Ask HN: What unknown technical blogs or sites do you read? - llambda
======
smanek
Unknown is relative, but here are some of the rss feeds I'm subscribed too:

<http://nosql.mypopescu.com/>

<http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/>

<http://eli.thegreenplace.net/>

<http://www.stefankrause.net/wp/>

<http://mechanical-sympathy.blogspot.com/>

<http://www.cowtowncoder.com/blog/blog.html>

<http://highlyscalable.wordpress.com/>

<http://hunch.net/>

<http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/>

<http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/>

<http://www.softwarebyrob.com/>

<http://blog.mikemccandless.com/>

~~~
msutherl
Scott Aaronson's blog is so awesome. I would be reading it now if I still had
room in my head for the whole 'rationalist' thing (along with Overcoming Bias,
etc.) Check out his "Favorite Posts" in the right-hand column.

Lambda the Ultimate is also a rare gem of a community on the internet and
likewise I'd still be reading it if I wasn't trying to care less about design
and more about hustle right now. I'm really interested in dataflow programming
and I've learned a lot by searching through previous discussions on the
concept at LtU.

------
JoshTriplett
I find Planet blog aggregators a useful and surprisingly unknown resource.
Great way to get a view into the blogs of a whole project community without
having to follow a pile of them individually; I recommend following the Planet
for any project you regularly use or have a strong interest in. I personally
follow these planets regularly (via a bookmark folder that I open into tabs):

Planet Debian: <http://planet.debian.org/>

Planet Freedesktop: <http://planet.freedesktop.org/>

Planet GNOME: <http://planet.gnome.org/>

Kernel Planet: <http://planet.kernel.org/>

Planet Mozilla: <http://planet.mozilla.org/>

~~~
reidrac
I also follow:

\- Planet Python: <http://planet.python.org/>

\- Planet Django: <http://www.planetdjango.org/>

The following are interesting if you're user of the Linux distribution and
sometimes overlap with other planets (ie. Gnome):

\- Planet Fedora: <http://planet.fedoraproject.org/>

\- Planet Ubuntu: <http://planet.ubuntu.com/>

EDIT: formatting

------
cowboyhero
<https://cooperpress.com/>

It's not a blog, but a collection of weekly email newsletters.

At the risk of sounding like a shill (because I'm pretty sure Mr Cooper posts
to HN), I have to say these are each brilliantly done. There are separate
newsletters for JavaScript, Ruby, HTML5, and Dart (but sadly no Python).

Great way to keep up with changes in these areas once a week, and pretty much
the only third-party emails I not only look forward to receiving, but actually
open and read.

~~~
petercooper
I do! :-) Thanks for the mention, you would be a great shill to hire if I were
looking.

With regards to Python, I believe <http://www.pythonweekly.com/> was inspired
by my newsletters. I don't run it but have seen a few issues. There is also
<http://pycoders.com/> and I know those guys too. Both have a similar
structure and approach to mine. Hopefully I can buy/partner with one of them
someday rather than launch my own ;-)

------
Gravityloss
<http://newspacewatch.com/> \- Newspace sector news. Clark Lindsey knows
what's going on. If you want to set into context what SpaceX does, this is the
place: Usually it's something that other companies have already done on a
smaller scale.

<http://www.43rumors.com/> \- Micro four thirds camera news, only interesting
if you have one or are going to buy one.

<http://www.greencarcongress.com/> \- Automotive sector technologies. This is
the engineering style site: just mostly text and more in depth press releases.
No fancy word plays or car show girls. I do wonder though, why we are not in a
better position as a new massively improved cheap battery technology is
discovered every week...

<http://planet3.org/> \- Climate scientists write thoughtfully. Also in the
comments. It's not as massive as realclimate and it's much less formal.

------
anoved
Jonathan's Space Report (<http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html>) is an
exhaustive accounting of human activity in space (manned or unmanned), with a
focus on recent launches. Released every few weeks. Back issues run to 1989
and continue to the present day.

Emily Lakdawalla writes some very good explanations of space science for the
Planetary Society - very accessible, but with more detail and intelligence
(IMHO) than you get from other media outlets.
<http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/>

------
powertower
Fringe energy and "science" type stuff...

<http://peswiki.com/index.php/Main_Page>

<http://pesn.com/>

By following the links and discussions, you can get pretty deep into it; down
to the published papers in respectable journals and granted patents. But be
warned, there are a lot of crack pots that pollute the matters (as expected
for this category). So you have to take what's good, and throw away what's
bad. But it does give you a different perspective on things.

------
JagMicker
<http://cryptome.org>

<http://publicintelligence.net>

<http://landonf.bikemonkey.org>

~~~
3amOpsGuy
Landon Fuller is a great read, although not as active in the past year or 2.
Have seen a few posts trickle through recently, as high caliber as ever.

------
kami8845
Hacker News

If it's good enough it will make it's way on here. If not, there's no point in
me repeatedly checking their site or collecting it into a big RSS dump where I
have to wade through 99% crap to get to the good bits.

