Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Which Expert Bloggers Do You Read?
An anonymous reader writes: The crush of news sites today is almost overwhelming. For true bits of news — bare facts and alerts that something has happened — it doesn't really matter which site you read it on. Some tiny, no-name website can tell me $company1 bought $company2 just as well as Reuters, CNN, or the NY Times. When it comes to opinion pieces and analysis, though, it's a different story. One of the generalist tech bloggers at the NY Times probably isn't going to have many worthwhile posts comparing database sorting algorithms or explaining the Cassini spacecraft's orbital path or providing soldering techniques for fixing a busted monitor. An example most of us are familiar with: Bruce Schneier generally provides good advice on security and encryption. So: what expert bloggers do you keep tabs on? I'm not looking for any particular posting frequency. This type of person I'm thinking of is probably not a journalist, and may not post very often at all — posting frequency matters far less than the signal-to-noise ratio. My goal is to build a big list of smart people who write interesting things — mainly for topics you'd expect to see on Slashdot, but I'm open to other subjects, as well.
Because really, I need the skinny on bourbon and James Bond. I mean occasionally he writes about Apple and tech, but let's be honest. We're all there for the booze news.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
John Gruber
If it's free, it probably has a corresponding worth.
Most experts don't have the time to write or read blogs based on their work. And if I wanted an explanation of Cassini's current activities I'd just walk down the hall and ask one of the experts myself. ;)
It used to be Slashdot. Not sure what this site is anymore, and I'm still looking for a reasonable replacement. I guess a collection of experts would be a decent way to go.
OK, it's a borderline conspiracy theory site, but this guy does a good job analyzing events and media coverage.
My favorite post is on how he explains US military activity... everything makes much more sense now:
The Geopolitics of World War III: https://youtu.be/TC3tINgWfQE
I still don't get the blogging thing. I guess I'm not the sort to want to talk about myself endlessly.
I also enjoy Jeff K and timothy.
there may be any number of people blogging about random stuff with occasionally insightful comments to share. but i haven't found any of them to be worth "following" enough to notice instantly when they have a new post. because, frankly, i don't have time for that.
He's got a lot to say, and a captive community to say it to.
Only blogs I see regularly are The Incidental Economist (healthcare news, reform, and research) and Real Time with Bill Maher (It's...um...Bill Maher...).
http://theincidentaleconomist....
http://www.real-time-with-bill...
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Slashdot comments of course! That is if Dice morons don't continue to butcher its technical userbase
Krebs On Security. Nuff said.
This sig is false.
Bruce Schneier. They say pre-computes S-box tables dynamically from the key... over breakfast.
Good people go to bed earlier.
A few of the "expert" ones I frequent:
Economics/Social Science:
Econlong
Marginal Revolution
The Money Illusion
Overcoming Bias
Bronte Capital - More short selling fund/capital management than economics
Law
Volokh Conspiracy (Now tied into the Washington Post)
Writing/Fantasy/SF
According to Hoyt
Mad Genius Club
Come Let Us Reason Together (more politics than writing)
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Why read the rest when you can laugh with the best?
asktom.oracle.com is one of the best sources for Oracle tips, tricks and shared adventures. He builds examples to prove just about everything he says - no speculation, no guesses.
I read Zheng3.com, but that's just me.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
oh, wait.. it is not a blog.. but who cares, the information is more valid than many "expert blogs"
Paul Krugman, David Frum, Ezra Klein, Robert Reich, Ryan Avent, Jared Bernstein. I don't always agree with them, but they have a pretty good track record.
Also, read this:
http://www.hamilton.edu/docume...
It is real simple.
* If you are wasting time following another blogger that means you are being reactive.
* Instead, invest your time into creating/producing solutions which means you are being pro-active.
It is the same deal with Focus. As Steve Job's used to say "The secret to staying focused is to say no." Every minute you waste reading someone else's blog, waste watching TV, waste gaming, etc., means the competition just gained an advantage over you.
I spend 5 minutes / day reading /. and Reddit spread throughout the day. Any more then ~5 minutes is time wasted that could be spend more efficiently building your business, helping people, networking, etc.
"The crush of news sites today is almost overwhelming."
Call it off-topic, but if you are overwhelmed by the "crush of news sites", then you're probably doing something wrong. Virtually all of the news in the US can be summed up as "MSM". A couple of liberal families own most of the "news" organizations. An ultra-conservative Aussie owns the best-known alternative. There are more main-stream sites available, but most people don't want to hear about them.
