On news sites
When I started programming in '99, Slashdot was the big thing. I would read it as soon as I had time to waste. Be it waiting for the compiler to compile, waiting for the coffee to brew, or just waiting for 17h to arrive; Slashdot could fill my day.
Then something happened. I don't know when it happened and many disagree on that anyway but over time, Slashdot was not it anymore. More politic, more speculation, more outrage about insignificant quotes from famous persons. It was not news anymore; it was something else.
I tried to read Kuro5hin but that was still not it. It took some time for other geeky news sites to arrive and I was spending more of my "waiting" time on comic strips or even, and I do admit it with some shame, on Bash.
Then came Digg and Reddit and it was good. The readers could finally decided what kind of news they wanted. There was less speculation and an occasional funny picture could share the front page with the latest Ubuntu release. But something went terribly wrong. Over reaction against the creationism movement became a moto and a growing proportion of the front page would be dedication to the adventures of random atheist bloggers against their evil creationism neighbors. US politics started to take more and more place; it would only be out ranked by the copious amount of funny pictures.
That was not right so I asked a friend what was his news source. He recommended Boing Boing. I was happy to try something new but then I discovered a world where "news" included labia scented perfume and the outrage of false advertising on Sponge Bob popsicles.
Be careful for what you wish for. We asked time wasting devices and that's what we ended up with instead of news sites. So be it. It's not my duty to judge the relevance of the time wasting devices out there but I'm still looking for a news site. Where do you get your news from?
Comments
Sounds like if you look close enough at SlashDot you find a Jump the Shark moment.
news.ycombinator.com?
I'm using google reader as an rss feed agregator. I select feeds I like to follow and when they tend to fill my brain with uncool stuff I delete them. It helps keeping track of news/blogs sites I don't always think of checking for updates ... like yours ! The cool thing is that it's online ...
google also helps with translation:
J'emploie le lecteur de google pendant que les rss alimentent l'agregator. Je choisis des alimentations que j'aime suivre et quand elles tendent à remplir mon cerveau de substance sophistiquée je les supprime. Elle aide à maintenir des emplacements de nouvelles/blogs que je ne pense pas toujours à la vérification les mises à jour… comme le vôtre ! La chose fraîche est qu'elle est en ligne…
I do use a feed aggregator too. I used Google Reader when I was in Hawaii because I changed of computer quite often but I'm now back with Akregator, KDE's excellent feed fetcher. Using feeds is the only way to follow several websites with irregular update schedules; you got that right and there is no need to argue.
But, I still need decent feeds to subscribe to. Could you point me to some feeds worth following?