
Ask HN: Best curated newsletters? - neilsharma
Based on my experience, Google searches rarely surface high quality blog posts, articles, and insider analyses. Twitter + LinkedIn have an SNR problem. HN is great only for the (primarily US) tech&#x2F;startup scene, and other similar sites often lack the community standard or size to maintain a consistent flow of worthwhile new content.<p>What <i>hand-curated</i> newsletters or websites do experts in any field find incredibly useful? A recent example I&#x27;ve found is Mattermark&#x27;s daily email newsletter, which has a curated list of 5-10 articles and blogposts from investors and operators.<p>Open to lists that aren&#x27;t career related too -- ie: a jazz playlist curated by professional jazz artists.
======
SCdF
For tech I'm honestly trying to keep up less, I want more time in my life to
read shitty fiction etc (and you know, spend time with humans I guess); I've
spent the better part of a 15 years keeping up _too_ much IMO.

On nothing to do with tech: I'm desperately trying to find something that
covers general world news without too much of a US slant, in a nice concise
way. Next Draft (mentioned elsewhere in this thread) is pretty good, but is
very US heavy.

When I trialled subscribing to The Economist their Espresso app-- which is
essentially a daily curated newsletter-- was pretty decent, so if you sub to
them you should definitely check it out.

These days I'm trying the qz daily digest, which I think is working out OK:
they talk about what to expect in the next day, what happened while you were
asleep etc. If anyone has any better suggestions I'd love to hear them: I like
how the economist actually talks about other parts of the world apart from the
states, but I don't love it enough to pay their standard sub rate.

In terms of general flowery writing I get emails from Medium based on what
I've read, emails from Pocket based on what I read, and longform.org's
newsletter. Depending on how snowed under I feel at any given time I either
just delete them without opening them, of potentially skim them to see if
anything is interesting.

~~~
cJ0th
I've subscribed the Quarz RSS feed (not the daily newsletter). I am mostly
pleased with their articles. They do have a weird obsession with women's
issues, though. It's not that I don't care about these but articles on this
subject are often a bit fluffy for my taste.

Example: [http://qz.com/599694/a-peek-inside-modern-day-elite-kitty-
pa...](http://qz.com/599694/a-peek-inside-modern-day-elite-kitty-parties/) (I
read that article two times and still don't understand why "Kitty Parties" are
of significance and how they differ from other social gatherings of business
minded women or people in general)

@OP: Thanks for posting this questions. Looking forward to other people's
answers. I find it quite reassuring that other people also long for curated
newsletters.

~~~
vram22
Kitty parties are a huge thing for women :) It's a women-only kind of thing,
mainly. Quite popular in India too (probably inherited from British colonial
times), at least among the married women crowd. To try to describe it, I'd say
that for women, it is something like "girling out", similar to geeking out or
such terms. Meaning doing something you like, possibly intensively (along with
others).

------
skewart
Great question! I hope it gets traction and makes it to the front page. I'm
curious to see what people come up with.

I like Dave Pell's Next Draft, which is just interesting general news stories,
and also Azeem Azhar's Exponential View, which covers tech, with a slant
towards AI/ML. In terms of stuff the HN crowd is less likely to already know
about, I like Archinect, which covers architecture. It's not really a curated
article roll-up so much as it is an architecture news site, but their weekly
email is a nice way to stay on top of what's going on in the field.

~~~
neilsharma
Thanks for the suggestions -- looking into them now. Clever idea to sign up
for a site's weekly email instead of skimming the site.

I used to sign up for an HN newsletter that'd only show the top posts. I
thought that was an effective way of pushing only the best content to me every
few days. Realized later that I enjoy reading a some articles that didn't get
a lot of upvotes.

I also tried to create an open google doc where a small group of friends could
share links to articles they found particularly noteworthy. Participation was
0, so I gave up and now just store interesting articles in my bookmarks
folder. Messy.

