
Websites people say have changed their lives - imartin2k
http://kottke.org/17/04/these-websites-could-change-your-life
======
futurix
Funny enough, I don't remember precise websites that really changed my life -
usually they would trigger a flurry of activity and would be forgotten
themselves.

I don't remember where I read in 1997 that being gay is 'okay' and normal -
but that was a major revelation for a geeky teen in a notoriously homophobic
and close-minded country (no more suicide attempts for me, yay). Co-
incidentally that led me to work hard on improving my English, as all
information was in it.

And my improved English led me to start my own website - the only website that
changed my life and I still remember all the details of it (even though it is
no longer online). It was dedicated to my hobby project - the project that led
a foreign company to hire me and relocate me to a Western country. Which
triggered a chain of events that brought me to the UK, to a much happier and
fuller life than I ever hoped to have.

And finally, I don't remember where I read an article describing the author's
struggle with an eating disorder, but I realised that I'm going through
exactly the same thing and that I need help. It improved my life dramatically,
pretty much kept me alive - but I don't remember what or where it was...

------
cJ0th
I am surprised no one mentioned Reddit. Reddit really helped me gain
perspective.

For one thing, it made me realize how similar people all over the world are.
No matter how specific a post is, chances are really high that someone else
will chime in and echo the feeling/experience that has been expressed. In
short, the positive message is: You're not alone!

For another thing, it is (despite the horrible search function) relatively
easy to discover communities that discuss the same topics from different
angles. For instance, when it comes to international news that affect country
A and B you can read the comments in r/a and /b and thus gain a deeper
understanding of the issue.

~~~
nonamechicken
Reddit impacted my life negatively and is a site I would never recommend to
anybody in my life. It taught me that a lot of Americans hate Indians, and has
probably forever changed my feelings to them negatively. It is the only
addiction I have that I am trying to get away from, but always find myself
going back. And the weird thing is, on some days, I specifically go look for
the bad news.

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
As an American I have to say I don't know any Americans that hate Indians. So
please don't think that because you have met some portion on Reddit that feel
that way!

~~~
codesocomplete
As an Indian living in the US, I don't know any either. However, there are
only a limited number of people I know and I do go to Reddit to gain
perspective on a number of things - and advice/opinions there have helped me
in real life. So I often tend to trust (well voted) opinions there. Reddit
hatred towards India combined with the much revered NYTimes also often showing
signs of it has started to make me believe that there is more anti-India
sentiment lurking in America than meets the eye

~~~
cylinder
The internet has led me to believe that Indians are extremely sensitive and
insecure about their reception and reputation in other countries.

There are 1 billion+ Indians and 330m+ Americans. I'm sure some hate each
other and some love each other. If you think America generally as a whole
dislikes Indians, perhaps you can explain why they have the highest average
incomes of any ethnic group in the US, own most of the hotels, and lead
several Fortune500 companies.

This is probably the third thread I've randomly come across in two days where
Indians are whining about their supposed reputations abroad. Keep it up and
it'll become true!

~~~
nojvek
Indians is such a big category though. I have Indian DNA, lived most of my
life away from parents in western counties. I can't speak hindi to save my
life.

But occasionally you'd find the person who'd be a snob and judge you from the
skin. Then you'd say something and they'd be like "where are you from". "I'm
from here". "No no, wheeeeere are you from?". "From Africa". "Where are your
grand parents from?

------
Symbiote
Wikipedia.

So much information, generally well written, and a good level of detail on
many pages. I've used the "Random Page" link a few times.

Just this morning I read "Apollo 8"[1], since I heard samples from the radio
broadcast in a song last night.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8)

------
avasylev
Mr money mustache

After living in US for a year or two, was very interesting to discover
alternative view on "typical" lifestyle. While I don't agree with all his
recommendation, I did buy cheap small car :)

~~~
erikb
there are also some subreddits on frugal life, early retirement, management of
your finances. While there is a lot of advertisment and untested theory in
there as well, I have to agree that it helps a lot to gain some money skills.

The one I can recommend the most is learning to write down and track your
finances manually (i.e., without Mint). I'm a lazy bum, so I stop doing it
after a few months every time I start, but when you hit a strain of bad luck
that drains all your savings you will be happy as hell to have these skills
navigate you through the storm. I'd say without these skills I would be
insolvent right now, which is worse in my country than the US, afaik.

~~~
mrweasel
While there are much good advise in those subreddit, much of the content is
also extremely US-centric. That's fine of cause, that's where many of the
users are, but some of the advise aren't really applicable in some other
countries, and some is just plain bad advice in you're not in the US. The
whole renting vs. buying of instance, Reddit users almost always recommend
renting your home, but that just throwing money away in some countries.

~~~
fragmede
Rent vs. buy is a great example of how useless broad unqualified advice is.
Whether to buy or rent varies from district to district within the same city,
as well as from city to city, and also state to state inside the US, never
mind different countries.

It also varies from individual to individual; their savings, their finances,
where they are in their career.

