Slashdot, if you don't mind a heavy dose of Internet Meme along with your Interesting Discussion.
There are also sites which focus more on specific topics... if you're into server-side Java stuff, there's http://theserverside.com, if you're into programming language research, there's http://lambda-the-ultimate.org, etc., etc.
And a lot of the more niche subreddits are actually pretty good. Stay away from /r/funny, /r/politics and the other "big" ones and check out /r/machinelearning, /r/compsci, /r/systems, /r/math, or /r/compscipapers, etc.
Slashdot is ad-plagued and not at all the techie site it once was, IMHO. You used to get the big names in the field discussing their topics on there. Now it's mostly fanboy flamewars.
I switched to here from Slashdot but I still read it the way I always did: via a newsletter. I just skim over items that I already read on HN. Its also useful if I miss a few days and feel like catching up (Yeah I know about Hacker Newsletter).
The level of discussion though is much better here.
There are some other worthwhile tech communities on G+ - just visit https://plus.google.com/communities and do some searches, e.g. for your favorite programming language, platform, or framework.
I find the posts and discussion in G+ communities (in general, I am no referring any specfic community) to be in general to be terrible in quality.
For programming related communities, there are too many newbies who don't bother googling asking the same stupid question over and over. For some others, many are reposting the same thing that made it to the front page of HN or Reddit, to earn 'creds' I guess. There are a few obscure ones that post high quality content that I wouldn't discover otherwise, they usually lack lively discussions.
It looks cool but it's impossible to get an invite if you don't know someone already on it. I tried to contact an active member to ask for an invite and didn't even get a response, then I tried a second one and same thing… Since then I think that either it's that kind of community and I wouldn't fit in anyway, or maybe I was just unlucky and randomness didn't make me contact the right people.
That's an alternative, but not a particularly good one, IMO.
The Comic Book Guy is strong over there - meaning that a significant number of conversations carry that sort of condescending, unfriendly tone as the Simpson's Comic Book Guy; intending to show that the author is clearly a superior human being due to their knowledge of ARM opcodes and their interaction with GCC or whatever else the subject is.
The biggest risks I see for HN are:
* Simply getting too big. Not much to do about that.
* Noisy political articles (like, say, about China...) that attract people who like noisy political discussions.
* Outrage articles. There are a lot of horrible injustices in the world. Enough to completely drown out tech and startup news, and in the grand scheme of things, often much more important than, say, Scala vs Clojure.
It's interesting to compare the HN[0] and Reddit[1] comments for the same article.
The second highest voted comment on Reddit is "this is high levels of bad ass." at 276 points. I guess HN is still far ahead of other communities after all (if you're interested in serious discussion).
Most of the subreddits dedicated to a specific language or technology are nice, although it usually takes at least 1,000 subscribers to reach a critical mass, with the sweet spot between 10,000 and 100,000 subscribers. If you are doing front-end web development, for example, /r/webdev, /r/javascript, and /r/html5 are pretty good places to keep on top of interesting projects and exchange ideas.
But for me the people on proggit are too communist. If you show the slightest bit of evidence that you're (at least somewhat) in it for the money, they hit the downvote button hard.
> Google+ - also quite good, but one needs to do some work, namely to find the right communities
could you link? I subscribed to some lang/framework/os ones, but didn't find much value there and found it's better to follow people. if you got some it would be nice.
> reddit - here, you have to subscribe to the right mix of subreddits according to your interests
Can you recommend some subreddits beside /r/programming and the subreddits mentioned in the sidebar of /r/programming)?
I have not found a generic software engineering subreddit (probably without any web development content), which is quite strange.
I built a tongue in cheek tool to keep track of communities like HN that might be relevant to other interests. However, I'm the only one that has ever used it, and I think all the things I've submitted have already been mentioned here.
The Op asked for a HN alternative. (Arxiv is great, I subscribed to all rss) But I bet you can't comment on a dissertation/tehsis/publication like you do on HN/reddit. hehe :)
It is not complete yet, but I could use some feedback. Specifically regarding a commenting system. I am thinking about rolling my own, but that comes with a lot of issues. Any ideas on how you would like it to look?
The site has the ability to curate posts, and then as you follow topics or even other users, you can start to build out a custom stream of news by sources that you like or are interested in. Both curated items and stream items are ordered based on the amount of likes that they receive. There is no down voting.
Each user also has a profile page showing where they typically "like" items and where they post them.
http://TheChaosEngine.com focuses on video game development (art, programming, design, general topics). To get full access you would need to send an work email to confirm that you are from the industry. There are also some indies, educators, and ex-video game folks (so it's not a strict order).
[+] [-] mindcrime|12 years ago|reply
There are also sites which focus more on specific topics... if you're into server-side Java stuff, there's http://theserverside.com, if you're into programming language research, there's http://lambda-the-ultimate.org, etc., etc.
And a lot of the more niche subreddits are actually pretty good. Stay away from /r/funny, /r/politics and the other "big" ones and check out /r/machinelearning, /r/compsci, /r/systems, /r/math, or /r/compscipapers, etc.
