Slashdot Mirror
Your Take On(line) Reality?
Omega1045 asks: "It is a fact that our perception is based on the information given to us. I find tha Slashdot readers offer a wealth of knowledge though the various sites they reference. I ask Slashdot, where do you surf to on a daily basis? What is your daily pattern of information retrieval? This is of particular interest to me as the Internet has made us all publishers. There are many sources of information, all with their own slant on the day's news, many non-traditional. Where do my fellow peers go on a daily basis?"
Well... Slashdot of course. :)
Avalanche.org. Don't leave home without it.
The Politech mailinglist.
From http://www.politechbot.com/info/about.html:
Acts@core.mailboks.com Acrux@core.mailboks.com Adam@core.mailboks.com Adar@core.mailboks.com Ada@core.mailboks.com
slashdot.org
newsforge.com
theregister.co.uk
my university's daily newspaper (no link!)
fark.com
the smirking chimp
dr. fun
the daily vault (although i review there once in a while)
google news
daily rotten
lwn.net
crackmonkey archives
the dot
kde-look.org
corona's coming attractions
snopes' update page
doc's weblog
And I think that's about it for a daily basis.
OS News (all about OSes and more, my favourite next to /.)
Heise News (German IT news, the guys that make the c't) - they have an English Version, too (though you won't find anything there)
Penny-Arcade what? you only visit it once-a-day? sheesh...
My daily trip usualy begins with comics strip:
c om,
:)
User Friendly
Mega Tokyo
Sinfest
Then, I usualy go to Slashdot. Then its off to the
linux game tome (happypenguin.org),
then linuxgames.com. After that comes
gbacentral.net,
doomworld,
desktoplinux.
firingsquad.com,
tomshardware.
Oh, and TheHaus.net and icculus.org.
Whem I'm bored I sometime check ve3d.com and
http://www.redlynx.com/phobiaIII/index.html (to see if the long delayed Phobia 3 version is finaly out).
About once a week I check linuxhardware.org, but its not updated often.
Also, I frequently browse sourceforge.net, contributing to escape of the unicorn (www.sourceforge.net/projects/eounicorn) which is in early beta.
That's about it, now you know everything about my browsing habits and didn't have to install any spywares into my computer.
Have I been fooled?
Common Dreams is absolutely incredible. Pulls together progressive news and opinion from newspapers and magazines all around the world. You truly will be exposed to news that you will never see if you stick with the New York Times. Don't let the word 'progressive' scare you either. While I would agree there is a lot of what many would consider "liberal" opinion, the emphasis is on hard news. Just as I would never discount something that's been labelled 'conservative' out of hand, allow yourself the same liberty with this fine site and do yourself the favor of truly broadening your perspective. This is what the internet was meant for.
I have a definite list and surprisingly an order too (anyone else do this compulsively?)
1.) CNN
2.) LinuxToday
3.) OSnews
4.) KernelTrap
5.) Yahoo! Mail - Only including this because it's in my list.
6.) ExtremeTech
7.) AnandTech
8.) Tom's Hardware
9.) 2cpu
10.) Slashdot - Last because it takes the longest.
Hmm, come to think of it I have some wierd habits while surfing too. When I'm traveling my path of websites, I picture them on a 2d plane with distance in between. CNN on the left, linuxtoday in the lower middle, etc. Anyone else do this?
Best slashdot comment
By the way, let me take this oppurtunity to sing the praises of RSS, an XML schema, that allows for new aggragtors such as NetNewsWire for OSX to collect and read blog, new sites, etc... from one app... Wonderful stuff.... If your websites aren't outputting it, they should be!
"Realworld" News
indymedia.org - far left news and thoughts
newsmax.com - far right news and thoughts
nytimes.com - somewhere inbetween, leaning to the left
I do this to balance things out so that hopefully the info I am being fed (and don't lie to yourself, you ARE being fed) is at least a bit varied, and I can try to make own my own conclusions...