~~~
erikb
Therefore don't learn the conclusions, learn the decision making steps and
information gathering tips. Then apply them yourself and see what it yields
for your context.

------
erikb
I love such summary sites, and probably will spend the next weeks
reading/watching stuff from this one. However, I have to note a mistake I
often make that other people may make as well:

Often when we think "wow, that's life changing!" it's actually a strong
emotional response of surprise. It is really helpful when it happens because
the content provided demands it. It helps us to learn faster and stay
motivated to the end of the content. But sometimes it's not the content
itself, but the presentation. And just like Coka Cola may taste exciting when
you haven't been drinking any sugary drink for years, the presentation itself
may be the only thing exciting about it. It creates the emotional response by
artificially triggering our buttons, but not because it really has some
valuable lesson.

I really need to remind myself of that before I start to dive in. Hope it
helps some others to filter the real content from the sugar water as well.

------
obituary_latte
For me it was a band fan club website. It was built on top of a highly
customized version of phpbb. There were quirks so that people could change the
color of text and embed pictures etc even though that wasn't allowed. That was
what sent me down the rabbit hole: how did they change the color of the text??

Unfortunately, eventually it led me far enough that I found an xss vuln and
upon reporting it they shut down the ability to comment/post/pm at all. So now
it just sits there frozen in time.

I eventually scraped the site (some 2GB of posts) and rebuilt the site from
scratch with pyramid/sqlalchemy/postgres. I offered it up for use, but didn't
get much traction. Still, that was a very fun project. Interesting how the
site was still sending me down the rabbit hole all those years later.

------
petra
Pubmed clinical queries section:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/clinical](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/clinical)

If you or your family have any sort of medical issue, that's the best place to
get high-quality, reliable medical information, especially in the "systematic
reviews" section - which is basically journal quality summarization of the
relevant research.

EDIT: to get the maximum benefit, you'll probably need to use Libgen together.

------
kristianc
I remember Dreamless, Praystation, k10k et al with some fondness as part of a
special era on the web when people were just making things for the sheer joy
of experimenting with this new platform and seeing what was possible. Some of
it was pretentious nonsense, some of it was quite fun, most of it would be
dismissed as frivolous today. The web as an app platform really profoundly
changed things but in many ways we stand on the shoulders of these early
efforts.

~~~
drawkbox
Praystation was great, the flash community at the time was almost like an
interactive underground demo scene where people showed off their flash skills.

Makes me think of flash cartoon sites as well from the time: Joe Cartoon [1],
Spumco (JohnK, Goddamn George Liquor Program)[2], etc. Made many people see
that you could get animation and web comics/entertainment to anyone with this
tech, many shows to this day still use Flash/Animate[3] or now most use Toon
Boom[4].

[1] [http://joecartoon.com/](http://joecartoon.com/)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCE0d5xCHJ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCE0d5xCHJ4)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_televis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_television_series)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toon_Boom_Animation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toon_Boom_Animation)

------
yomritoyj
Terence Tao's 'What's New'[1] and Mathoverflow[2]. Books and papers in
mathematics don't tell you much about the penumbra of stories, hopes and plans
around the formal work, particularly at the higher levels. These sites make
(some) of that intuitive knowledge accessible to everyone.

[1] [https://terrytao.wordpress.com/](https://terrytao.wordpress.com/) [2]
[https://mathoverflow.net/](https://mathoverflow.net/)

------
TheAceOfHearts
Hacker News changed my life, I found my first job thanks to a Who's Hiring
post. :)

I'm surprised that Khan Academy isn't listed anywhere. Their videos were
incredibly helpful when I was in college.

~~~
pacnw
Second this. I have learnt about so many new technologies from HN, that 1) it
pushed me to finally start my own venture, and 2) the technologies I have
learnt about and use in my daily stack all came from HN posts over the years

------
curuinor
Something about MeFi that makes it an oasis of basically what the lurid 90's
folks imagined the Web would become. Probably because it's from the 90's, but
it's a dingy dirty utopia of sorts

------
shouldbworking
HN is up there for me. It gave me a much broader perspective on the happenings
within the field. And it encouraged me to move to the great city I now live.

------
waqasaday
Here are some I like: [https://archive.org](https://archive.org)
[http://meh.com](http://meh.com)
[https://www.1843magazine.com](https://www.1843magazine.com)
[http://ribbonfarm.com](http://ribbonfarm.com)

------
dghughes
The original Slashdot was an interesting site for me it introduced me the
social web format. Previously my only social interaction was IRC. I don't
think it changed my life but at the time slashdot certainly opened up a new
world to me.