~~~
hardmath123
I've been thinking about setting something like this up, but over email.
Anyone who opts in to the mailing list would be able to submit a
link+description, and once a week some software would automagically send out
an aggregated email to everyone who opts in.

The problem is getting it to the optimum size. If it's too small, it won't
work because nobody will want to post. If it's too large, then the signal-to-
noise ratio drops and it's no better than Reddit or HN.

Also, moderation is hard.

~~~
neilsharma
Yeah, I hear you. Community-driven newsletters / news sites have a very narrow
success zone -- too small and it'd lack fresh content, too large and it'll
have SNR problems.

I think the best solution is to find one or two people who know their stuff to
curate everything. Add community engagement mechanisms incrementally. For
example, enable social media sharing and commenting before account creation,
upvoting, and article submissions.

Wonder how a Quora/Medium model (invite-only) or The Information (paywall)
would work for newsletters, since content isn't original?

------
myztic
I second [https://www.brainpickings.org/](https://www.brainpickings.org/) and
also would like to add [http://nextdraft.com/](http://nextdraft.com/) (though
it is more "general news") - other than that I can't help, because I actually
prefer to use rss-feeds over Newsletters.

Some RSS-Feeds I follow and which might be of interest:
[http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/](http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/) \-
[http://www.rand.org/blog.html](http://www.rand.org/blog.html) \-
[https://blog.codinghorror.com/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/) \-
[https://bsdmag.org/](https://bsdmag.org/)

(PS: You can also get rss-updates about new entries in Youtube-Playlists
(google it) and if you use Twitter and follow some interesting people, that
might also be a good way to stay up to date)

~~~
guftagu
Also a gem of a blog is Joel Spolsky's joelonsoftware.com. He doesn't post
much now but read the archives. You won't regret it.

------
chriseidhof
For iOS, I really like iOS Dev Weekly:
[https://iosdevweek.ly](https://iosdevweek.ly)

Dave, who runs it, also built [https://curated.co](https://curated.co), which
is a tool for producing these kind of hand-curated newsletters.

------
sareiodata
A WordPress curated newsletter you can find at
[http://wpmail.me](http://wpmail.me)

It's sent once a week and you should find at least one or two good articles
that are worth reading.

Then there is [https://www.brainpickings.org](https://www.brainpickings.org)
where the author reads a bunch of books and sends out a newsletter with a
resume of each book. I personally don't think there's anything like this out
there!

------
palcu
Quartz's daily newsletter for everything global. -
[http://qz.com](http://qz.com)

Morning Reader, for general tech news -
[https://morningreader.com](https://morningreader.com)

hackernewsletter for avoiding lurking on HN too much -
[http://www.hackernewsletter.com](http://www.hackernewsletter.com)

------
scottpiper
[http://highscalability.com/](http://highscalability.com/) \- For news related
to building large web apps and software.

[https://summitroute.com/blog/](https://summitroute.com/blog/) \- (mine)
Infosec news.

[http://ben-evans.com/#newsletter](http://ben-evans.com/#newsletter) \- Email
only newsletter from Benedict Evans of A16Z mostly related to large mobile
business moves.

[https://www.feistyduck.com/bulletproof-tls-
newsletter/](https://www.feistyduck.com/bulletproof-tls-newsletter/) \- TLS
crypto news (monthly)

[http://golangweekly.com/](http://golangweekly.com/) \- Golang links

------
btgeekboy
I subscribe to, and enjoy reading,
[http://postgresweekly.com/](http://postgresweekly.com/)

------
suresk
In the Hadoop ecosystem, the Hadoop Weekly has been pretty useful to subscribe
to:

[http://www.hadoopweekly.com/index.html](http://www.hadoopweekly.com/index.html)

------
kiesel
I enjoy reading

* [http://softwareleadweekly.com/](http://softwareleadweekly.com/) \- about people, culture, leadership

* [http://www.devopsweekly.com/](http://www.devopsweekly.com/) \- DevOps, by Gareth Rushgrove

Just my pick. Indeed, I've found links there that haven't popped up anywhere
else (HN, Twitter), so I second the original poster's opinion that mail
newsletters are a good thing - wouldn't have thought that.

