!”"
- https://www.ldeming.com/longevityfaq
https://weatherwest.com/ - In depth explanations of mostly California weather phenomena and medium term predictions.
What's everyone using for RSS, webdev + client side??
What's everyone's feeling on ActivityPub?
ActivityPub is a complicated protocol, but I still implemented ActivityPub support into my blog.
Do you have blogrolls as well?
Great take on a webring.
Thanks! — let's adopt this, wow.
^^ His blog has changed quite a bit since I started reading it in 2013. Used to be more about ways to save money, but he's long since moved on to just writing about various current issues. I don't always agree with what he has to say, but I find his experiences and opinions very interesting.
Here's a sample:
https://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2009/04/parent-trap.html
https://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2018/05/are-all-psychiatri...
https://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2011/02/culture-of-bellige...
https://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2011/09/cheap-kayaks.html
https://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2009/11/understanding-chec...
https://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2011/06/why-i-hate-young-p...
https://notes.busterbenson.com/
https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes
And
- https://rachelbythebay.com/w/
- https://sarahdrasnerdesign.com/writing/
- https://lukesmith.xyz/ - Quirky minimalist linux & free software stuff. I don't agree with many of his opinions but his rants are entertaining + offer a refreshing view on certain things.
Non-technical:
Some of the best writing about being alive right now to be found if you're interested in anthropology, art history, and philosophy. Can't recommend it enough.
Matt might's 'blog' https://matt.might.net/articles/ is good read about various functional ideas and others
https://aphyr.com/posts/342-typing-the-technical-interview funny post about how complicated balancing a binary tree could be
https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/archive.html some intersting posts about various aspects of programming language tools
https://extraguacblog.com/2016/04/17/financialwisdomofrapmus...
“Futility Closet is a collection of entertaining curiosities in history, literature, language, art, philosophy, and mathematics, designed to help you waste time as enjoyably as possible.” The podcast is good too!
https://vebaccount.substack.com/ - great stuff on economics through a heterodox lens
Content ranges from security, to programming, to observations about life.
I like it because there's usually some good point that is made and I consider it to be well written.
https://martin.kleppmann.com/archive.html - reading about distributed systems and db are extremely interesting
https://danluu.com/ - his metrics articles is how I found him out, but other articles really good too.
https://paulefou.com/ -- This is my blog. I write about self-development for software engineers and my experience with different strategies on the path
Russ Cox of Go: https://research.swtch.com/
Interfluidity - https://www.interfluidity.com/
The Debate Link - http://dsadevil.blogspot.com/
Econbrowser - http://econbrowser.com/
Empassive - https://mandelcabrera.com/
Dead Voles and Econbrowser may have more than one contributor, but its not part of some institute or organization or anything like that.
His old blog is also amusing: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/
I come across a lot of blogs when I curate for my newsletter Interesting Things [1]. Just looking through the links that have been curated in the past month or so, I would suggest:
Tech
Non-tech
- https://www.drorpoleg.com/ - About work and society
- https://staysaasy.com/ - About tech work
- https://www.nateliason.com/ - About life in general
And, of course, shameless plug: https://bengtan.com
----
The NixOS infrastructure is awesome, and of course the whole blog is open sourced and served from the nix store.
Derek Lowe on medicine. He is an absolute expert on the topic, but doesn't mind to speak his opinion and to explain it on a sufficient level for me. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/
Scott Aaronson on algorithms and quantum physics. Scott is a great communicator, and of course an absolute expert on these topics. He does sometimes go a bit off topic though. https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/
Sabine Hossenfelder on experimental physics. Expert on these topics, and has a (very) critical opinion, which is refreshing in this field and can give a feel about what is going on. Lately, she did shift to more pedagogical explanations which are a bit too low level for me, but the blogposts still contain gems from time to time. https://backreaction.blogspot.com/
Glenn Greenwald on journalism and politics. While he is very sharp and opinionated, he digs up new stories and has an out-of-the-box but well-informed opinion I largely agree with (I'm an anarchist). https://greenwald.substack.com/
The best read it the The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans - https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu...
- https://twopagesdoublespaced.substack.com/ - short form non-fiction
- https://www.joshwcomeau.com/ - technical snippets
- http://paulgraham.com/ - entrepreneurship
- https://audacity.substack.com/ - a variety of talented writers
https://www.freedomain.com/blog/
over 3 decades of IT industry commentary and insight.
he doesn't post as frequently anymore but I still enjoy it.
- https://www.kalzumeus.com/archive/ (classic)
I was even interviewed about that list :P
https://netzpolitik.org/2017/interview-how-to-pique-your-cur...
Brian Hayes was once an editor of Scientific American. The blog covers a variety of topics, some related to computer science or math, some not. It reminds me a bit of the old Computer Recreations column that used to run in Scientific American.
