9 ms·

Websites people say have changed their lives

221 points by imartin2k 10y ago

kristianc 10y ago
I remember Dreamless, Praystation, k10k et al with some fondness as part of a special era on the web when people were just making things for the sheer joy of experimenting with this new platform and seeing what was possible. Some of it was pretentious nonsense, some of it was quite fun, most of it would be dismissed as frivolous today. The web as an app platform really profoundly changed things but in many ways we stand on the shoulders of these early efforts.
- drawkbox 10y ago
  Praystation was great, the flash community at the time was almost like an interactive underground demo scene where people showed off their flash skills. Makes me think of flash cartoon sites as well from the time: Joe Cartoon [1], Spumco (JohnK, Goddamn George Liquor Program)[2], etc. Made many people see that you could get animation and web comics/entertainment to anyone with this tech, many shows to this day still use Flash/Animate[3] or now most use Toon Boom[4]. [1] http://joecartoon.com/ http://joecartoon.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCE0d5xCHJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCE0d5xCHJ4 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_television_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_televis... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toon_Boom_Animation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toon_Boom_Animation
rolfvandekrol 10y ago
We hugged the server to death. Cached version at Google: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:upCV-mXKwQ0J:kottke.org/17/04/these-websites-could-change-your-life&num=1&hl=en&gl=nl&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:upCV-mX...
- agumonkey 10y ago
  alternate cache http://archive.is/WZQ9p http://archive.is/WZQ9p
cJ0th 10y ago
I am surprised no one mentioned Reddit. Reddit really helped me gain perspective. For one thing, it made me realize how similar people all over the world are. No matter how specific a post is, chances are really high that someone else will chime in and echo the feeling/experience that has been expressed. In short, the positive message is: You're not alone! For another thing, it is (despite the horrible search function) relatively easy to discover communities that discuss the same topics from different angles. For instance, when it comes to international news that affect country A and B you can read the comments in r/a and /b and thus gain a deeper understanding of the issue.
- dualogy 10y ago
  > For one thing, it made me realize how similar people all over the world are. For me, it made me realize how similar redditors all over the world are.. =)
  - H4CK3RM4N 10y ago
    4chan(/pol/ and /int/ in particular) is what did it for me. An Indian complaining about Pakistanis looks an awful lot like a German complaining about the French, or an Aussie complaining about Kiwis.
    - perilunar 10y ago
      I don't know about that. There's a long history of bloodshed between India and Pakistan, and between Germany and France. Australia and New Zealand have always been close allies. We only complain about each other in jest.
      - kerbalspacepro 10y ago
        I think that's the point. If two allies complaining about each other in jest is indistinguishable from two enemies complaining about each other in sincerity, then what's do the enemies complaining about each other really mean?
  - 10y ago
_Codemonkeyism 10y ago
The Last Psychiatrist.
- aub3bhat 10y ago
  Oh man I really miss his writings. Btw if you want similar style essays but about DB/Bitcoin tech check out http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/03/01/what-did-not-happen-at-mtgox/ http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/03/01/what-did-not-happen...
curiousgal 10y ago
HN is on the top of my list!
golergka 10y ago
No TvTropes?
- JetSpiegel 10y ago
  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinY...
Dowwie 10y ago
Advice from Reddit's r/DIY and r/homeimprovement communities helped me take on repairs and improvements that I wouldn't have done otherwise. I learn a lot from the step-by-step photos, explanations of work, and feedback in the comments. Those forums are like the Stack Overflow of home improvement and are really great -- life changing!
curuinor 10y ago
Something about MeFi that makes it an oasis of basically what the lurid 90's folks imagined the Web would become. Probably because it's from the 90's, but it's a dingy dirty utopia of sorts
Kaibeezy 10y ago
Amazon / eBay. Urban-center level access to necessities and more helped enable a move to a rural, old-time village. The kids go out the door. I know my neighbors. No traffic. Lots of flowers and birds.
Symbiote 10y ago
Wikipedia. So much information, generally well written, and a good level of detail on many pages. I've used the "Random Page" link a few times. Just this morning I read "Apollo 8"[1], since I heard samples from the radio broadcast in a song last night. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8
TheAceOfHearts 10y ago
Hacker News changed my life, I found my first job thanks to a Who's Hiring post. :) I'm surprised that Khan Academy isn't listed anywhere. Their videos were incredibly helpful when I was in college.
- pacnw 10y ago
  Second this. I have learnt about so many new technologies from HN, that 1) it pushed me to finally start my own venture, and 2) the technologies I have learnt about and use in my daily stack all came from HN posts over the years
shouldbworking 10y ago
HN is up there for me. It gave me a much broader perspective on the happenings within the field. And it encouraged me to move to the great city I now live.
therealmarv 10y ago
Google
yomritoyj 10y ago
Terence Tao's 'What's New'[1] and Mathoverflow[2]. Books and papers in mathematics don't tell you much about the penumbra of stories, hopes and plans around the formal work, particularly at the higher levels. These sites make (some) of that intuitive knowledge accessible to everyone. [1] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ [2] https://mathoverflow.net/ https://mathoverflow.net/