In my news feeds, I have two Russian, two Chinese, one Indian, one Kurd, one Arab, one Israeli, 4 British, one Australian, and a mishmash of US MSM. I scan over the MSM, choosing to click on one now and then. Being a conservative at heart, I click Fox more often than I click Hearst or Turner links, but TBH, I don't like Fox much. For the real news, I scroll on down to the "foreign" sources.
Also in my feeds, I have things like Scientific American, Project Censored and - oh, what's this? SLASHDOT?!?! How did that get in there?
Think outside the box that Main Stream Media tries to put you in.
On a related note - http://dontbubble.us/
Maybe I should have advised you to think outside the bubble, instead?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The problem is that the people who you really want to get insight from are not the types who waste a lot of time blogging. At least not on a regular basis. As a result, the signal to noise ratio is so low there's no point in really following any of them.
In the Pipeline (chemistry and pharma)
MathBabe (math and data mining)
Schneier on Security (crypto and computer security)
My Biased Coin (statistics)
Steve on Image Processing (image proc w/ Matlab)
Paul Graham (computing and Y Combinator)
Lessig Blog (intellectual property and cyber law)
The Volokh Conspiracy (politics)
MultiBlogs:
Talking Points Memo (political)
Google Research Blog
KDD Nuggets (datamining)
R-Bloggers (R and datamining)
Bennett!
And I don't even have to go to his blog, Timmy will post his verbiage right here on Slashdot!
Excuse me now, I need some private time thinking about Bennett.
Why read the rest when you can laugh with the best? Seriously experts are wrong most of the time, just take a look at what they wrote a while ago. There are plenty of books on the subject of experts like:Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us - and How to Know When NOT to trust them. In economics the "experts" usually are those who had a lucky streak. Yes there are experts out there in mathematics, physics and other things who know specific stuff but they usually do not write about it in blogs, they publish peer reviewed articles.
For mathematics and physics, I read Not Even Wrong, by Peter Woit.
For theoretical computer science, I read Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP, by Richard J. Lipton and Kenneth W. Regan.
For analyzing the harm that modern feminism is causing, I read Dalrock.
Years ago a journalist reported the news. Today... no such animal. Just reporters giving an opinion.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
Jon Hendren, DevOps Thought Lord.
Naturally. *sips cognac*
Do the "editors" not do any research?
It is becoming increasingly difficult to access news in the traditional media. Paywalls are being erected everywhere. I was just surfing the web for highbrow stuff when I stumbled upon this article, and paywalls were making me very upset. Even Slate has just closed access to non-US readers. The panorama is bleak. So, if youre not a 99 percenter, it is getting hard to read stuff. The blogs are the last bastions of Internet freedom.
Bruce Schneier and TomDispatch [and all the blogs listed in TomDispatch site].
I like to read Derek Lowe's blog "In the pipeline". It has good insights on the pharma industry, drug development, etc. If you go there be sure to check the "Things I won't work with" page. It makes for some very entertaining reading on "exciting" (as in "oh my god we all gonna die") chemical substances.
The War Nerd on well, war, Scott Greenfield on (mostly criminal) law, and Ken White on law and privacy.
https://xkcd.com/727/
slashies!
The best information you can get on the 'net
http://www.kibo.com/
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Zero Punctuation from The Escapist and Ben Croshaw is fucking hilarious - these are short, fast paced game reviews done in flash animation if you're not familiar.
Red Letter Media for Half in the Bag, Best of the Worst, and of course Mr. Plinkett. These are movie reviews, commentary and sometimes satire from movie buffs. The most well known (and the reason I still regularly check back) are the scathing several hours long multi-part dissections of the Star Wars Prequels there are some for a few other things as well but the eloquence and insight in the Star Wars Prequel diatribes is really something spectacular and worth watching (it will put in to words what you probably felt).
Even further removed from blogs... Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic where two different ventures from the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 continue doing what they did sans puppets. I prefer Rifftrax of the 2, and collect them both.
This is no surprise, we all know and love him.
I'm talking, of course, about the most excellent Bennett Haselton!