------
larzang
There has only been one site that has been a consistent companion since I
discovered it in high school in '99\. One site that has served as a foundation
in shaping my life. That site is zombo.com. You can do anything at zombo.com.

~~~
feld
I have great news for you: [https://html5zombo.com/](https://html5zombo.com/)

------
hashhar
REDDIT:

Reddit's /r/diy got me to learn a lot about electronics. The extremely
detailed guides which led to something that could ACTUALLY BE USEFUL was a
very good motivator.

/r/StopDrinking was also a lot of help for me (to help a friend). I owe a lot
to the community there for helping my friend take control of his life again.

/r/fitness also helped me reach a healthy weight and lifestyle after I had a
recent health scare.

/r/randomkindness helps me feel good by doing good for others.

/r/cscareerquestions helped me get a great job and taught me a lot about
programming (/r/programming and language specific subs) and career.

Humans of New York:

This photoblog by Bradon Stanton was instrumental in helping me develop a much
more open mindset about people and eventually led me to volunteer for the
UNICEF after they covered a young girl directly impacted by UNICEF. The
European Refuge Crisis was a similarly transforming moment for me.

Toastmasters International: This is kind of like Alchoholics Anonymous for
people who haven't given a public presentation before.

Countless TED talks also helped shape my thinking and gave me perspective.

Since a lot of the HN populace doesn't like Reddit I wanted to clear it up
that the key to using it productively is to follow only subreddits that fill a
niche in your life. And prefer subreddits which have more text posts than link
posts. Discussion with a wide variety of people is one of reddit's key
strengths. As an example, I usually discuss and read comments about foreign
policies on multiple country subreddits so that I can get an idea of how it
impacts other countries and what the people are concerned about in the other
places.

------
stevoski
Joel Spolsky's joelonsoftware.com and the now-dead "Business of Software"
forum he hosted. I discovered that it was possible for normal developers
without any business training to independently make and sell software online
for a living. That's what I've been doing now for 10 years.

------
Kaibeezy
Amazon / eBay. Urban-center level access to necessities and more helped enable
a move to a rural, old-time village. The kids go out the door. I know my
neighbors. No traffic. Lots of flowers and birds.

------
ThomPete
On the top of my head:

[https://www.well.com/](https://www.well.com/)

[http://spacecollective.org/](http://spacecollective.org/)

[http://www.kurzweilai.net/](http://www.kurzweilai.net/)

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

and of course

[https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/)

I am sure I forgot a few.

------
Dowwie
Advice from Reddit's r/DIY and r/homeimprovement communities helped me take on
repairs and improvements that I wouldn't have done otherwise. I learn a lot
from the step-by-step photos, explanations of work, and feedback in the
comments. Those forums are like the Stack Overflow of home improvement and are
really great -- life changing!

------
curiousgal
HN is on the top of my list!

------
ludicast
Rescuetime has been great for me so far. Really helping me stay on track and
motivated.

Coursera and edx can be great too, but potential time-sucks if you don't
manage your interests carefully.

------
rolfvandekrol
We hugged the server to death. Cached version at Google:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:upCV-
mX...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:upCV-
mXKwQ0J:kottke.org/17/04/these-websites-could-change-your-
life&num=1&hl=en&gl=nl&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

~~~
agumonkey
alternate cache [http://archive.is/WZQ9p](http://archive.is/WZQ9p)

------
fnsa
another good one:
[http://www.mrmoneymustache.com](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com)

------
_Codemonkeyism
The Last Psychiatrist.

~~~
aub3bhat
Oh man I really miss his writings. Btw if you want similar style essays but
about DB/Bitcoin tech check out
[http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/03/01/what-did-not-
happen...](http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/03/01/what-did-not-happen-at-
mtgox/)

------
samirillian
[https://www.couchsurfing.com/](https://www.couchsurfing.com/)

Was a big one for me. Along with Wikipedia, it's what I think of when I want
to believe that maybe the internet wasn't such a bad idea after all.

------
golergka
No TvTropes?

~~~
JetSpiegel
[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinY...](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife)

------
jameskegel
board.shodown.net, k10k, phong, surfstation.lu, designgraphik, submethod,
designiskinky, zoorex, zylonzoo, arkinect, pixeldust, deviantart, gmunk,
chapter3.net, threeoh, the list goes on...

------
cygned
Never heard of Bullet Journal before. That will change my life.

------
neebz
Stackoverflow

------
tomsaj
Domaining.com, people make money with domains. Lots of amazing information.

------
therealmarv
Google

------
sjs382
None moreso than OkCupid.

------
neebz
stackoverflow

------
kahrkunne
I'd say 4chan probably changed my life the most. Not only did it have a big
influence on my tastes to this day, it also (indirectly) introduced me to some
of my best friends and taught me a lot of social skills

------
zyb09
So is this just a big page of links? Are AIs writing blog posts now?

~~~
skshogun
kottke.org is just a collection of interesting links with short description.
But I like it :)