------
personlurking
It's quite hard to build up a following these days. In the last 5-6 years, I
made such newsletters for the coffee world, airports, plus cultural items and
tech news out of Brazil. For all of them, I made use of my
knowledge/familiarity of Romance languages and would thus translate foreign
news to add to my newsletters. Essentially, I learned they were "nice-to-have"
but not necessary in order to operate in these fields (the latter being what I
was aiming for).

\- For coffee, I learned people in the know are after 24/7 changes in the
commodities market.

\- For worldwide airport news, well, I don't think there is much of a market
there (though I would regularly capture 30-50 pertinent articles per day).

\- For Brazil news, cultural awareness is nice to have but in order for
something like that to be needed, I would think the focus would have to be
Business, and very specific (in fact, I played around with making newsletters
like this).

\- For Brazil tech, I think it was too early on in its development because
there were only around 10-15 items per day.

There's a final component I failed to consider with the first two newsletters
above, I had no product dev, no one on the inside to say "hey, focus on this
aspect, that's what people need."

------
long
There's a good one on internet (and non-internet) culture at
[http://tedium.co/](http://tedium.co/)

------
toni
Try NewsletterStash
[http://www.newsletterstash.com/](http://www.newsletterstash.com/)

It's a newsletter directory where you can search and find all kinds of
newsletters even with subjects outside the tech world. (I've got no
affiliation with them, just found it a while back on OpenHunt and thought it's
useful.)

------
nirajrajmohan
I personally recommend Snippets from Social+Capital (s23p). I like their pick
of articles - very logical and insightful. Delivered once a week, it captures
an essence of what goes on in the tech and startup world while casting aside
all the hype and hoopla that most other blogs end up pushing.

Take a look at some of their past newsletters - [http://us10.campaign-
archive2.com/home/?u=d7f0f45160075006b2...](http://us10.campaign-
archive2.com/home/?u=d7f0f45160075006b25756cd0&id=159d546edd)

2nd Place : Weekly Newsletter + Podcasts from Andreessen Horowitz (A16z). The
podcasts are amazing - discussions with entrepreneurs working on bio-tech, AI,
Fin-tech, Quantum Computing. All the people I would love to hang out with.

Preview [http://us7.campaign-
archive2.com/home/?u=35c671b34bb40414916...](http://us7.campaign-
archive2.com/home/?u=35c671b34bb404149166bf755&id=6da14709cd)

Non-tech: Brain Pickings FTW!

------
dhogan
For Data Science: Data Elixir [http://dataelixir.com/](http://dataelixir.com/)

------
reuven
I run Mandarin Weekly
([http://MandarinWeekly.com/](http://MandarinWeekly.com/)), for people
learning Chinese. It comes out every Monday, and I've been doing it for more
than a year. It's fun to hear from other people learning Chinese, around the
world!

------
Mojah
Fully disclaimer: I'm the one writing this newsletter.

Cron.weekly is a weekly newsletter (every Sunday) with news on Linux and open
source. Focussing on the technical side mostly, featuring new tools & projects
and guides & tutorials, as well as the latest news, releases, ... pretty much
anything noteworthy in open source.

It's available here: [http://www.cronweekly.com/](http://www.cronweekly.com/)

And all archives are available here:
[http://www.cronweekly.com/archives/](http://www.cronweekly.com/archives/)

------
jlgaddis
I pretty much _NEVER_ subscribe to anything like this as it seems like a given
that I'll eventually get spammed.

Recently, though, I signed up for the "cron.weekly" [0] newsletter and it's
actually pretty decent. I think I first saw it mentioned here.

The "archives" [1] are available as well, so you can get an idea of what it's
like before you sign up.