Oh, what we'll do for a "comedian" rating...
https://www.stratfor.com/about... From his bio: AREAS OF EXPERTISE Global Geopolitics Intelligence Gathering and Analysis International Affairs Geopolitical Forecasting Modern and Historical Warfare U.S. Foreign Policy so not necessarily stuff the slashdot community would be interested in, but every article he writes is fascinating and FULL of great information
I enjoy reading what the "Technollama" blog (written by Andres Guamuz) has to say. http://www.technollama.co.uk/
He seems like a level-headed, well-informed lecturer with insight into UK law as well as US laws.
The main lesson of any person or site posing as a techno-authority is that authority itself is now impossible, if it can be said that it ever was doable. I look at this place every day, at Ars, and at How-to-Geek (who regularly presents some surprisingly remarkable insights). Once a week I'll look over Motherboard's, BB's, and Wired's posts; and for the rest there's social media. As annoying as it can often be, following Anonymous's twitter feed frequently delivers pearls from sites I otherwise wouldn't visit. And for really important stuff I follow Glenn Greenwald of Intercept and the EFF and the Tor project's feed.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
For advanced/but niche automation/devops tech things, I read The Technical Blog of James
https://ttboj.wordpress.com/
I also like Planet GNOME (an aggregator):
http://planet.gnome.org/
HTH
Derek Lowe, In The Pipeline, I got into him from his Things I Won't Work With tag (Note: he's going to be moving to another domain in a few weeks)
Stephen Smith's Space KSC (I think he's a bigwig with NASA's outreach or advocacy programs or something)
Bunnie Huang's blog (famous for hacking the Xbox, but he isn't updating very often this year, so he must be working on something)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Raymond Chen
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
If you're out there leading and don't care what others think, why are you reading Slashdot?
Kind of wish more programmers would read the Daily WTF.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"Of Dust and Kings": http://tehanna.com
Now, most slashdotters are atheists, and I'm not going to debate about that one way or the other. I honestly have no concern what you believe, because I think there's a kernel of truth in all religions and non-religions (including humanism, satanism (whcih is another form of humanism), etc.). However, even if you are an atheist, you still have a sense of morality, and it is possible to get some inspiration from Christian tradition, as long as you don't get enmired in some kind of legalism. Although I think most Christian tradition is a bunch of hooey, I really like the *core principle* of Christianity, which is a religion of forgiveness. To everyone, we can apply this idea of "forgive those who realize they've wronged other people and wish to change their ways for the better." (There are other things about Christianity that I like, and even Dawkins will admit that Christianity is relatively benign.)
The author of this blog (T. E. Hanna) is a Christian (a Methodist minister, actually), but he's also a post-modernist, meaning that he rejects traditions that are out-dated, don't make sense, go counter to evidence, etc., and his perspective on God isn't some man in the sky with a white beard who hands down nonsensical rules. For instance, he's not a creationist, he's not a homophobe, and he believes in total equality of the sexes (mutual submission of partners rather than submission of the wife to the husband in some stupid way).
I've had personal conversations with this guy. I can't tell you just how annoying it is to try to have a discussion with so many Christians who have a narrow interpretion of their scriptures and want to force those beliefs on others. By contrast, all of my discussions with Thomas Hanna have been enjoyable and enlightening. He's all about philosophy, insight, intellectual discourse, and having an open mind. Any aspect of Christianity you learn from him is going to come from him being insightful and settng a good example.
So, even if you don't care much for Christianity, or many of the issues don't seem relevant to you, his blog is still a really interesting read. Here's what I would call an "expert on Christianity and other important moral concerns," and I have read his blog.
Some of those guys are experts?
APK's insightful commentary on HOSTS files is what keeps me coming back to slashdot. I love the passion he has for his work and how he relentlessly defends it against any naysayers who dare attack it. When will they learn that they are simply WRONG?!
[fark.com] tends to have pretty great and balanced political discussion
I hope by "balanced political discussion and humor" you mean "a mix of political discussion and humor", because Fark was overrun by screaming liberals a long time ago.
Expert on what? The field of human endeavor, and thus the question, is impossibly broad. (Though the questioner quasi limits it to IT/science/hardware by implication.) In fact, the submission reads an awful lot like someone trying to get content for free...
That being said, for most of the stuff I want expert help on I tend to visit specialized forums far more than blogs. I've generally got too much going on to strain the sea in hopes that something I can actually use drops into my lap by happenstance.
