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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
67 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] threadThe 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.
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
nytimes.com
qz.com
newyorker.com
twitter.com
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.
I find myself looking for more "adult" communities nowadays, and it has been a struggle to find them.
EDIT: Typo
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.
I'd be interested in seeing a stylometric analysis of the comments. I bet we'd see quite a lot of crossover with political, and corporate PR.
http://www.ventusky.com to check the weather worldwide
http://www.xkcd.com for a quick procrastination break
huffpo
hn
my industry's subreddit
4chan /b/ /pol/ /biz/
fark
a local blogger
each site probably 4-5 times a day
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
https://www.theatlantic.com
http://www.nytimes.com
https://www.theguardian.com/international
https://www.bloomberg.com/
https://www.gwern.net/
https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/
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.
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)
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.
Hacker News
4chan (/v/, /tv/, /pol/)
Youtube (Mainly for music)