What is popular and currently interesting: (Popular doesn't mean best, but i AM interested in what's popular)o rg
daypop.org/top
memepool.com
slashdot.
Tecnical Reference
phpbuilder.com - php and mysql reference
http://forums.macnn.com/ - all things Mac
devshed.com - more php and mysql
www.macdevcenter.com - more Mac
macosxhints.com - OSX centric
arstechnica.com - everything else!
Breaking Mac News:
maccentral.com
macnn.com
thinksecret.com (for somewhat reliable rumors)
General Interest
howstuffworks.com - one of THE most underated sites online
Fun
I have a girlfriend for fun.
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
www.google.com www.slashdot.org www.fark.com www.drudgereport.com www.regexp.org www.willworkforfood.org www.ryanflynn.com www.mp3.com www.sf.net www.perlmonks.org www.freshmeat.net
The links are just abbreviations, so you have to explore to discover what they mean, but the advantage to this is that I can cite the abbreviation easily each time I link a story found via that source.
The idea of putting them in rows at the top is so that frequent visitors to my blog can jump to other sources if they don't find anything new/interesting at mine. (I call them 'jumpbars'.) Lately I've started adding little asterisks for sources that have recently done especially noteworthy updates.
My local startpage duplicates the jumpbars, and adds less-frequent sources like monthlies. When I started blogging I made a serious effort to learn the update schedules of every online periodical, and I created a generic startpage that summarised these. (It's badly out of date now.) The idea was to encourage people to copy this page and customise it to their interests. But knowing when zines usually update makes it easy to prioritize my surfing-schedule. (I wish all periodicals spelled this info out on their front page, eg The Onion comes out late Tuesday.)
I think NewsHub still isn't appreciated for its headline-aggregation pages. I'd use NewsLinx too except that most all the tech zines have decided to use obnoxiously junky html-design, so I stick with Slashdot and the Register for tech news.
My politics are lefty, and Sam Smith's Progressive Review gives a very deep daily summary with links, while Common Dreams reprints full articles from many major sources. A newcomer is Memory Hole that specializes in stories the mainstream media tries to suppress/ignore.
For space news, NasaWatch is tops. I've mostly given up on Drudge and Salon, and am having doubts about the BBC science page.
Other daily faves include the AstroPic of the Day, two poem-of-the-day sites, Zippy the Pinhead, and various blogs. A weekly that I think is underappreciated is Dean Baker's Economic Reporting Review that gives a very dry weekly critique of economics-propaganda in the NY Times and Washington Post. (They very systematically distort the facts with the obvious goal of redistributing the wealth upwards.)
First, my site to see if any new pictures have been posted http://pihlopase.mine.nu/albums
http://slashdot.org
http://art.gnome.org
http://themedepot.org
http://freshmeat.themes.net
http://debianplanet.org
http://gnome.org
http://google.com
Then I usually log into Blackboard at school to see if I have any new assignments or if any messages have been posted since I last checked. Then it's off to my numerous webmail accounts with netscape.com, cup of coffee, hop on the bus, go to class. Sneak a peak at Slashdot while the teacher is not looking. lather, rinse, repeat
Throughout the day I go through BBC news, slashdot, techdirt, the inquirer, the register, ananova and wired. I also scan through the mass of RDF wires that I have on the left in /. for anything intersting.
About thirty webcomics. (Really.)
e t
And then:
Newsforge
Overclockers.com
Slashdot
The Register
Osopinion
Osnews
Wired
theinquirer.n
On my way to work I listen to Don Wade and Roma out of Chicago for semi-coherant national news and talk.
Go here to create your own Slashdot dis
http://www.bluesnews.com/
http://www.shacknews.com/
http://www.slashdot.org/
http://www.linuxgames.com/
http://www.icculus.org/
http://www.flipcode.com/
http://www.google.com/
http://www.gouranga.com/
http://curmudgeon.linuxgames.com/
http://icculus.org/fingerdigest.html
http://kerneltrap.org/
No doubt this will be buried into the mass of similar posts before long, but it is a decent format for listing where people generally go...