... but i do read Slashdot, though....
Techrights.org
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com...
Best economics group blog on the Internet. Led by Yves Smith, who's writing about the 2008 banking crisis was absolutely brilliant and spot-on. Also Philip Pilkington, who's blog "Fixing the Economists" is essential reading. Non-ideological (unless you disagree with them, in which case you will claim - falsely - that they're ideological). Their economics expertise is unquestioned.
I read their blog every day and every time I find myself disagreeing with something they've written, I learn that I was wrong.
You are welcome on my lawn.
In general it's difficult to get excited about Canadian issues, since the news and commentary from our US neighbors tends to be a lot more loud and extreme. However, there are a couple commenters I turn to when I want to catch up on what is happening in my own country:
Michael Geist is an excellent source for tech and intellectual property issues in Canada.
Chantal Hebert is a fantastic political analyst... her columns are regularly insightful and devoid of the partisan screeching that seems to infect a lot of political commentary.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
This guy, because I agree with everything he has to say.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/
"Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author."
That's an oxymoron.
I've been reading Fivethirtyeight.com since back when it was an expert blog on statistical analysis of polls. I guess that's not what it is any more, but I still read it.
I still read CodingHorror, although Jeff's output has gone way down since StackOverflow took off (or since he starting having kids. I'm not sure which was the real driver).
But I think for the most part youtube series have replaced a lot of my blog reading.
She's always right, checks her sources, actual journalist. 'nuff said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I read bbc, science daily, ccn, slashdot, hacker news and tor.com. I do not feel crushed by the number of news sites and I do not regularly read any single author blogs. I have no objection to blogs - I simply have not found any blogs that are consistently interesting (to me).
Casey Muratori is a game developer (and previous game-tools developer) who has an excellent blog covering various programming topics: http://mollyrocket.com/casey/
not so much a blog but the comic is great for expanding general science knowledge
The last psychiatrist you'll ever need :-)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I particularly enjoy reading from the Communities Dominate Brands to see where the cell phone market is going. /.
He's been pretty much spot on in regards to Nokia and predicted that Microsoft would do cut to the Lumia brand which is part of today's headlines on
I read a lot of the usual suspects: this site; although it's probably
gone downhill over the years, there are still some interesting, insightful
or informative opinions/posts.
Other sites include:
El Reg. Always good for the latest government fuck-ups with IT.
The latest: 16 billion quid wasted trying to implement a new IT system for what is essentially a renamed social security benefit.
Our dishonest dick of a PM (David Cameron) said today:
"Deliberate pace"? It's been years (and it wont be ready for many more, if at all!). What a tosspot.
Another good site is:
FreeBSD Forums. A must read for all those using (or proposing to use) FreeBSD.
The icing on the cake:
The Daily Mail; drivel masquerading as news.
It's like The Onion, only funnier.
It consists of "news" about celebrities (I use the word loosely: most of
them I've never heard of). On a typical day there will be about a dozen
stories about the dreadful Kardashians. A tweet by one of those revolting
people constitutes Daily Mail "news".
What beggars belief though, is that the DM is one of the most popular sites
in the UK! People believe and read the trash they write, as the hundreds of
braindead comments attached to each story attest.
Who was it that said "You can't underestimate people's stupidity"? The DM
is living proof of the wisdom of that quote. Remember, that half the
population has an IQ < 100; I read the DM so that I know what that
half are thinking/being told to think.
I'm not the only one to read the DM. The government takes a keen interest
in what the DM and their imbecile audience has to say and it inevitably
informs part of their unashamedly populist government policy.
Eg. EU bad, people on social security are all scroungers, isn't
the Royal Family lovely?, immigrants are scum, BBC bad etc.
In short, they're hugely influential and I take it as a public duty to
stay informed of what these dingbats are up to. If I lived in the States,
I'd watch Fox News.
I used to troll the DM: post comments which caused a certain amount of
cognitive dissonance amongst the readers. But I got bored with it; the
dullards didn't really react. Maybe my trolling technique wasn't good enough.
We shouldn't always read stuff that confirms our own views/prejudices. You
need to know what the "opposition"/"mental defectives" (or in the States:
Republicans) are up to.
The Machine stops.