waqasaday 10y ago
Here are some I like: https://archive.org https://archive.org http://meh.com http://meh.com https://www.1843magazine.com https://www.1843magazine.com http://ribbonfarm.com http://ribbonfarm.com
Kenji 10y ago
After reading 3 feminist links, I gave up on the list. I don't like being patronised. EDIT: Ok, the SSRI article was good.
- pervycreeper 10y ago
  "This website changed me from a feminist into an even more extreme feminist". I have trouble believing that the people who proposed those links actually underwent any significant change in their own mindset upon reading those links. More likely, those websites reinforced their preexisting beliefs, and the readers imagine that they might be a good tool for converting others to their own belief system, their "life-changing" nature being entirely speculative, and claimed in bad faith.
obituary_latte 10y ago
For me it was a band fan club website. It was built on top of a highly customized version of phpbb. There were quirks so that people could change the color of text and embed pictures etc even though that wasn't allowed. That was what sent me down the rabbit hole: how did they change the color of the text?? Unfortunately, eventually it led me far enough that I found an xss vuln and upon reporting it they shut down the ability to comment/post/pm at all. So now it just sits there frozen in time. I eventually scraped the site (some 2GB of posts) and rebuilt the site from scratch with pyramid/sqlalchemy/postgres. I offered it up for use, but didn't get much traction. Still, that was a very fun project. Interesting how the site was still sending me down the rabbit hole all those years later.
zyb09 10y ago
So is this just a big page of links? Are AIs writing blog posts now?
- skshogun 10y ago
  kottke.org is just a collection of interesting links with short description. But I like it :)
neebz 10y ago
stackoverflow
neebz 10y ago
Stackoverflow
larzang 10y ago
There has only been one site that has been a consistent companion since I discovered it in high school in '99. One site that has served as a foundation in shaping my life. That site is zombo.com. You can do anything at zombo.com.
- feld 10y ago
  I have great news for you: https://html5zombo.com/ https://html5zombo.com/
erikb 10y ago
I love such summary sites, and probably will spend the next weeks reading/watching stuff from this one. However, I have to note a mistake I often make that other people may make as well: Often when we think "wow, that's life changing!" it's actually a strong emotional response of surprise. It is really helpful when it happens because the content provided demands it. It helps us to learn faster and stay motivated to the end of the content. But sometimes it's not the content itself, but the presentation. And just like Coka Cola may taste exciting when you haven't been drinking any sugary drink for years, the presentation itself may be the only thing exciting about it. It creates the emotional response by artificially triggering our buttons, but not because it really has some valuable lesson. I really need to remind myself of that before I start to dive in. Hope it helps some others to filter the real content from the sugar water as well.
cygned 10y ago
Never heard of Bullet Journal before. That will change my life.
avasylev 10y ago
Mr money mustache After living in US for a year or two, was very interesting to discover alternative view on "typical" lifestyle. While I don't agree with all his recommendation, I did buy cheap small car :)
- erikb 10y ago
  there are also some subreddits on frugal life, early retirement, management of your finances. While there is a lot of advertisment and untested theory in there as well, I have to agree that it helps a lot to gain some money skills. The one I can recommend the most is learning to write down and track your finances manually (i.e., without Mint). I'm a lazy bum, so I stop doing it after a few months every time I start, but when you hit a strain of bad luck that drains all your savings you will be happy as hell to have these skills navigate you through the storm. I'd say without these skills I would be insolvent right now, which is worse in my country than the US, afaik.
  - mrweasel 10y ago
    While there are much good advise in those subreddit, much of the content is also extremely US-centric. That's fine of cause, that's where many of the users are, but some of the advise aren't really applicable in some other countries, and some is just plain bad advice in you're not in the US. The whole renting vs. buying of instance, Reddit users almost always recommend renting your home, but that just throwing money away in some countries.
    - erikb 10y ago
      Yes, I have the same problem. And it's really a pity that there is no local content in the same quality in my country. I also bought some native books, but they don't think strategically about money. It's just "grandma's advice" put on paper.
    - fragmede 10y ago
      Rent vs. buy is a great example of how useless broad unqualified advice is. Whether to buy or rent varies from district to district within the same city, as well as from city to city, and also state to state inside the US, never mind different countries. It also varies from individual to individual; their savings, their finances, where they are in their career.
fnsa 10y ago
another good one: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com http://www.mrmoneymustache.com
petra 10y ago
Pubmed clinical queries section: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/clinical https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/clinical If you or your family have any sort of medical issue, that's the best place to get high-quality, reliable medical information, especially in the "systematic reviews" section - which is basically journal quality summarization of the relevant research. EDIT: to get the maximum benefit, you'll probably need to use Libgen together.
futurix 10y ago
