Ask HN: What are your favorite thin websites (text only or limited images)? - febed
======
basch
[http://techmeme.com/river](http://techmeme.com/river)

[http://mediagazer.com/river](http://mediagazer.com/river)

[http://memeorandum.com/river](http://memeorandum.com/river)

[http://aldaily.com](http://aldaily.com) was already mentioned

[http://scitechdaily.com](http://scitechdaily.com) aldaily sister science site

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

[https://longform.org](https://longform.org)

[https://longreads.com](https://longreads.com)

..

[https://redef.com](https://redef.com) doesnt fit the criteria, but its close,
and i wish it had an option to turn off images.

two i dont actually visit very often -
[http://www.jimmyr.com](http://www.jimmyr.com)
[http://popurls.com](http://popurls.com)

..

as for page design itself.

[http://lucumr.pocoo.org/](http://lucumr.pocoo.org/)

[http://http2.info/](http://http2.info/)

~~~
publicfig
is /river a concept or standard I haven't come across?

~~~
CharlesW
Yes, although I can't imagine many people would recognize the concept yet.

[http://scripting.com/2014/06/02/whatIsARiverOfNewsAggregator...](http://scripting.com/2014/06/02/whatIsARiverOfNewsAggregator.html)
[http://buzzmachine.com/2006/08/22/the-river-of-
news/](http://buzzmachine.com/2006/08/22/the-river-of-news/)

~~~
leejoramo
I feel like Dave Winer was talking about Rivers earlier than that. I found a
reference back to May 2005 from Nick Bradbury creating of FeedDemon

[http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2005/05/river_of_news_1.html](http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2005/05/river_of_news_1.html)

~~~
CharlesW
I'm sure you're right! My goal was just to share a couple of useful
references.

------
markplindsay
This site about bicycle touring is so content-heavy it's ridiculous:
[https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/](https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/)

Browsing journals "by locale" is the best armchair tourism on the internet.

~~~
GordonS
Try this UK car rental site, absolutely insane:
[http://www.lingscars.com](http://www.lingscars.com)

~~~
wlkr
For those outside the UK and/or are unaware, this is a real business. The
owner, Ling Valentine [0], even appeared on Dragon's Den seeking investment of
£50,000 [1].

[0] [https://twitter.com/LINGsCARS](https://twitter.com/LINGsCARS)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtib4WZW_4M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtib4WZW_4M)

------
mwillmott
[https://www.gov.uk](https://www.gov.uk)

~~~
pcrh
gov.uk is surprisingly easy to navigate and use.

~~~
wlkr
It's often said but the revamped design is excellent and the designers should
be commended. I used to have to assist my parents whenever they needed to fill
in a government form online and my mum in particular found it stressful, with
pages having all sorts of timeouts and conflicting instructions. A lot of
services used to be very fragmented and lacked cross browser compatibility.
They manage it easily themselves since the UI became much more accessible.

------
tedmiston
The talk pages that Maciej (Pinboard) makes are refreshing.

[http://idlewords.com/talks/](http://idlewords.com/talks/)

------
K0nserv
I'm very pleased with how my own website[0] has turned out. It uses no JS and
a very small amount of CSS. I think it has just enough styling to give it a
distinct look and make the reading experience pleasant on all devices. Pages
average around 10kb

0: [https://hugotunius.se](https://hugotunius.se)

~~~
cygned
I like it, especially the colors. Would have added some margin to the top,
though. But very pleasant.

I recently rebuilt my blog and used similar ideas; minimal CSS, no JavaScript,
static site generator. It's actually interesting to see that some (front-end)
developers tend to have very minimalistic sites.

------
copperx
[http://gwern.net](http://gwern.net)

------
jcoffland
[http://www.textfiles.com](http://www.textfiles.com)

It's got many of the classic text files and zines from my BBS days. Tons of
nostalgia.

~~~
p333347
Nice content but had forgotten what the site looked like. It literally kills
the eyes and gives a headache when the green on black index page suddenly
changes to black on white text file page.

