Question Forums / Websites for Geeks?

[Thunder Chicken]

Hi all,

I am an educated engineer (PhD in Mechanical Engineering, professor of engineering) and I am really looking for internet boards and such with some cerebral content. It seems 90% of the internet is now videos of cats or Beiber interviews.

O-F is my go-to for space science information and enthusiasm, hands down. If I see anything in the mainstream media about space, I head right here for the real scoop. Mainstream media doesn't do space science very well.

I've haunted Slashdot for a while, but it really isn't geek anymore. The crowd there really thinks they are all scientfically literate when in reality only a few of them are (i.e. signal to noise ratio is way too low).

Any suggestions for good, thought-provoking internet content? Anything that has been keeping you intrigued? General science, engineering, politics, game theory, etc..

Thanks!

 

[n72.75]

orbiter-forum.com

 

[tl8]

http://stackexchange.com/ is a good please to kill time.
Some podcasts that might also be of interest: http://theengineeringcommons.com/
http://techdistortion.com/podcasts/pragmatic (Now finished)
http://thesparkgap.net/

 

[Andy44]

I've always been partial to this one: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php

As far as slashdot I agree. Even when it was "nerdier" it was computer/internet type of nerd, not analog electronics/rocket type of nerd, the kind that I identify with.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

As far as slashdot I agree. Even when it was "nerdier" it was computer/internet type of nerd, not analog electronics/rocket type of nerd, the kind that I identify with.

The Slashdot moderation system is terrible - sociopaths have free run of the show there.

I've been pecking through Open Yale Courses (http://oyc.yale.edu/courses). I particularly liked the Econ 159 Game Theory course by Ben Polak, very interesting.

 

[kamaz]

http://cosmoquest.org/ (formerly bautforum.com)

Certain areas of reddit are also worthwile, i.e. r/science r/space r/futurology . The nice thing about reddit is that you can merge several subreddits into one feed like this: http://www.reddit.com/r/space+science+futurology . I also like adding r/DarkFuturology and r/collapse to balance the techno-optimism.

NB Slashdot is a case study into how (a change in) moderation system killed a valuable website.

 

[Urwumpe]

In the German diaspora, https://www.heise.de is a pretty good place especially since it also has a lot of support for the maker scene here. Yes, I know, its a more German kind of geekiness.

xkcd is also of course a smarter place.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

In the German diaspora, https://www.heise.de is a pretty good place especially since it also has a lot of support for the maker scene here. Yes, I know, its a more German kind of geekiness.

Looking at that website I got a reminder how similar German is to English. The visual prompts of the subject matter help. It's like the image that is either a vase or two face profiles, sometimes it comes to you in a flash.

xkcd is also of course a smarter place.

I quite like his What If series.

 

[Codz]

I wouldn't normally recommend Reddit, because of the mess that some of the subs have become, but there are some pretty good science/tech/engineering communities there if you search hard enough.

 

[Unstung]

Certain areas of reddit are also worthwile, i.e. r/science r/space r/futurology . The nice thing about reddit is that you can merge several subreddits into one feed like this: http://www.reddit.com/r/space+science+futurology . I also like adding r/DarkFuturology and r/collapse to balance the techno-optimism.

While r/science (and it appears r/futurology) is well moderated, r/space is not and the top posts there are almost always superficial image posts. It's better to subscribe to r/spaceporn which has clear submission rules and much of the same content as r/space. As r/space has become more popular the quality of its content has declined, similar to many other things. Its singal-to-noise ratio is definitely low.

I would recommend unmannedspaceflight.com, it's another forum that's dedicated to, well, that's self-explanatory.

Going back to reddit, r/AskScience and r/AskHistorians have intriguing content. I would even recommend r/HistoryPorn for the variety of historical subjects in its submissions.