Ask HN: Favorite mailing lists, IRC channels

[MichaelAza]

I've recently come to appreciate true veterans of technology hang around mailing lists and IRC channels.

What are some of your favorite programming/security/sysadmin mailing lists and IRC chaneels?

[cjbprime]

The liberation-tech list is interesting sometimes: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech

The rest of the mailing lists/IRC channels I read are all related to specific software projects, though.

I feel like I should add something here about how spending a lot of time on IRC can be inversely correlated with being someone who's doing a lot of work, in some cases. The veterans you're seeing might be people who now spend more time talking about technology than creating it, unless they're using IRC to coordinate their contributions to a project with its other members.

[shiftpgdn]

I would love to see some sort of service that logs an IRC channel and condenses down the most popular topics, keywords, users, etc.

[ipmb]

Pycoder's Weekly: http://pycoders.com/ Python Weekly: http://www.pythonweekly.com/

...and a shameless plug for my Django bi-weekly

Django Round-up: http://eepurl.com/yZh21 (Archive: http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/home/?u=24fce4628ba1d5814de...)

[lvh]

#python on Freenode. If you can live with being asked questions when you're asking something funny long enough to convince regulars you usually know what you're doing, it's an excellent congregation of some hella smart people.

(Disclaimer: I'm a regular of the channel myself. I also run the official Python channels on Freenode.)

[ishbits]

Is #python not the official channel?

[the_cat_kittles]

thanks for the help getting started! you helped me out a ton 2 years ago!

[suhair]

This is my list of favs. http://suhairhassan.com/2013/04/17/newsletters-for-hackers.h...

[fizzbar]

Nice list, thanks for putting it together & sharing.

Slightly OT, for people with email sending experience: I've noticed that some of these lists require you to confirm an email subscription ("double opt-in"), which afaik is standard operating practice for any email list these days.

Yet a couple (Bootstrappist, Web Design Weekly to name a couple at random) don't, they just send a welcome email. Are those two able to avoid the double opt-in requirement by virtue of being larger/older/more established lists, or are they assuming their open rates will keep their deliverability % high, w/o needing the extra confirmation step?

Has the double opt-in requirement become a relic?

[hawk82]

NANOG, http://www.nanog.org/list

MailOP, http://chilli.nosignal.org/mailman/listinfo/mailop

VoiceOPS, http://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops

Full Disclosure, https://lists.grok.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/full-disclosure

Outages, http://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/outages

DNS Operations, https://lists.dns-oarc.net/mailman/listinfo/dns-operations

[justinlilly]

Shameless plug, I've written a small piece of software which will send you daily aggregates of github activity via email. There are also weekly / monthly options as well.

http://gitstreams.com/

[tlongren]

Cool! I've been searching for something similar to this.

[LukeHoersten]

#haskell on Freenode. Great group of smart hand helpful people.

[lelf]

+ haskell café maillist

[davidw]

Some of us are on #startups on Freenode.

[petercooper]

There are a lot of good channels on Freenode generally, but it's a bit like saying one's circle of friends are good.. they're not so great until you know them, etc. #startups is probably one of the better ones for strangers, but it's certainly worth branching out into several at a time, particular technology specific ones where newcomers are expected and frequent (e.g. #redis, #rubinius, #ruby-lang). You can then get invited or drawn into the more cliquey but interesting channels that no-one talks about as much.

[jamesjguthrie]

I'm there (Jabo)

[joren]

I really like the Ruby Rogues Parley http://rubyrogues.com/parley/ and ruby weekly http://rubyweekly.com One is great just to get up to date and the other has really great discussions with all kind of people involved with Ruby in one or the other way.

[lowglow]

#Techendo (http://techendo.co) on freenode -- a lot of good people there from the SF tech scene, but I'm biased because I started the channel.

[usaopp]

IRC: Freenode: #security, ##freebsd, ##hardware, #debian - all good Rizon: #baot As for mailing lists, Full Disclosure for sure, Bugtraq, all the big name security ones have really interesting posts.

[davidbrent]

#slicehost on freenode. I know the company doesn't exist anymore, but I learned so much about setting up my first debain box from these guys/gals. It is still going strong 6 years later.

[Sealy]

I'm a fan of digital currencies so I frequently visit Freenode channels: #bitcoin #litecoin #bitcoin-dev #mtgox

Its interesting to observe the growth of the channels during bitcoin's hype cycles.

[TamDenholm]

I run a small IRC channel for webby types, mainly UK based and theres not many of us but anyone's welcome. irc.chatwebdev.com #chatwebdev

[joshbaptiste]

#python #bash #awk #go-nuts on Freenode...

[soapdog]

irc.mozilla.org and then #webdev #webapi #b2g #developer and others. Keeping the web free and open to all ;-)

[octo_t]

I'm a fan of scala-lang/scala-internals both of which are very interesting.

[uzqlbrm]

##c on Freenode. If there's one channel to visit, it's that one.

[Kelet]

Last time that I tried being a regular in ##c, regulars over-zealously referred people away (That's GNU C, go away!) and most often responded by using a bot to deliver an automated message. People scolded me for answering questions sincerely. Maybe just a one off experience, but not a big fan.

[GeneRoddenberry]

#ebooks on irchighway.net

[Sephr]

#oftn on freenode is a great open source programming channel.