Discusses:
- Programming - Applied Math
And some random stuff like: Evaluating splatoon's ranking system: https://www.evanmiller.org/evaluating-splatoons-ranking-syst...
Really recommend it ;)
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/
Daring fireball
Tyler coven on marginal revolution
- https://thealexandrian.net/ - for tabletop rpg content
Fabrice Bellard, creator of FFMPEG, QEMU, and lots of other amazing stuff : https://bellard.org/
particularly nice category: https://www.tommoody.us/archives/category/computers-r-stupid...
Nitin discuss from a fresh perspective what it will take to prevent climate change. He distills and synthesizes books and articles into short essays that push my thinking forward.
https://docs.monadical.com/s/favorite-blogs#Favorite-Persona...
Above and below are other categories too.
It's run as though it's a professional news site, but it's really just one guy posting 99% of the content about the digital signage industry.
Shocked this has not been mentioned yet. It's on hiatus "for now" but I hope this comes back, this was by far my favorite.
A programming blog for the most part, but I always find whatever they're writing about to be fascinating
He's a pro-tech (anti-industry) left-wing futurist and science fiction author. I read him to get out of my filter bubble.
I tune in every time I see a new entry pop up, it's so engaging.
It's in german, but has a nice mix of political and technical topics
Engaging, surprising, highly readable writing that connects cinema and style.
I like https://begriffs.com
Does anyone know any tool that will mass bookmark links on a page?
Here are some that are prolific and good:
https://marginalrevolution.com/
Marginal Revolution: wide-ranging and prolific blog about economics and culture.
https://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com
Anecdotal Evidence: well-written personal blog, mostly observations on books.
Krebs on Security: about information security. It's written for a popular audience, which is about the level at which I understand the subject.
Michael Tsai: collects quotes from other people about ongoing software-related news.
Acquisition Talk: about weapons system acquisition, government procurement, etc. Something I wanted to follow because it's a huge sector that doesn't get a lot of attention.
https://www.futilitycloset.com/
Futility Closet: wunderkammer-style blog with historical miscellany, quotes, puzzles, etc. Also a great podcast.
https://www.tor.com/tag/jo-walton-reads/
Jo Walton's Reading List: Not strictly a blog, but it's in my RSS feeds. I like to see what she's reading lately, and sometimes I get good recommendations from her (e.g. KJ Parker).
BLDGBLOG: about design, architecture, etc.
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/
Colossal: about art and design.
Subtraction: about design
The rest are news sites with a dynamic feed.
I don't read scripting.com much anymore, but it was the first blog I stumbled onto.
That said, some of his political posts are offputting - not because I disagree with them on a liberal/conservative spectrum, but because they sometimes have an "I drank the kool aid" tone.
Slate Star Codex: https://slatestarcodex.com/ | Astral Codex Ten: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/
Paul Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
Bryan Caplan on Econlog: https://www.econlib.org/author/bcaplan/ --Economist
Fake Nous: https://fakenous.net/ --Philosopher
Debarghya Das: http://debarghyadas.com/writes
Nicky Case: https://ncase.me/
Quanticle: https://wiki.quanticle.net/
Grognor (RIP): http://grognor.stacky.net/index.php?title=Main_Page
This is my personal blog: https://galambo.wordpress.com/
'Naked Capitalism", "Yves Smith", https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/
"The Big Picture", Barry Ritholtz, https://ritholtz.com/
"Calculated Risk", Bill McBride, https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/
These ones are some of my favorites: - www.wall.org/~aron/blog/ (physics, theology, history, philosophy)
- http://xahlee.info/ (math, emacs, keyboards, etc.)
- https://matt.might.net/articles/ (academy, compsci, etc.)
- https://www.joelonsoftware.com/ (programming, companies, etc.)
- https://danluu.com/ (technical topics)
- Mailing list in https://practicaltypography.com/
- https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/ (math, physics)
- https://www.gwern.net/index (interesting articles)
- https://slatestarcodex.com/ and https://astralcodexten.substack.com/ (science, psychiatry, philosophy, rationality, etc.)
- http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/ (programming)
- https://creativegood.com/blog/ (UX, and more)
- https://daringfireball.net/ (Apple)
- https://backreaction.blogspot.com/ (physics)
- https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/
- https://historyforatheists.com/ (historical myths)
- http://funcall.blogspot.com/ (programming, compsci)
- https://blog.fawny.org/ (accessibility, design)
- https://blog.jessfraz.com/ (technology)
- https://use-the-index-luke.com/blog (databases)
- https://weekendfisher.blogspot.com/ (God, love)
I can list some of my favorite articles from one of these blogs if anyone is interested.
You can see some sample articles at [1].
[0] thinking-about-things.com
[1] mix.com/thinkingaboutthings
Counts because he hires data collectors, but it's one of the most life changing websites I've ever visited.