------
LordHeini
One of the most read german blogs:
[https://blog.fefe.de/](https://blog.fefe.de/) Does not even have html headers
:)

~~~
cygned
As someone said at 32C3

    
    
        > The only website that loads on the Berlin underground railway

~~~
majewsky
Incidentally, it also looks like a Berlin underground railway station. ;)

------
cscharenberg
[http://amasci.com/](http://amasci.com/) \- Science Hobbyist, the homepage of
Bill Beaty. I've been perusing it off and on for 15 years and keep discovering
neat things. First found it via "Evil Genius Hoaxes"
[http://amasci.com/hoax.html](http://amasci.com/hoax.html)

~~~
tomcam
National treasure

------
dmtroyer
[http://thin.npr.org/](http://thin.npr.org/)

~~~
maxxxxx
Nice! But even they have a "read more" button instead of just displaying the
article straight.

~~~
wlkr
Normally those bug me a great deal but because the page loads so fast and the
focus is on resource constrained users the `read more' option doesn't bother
me at all. I'm constantly frustrated by JavaScript `read more' links though,
which take an age to render the rest of the text on mobile devices which is
where I do an ever increasing percentage of my reading.

------
NSAID
[http://www.metafilter.com/](http://www.metafilter.com/)

------
BoppreH
[http://slatestarcodex.com/](http://slatestarcodex.com/)

[https://www.gwern.net/](https://www.gwern.net/)

[https://metafilter.com](https://metafilter.com) (comments and best-of)

------
dorianm
[http://perdu.com](http://perdu.com) A short domain only served with HTTP so
it's useful to trigger all the wifi MITM login pages

~~~
euyyn
Thank you! I used to go to www.marca.com for that same purpose, but this is
much lighter and is easy to remember.

------
maxxxxx
Does craigslist count?

------
jcoffland
Awesome text only weather. Recently posted on HN.
[http://wttr.in](http://wttr.in)

------
collyw
Hacker News

------
Veen
Arts and Letters Daily

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

~~~
leejoramo
If only they had RSS

------
tyingq
Not limited images, but I like the craigslist ui. It's not visually
attractive, but it's intuitive.

------
tekklloneer
[http://foopee.com/punk/the-list/](http://foopee.com/punk/the-list/)

Shows (mostly punk/rock) in the bay area. Straightforward. Up to date. Gets
the job done.

------
gregopet
My friend's site about games and pixel art is designed as an homage to old
text adventure games: [http://www.retronator.com/](http://www.retronator.com/)

------
niftich
\- BBC's old mobile site, discontinued in 2015

\- [https://braille.wunderground.com/](https://braille.wunderground.com/)

\- [http://www.smh.com.au/text/](http://www.smh.com.au/text/) and any other
news source that still bothers to make RSS-like versions

\- [https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc-index-100a.html](https://www.rfc-
editor.org/rfc-index-100a.html)

------
cpt1138
[http://wiki.c2.com/?WelcomeVisitors](http://wiki.c2.com/?WelcomeVisitors)

~~~
cooper12
I really don't like the whole AJAX thing they did after they went down. Now if
I visit in a text-only browser (w3m), I just see "[sping]" (the alt text on
their spinner). Kind of sad for a static website, especially a wiki.

------
tomc1985
Craigslist

------
chasingtheflow
[https://daringfireball.net/](https://daringfireball.net/)

~~~
sdegutis
> _PRICE: $8,500_

When I was looking into advertising there, it was $2,000. Guess he's doing
well. I don't envy him though. Being a full time blogger has to be one of the
most soul-killing jobs. All that keeping up on the most boring and annoying
bits of latest information, and repackaging it, all the while trying to not
look biased. I just couldn't do it even if I wanted to.

~~~
jwong_
I was always under the impression that he's not full time. He posts
sporadically, usually around big Apple news, and it seems more out of personal
interest than dedication to his job.