[+] [-] Lewton|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nursie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreen|12 years ago|reply
The level of discussion though is much better here.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ExpiredLink|12 years ago|reply
> And a lot of the more niche subreddits are actually pretty good. Stay away from /r/funny, /r/politics and the other "big" ones
esp. stay away from r/programing. It degenerated to the moderators' fanzine.
[+] [-] mmahemoff|12 years ago|reply
There are some other worthwhile tech communities on G+ - just visit https://plus.google.com/communities and do some searches, e.g. for your favorite programming language, platform, or framework.
[+] [-] hdra|12 years ago|reply
For programming related communities, there are too many newbies who don't bother googling asking the same stupid question over and over. For some others, many are reposting the same thing that made it to the front page of HN or Reddit, to earn 'creds' I guess. There are a few obscure ones that post high quality content that I wouldn't discover otherwise, they usually lack lively discussions.
[+] [-] tezza|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conroy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] p4bl0|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atacrawl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheShadowFog|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jacquesm|12 years ago|reply
And many other subreddits besides.
[+] [-] davidw|12 years ago|reply
The Comic Book Guy is strong over there - meaning that a significant number of conversations carry that sort of condescending, unfriendly tone as the Simpson's Comic Book Guy; intending to show that the author is clearly a superior human being due to their knowledge of ARM opcodes and their interaction with GCC or whatever else the subject is.
The biggest risks I see for HN are:
* Simply getting too big. Not much to do about that.
* Noisy political articles (like, say, about China...) that attract people who like noisy political discussions.
* Outrage articles. There are a lot of horrible injustices in the world. Enough to completely drown out tech and startup news, and in the grand scheme of things, often much more important than, say, Scala vs Clojure.
[+] [-] olalonde|12 years ago|reply
The second highest voted comment on Reddit is "this is high levels of bad ass." at 276 points. I guess HN is still far ahead of other communities after all (if you're interested in serious discussion).
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5330998 [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/19rzi3/breaking...
[+] [-] jacques_chester|12 years ago|reply
It drove me so completely batty that I founded a related subreddit in anger.
[+] [-] rubinelli|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulHoule|12 years ago|reply
But for me the people on proggit are too communist. If you show the slightest bit of evidence that you're (at least somewhat) in it for the money, they hit the downvote button hard.
[+] [-] James_Duval|12 years ago|reply
^really interesting subreddit imo.
[+] [-] olalonde|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greyman|12 years ago|reply
1) reddit - here, you have to subscribe to the right mix of subreddits according to your interests
2) Google+ - also quite good, but one needs to do some work, namely to find the right communities, pages and people to follow.
But if you are asking about sites with the same "genre" as HN (the same functionality), then no, I haven't found alternative to HN.
[+] [-] zalew|12 years ago|reply
could you link? I subscribed to some lang/framework/os ones, but didn't find much value there and found it's better to follow people. if you got some it would be nice.
[+] [-] _pmf_|12 years ago|reply
Can you recommend some subreddits beside /r/programming and the subreddits mentioned in the sidebar of /r/programming)? I have not found a generic software engineering subreddit (probably without any web development content), which is quite strange.
[+] [-] Sambdala|12 years ago|reply
I built a tongue in cheek tool to keep track of communities like HN that might be relevant to other interests. However, I'm the only one that has ever used it, and I think all the things I've submitted have already been mentioned here.
[+] [-] jaytaylor|12 years ago|reply
Fun little app, thanks for sharing!
[+] [-] dhotson|12 years ago|reply
I'm being serious.
If you're looking for a raw source of interesting material—you can often find some really interesting stuff.
[+] [-] jpdevereaux|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phyalow|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] X4|12 years ago|reply
The Op asked for a HN alternative. (Arxiv is great, I subscribed to all rss) But I bet you can't comment on a dissertation/tehsis/publication like you do on HN/reddit. hehe :)
[+] [-] revorad|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zachlatta|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcovey|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidw|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmelendez|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cvg|12 years ago|reply
http://www.reddit.com/r/somethingimade+longtext+programming+...
It's not a perfect version of 2010 HN, but with some pruning and grafting I imagine it could be close.
[+] [-] andyzweb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haffi112|12 years ago|reply
You basically just follow topics/sites and it suggests to you more sites/topics which are similar.
Browsing from there I get all the big articles on hacker news and from other sources which I wasn't aware of previously.
[+] [-] hoopsho|12 years ago|reply
It is not complete yet, but I could use some feedback. Specifically regarding a commenting system. I am thinking about rolling my own, but that comes with a lot of issues. Any ideas on how you would like it to look?
The site has the ability to curate posts, and then as you follow topics or even other users, you can start to build out a custom stream of news by sources that you like or are interested in. Both curated items and stream items are ordered based on the amount of likes that they receive. There is no down voting.
Each user also has a profile page showing where they typically "like" items and where they post them.
[+] [-] mooism2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vanwilder77|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rounak|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malkia|12 years ago|reply
There is also http://www.altdevblogaday.com/ also for game development.
Recently http://flipcode.com has been getting up from long sleep (it was my favourite site back in the days).
[+] [-] RobSim|12 years ago|reply