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Ask HN: What's the best free course in your area of expertise?

154 points| Fervicus | 3 years ago | reply

Let's compile a list of the best free courses on various subjects. Video courses are preferred; it's nice to have a backlog of videos to watch when the opportunity arises, like while flying.

31 comments

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[+] transpute|3 years ago|reply
Xeno Kovah's courses on low-level systems architecture, security, firmware, reversing & vulnerabilities, https://p.ost2.fyi

"OST2: A new way to grow security talent for open source projects", https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/event/ost2/

> .. he ended up working for Apple. There he worked on securing all the lesser-known firmwares on Macs and peripherals - everything from 3rd party GPUs to SecureBoot for monitors! He worked on the x86-side of the T2 SecureBoot architecture, and his final project was leading the M1 SecureBoot architecture - being directly responsible for designing a system that could provide iOS-level security, while still allowing customer choice to trust arbitrary non-Apple code such as Linux bootloaders. He left Apple in Dec 2020 after the M1 Macs shipped, so he could work full time on Open Security Training.

[+] abraxas|3 years ago|reply
Even if it seems like it's outdated somewhat due to the breakneck progress of machine learning in the past few years the legendary Cs231n is still the course to start your ML journey with. Especially as taught by Andrej Karpathy. You should be able to find recordings of it on YouTube. Make sure you get the ones from Karpathy years at Stanford. As brilliant as Andrej is as a ML practitioner, he is an absolute world class mastermind at teaching this stuff.
[+] novafacing|3 years ago|reply
pwn.college from the folks at ASU SEFCOM is by a significant margin the best comprehensive binary exploitation training you can get. There are video lessons from some of the top professors and graduate (and undergraduate) TAs, CTF players, and more alongside a massive suite of hands on practice and a community for discussion and learning.

Video training sessions: https://youtube.com/@pwncollege Challenges: pwn.college Discord: https://pwn.college/discord

[+] odessacubbage|3 years ago|reply
Modern Colour Theory For Traditional And Digital Painting Media by Dr David. J.C. Briggs, >http://www.huevaluechroma.com
[+] aguilonius|3 years ago|reply
Thanks so much for posting my website here! Who knew hackers were so interested in colour! Someone just suggested adding paid courses as well, so I hope it's okay if I add that I also give a live online colour course that's not too expensive and has a lot of new material I've produced since finishing the main part of The Dimensions of Colour in 2017. There's a course outline here and a form if you want more information https://sites.google.com/site/djcbriggs/tmct
[+] muzani|3 years ago|reply
Android/Kotlin course on Udacity, by Google: https://www.udacity.com/course/developing-android-apps-with-...

This one is slightly out of date, but it's great, something I'd happily pay $300 or so for. The value is heavily subsidized by Google. I have taught week-long Android professional certifications and this does a lot better than most of them out there.

[+] crossroadsguy|3 years ago|reply
Wish there was an excellent and advanced Android/Kotlin course.
[+] joshxyz|3 years ago|reply
When I was in high school and college I used to watch Dana Mosely's math videos. He got the best explanations I've ever found. https://coolmathguy.com/
[+] rg111|3 years ago|reply
* Machine Learning, Andrew Ng, Coursera

* Practical Deep Learning for Coders, fast.ai

* Mathematics for Machine Learning Specialization, Imperial College London

* Deep Learning Specialization, Andrew Ng, Coursera

[+] tester756|3 years ago|reply
Maybe not my expertise, but it's rare to see this kind of content

so if you want to learn something like: PCI/CXL/USB/x86/ARM/DRAM/SAS/AHCI/NVM/SATA/Virtualization/UEFI/Thunderbolt

then I've seen this https://www.mindshare.com/ being recommended

[+] enos_feedler|3 years ago|reply
I would like people to add paid courses. I don’t mind paying $500+ if it’s really well done
[+] loveparade|3 years ago|reply
In my experience there is almost an inverse relationship between course quality and whether it's paid or not.

People who are experts in their fields typically don't need to make money from selling educational materials. They make enough money in their field of expertise, e.g. by being a researcher or professor. The reason they publish educational materials is typically to improve their public image or become a bit more famous, and they want as many people as possible to have access.

On the other hand, paid courses (think Udemy and stuff like that) are often made by people whose goal is to put in the minimum effort plus some marketing to sell a course. They are not experts in the field, and don't need to be, because marketing is more important. These courses end up being shallow low-quality fluff.

[+] than3|3 years ago|reply
I agree with the sentiment that you get what you pay for, but there is so much market fluff that most of the time true gems aren't recognized, and 90% of what you see, a true professional in that area would rank, hard down.

That being said, valuable material shouldn't be available for free. You should have to exchange something for it because the author put in work and expertise to make it happen, and they won't be able to provide more or support it with a price tag of free. People have to have some incentive and be able to offset costs.

Algorithms often also control what you see so even lists like this are quickly corrupted. It truly is an 'Anathem' world now.

[+] chestertn|3 years ago|reply
Any paid course that you recommend?
[+] andrei_says_|3 years ago|reply
Kevin Powell on CSS - YouTube

Jen Simmons on CSS grid - YouTube