Plus, I don't see him as trying not to look biased. If anything, he completely
disregards attempts to -- he frequently states that something is his opinion,
that seems to be the appeal of the blog. That it's completely biased and all
one man's opinion is what makes him so polarising.

~~~
leejoramo
Gruber has been full time for very nearly 10 years.

[http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/initiative](http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/initiative)

------
bryanmgreen
Can I say my website?

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

As neither a professional designer or developer, I wanted a site that was very
clean and easy to build (and adaptive) but shared critical information. The
end result has made me quite happy.

~~~
majewsky
I was going to complain about the unreadably thin text, but apparently that's
the default font-weight. WTF.

(And by the way, there's a typo in your font-family.)

------
globalgoat
[http://sommarskog.se/](http://sommarskog.se/)

------
nhaliday
[https://danluu.com/](https://danluu.com/)

------
xiaoma
I can't believe nobody mentioned this given the site, but
[http://paulgraham.com](http://paulgraham.com). It literally altered the
direction of my life.

------
p333347
tvtropes.org.

plato.stanford.edu, which is a philosophy encyclopedia by Stanford university.

------
ssorallen
Kanye's clothing line, Yeezy, has an impressively minimalist site that works
on desktop and mobile.

[https://yeezysupply.com/](https://yeezysupply.com/)

~~~
dom0
> minimalist

shows absolutely no content except for a handful footer links without 3rd
party JS.

~~~
ssorallen
I have uBlock Origin enabled when visiting the site, and it works for me. What
script are you blocking that loads images?

~~~
dom0
NoScript by default blocks third-party scripts (of which this site has
plenty). In this instance it's some JS from shopify that's required for basic
functionality.

~~~
ssorallen
Fair enough. Post said "(text only or limited images)", which I thought this
site, especially being a fully featured ecommerce site, fit well.

~~~
dom0
Oh, I'm not saying you should not have posted it, not at all (I don't do
that).

Just meant to show that minimalist _design_ doesn't have to mean that it's
technically clean or minimalist in any way.

------
compiler-guy
frets.com

Straight out of the late 90s hand-written html, but by one of the greatest
guitar luthiers alive, Frank Ford.

Want to see exactly how one would restore a pre-war Martin Guitar? You can see
it. Truly amazing.

~~~
wycx
There is so much good machining stuff there. I remember reading all the posts
when I discovered frets. I am going to see if there are any new posts right
now...looks like all the machining content has moved to
[http://www.frets.com/HomeShopTech/ShopTips/tiplist.html](http://www.frets.com/HomeShopTech/ShopTips/tiplist.html)

------
pokemon-trainer
[http://www.berkshirehathaway.com](http://www.berkshirehathaway.com) cracks me
up

------
n2j3
[https://tinyapps.org/blog/](https://tinyapps.org/blog/)

------
paralelogram
[http://lartc.org/howto/](http://lartc.org/howto/)

------
alva
[http://www.drudgereport.com/](http://www.drudgereport.com/)

------
japaget
[http://www.numericana.com/](http://www.numericana.com/)

~~~
tomcam
Mesmerizing and misleading. Looks like it was designed by the Dr. Bronner's
soap guy (lists of links are organized by string length) but it turns out to
be a giant buffet of bite-sized but well-presented scientific factoids.

------
Mojah
[https://www.cronweekly.com](https://www.cronweekly.com)

------
pxlfkr
RIP [http://ntk.net](http://ntk.net)

Has it really been 10 years?

------
machbio
text only - complete car review -
[http://www.cars101.com/](http://www.cars101.com/)

------
kruhft
www.telehack.com - classic hacking adventure game.

------
icpmacdo
another vote for [https://www.gwern.net/](https://www.gwern.net/)

------
cygned
[http://brutalistwebsites.com](http://brutalistwebsites.com)

------
sogen
skimfeed

------
dontJudge
reddit, craigslist.

------
scheijan
www.ankhet.com

------
dmsnell
endless.horse