[0]: [http://www.cronweekly.com/](http://www.cronweekly.com/)

[1]:
[http://www.cronweekly.com/archives/](http://www.cronweekly.com/archives/)

~~~
Mojah
Hi there,

I'm writing that mailing list, so I'm very happy to read you're enjoying it.
Thanks for sharing!

Mattias

------
nexxer
In addition to others mentioned here, I've been enjoying Weekend Reading by
Assaf Arkin for a roundup of lighthearted tidbits about the dev world, in
addition to some useful tips:

[http://tinyletter.com/assaf](http://tinyletter.com/assaf)

Example link from yesterday's I liked:
[https://twitter.com/HenryHoffman/status/694184106440200192](https://twitter.com/HenryHoffman/status/694184106440200192)

------
lubonay
For Android development, Android Weekly is the most popular newsletter:
[http://androidweekly.net/](http://androidweekly.net/)

------
davemel37
I read [http://www.MarketingLand.com](http://www.MarketingLand.com) 's
MarketingDay Email every day &
[http://www.SearchEngineLand.com](http://www.SearchEngineLand.com) 's
SearchCap.

MarketingDay does an amazing job curating posts from around the web as well as
give you the top stories published on MarketingLand that day. It is a must
read for anyone involved in any area of digital marketing.

------
pjdkoch
[http://www.devopsweekly.com/](http://www.devopsweekly.com/)

I don't always have time to read it. But, when I do, I never regret it.

~~~
jlgaddis
Looking at their archive [0], it appears the last "issue"(?) was a little over
14 months ago.

[0]:
[http://www.devopsweekly.com/archive](http://www.devopsweekly.com/archive)

~~~
benjaminwootton
Still very much alive and excellent - I think he just hasn't automated the
archive update.

------
gautamnarula
I've been pretty happy with Charged (www.char.gd). Nicely summarized articles
on the tech news for that week, with links to the originals and links for
further reading.

~~~
owenwil
Thank you!

------
dinosaurs
[http://javascriptweekly.com/](http://javascriptweekly.com/)

[http://nodeweekly.com/](http://nodeweekly.com/)

[http://rubyweekly.com/](http://rubyweekly.com/)

I like how they post the weekly newsletter on the website. I'm not subscribed,
but I read it every week. It's a nice way to stay up to date of some
technologies I use daily.

------
pmcpinto
Farnam Street Blog Newsletter:
[https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/](https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/)

Great source of wisdom

------
reuven
I run Daily Tech Video, at
[http://DailyTechVideo.com/](http://DailyTechVideo.com/), with a single,
curated conference video about the sorts of topics I like -- namely, Web
development, programming languages, and databases. I started it to keep up on
topics and conferences, and I'm now up to more than 430 videos, categorized by
language, technology, etc.

------
vatsal
I like [http://www.StrictlyVC.com](http://www.StrictlyVC.com) for VC/Startup
related news. I also enjoy
[http://www.MarketSnacks.com](http://www.MarketSnacks.com) for a quick and
often humorous read in the morning related to wall street and the public
markets.

------
nl
Linux Weekly News ([http://lwn.net/](http://lwn.net/))

For Machine Learning I can't recommend Talking Machines
([http://www.thetalkingmachines.com/blog/](http://www.thetalkingmachines.com/blog/))
highly enough. It is a podcast though.

------
rdlecler1
If you're into food and agtech, we run
[https://AgFunderNews.com](https://AgFunderNews.com) Our weekly newsletter
features our top articles and other top external articles we shared on social
media. Newsletter goes out to >15,000 people each week with a 30% open rate.

------
rchaudhary
You can check out,

[http://www.pythonweekly.com](http://www.pythonweekly.com)

[http://www.nosqlweekly.com](http://www.nosqlweekly.com)

[http://www.founderweekly.com](http://www.founderweekly.com)

Disclaimer: I am the curator of these newsletters.

