Edit: I mean: it's one of the very few websites that actually provides sources of information. It's insane it's that rare these days. And most important facts are just placed in visible and easy to spot place, no need to dig through author's life story, thanks for subscribers etc. before getting to the point.
https://geizhals.de is a German search website that allows you to very narrowly specify all kinds of things.
Searching for a mainboard with minimum 4x SATA ports and 64GB RAM support in mini ITX format? Easy peasy.
For example, take a look at the laptop category and its filters: https://geizhals.de/?cat=nb
I wish every e-commerce website was built like this.
Bret Victor's visual / interactive explanations of certain ideas or papers.
Two that I like in particular are his redesign of Strogatz's paper on small world networks and the 'ladder of abstraction'
http://worrydream.com/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt...
Lets you listen to the full audio of three Apollo missions. Not only the official mix, but also behind the scenes stuff, like flight dynamics officer, computer supervisor, etc.
Not only is it interesting to hear what engineers on a mission sounded like in that somewhat early NASA environment, but it's also a pleasant background track.
I knew nothing about mechanics before starting this series and I'm very impressed by how informative and professionally made the content is. Well worth the price tag (currently discounted as it's still in prerelease, but lots of videos have already been published.)
(Note: I have no affiliation with the creator of this course and have nothing to gain by promoting him; I'm just a happy customer.)
No, I'm not trolling. This is one of the coolest websites I've ever seen, despite it being a personal blog and having no fancy animations. ps: the coolest "site", not the coolest content of the site. While it is very good too in this case.
Ken Fern's Plant databases https://theferns.info/
U2-3 - The Famous 1000 copies of U2's first ever release https://www.u2-3.com/
Dana Countryman's Virtual Museum of Unusual LP Cover Art (may contain some albeit low quality NSFW artwork) http://www.danacountryman.com/danacovers/danacovers.html
One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age - Digging through the Geocities Torrent https://blog.geocities.institute/
and finally, The End Of The Internet https://hmpg.net/
I've kept a bit of a running list on my site here: https://jason.nabein.me/#links
By far and away my favourite site of all time.
It’s a beautiful example of representing complex data in a manner that’s easy to digest, viscerally understand, even.
It’s also the first time I heard of the Misery Index, which was fun to learn about.
https://river-runner-global.samlearner.com/
Click on any spot on Earth and see where a raindrop there will flow until it reaches an ocean.
It’s a solar powered, self hosted version of Low Tech Magazine. The articles are always interesting, but there’s also a ton of good information about efficient website design as well [0].
* Nietzsche Source. Searchable, digitized collection of the complete works, as well as scans of original manuscripts, etc! http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB
* WebSDR - control a short-wave receiver located at the amateur radio club ETGD at the University of Twente, complete with chatbox: http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/
[1] https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem....
Wholesome, fascinating insight into the inner thoughts of some people, and shows us how tenuous the human connections we make on the internet can feel sometimes.. how lonely some of us can be.
All reviews by Danny Yee
I like how insane this Norwegian mail order website is.
Search for your favorite bands using the bar at the top right corner. Find the associated playlist on Spotify via "The Sound Of X" where X is the genre name.
If you have (or would like to have) diverse musical tastes this is the best way to do it!
This site for its depth on a niche subject (nike missiles): http://ed-thelen.org/
and for military telecom: https://www.electrospaces.net/p/index_15.html
similarly, for another niche (very old computers): http://bitsavers.org
Evan Amos pictures of game consoles on wikipedia are pretty cool because of how comprehensive they are. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Evan-Amos
nostalgia http://16colo.rs
thrillingly designed, and amazing what can be done in WebGL
It’s super fast with their jump to reference/declaration. Still curious what’s actually driving it. Looks like some sort of lightweight git/VCS browsing app. Does anyone here know more about it?
Without a doubt, one of my favorite sites to go reading through. I find every article fascinating, and love that it's still got that retro look and hasn't changed in years.
Each element has its own micro-interaction on hover.