Check out ioquake3.org for a great, free, First-Person Shooter engine!
10 slashdot
20 sleep 30
30 goto 10
I've had to cut down on blogging lately, lest I get fired. But my daily routine is:
n dex2&cid=9 65 - Yahoo! News Most Popular
news.google.com (Used to be news.yahoo.com - I like Google better).
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=i
Slashdot.org (Where I come to flame, troll, be trolled, etc)
Kuro5hin.org (For thoughtful debate)
Salon.com (+5, Insightful)
Plastic.com (+5, Funny)
portland.indymedia.org (Check on the local anarchists/communists/Earth! Firsters)
www.indymedia.org (Check on the global anarchists/communists/Earth! Firsters)
- James
- Slashdot... Hardly a surprise here..
- Freshnews.. I really like this news aggregator site, from there, I usually scan OReilly, Kuro5hin, Ars and a few other sites they feature for interesting articles and visit if the title seems interesting..
- Use Perl.. Top 10 journals, mostly
- Google news.. This replaced visits to BBC, CNN and a few others
- Freshmeat.. and a few other shareware sites from time to time
- Joel on Software.. and a few more blogs, like Scripting
- Trillian, Phoenix, Apache and a few more software sites for possible updates...
- Webmail accounts
Yeah, that's about it.. Fortunately for my productivity, I cant find a good public news server, or I'd also be on Usenet for a large portion of the daywww.freshnews.org - very handy headline summary site for a bunch of other news sources, including:
slashdot
zdnet
o'reilly network
newsforge
coding style
linux today
freshmeat
bsd today
megarad
techdirt
ars technica
the register
the inquirer
acm
use perl;
madville
linux news
kuro5hin
linux hardware
designtechnica
geeknews
warp2search
icannwatch
neowin
RISKS digest
internet news
wired news
macslash
advogato
tom's hardware
here for starters.
/. of course
www.cnn.com
www.foxnews.com
www.msnbc.com
www.usatoday.com
boxofficemojo.com
www.fark.com
starnix.org
news.google.com
aard.org
nicoal.org
www.yzedf.com/links.html
www.ninenine.com
www.sexkey.com
www.speedtv.com
After that it's usually off to non-news stuff like Diesel Sweeies or whatever.
I look at the local newspaper occasionally, even though their editing is awful and they get facts wrong in the subject areas I know about, which makes me wonder if they ever get it right the rest of the time. I only watch TV news if something important is happening. (Celebrities getting arrested isn't important, so I rarely watch TV news.) If something interesting is happening and I don't think the TV news is worth turning on, I hit the Google News beta site and type keywords.
My main sources of information are the newspaper, TV news bulletins and teletext. The only site on the internet that I visit more than daily is /.. This is how I get the news. If I want information on a specific subject I try to find it on the Internet using Google.
-- Cheers!
OK, the sites I visit every day are:
Slashdot - my home page, visited several times per day.
The Register - also several times per day.
Amiga news sites, each visited once per day:
Amiga.org
AmigArt
Czech Amiga News
Online comics, each visited once per day:
Dilbert
Peanuts
That's all folks!
I don't actually read this site very often, but I happened upon it one day and I don't know what to make of it. Perhaps some slashdotters can either say, "no, this site is full of made up references" or "uhh, I guess I can't disprove what it says, so that means it's a pretty lousy world."
anyways, I found out some information about the Serbians in World War II that seems likely to be true and interesting.
Emperor's new clothes
FOXNews
Drudge
Rush
InstaPundit
The Bleat
Dilbert
Blue's
jwz
Davezilla
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
What this means is you can bookmark a group of URLs, and then download them in parallel. That's much faster, because you don't have to wait for each to download individually, since even with broadband, it takes a while for each page to download. Also, you don't have to think about it; you can download the same URLs every day.
