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.
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.
He's got a lot to say, and a captive community to say it to.
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.
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"
"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)
Yeah, 'cause living in your own bubble makes you a super effective player in the world you're ignoring.
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.
Just to give some perspective, every conflict since 1945 has led people to predict that WW3 was about to break out. Also, for as long as I can remember, every conflict in the middle east has spurred predictions of Armageddon and the end of the world.
The reality is, no one actually cares enough about Syria for it to lead to WW3. It will be resolved similarly to any number of the cold war conflicts, where major powers were on both sides, but neither wanted to escalate.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Didn't he die in the second Die Hard movie?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
A good track record of what?
The War Nerd on well, war, Scott Greenfield on (mostly criminal) law, and Ken White on law and privacy.
The best information you can get on the 'net
http://www.kibo.com/
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Oh, I'm not worried about WWIII, it just has a pretty good explanation of how much our foreign military intervention is driven by backing the USD with growth in oil/energy since the dollar went off the gold standard.
Never listen to any commentator on that topic if they seem unaware that most US oil consumption is supplied by the US and Canada.
(Incidentally, Milton Friedman correctly pointed out that the US went off the dollar standard in 1934. The system from then until the Nixon shock was 'gold standard' in name only).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Raymond Chen
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Well, if you use Canadian oil you'll go from 1 mile per gallon down to 0.425143706 kilometre per liter. Nobody wants that!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I imagine a lot of people boost their reputation (and thus the money they can make doing speaking engagements / consulting work) by publishing free content. Bruce Schneier comes to mind.
Then there's people like Raymond Chen, who's blog I read despite that I haven't had much to do with windows in about 10 years.. I just find it interesting and he has a fun writing style.
And there's always ad revenue. Stuff like eevblog is "free" but he's probably making a bunch of money on ad revenue (as far as I know, eevblog is his full time job).
Same here, just different reasons. I have 88 newsfeeds in my RSS reader, I don't read a fucking thing. Max /. comment section for the drama lol...
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/...
For those who do not want to go to the article, where does US oil come from:
- USA: 38.8%
- Canada: 15.1%
- Saudi Arabia: 8.1%
- Mexico: 7.5%
- Latin America (other than Mexico/Venezuela): 6.2%
- Venezuela: 5.9%
- Nigeria: 5.2%
- Africa (other than Nigeria): 5.1%
- Persian Gulf (other than Saudi Arabia): 4.8%
- Other than above: 3.3%
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.
The Gruber brothers were (separately) in the first and third Die Hard movies. They didn't appear in the second. That was the one about mercenaries taking over the Dulles airport.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
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.
A good track record of what?
A good track record of insightful contributions to public discourse.
Or at least a better track record than most of us who post to slashdot.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.