Ask HN: What are some high signal blogs?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29980210

by smk_ • 5 years ago

30 29 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hello HN.

I am looking to expand my information sphere and would like to hear of any interesting, high-signal blogs you follow.

I can begin by recommending Astral Codex.

Thanks!

mooreds• 5 years ago

What domain? I follow tech blogs, finance blogs, real estate blogs, cloud computing vendor blogs. Different domains have different strong players.

PaulHoule3• 5 years ago

Part of me wants to like Astral Codex (Bayes theorem is dear to my heart and my head) but I find it too rambling and too tied to the cringeworthy "rationalist" scene. (e.g. some of those people think the 'woke' folks are groupthinkers, but some of their circles would drive people out if they expressed disbelief in quasireligious concepts such as superhuman a.i., cryonics, etc.)

For people who want to understand "how to successfully promote a blog" my favorite is

https://www.righto.com/

which I think is captivating to people even if favors nostalgia vs timeliness (never news) and few people would find it useful (for my electronics hobby I expect to build increasing powerful illusion projectors and I find some of his talk on electronics inspirational and educational but I never expect to decap a chip or make discrete versions of things like current mirrors and op amps that are impractical to make on an artisan scale.)

andrewmcwatters• 5 years ago

Rambling is probably the right word, though for other readers here, you can probably get that yourself from reading the About page[1] or even just casually scan the newest post[2] for 5 seconds.

> once i threw a party for the bay area rationalists, and the rules to attend were you had to be wearing a full-face coverage mask, and be naked. Many came; they all bravely stripped, donned weird masks... and then proceeded to sit in a polite circle and debate global trade.

Ah, OK. It's clear why this blog is recommended so frequently here now.

[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/about

[2] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/theres-a-time-for-ever...

PaulHoule3• 5 years ago

I am laughing my ass off because that tweet you quote is by a woman who drives me absolutely up the wall.

For a brief time I was intimidated by her combination of pretty and smart, except that the more I looked the more I saw that being born female can really be a chance to live life on tutorial island.

For the life of me I can't see how she thinks that Eliezer Yudkowsky is an evil genius frame controller, still thinks he is the greatest thinker of the 21st century, but the main talent I think he has is that he can always see the Emperor's Clothes even if he goes to a naked people party.

kens• 5 years ago

Thanks for mentioning my blog :-). By the way, anyone who is interested should try decapping a chip. Modern epoxy chips are hard to decap, but you can get an older chip in a ceramic package on eBay for a few dollars. Decapping one is simply a matter of tapping it with a chisel. To see complete details of the die, you need a special metallurgical microscope, but a generic microscope will still show a lot. Even with the naked eye you can see a lot of interesting structures.

reducesuffering4• 5 years ago

Instead, I will recommend https://astralcodexten.substack.com/

Along with HN, it is the only other place I can find altruistic and intellectual discussion. Blind has some intellectual people but a dearth of morals ($ and status obsession). HN even can be a bit too cynical and sneer-like sometimes.

Scott is one of the smartest people I've encountered and has a very good way with words. I find myself laughing out loud sometimes with the special way he phrases things. I related to how curious he is about many different topics and you can tell he deeply means well. He constantly brings up things I've had hunches about but puts it so eloquently.

I think saying "some of their circles would drive people out if they expressed disbelief in quasireligious concepts such as superhuman a.i., cryonics" is inaccurate. I've seen plenty of debated skepticism. Ffs there's a guy making 20 low quality comments about Marxism every other thread.

Interested? Start with https://slatestarcodex.com/about/

On preferred pronouns: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-ma...

On Tragedy of the Commons / coordination problems: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

On government: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic...

On finding uncomfortable truths in the pursuit of it: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-...

sysadm1n• 5 years ago

web.dev[0] is full of great articles if you like web development

CSS Tricks[1] is also full of handy snippets of code you can use when developing a website. I've noted many handy (somewhat overlooked) pieces of code on there. Feel free to skip some 'noisy' articles that have code you will never use. I tend to focus on stuff that will work everywhere, regardless of browser.

[0] https://web.dev/blog/

[1] https://css-tricks.com/

nicbou2• 5 years ago

CSS Tricks is one of those websites I never regret seeing in the search results

drocer88• 5 years ago

Political Calculations : https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/

Capital Spectator : https://www.capitalspectator.com/

soueuls• 5 years ago

Lyn Alden - https://www.lynalden.com/ (finance)

Mr Money Mustache - https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ (unusual approach to minimalism and FIRE)

tharne• 5 years ago

+1 on Mr. Money Mustache. They guy comes off as a know-it-all and kind of a jerk, but he knows his stuff. The Mr. Money Mustache blog did more to help me build a healthy relationship with money than absolutely anything else I've read on the topic of money and finances.

open-source-ux• 5 years ago

Lines and Colors is a great blog to dip in to find some visual inspiration. This blog has been going since 2005 - impressive longevity for a personal blog.

Description:

Lines and Colors is a blog about painting, drawing, sketching, illustration, comics, cartoons, webcomics, art history, concept art, gallery art, digital art, artist tools and techniques, motion graphics, animation, sci-fi and fantasy illustration, paleo art, storyboards, matte painting, 3d graphics and anything else I find visually interesting. If it has lines and/or colors, it's fair game.

http://linesandcolors.com/

cpach2• 5 years ago

The problem with high-signal blogs is that they tend to be low-frequency…

mikewarot• 5 years ago

That's a feature, not a bug. I've got hundreds of youtube channels I've subscribed to, that are VERY low frequency, but interesting when something does show up.

For example:

Impulse Manufacturing Laboratory at Ohio State

cpach2• 5 years ago

It can definitely be seen as a feature.

TBH I just check my favourite blogs manually from time to time.

I know there are lots of RSS applications such as Netnewswire & Co, but after Google Reader I gave up on RSS. (And frankly I don’t miss it that much.)

notomorrow• 5 years ago

https://www.gwern.net/ is all you need! https://fantasticanachronism.com/ is also good!

pgwhalen• 5 years ago

fedguy.com, if you are interested in monetary policy or economics. I also recommend the book by the same author (Central Banking 101).

bsoudan• 5 years ago

http://electoral-vote.com from 2 political scientests summarizes US political news, high signal AND high frequency, several articles each weekday morning.

meco• 5 years ago

Money Stuff by Matt Levine - https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/money-stuff

nicbou2• 5 years ago

Matt Levine is funny and interesting. He can be hard to follow, but only because he talks about really complicated things. No one can explain it better than he does.

Ask HN: What are some high signal blogs?

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