Try it; it's very cool; atleast it is if you like using tabbed browsing.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Most of the obvious sites have already been posted, but I'd like to add two more to the list:
Unless I'm moderating I usually just skim the top with highest scores first although I regularly work my way to the first posts at the bottom. Not to join on the bandwagon but moderation has gotten terrible so I've set all the negative moderations to have a 1+ value in my preferences. This in effect negates them so an article has as fair a chance of reaching me as any other not moderated. I haven't decided that all negative moderations are evil so I also haven't come to the conclusion that any moderation is worth my attention. I'll set my preferences to 2+ if that ever happens.
I follow up slashdot with a somethingawful.com chaser to set my mind at ease and to be reassured that getting aggrevated is futile since the internet makes you stupid.
After reading the day's feature, I then check their Awful Link of the Day. Unless it belongs to a very original freak or a freak ailed by something an acquaintance suffers from, I pass. If it can't give me ammo to tease friends I always opt for my own nomination, macosrumors.com
In the rare case of an update I'll read it for laughs unless it's a processor based update. I don't have a comedy chaser ready for those instances so there's no point in winding myself up into a murderous rage.
A quick stop afterwards at maccentral.com usually satisfies the need for real Mac news although I'm thinking of solely switching to macdevcenter.com since they have Mac Central updates on a sidebar.
The subject says "5 daily reads" and for now that's macdevcenter.com which I got into by following slashdot articles. This slot is always being contested and it's a good thing I only read The Filthy Critic on Monday. --- and then I got tired of proofreading my post
If you disagree then it must be overrated, redundant or trolling.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
American news sucks - incomplete and mostly domestic. When you go to the BBC News, click the 'outside UK' option, and you'll get great world coverage without any news of the Midwestern family that heroically rescued their cat amidst a thunderstorm.
Whenever a new site I want/need to check regularly I add it to this list. It's like my morning newspaper, without the paper.
In my _Daily folder I currently have:
(Fun)
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3
http://www.snopes.com/info/whatsnew.htm
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail.html
http://www.userfriendly.org/
(Friends and blogs)
http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/sunbeam60/diary
http://www.rasmus.sigsgaard.com/blog.php
http://www.kuro5hin.org/
http://meidell.dk/blog
(News) http://slashdot.org/
http://wired.com/
http://www.computerworld.dk/
http://politiken.dk/VisArtikel.iasp?PageID=1
http://www.memepool.com/
http://osnews.com/
http://www.shacknews.com/
http://www.gonegold.com/
Many of these are dispersed with a quick scan, and nothing more. Others are checked thoroughly and spawn many new tabs (like /.)
Give me liberty or give me kill -s 9
The stats and status page for an intranet service I'm involved in running.
www.dilbert.com - 'nuff said
keepersoflists.org - a bit hit and miss, but occasionally +5 coffee-through-nose funny
www.theregister.co.uk - essential
slashdot - 'nuff said
www.telegraph.co.uk - Yes, it's antidiluvian right-wing stuff, but the Alex cartoon strip in the business section is a deadly accurate parody of the financial services biz (currently exploring the world of unemployed investment bankers after Alex has been laid off by MegaBank....)
www.ananova.com/news - headline scan in case they've picked up something the BBC has missed.
Google news - For a more US-centric take on the world
catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/ - The Risks list digest - when my automatic checker flags an update
www.economist.com - The Economist newspaper, on Fridays - I get the print edition too but the web site has additional stories.
Various news and info pages on employer's intranet.
Reuters news service via employer's intranet, especially for air transport information
3 airline booking sites every few weeks to track any useful special offers
Total time taken: maybe 15 minutes if there's a lot going on.
Yes, I'm an expat Brit IT-er working in financial services. How could you tell?
It seems every day I end up reading a particular .cx page. Usually it happens after I click on a link on a slashdot thread that I end up on that page. Guess I should learn to be a bit more careful. I finally gave up and make it a habit of visiting that page before reading other things so I won't be surprised later.
You can read the group nicely formatted at mcgroarty.net/inkfeed. Each includes a link to the site it comes from underneath the article.