------
tmlee
My friends hand curate newsletter related to Fintech and bitcoin &
cryptocurrency

[http://www.fintechstreet.com](http://www.fintechstreet.com)
[http://www.altcoinweekly.com](http://www.altcoinweekly.com)

------
itamarhaber
I really enjoy the stuff in Redis Watch - anything and everything about Redis:
[https://redislabs.com/redis-watch-archive](https://redislabs.com/redis-watch-
archive)

 __DISCLAIMER __: I 'm the curator and janitor of the newletter

------
owenwil
I found myself overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content coming out of most
places, so I created one that focuses on technology and reducing noise on a
weekly basis - about 7,000 subscribers now: [http://char.gd](http://char.gd)

------
mangoorange
[http://importpython.com](http://importpython.com) is a Python Weekly
Newsletter. Unlike some of the other newsletter on Python it's not just the
best of Reddit but articles that aren't even on Reddit. Check it out.

------
cleartruth
[http://importpython.com/newsletter/](http://importpython.com/newsletter/) is
one I enjoy reading. Specially the open source projects they feature every
week have been helpful to my development/work.

------
onion2k
[http://tinyletter.com/data-is-plural](http://tinyletter.com/data-is-plural)
Data Is Plural by Buzzfeed's data editor. It's a curated list of interesting
open data sets that can be used to build stuff.

------
nepsilon
I'm curating Fullweb Weekly[1], a newsletter for Fullstack developers.

The format is the top 5 links of the week + 1 mini article. About 1100
subscribers now, I also welcome contributions!

1: [https://fullweb.io/](https://fullweb.io/)

------
0x54MUR41
For engineering, I would recommend Sliced Ham [1]. It contains some
engineering and development blogs from various companies and individual
contributors.

[1]: [http://www.slicedham.co/](http://www.slicedham.co/)

------
dennybritz
Shameless plug, but I am curating a Deep Learning / Artificial Intelligence
newsletter:
[http://www.wildml.com/newsletter/](http://www.wildml.com/newsletter/)

------
bckmn
My up-to-date list of newsletters (present, past, and future):
[http://www.andjosh.com/lists/newsletter/](http://www.andjosh.com/lists/newsletter/)

------
siquick
[https://www.soundshelter.net/](https://www.soundshelter.net/)

Curates a personalised list of electronic music/soul jazz vinyl releases based
upon items you add to your Saves list

------
ranganaths8
IF you are python programmer, importpython
([http://importpython.com/newsletter/](http://importpython.com/newsletter/))
is the must for subscription

------
mrw34
Data Machina reliably surfaces links that I wouldn't have seen otherwise:
[https://tinyletter.com/datamachina](https://tinyletter.com/datamachina)

------
stelian
From [https://frontendfront.com](https://frontendfront.com) I send a
newsletter every Monday with the most upvoted front-end news of the week.

------
skorgu
I compile some random links and send them out every week:
[https://www.skorgu.net/weird/](https://www.skorgu.net/weird/)

------
renaissancec
Azeem Azhar's Exponential Life David Farber's Interesting People Benedict
Evans weekly digest Sinocism Webstock's weekly newsletter TechTails by
Smalldog Electronics

------
citeguised
For front-end & web-development, the weekly »Web Development Reading List« is
pretty nice.

[https://wdrl.info/](https://wdrl.info/)

------
qgaultier
I use [http://www.pearltrees.com](http://www.pearltrees.com), fully hand
curated. I think it matches exactly your needs.

------
pedrodelfino
Beta List's newsletter

------
thekindlyone
importpython for python programmers.

------
douche
I like these, tending towards the .NET world

Alvin Ashcroft's Morning Dew
[http://www.alvinashcraft.com/](http://www.alvinashcraft.com/)

Chris Alcock's Morning Brew
[http://themorningbrew.net/](http://themorningbrew.net/)

Regular Geek [http://regulargeek.com/category/geek-
reading/](http://regulargeek.com/category/geek-reading/)