Hacker News does a great job of giving me the HREFs I like to click on and
that's one of the reasons I keep coming back.

~~~
why-el
Except when I am offline for a minute, then I have to do some digging. Are you
aware of this news.ycombinator.com/best though? I find it helpful

~~~
kami8845
I proudly present:

<http://rewindhn.com>

:)

------
bbunix
Since it hasn't been mentioned yet - The Risks Digest -
<http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks>

See just how wrong things can, and do, go.

------
sgdesign
May I suggest my friend Tim's blog? I'm pretty sure it's unknown, it seems he
writes it mostly for himself. But there are some great technical articles on
it:

<http://www.pixelastic.com/>

~~~
lucb1e
Reading the top blog entry, looks like a very useful blog to me. No big fancy
talking about how he scaled up to 4 million users, but a down-to-earth story
about FTP and versioning that I can relate to. Thanks for the link :)

Edit: I forgot to mention another thing: It made a positive impression by
being a dark blog with a good design. I don't entirely like my own blog's
design, and I thought white-on-black just wasn't a good setup. This shows it
can be great. I also like the lack of "recommended articles" and pop-ups
(javascript ones) to keep me on the site.

------
vjeux
Shameless plug to my own blog: <http://blog.vjeux.com>

~~~
jackpirate
Another shameless plug: <http://izbicki.me>

I have both technical AI type posts and also a bit of religion.

~~~
sbierwagen
Since this appears to be the dedicated thread for self promotion,
<http://bbot.org/blog/>

------
larsberg
Probably the most unknown area I read and/or hear about today are private G+
circles. For example, much pre-publication PL/compilers work is mentioned in
"limited" posts. I've heard similar things are happening in ML areas, though I
have no personal insight into them.

~~~
batgaijin
That's not cool.

------
xbryanx
Technical Mapping, GIS, and Cartography blogs I follow:

<http://smathermather.wordpress.com/>

<http://www.obscureanalytics.com/>

<http://ogleearth.com/>

<http://blogs.esri.com/esri/>

<http://mapbox.com/blog/>

<http://bigthink.com/blogs/strange-maps>

------
wslh
I've not seen these ones on any list here:

<http://blog.databigbang.com>

<http://blog.nektra.com>

<http://www.yosefk.com/blog>

<http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/>

<http://blogs.southworks.net>

<http://awelonblue.wordpress.com/>

------
icebraining
Well, I've been enjoying Joey Hess' build log of git-annex assistant [1], and
I like Julien Danjou's [2] too, even though he writes more about Emacs, while
I'm a VIM user.

Then there's Old New Thing, LtU and John Resig's blog, but those are less
obscure.

[1]: <http://git-annex.branchable.com/design/assistant/blog/>

[2]: <http://julien.danjou.info/blog/>

------
qubitsam
<http://www.devttys0.com/blog/>

<http://www.dumpanalysis.org/blog/>

<https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/>

<http://j00ru.vexillium.org/?lang=en>

<http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ntdebugging/>

------
Nick_C
I like Chris Siebenmann's blog. He writes daily about unix sys admin on a
university network, mainly using Solaris, RHEL and ZFS.

It's interesting to see the tools he uses and the problems he encounters,
useful when you do some amount of admin on your VPS.

<http://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/>

------
noblethrasher
<http://existentialtype.wordpress.com/>

<http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/>

<http://ericlippert.com/> and <http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/> and
<http://stackoverflow.com/users/88656/eric-lippert>

<http://www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog/Default.aspx>

------
msutherl
I try to keep my subscription to an absolute minimum since I like to leave
some time for reading books. After a lot of culling, I'm currently subscribed
to some popular feeds:

<http://www.smashingmagazine.com/> (general web design / dev)

<http://www.alistapart.com/> (long form web design / front-end)

<http://dailyjs.com/> (Javascript / node.js)

<http://createdigitalmusic.com/> (digital music / software)

<http://www.creativeapplications.net/> (new-media art)

And a handful of unpopular ones:

<http://www.ribbonfarm.com/> (absolutely my favorite blog in the world – self-
describes as "refactored perception)

<http://www.tempobook.com/blog/> (same author as above, posts related to his
last book)

<http://worrydream.com/feed.xml> (not really a blog, but Bret Victor writes
some of the best long-form articles on interaction design around – read all of
them)

<http://www2.technologyreview.com/rss/video_rss.aspx> (Tech Review videos,
sparsely updated – mainly because the editor's interviews are
awesome/hilarious)

<http://idlewords.com/> (breathtaking travel blog from the founder of
Pinboard)

<http://www.loper-os.org/> (awesome / hilarious posts by a software heretic on
the general terrible state of things in technology – keeps me in touch with
Alan Kay-esque thinking)

<http://we-make-money-not-art.com/> (the only contemporary art blog I like
from a very dedicated Italian writer)

<http://vagueterrain.net/> (occasionally published digital art magazine,
themed topics, guest curated)

<http://theixdlibrary.com/> (occasional classic UX articles)

<http://www.markboulton.co.uk/> (occasional forward-thinking posts on web
design, focus on layout and grids)

<http://informationarchitects.net/> (same as above, but focus on typography)

All of these feeds have been selected for a _very_ high signal to noise ratio
and most of them are updated only occasionally (which I prefer), with the
exception of Smashing and DailyJS.

~~~
goolulusaurs
Ribbonfarm is truly top-notch, one of my absolute favorites as well.

I also like <http://lesswrong.com/> but I think its pretty well known.

