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Ask HN: Alternatives to HN less web-focused and more technical/professional?

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Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to HN less web-focused and more technical/professional?

#61

Post by lftl »

kluck wrote: post #30
jcr wrote: post #20

Your question is far too vague. For example, how do you personally define "web-focused" or "technical" or "professional"? All of those definitions matter a whole lot. Also, you left out an important aspect, namely if you're looking for a discussion forum or an aggregator? Since I'm blindly guessing at what you mean, the following suggestions might not be what you want, but they're the best I can do. https://lobste.rs…

To clarify: - I am looking for a discussion forum, not an aggregator. - By "web-focused" I meant posts about website development technology used on client and/or server side. Some of this technology is still interesting, like databases, but there is a lot more, e.g. desktop sw technologies, algorithms etc. - By "technical" I meant in-depth technology reviews and discussions. More posts by people that are not about "h…

Datatau is a HN clone focused on data science.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to HN less web-focused and more technical/professional?

#62

Post by aembleton »

sideproject wrote: post #39

How about creating your own? :) http://postatic.com Disclaimer - I run this site - shameless plug, I know.

I haven't checked all around the site but on http://www.postatic.com/admin/hello/tour this stood out:

`User your own domain name` should be `Use your own domain name`

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to HN less web-focused and more technical/professional?

#63

Post by kluck »

anarazel wrote: post #44

I've been wondering about this as well. I mean, there's lots of interesting stuff here on HN, but the deeply technical stuff is far and inbetween. And due to the way topics very quickly drop of the first two pages it's hard to discuss more technical stuff. More often than not I find there was an interesting discussion on some entry, but all the discussion ended 8 hours ago, and nobody will read it now.

I found this too. This is probably due to the fact that Hacker News is (mainly) for sharing news not discussing topics. The discussion part is not supported well by the mechanics of the site.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to HN less web-focused and more technical/professional?

#64

Post by onion2k »

danieltillett wrote: post #55
onion2k wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First post! :(

I hope you have a 4 digit id making that joke :P

Sadly not. I was #203094. One of the funniest things I remember about /. were the times someone would post that they had a lower ID than a previous commenter, and that would spark a chain of decreasingly low ID posters replying to say theirs was lower still. You probably had to be there. It was a simpler time.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to HN less web-focused and more technical/professional?

#65

Post by brudgers »

kluck wrote: post #30
jcr wrote: post #20

Your question is far too vague. For example, how do you personally define "web-focused" or "technical" or "professional"? All of those definitions matter a whole lot. Also, you left out an important aspect, namely if you're looking for a discussion forum or an aggregator? Since I'm blindly guessing at what you mean, the following suggestions might not be what you want, but they're the best I can do. https://lobste.rs…

To clarify: - I am looking for a discussion forum, not an aggregator. - By "web-focused" I meant posts about website development technology used on client and/or server side. Some of this technology is still interesting, like databases, but there is a lot more, e.g. desktop sw technologies, algorithms etc. - By "technical" I meant in-depth technology reviews and discussions. More posts by people that are not about "h…

The problem with discussion forums is endless September. I find the database forum because I want to discuss CAP. I post "Let's talk about CAP" thread. The discussion forum has had 1500 CAP threads over the last ten years. It's boring answering the same questions and getting into the same arguments, so either all the experts have moved on, or they find entertainment in inside jokes or political discussions or flaming the freshman.

What I don't see mentioned is behavior. That's the hard problem for discussion. Reddit, StackExchange, and the Linux kernal mailing list all have different norms. For me, their behavioral norms don't make them viable alternatives to HN. Lambda-the-Ultimate seems to be generally well behaved when I've encountered it, but it may be more technical and narrower than the enterprisey topics and level of depth you describe.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to HN less web-focused and more technical/professional?

#67

Post by jcr »

kluck wrote: post #30
jcr wrote: post #20

Your question is far too vague. For example, how do you personally define "web-focused" or "technical" or "professional"? All of those definitions matter a whole lot. Also, you left out an important aspect, namely if you're looking for a discussion forum or an aggregator? Since I'm blindly guessing at what you mean, the following suggestions might not be what you want, but they're the best I can do. https://lobste.rs…

To clarify: - I am looking for a discussion forum, not an aggregator. - By "web-focused" I meant posts about website development technology used on client and/or server side. Some of this technology is still interesting, like databases, but there is a lot more, e.g. desktop sw technologies, algorithms etc. - By "technical" I meant in-depth technology reviews and discussions. More posts by people that are not about "h…

I'd encourage you to check out some of the subreddits in the previous HN discussion link I posted. I think they might be your best bet.

Though Lambda The Ultimate (LtU) is officially a blog, it does have comments and it might be interesting for you. From their FAQ:

>"Mostly this site deals with issues directly related to programming languages, and programming language research. However, we allow ourselves moderate forays to bordering issues like programmability and language in general."

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/

Your desire to avoid "web-based" stuff suffers from the fact that such large swaths of tech today are "web-related" in some way.

Your desire to avoid "compsci basics" suffers from the "News-To-Me" problem.

Your desire to find "how X works inside" type content seems quite similar to "how X works _in_ _practice_".

Given the above, I'd suggest reading current research papers. The trouble with research papers on HN is, papers take more time and effort to read, so they rarely get significant attention or useful discussion.

Using Algolia HN Search can uncover some research. Stuff like "[pdf]" files, common sites, organization names, journal names, and even conference names can be useful:

  [pdf]
  arxiv.org
  plos.org
  usenix.org
  JMLR
  OSDI
  CVPR
  ICML
Since you want stories with _discussions_ use the "comments>?" filter.

https://hn.algolia.com/?experimental&sort=byDate&prefix&page...

https://hn.algolia.com/?experimental&sort=byDate&prefix&page...

One of the better efforts I've seen so far on the research paper front is "Papers We Love":

http://paperswelove.org/

https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love

The trouble with "Papers We Love" is you need to live in one of places where the physical meetings happen, and you need to be able to get to said meetings. If you're home bound, then you're pretty much stuffed.

Good Luck

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to HN less web-focused and more technical/professional?

#68

Post by tvanantwerp »

I wish there were something similar to Hacker News for IT. I work at a small nonprofit, and I handle both the web side and the hardware side. One day I'm making a data visualization with D3, the next I'm trying to understand why the printer won't print random chunks of a PDF. One day I'm configuring a new VPS, another I'm trying to figure out why the ClearOne in the conference room hates our VoIP system. I've found tons and tons of resources for web development anything. Similar resources for IT have been practically non-existent by comparison. Maybe I just don't know where to look?

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to HN less web-focused and more technical/professional?

#69

Post by sosuke »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #68

I wish there were something similar to Hacker News for IT. I work at a small nonprofit, and I handle both the web side and the hardware side. One day I'm making a data visualization with D3, the next I'm trying to understand why the printer won't print random chunks of a PDF. One day I'm configuring a new VPS, another I'm trying to figure out why the ClearOne in the conference room hates our VoIP system. I've found t…

I thought IT had SpiceWorks, have you ever tried that one?

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to HN less web-focused and more technical/professional?

#70

Post by kilimchoi »

r3bl wrote: post #54
kilimchoi wrote: post #38

http://www.slicedham.co/ for articles on software development. It pulls posts from the list of a few hundred blogs, https://github.com/kilimchoi/engineering-blogs . There's even a weekly mailing list.

I don't like the design of it at all. I would prefer just using some RSS reader to get the latest news posted on those blogs.

It would be helpful if you could tell me what about its design you don't like at all. Is it the font size or something else?
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