It's rediculous. They have either pointless stories or stories that don't matter worth beans. Many times both. /. makes any reference to this pathetic wannabe science magazine.
i.e. The secret of hiccups!
I have absolutely no idea why
void
This is my normal daily browsing routine, in general order:
/. and whatever sites that takes me to
... after an hour or two of work it's time for relaxing
... Rinse and repeat the first block ... Rinse and repeat the second block ... ??? ... Profit!
Netscape Messenger
Yahoo! Mail
CNN.com
News.com
Googling for work and whatever sites that takes me to
Boners.com (less and less, not alot of updates lately)
DailyRotten.com and whatever sites that takes me to
Games-Workshop.com to see if there's anything new
Portent.net to check on 40K rumors
Googling for curiousity and whatever sites that takes me to
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
I've tried to shorten my list lately because I find I'm spending too much time going through each of these.
I visit these pretty much every day:
Globe Gazette - local paper at globegazette.com
Slashdot
BBC News
The Scotsman - thescotsman.co.uk
User Friendly
Various email account sites
If I have time I'll also visit:
The Register
sffworld.com Message Boards - sf/fantasy book discussions
babynames.com Message Boards - people ask for advice on names for their kids
I also get a NY Times email update in the morning and sometimes visit their site to read the stories when a headline grabs my eye.
One other site I recently started checking out is the World News Network - WN.com
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
1) Yahoo! Mail - our motto: "Better than Hotmail!"
2) Slashdot - News for Nerds
3) Washington Post - GF takes the morning paper with her
4) ArsTechnica - always looking for new hardware
5) eBay - not news? it's kinda like my price checking engine...
--trb
I'll probably be flamed for visiting notorious conservative site http://www.freerepublic.com/ , but the articles are actually quite balanced, and in these times of war you can read fascinating things from the horse's mouth in the Middle East. It's only the comments that aren't balanced (and some of them make me question the nature of human evolution). Still, if you want all the world's news in one place, I have yet to find a better way to get it.
:-(.
I tend to skip visiting Free Republic during days of light political activity, not that there's any such thing nowadays. But for War on Terrorism news it's perfect.
http://www.economist.com/ brings a European perspective to the news, although I often get my fix through the print edition instead of the web. Although Europe has not been good at supporting us against Iraq (although The Economist has been steadfast), it does have better journalism overall than the US.
I've been checking out la.indymedia.org because I want to film a big left protest. I notice that the left and right nowadays are arguing completely at cross-purposes; if you visit a left web site, it doesn't even address the points given on the right, and vice versa. I find this unfortunate; how can you make up your mind on the issues when the two sides won't even debate?
Slashdot, of course.
I join the mainstream of Slashdot in reading http://www.theregister.co.uk - it has just the right sarcastic bite to it to make it fun to read the news.
http://www.ubersoft.net/ , while uneven, often reaches the level of true greatness, as when they had Binky, the paperclip character from Office, on the witness stand testifying for "Ubersoft".
http://www.macsurfer.com/ keeps me updated on the Macintosh world. http://www.appleturns.com/ is probably the world's best Mac news site, if they would only start doing it again. Having a kid seems to have really damaged their production schedule
http://www.wired.com still has high-quality news articles on an interesting range of subjects.
I don't have any particular routine, but on a typical day I'll visit all those sites. Slashdot and Free Republic tend to send me to some pretty strange sites on occasion.
Slashdot.org Geek.com Think Secret (gotta keep up with the rumormills) 2600 Internet Storm Center FreeBSD Project Fink OpenDarwin Tucows ABCNews The Indy Channel (local Indianapolis news) CNN.com (take with 1 (one) grain of salt) UM Weather Nuvo.net (local Indianpolis news) IDSNews.com (IU-Bloomington news)
I go to a number of sites for "news" news; I find that the "same" news is very different coming from different countries:
...and a couple of sites for tech and science news:
BBC News, which everyone's familiar with;
CNN, the epitome of US government-sanctioned news;
The Economist, of course;
The Times of London,
Japan Today,
Pravda,
The Beijing Review,
Le Monde, and
The Tehran Times
EurekAlert, a great site for science and medicine press releases,
the former, but still running, Hacker News Network,
BottomQuark,
the phenomenal journal Nature,
Science magazine,
and, of course, The Source.