~~~
msutherl
While I've found some nice ideas on Less Wrong, articles like this recent one:
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/frp/train_philosophers_with_pearl_an...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/frp/train_philosophers_with_pearl_and_kahneman_not/)
go to show the tunnel vision of the "Rationalists" that haunt that part of the
internet.

I think of Venkat Rao as a combination of that sort of scientific rationalism
with the sort of old-school intellectualism that can only come from reading an
epic quantity of literature and taking a truly skeptical attitude toward
everything. Keeps the fanaticism in check and results in a much more subtle
and interesting point of view.

~~~
goolulusaurs
I definitely agree about lesswrong being a mixed bag, that post you linked in
particular was just... painful.

------
msbarnett
Mike Ash's Friday Q&A is easily one of my favorite technical blogs
<http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/>

------
sbierwagen
<http://blog.elphel.com/> image processing

<http://hydraraptor.blogspot.com/> 3d printers

<http://pipeline.corante.com/> pharmaceutical development

<http://howtospotapsychopath.com/> all sorts of stuff

------
FrojoS
<http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/>

PS: Awesome thread! So many nuggets.

------
tomcam
<http://www.web2py.com>

By far the most comprehensive, most underrated Python framework (actually, any
web framework) that I know of. Incredibly complete library. Fantastic
community. Most responsive project creator/manager-place is a dream.

------
rdl
<http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/> \- blue pill company, etc.
<http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/> \- cambridge (uk) security group

------
MaxGabriel
It may not be living up to its name if it is popular, but NSHipster is a great
blog on Objective-C

~~~
msutherl
Link for the lazy: <http://nshipster.com/>

------
ejstronge
Not as much a blog as a repository of beautiful data visualizations,
occasionally coupled to the story behind the visualizations' creation:

<http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/>

------
_feda_
as for technical blogs, the only ones I get consistently useful information
from are: <http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/>, from which I've learnt a great deal
about vim and also about some obscure but historically significant unix tools
which otherwise I'd never have known of. <http://archlinux.me/> Every now and
then a good in depth article pops up pn this one. Dev blogs are great for
learning about the nitty gritty details of a project aswell as getting a grip
on the problems devs are facing right now.

------
apaprocki
[http://mrale.ph/blog/2012/12/15/microbenchmarks-fairy-
tale.h...](http://mrale.ph/blog/2012/12/15/microbenchmarks-fairy-tale.html)

Slava always has great live presentations and has a great blog.

------
gits1225
My recent subscription: <http://bartoszmilewski.com/> The blog in one
sentence: Think in Haskell, code in C++ & multi-core to spice it all up.

------
jcdavis
2 good JVM performance blogs:

<http://vanillajava.blogspot.com/>

<http://mechanical-sympathy.blogspot.com/>

~~~
monksy
Vanilla Java is a great book. The author is active on SO as well.

------
hncommenter13
<http://glinden.blogspot.com/>

Mix of interesting technical articles (most related to search and information
retrieval) and tech industry prognostication.

------
vertis
I really enjoy <http://afreshcup.com/>. It's mostly a linkblog, but Mike
Gunderloy always finds interesting things to share.

------
yuhong
<http://os2museum.com>

<http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com>

------
yread
Not sure if it's unknown but <http://blog.cwa.me.uk/> is pretty good for MS
technologies (and sometimes web in general)

------
kephra
<http://www.bernd-leitenberger.de/blog/> <\- a German blog focused on rockets
and space techologie

------
mgonto
I read <http://www.blogeek.com.ar/> It's about Scala, Java, Ruby, Play mostly.

------
bbunix
The Risks Digest is great <http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks>

------
bumbledraven
<http://www.solipsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/LumpNet>

------
draq
<http://www.eurekalert.org>

------
andyrubio
They're not unknown to me...

~~~
huhtenberg
"No known bugs" is a must have in all self-respecting Release Notes :)

------
denysonique
<http://echojs.com>

------
asmithmd1
a very smart physicist turned quant's take on many topics - always excited to
see a new entry

<http://scottlocklin.wordpress.com>

------
pocketstar
im not sure how unknown it is but hackaday.com

I frequently see an interesting project posted on hackaday, then a few days
later it has gone 'viral' on engadget, lifehacker, hn, ars etc...

------
hemtros
a link aggregator called coder.io and articles on codeproject.com are too
good.

------
boringkyle
Anyone got one for musicians?

~~~
mnicole
What kind? Nothin' fancy, but I keep a snip.it for interactive/iOS music
production here - <http://snip.it/collections/1518-make-music>

------
goronbjorn
highscalability.com

 _never_ ceases to have interesting, substantive content.

------
yaphets_pis
www.taobao.com

------
zohebv
<http://blog.sigfpe.com/> <http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/>