Generating good content is hard, and for a single person to do it on a regular basis is next to impossible. As an experiment, take all the blog posts you read on a particular day that come from whatever source you normally use (for me that's /r/programming or Hack-A-Day). Then go to the previous post on that person's blog. Odds are you'll find that article of significantly lower quality than the one that brought you there, and/or that article will have been posted months or years ago.
Content aggregators are really the only sites worth using on a regular basis. If you try to stick to just a few dozen expert bloggers, you'll only see a post every month or so, or there will be a very low interesting (to you) content to noise ratio. And you'll miss out on a lot of the one hit wonders. Additionally, I usually find the comments on the aggregator site are often just as or more interesting than the blog post.
The very first public wiki: it goes by the aliases "Wiki Wiki Web", "C2 wiki", and "Portland Pattern Repository".
It's a combination wiki, blog, and discussions on the philosophies of software design. It's messy, but often messy in a good way.
There is a tension between what may be called "practitioners" and "academics" that I find fascinating (and have helped fuel, I must say). The practitioner stance is that human (coder) nature/perception and economics (bottom line) are the key factors, while the academics tend to argue that symbolic parsimony and mathematical provability/analyzability are the keys.
You will generally NOT find definitive/consensus answers, but you will find interesting questions and a wide variety of opinions on various software design and IT topics. It's fuel for thought in the sense of "Why is technique X better than technique Y?", or "can you objectively prove that technique X is better than Y, and if not, what's holding you back?"
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?Welcome...
However, lately it's only in read-only mode, and being redone into a "distributive" wiki, in part driven by vandals and spammers. The future direction is unknown.
It's like a junkyard for idea-tinkerers.
Table-ized A.I.
Expert Blogger = oxymoron. For me, "Blogger" always conjures up images of the WoW guy from South Park.
http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/
Miles Kimball is Professor of Economics and Survey Research at the University of Michigan. Politically, Miles is an independent who grew up in an apolitical family.
Because I'd rate this funny!
Maureen O'Gara for me. She is vary fair, has integrity, is unbiased, and has a very good insiders view with the direction of many technologies.
Right.
Subject line.
Patrick Volkerding and the Slackware changelogs...
ftp://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/slackware/slackware64-current/ChangeLog.txt
ZeroHedge.com (Sensationalist but the true bits are quite interesting and after about a year or two, whatever crazy thing they're going on about shows up on "The Economist.")
NakedCapitalism.com (It doesn't SHOUT at you the way ZeroHedge does, but it's informative).
ricefarmer.blogspot.com (A sane news aggregation site with occasional realistic commentary. As usual, reality puts people off).
ClubOrlov.com (Interesting guy. Grew up in Russia during the collapse. Comments on our ongoing slo mo collapse).
http://ourfiniteworld.com/ (A happy little blog about resource depletion and its implications. Packed with facts and numbers. Do not approach without a working calculator). Don't expect to be happy at what you finally figure out for yourself either.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
http://dodwell.us
http://www.macrobusiness.com.au
> For analyzing the harm that modern feminism is causing, I read
MUH-SOGGY-KNEEESS!!!! You hate women! You sexist neckneard cis white republicard hetro privileged male. Stop opressing me!! Get on the right side of HERstory and donate to my patreon. Your post is triggers me as harrassing terrorism!! Your world view is toxic. Donate to my Patreon and hand over your internets nerd!!!
and this empty void in my personal life can be filled with all her wisdom ... or at least her a$$.
ACs.
Some of the best hints have been from them thru the years (though arguably with the register system they flew off to greener pastures)...
Semi-Accurate
Storage Mojo
Rands in Repose
Daringfireball for a laugh. You should seriously be cautious of any site without comments. Most of his content doesn't stand up to even mild criticism.
I follow Ivan Pepelnjak at blog.ipspace.net for advanced networking stuff (some topics are CCIE-level). He is great at explaining concepts, has strong opinions on new technologies and provides links to background information. He also gives weminars on multiple technologies (most are paid). Great source of information to get in touch with reality, apart from what appears in networking books. (Disc: I am not affiliated with him, but follow the blog and have attended some paid weminars).
Not really an expert blogger, but the solution to your problem is this guy: http://nextdraft.com/ I stopped reading any news website altogether. By the end of the day I read his daily email and figure out what happened. I can't recommend this anough.
Anything is possible at zombo.com
Twitter hashtag pretty much covers everything.
For IT News you need to read fefe. Who doesn't?