Some good comics, most of which you will all know, but which I love; here are a couple you might not know:
Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet, a comic that actually features a female sysadmin/techgoddess, and
Bateman Political cartoons, a fun political comic updated regularly.
And, of course, take a look at my sig... Click every day.
Do something about world hunger. Click here
I want to know $$$$$exyGal's daily pattern of information retrieval.
Siggy Wiggy Figgy Tiggy a bana bo Biggy!
Quick Loading Headlines From 190+ Tech Sites. Pick the sites you want to see headlines for and they give it to you.
Can't live without it!
Then (if there's still time before class, if not just after) I generally see whats up on
And well, thats about it. That I check frequently at least. I do like webcomics and strongly suggest that you check out Machall Megatokyo and Errant Story if you don't already though! And then there's also everything2 but its not news and I can't check it daily (or else I would do nothing all day but read!) its too good at just drawing you in. And the anime turnpike to go browsing through Anime fansites...
When i wake up in the morning, I crack open the daily newspapaper and.... wait that's not true. Lets start again. When I wake up in the morning I turn on my computer, and check out... webcomics.
Angst Technology, Ctrl Alt Del, Dilbert, Errant Story, Force Monkeys, Fox Trot, goats, Life of Riley, Mac Hall, Megatokyo, Misfire, Penny Arcade!, Sinfest, Something Positive, and finally Wendy.
Then, after my daily webcomic barage (not to say that these all update on a daily basis. Some are good [ like ctrl alt del, and penny arcade ] and update regularly. others... well...) I frequent other sites, for information.
Slashdot of course (not linking it...)
Gamespot
Games workshop,
and
Unconventional Conformity.
Other than that, I have a few sites i goto every so often. Or ones which i check throughout the day. But they become less important than the comics.
-Gharbad
"Gharbad no Hurt!" -Gharbad
I check out slashdot, anandtech and other tech and science links. Also news.google.com and csmonitor.com (Christian Science Monitor). These to get an idea of the mainstream. I can't stand CNN and such so I skip those. Then I move on to my far left political links:
From the Wilderness http://www.fromthewilderness.com/
What Really Happened http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/
Centre for Research on Globalization http://www.globalresearch.ca/
Center for Cooperative Research http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/home.htm
Independent Media Center http://www.indymedia.org
Emperor's New Clothes http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/911page.htm
9-11 the people's investigation http://www.911pi.com/
Guerrilla News Network http://www.guerrillanews.com
International A.N.S.W.E.R. http://www.internationalanswer.org/
UK: The Observer (John Pilger) http://www.observer.co.uk/
UK: Independent (Robert Fisk) http://argument.independent.co.uk/
As a side note, I rarely use browser bookmarks; I keep my own index.html that I update daily, putting in references to articles I like and updating the top portion, of which the above are a subset. Then I can keep a copy of this on the internet in case I ever need it from a remote location.
I put all my dailies in a folder called "Bored"
Here's some I haven't seen mentioned:
Ben's Bargains - because it's good to drool.
Homestar Runner - the only excuse for Flash on the web
Most of my dailies are listed in various strings, but each Friday, never forget....
Bob the Angry Flower!
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
More-or-less daily in more-or-less this order:
www.techrepublic.com (various depending on email newsletters)
www.sciencedaily.com
www.linux.org
www.desktoplinux.com
slashdot.org
www.wired.co
www.reuters.com
www.lexpress.fr
setiathome.ss
www.bartcop.com
weekly:
www.anchordesk.com
www.buzzflash.com
www.saro
www.cybersciences.com
www.infoworld
www.tvguide.com
www.mg.co.za
www.eweek.com