The interactive elements help so much in explaining complex ideas. An example post that is incredible is: https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/
OK I'll bite... There's a very cool five letters dot com which exists since forever (I just checked on the Internet Wayback Machine and it has a copy of the site in 1998!). I'll say what it is but I'd rather not link it directly as I wouldn't want HN to kill it (and its owner deciding to pull the plug, you never know you know).
It's basically called "lost.com" (but in another language) and there are just two lines of text saying:
Lost on the Internet? Don't worry, we're going to help you
* <--- You are here
Focused on Nintendo Switch, written in rails AFAIK.
Hasn’t changed in 26 years.
If you like a science-based approach to futurism this guy is the absolute best. His channel on YouTube is amazing.
I know it’s on HN a lot but I just love the application of his sphere of deep knowledge (military history) to pop culture.
Barely related but equally cool project: https://supp.ai/
The coolest cellular automaton I've ever seen. I can fiddle with this all day and get absolutely no work done. Beautiful and stimulating 10/10
Honestly, my Internet life would be miserable without HN. I learn so much stuff in here.
Works pretty well, can answer almost any question :-)
So let me contribute with 2 other sites, maybe not the "coolest" but I think they will be of interest to some fraction of the people here (for those who dont know them)
- http://www.astronautix.com/ A labor of love of just 1 person, almost of 80000 pages! on humanity space programs,you can spend hours and hours reading about obscure soviet prototypes, NASA suits, the Chinese space probes, etc
- https://www.centauri-dreams.org/ A very active (and long) blog about interstellar travel. Despite the fact the subject is now more fiction than science the articles discussed and reviewed are about actual science done by actual scientists (many good guest posts too)
One of the most complete sources of baseball stats including game logs. Yes much of the data is from other sources (MLB, Retrosheet.org, etc) but they really ties things together nicely and I can spend hours on the site.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/19738001/2Advanced-V5-Websit...
This was more of a demo page, the original website is long down unfortunately.. Back in the day I'd get excited every time I'd load it! This site is all about esthetic and nothing about the content. I'd say many people decided to become web designers just because of this particular work.
It was hurting my slow DSL back then..
I also liked joke sites like getyourasstomars.com or typicalmacintoshuser.com :D
http://www.ruffandtuffrecordings.com/SELECTIONS
I even use it a lot on my own, I really enjoy the music I find.
I post updates to my twitter account usually as well @djwinterman
The list has many different genres and moods to it.
(Refreshing the list will load random videos)
I'm thinking of making it a carousel page of some sort soon.
Visual essays with data, that could only exist on the web
A music network state (if you are into new forms of music).
It's a personal website, but is full of amazing visualizations, educational content, and it basically has a demo scene demo to music on the front page, all hand coded in WebGL. It's just cool, in a delightful, personal, artistic way, and I love it.
I think it's run by a Ukrainian guy, they showed pics of cars on their street being bombed, it was wild
It's the most fun news browsing experience of any news site I use, the content is relevant and interesting, and it's non-profit and ad-free.
Thank me later :-)
Shows you satellites that will be visible from your position in the coming hours / days.
Incredibly cool tech stack too.
I just checked it and now it's some religious thing
i actually found out about this site after finding a very cryptic pamphlet at a bar. the site has hundreds of pages.
I'm considering getting an offline copy of wikipedia and libgen. I already have an offline copy of hacker news.
The official website for registering .no domains. Still the most modern website I have ever seen.
A game company that hired Waterloo co-ops once upon a time.
Covering net art since at least 2001. Maybe not as cool as it was then.
I believed them, such well written tables and sliced images… colspan your way to the end of the world
Allows you to simulate electronic circuits and also has bunch of other tools.
Fun and well curated science toy store
Its in german... and a giant treasure chest full of little humour
Watch television from the 90s.
It's a new open discussion site where each post is a live chatroom.
Fast and convenient, everything is one click away. Easy selection of the amount of news you're ready to absorb. Shows where you left off. Default colors are great with already followed links clearly visible. Default order is chronological contrary to https://news.ycombinator.com.
P.S.: no affiliation with it :)
- lambda-the-ultimate
- c2.com