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Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

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Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#151

Post by xtiansimon »

ismail wrote: post #96
eliben wrote: post #80

Books Seriously. Books are the ultimate long-form content; their authors typically spend years researching and writing them, and you can sample many reviews before committing to read one.

How do you avoid the problem of low signal to noise ratio? Some books in the popular business press can be reduced to several pages, with the core idea, rationale, and examples. Yet they all end up being longer than needed with tons of exposition.

Simple answer for me is to not feel obligated to finish the book.

But if you’re looking for a binary, then does it have an index?

Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#152

Post by fho »

sharmi wrote: post #82

A cautionary message from someone who used to think long form content equals quality and indepth coverage: Long form content in magazines still used to have limited pages. So there needed to be a balance between information and prose. So even in long prose, the content was well edited, every sentence brought something important to the table. Nowadays, on the web, an article could have infinite length without any limi…

> passages that do not really add anything to the central message

I really hate that thing where the authors tease you with an interesting story like "Mr X did this really interesting thing" and the third paragraph starts with "Mr X grew up in a nondescript village and now we take a detour to highlight how he grew up that has basically nothing to do with the thing I expected to read about here" ...

Anyway ... I grew up in Germany in the early 80s and my parents were completely normal people ...

Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#154

Post by kzrdude »

marsa wrote: post #112
waingake wrote: post #72

The New Yorker is great https://www.newyorker.com . Amazing writing, so much so that I can be pulled into articles that I wouldn't expect to be interested in. I had a Kindle subscription, but liked it so much I forked out for a print subscription. I find it a real struggle reading long form articles digitally.

re. digital: the last time i read a newyorker article it consumed 900+ MB of my mobile data plan and i've been avoiding it like the plague ever since. which is a shame because the writing is generally good as you note.

That's impressive!

Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#155

Post by smsm42 »

fho wrote: post #152
sharmi wrote: post #82

A cautionary message from someone who used to think long form content equals quality and indepth coverage: Long form content in magazines still used to have limited pages. So there needed to be a balance between information and prose. So even in long prose, the content was well edited, every sentence brought something important to the table. Nowadays, on the web, an article could have infinite length without any limi…

> passages that do not really add anything to the central message I really hate that thing where the authors tease you with an interesting story like "Mr X did this really interesting thing" and the third paragraph starts with "Mr X grew up in a nondescript village and now we take a detour to highlight how he grew up that has basically nothing to do with the thing I expected to read about here" ... Anyway ... I grew…

I think people are taught to write this way, it's called "human interest" or something. Presumably, if they tell me Xs story starting with their grandparents, I'd be more read to extend empathy to Xs story later on. Except that by the time it gets to the interested part, I'm usually to tired to care...

Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#156

Post by Havoc »

feynman69 wrote: post #137
Havoc wrote: post #136

Not sure it counts as long form since it isn’t written but I’ve been loving YouTube documentaries on big infrastructure projects and geopolitics issues. There are a handful of small content creators cranking out quality content in these areas

What are the channel names? I've been looking for some quality YouTube videos. Thanks!

Infrastructure heavy list: Megaprojects, neo, real engineering, Free Documentary, The B1M, Tomorrow's Build, Wendover Productions.

Not infra, but similar long form docu vibe: Johnny Harris, Coldfusion, Vice.

I'd probably start with Johnny Harris - his style is somewhat unique. All over the place when it comes to topics but usually thoughtfully executed & researched.

Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#157

Post by jerome-jh »

Read research papers on a topic of interest to you.

As of now I try to limit the time I spend on HN. I skim through articles very quickly. OTOH I recently reorganized my collection of research papers, most of them obtained thanks to that Kazakhstani heroïcal woman. I pick one and read it from start to finish, over the course of a week, a month, whatever. I often do not understand what I read. Little by little, reading again after a few months the same article, I understand one paragraph more :)

The two golden rules:

- stick to the most important, breakthrough papers

- read a paper from start to finish, even if you do not understand it. Do not block, just keep reading.

Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#158

Post by MonaroVXR »

stereoradonc wrote: post #119

You can join here for the best reads that I curate manually for the long-form: https://t.me/+pwdYcfBiV1I3Njll This is on Telegram and will require admin approval. I had to keep this as a private channel. I read a lot; if I find (and come across) good book recommendations, I post them too (including the books). You can save content locally, but the channel is restricted to disallow forwarding. This is intentional, bec…

I joined the Telegram group, Monday 24 Jan 20:10. Netherlands UTC + 1 from the top of my head.

Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#159

Post by marto1 »

sharmi wrote: post #82

A cautionary message from someone who used to think long form content equals quality and indepth coverage: Long form content in magazines still used to have limited pages. So there needed to be a balance between information and prose. So even in long prose, the content was well edited, every sentence brought something important to the table. Nowadays, on the web, an article could have infinite length without any limi…

A lot of blogs/articles will also let you know how long it takes to read said content. Some even have progress bars.

Re: Ask HN: Where are you going to find long-form content online these days?

#160

Post by czottmann »

eliben wrote: post #149
baron816 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about audiobooks? Had I had the option to listen to audiobooks while I was in school, I would’ve been a much better student. I never read any of the assigned reading when I was in school because I couldn’t keep my focus on the words, but I’m finding myself cruising through about one very long book per month. Most of the books had been non-fiction (social science and history mostly), but more recently I’ve been ge…

A lot of my reading is audiobooks. I love audiobooks - they enabled my reading levels to go way up in the last few years. Some more details about this here: https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2020/my-reading-habits/

By definition, you're not reading. It's called "listening", as in "I listen to a lot of audiobooks".
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