Funny enough, I don't remember precise websites that really changed my life - usually they would trigger a flurry of activity and would be forgotten themselves. I don't remember where I read in 1997 that being gay is 'okay' and normal - but that was a major revelation for a geeky teen in a notoriously homophobic and close-minded country (no more suicide attempts for me, yay). Co-incidentally that led me to work hard on improving my English, as all information was in it. And my improved English led me to start my own website - the only website that changed my life and I still remember all the details of it (even though it is no longer online). It was dedicated to my hobby project - the project that led a foreign company to hire me and relocate me to a Western country. Which triggered a chain of events that brought me to the UK, to a much happier and fuller life than I ever hoped to have. And finally, I don't remember where I read an article describing the author's struggle with an eating disorder, but I realised that I'm going through exactly the same thing and that I need help. It improved my life dramatically, pretty much kept me alive - but I don't remember what or where it was...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ThomPete 10y ago
On the top of my head: https://www.well.com/ https://www.well.com/ http://spacecollective.org/ http://spacecollective.org/ http://www.kurzweilai.net/ http://www.kurzweilai.net/ http://lesswrong.com/ http://lesswrong.com/ and of course https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/ I am sure I forgot a few.
ludicast 10y ago
Rescuetime has been great for me so far. Really helping me stay on track and motivated. Coursera and edx can be great too, but potential time-sucks if you don't manage your interests carefully.
jameskegel 10y ago
board.shodown.net, k10k, phong, surfstation.lu, designgraphik, submethod, designiskinky, zoorex, zylonzoo, arkinect, pixeldust, deviantart, gmunk, chapter3.net, threeoh, the list goes on...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dghughes 10y ago
The original Slashdot was an interesting site for me it introduced me the social web format. Previously my only social interaction was IRC. I don't think it changed my life but at the time slashdot certainly opened up a new world to me.
stevoski 10y ago
Joel Spolsky's joelonsoftware.com and the now-dead "Business of Software" forum he hosted. I discovered that it was possible for normal developers without any business training to independently make and sell software online for a living. That's what I've been doing now for 10 years.
samirillian 10y ago
https://www.couchsurfing.com/ https://www.couchsurfing.com/ Was a big one for me. Along with Wikipedia, it's what I think of when I want to believe that maybe the internet wasn't such a bad idea after all.
hashhar 10y ago
REDDIT: Reddit's /r/diy got me to learn a lot about electronics. The extremely detailed guides which led to something that could ACTUALLY BE USEFUL was a very good motivator. /r/StopDrinking was also a lot of help for me (to help a friend). I owe a lot to the community there for helping my friend take control of his life again. /r/fitness also helped me reach a healthy weight and lifestyle after I had a recent health scare. /r/randomkindness helps me feel good by doing good for others. /r/cscareerquestions helped me get a great job and taught me a lot about programming (/r/programming and language specific subs) and career. Humans of New York: This photoblog by Bradon Stanton was instrumental in helping me develop a much more open mindset about people and eventually led me to volunteer for the UNICEF after they covered a young girl directly impacted by UNICEF. The European Refuge Crisis was a similarly transforming moment for me. Toastmasters International: This is kind of like Alchoholics Anonymous for people who haven't given a public presentation before. Countless TED talks also helped shape my thinking and gave me perspective. Since a lot of the HN populace doesn't like Reddit I wanted to clear it up that the key to using it productively is to follow only subreddits that fill a niche in your life. And prefer subreddits which have more text posts than link posts. Discussion with a wide variety of people is one of reddit's key strengths. As an example, I usually discuss and read comments about foreign policies on multiple country subreddits so that I can get an idea of how it impacts other countries and what the people are concerned about in the other places.
tomsaj 10y ago
Domaining.com, people make money with domains. Lots of amazing information.
sjs382 10y ago
None moreso than OkCupid.
kahrkunne 10y ago
I'd say 4chan probably changed my life the most. Not only did it have a big influence on my tastes to this day, it also (indirectly) introduced me to some of my best friends and taught me a lot of social skills

221 points by imartin2k 10y ago

I remember Dreamless, Praystation, k10k et al with some fondness as part of a special era on the web when people were just making things for the sheer joy of experimenting with this new platform and seeing what was possible. Some of it was pretentious nonsense, some of it was quite fun, most of it would be dismissed as frivolous today. The web as an app platform really profoundly changed things but in many ways we stand on the shoulders of these early efforts.

drawkbox 10y ago
Praystation was great, the flash community at the time was almost like an interactive underground demo scene where people showed off their flash skills. Makes me think of flash cartoon sites as well from the time: Joe Cartoon [1], Spumco (JohnK, Goddamn George Liquor Program)[2], etc. Made many people see that you could get animation and web comics/entertainment to anyone with this tech, many shows to this day still use Flash/Animate[3] or now most use Toon Boom[4]. [1] http://joecartoon.com/ http://joecartoon.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCE0d5xCHJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCE0d5xCHJ4 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_television_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_televis... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toon_Boom_Animation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toon_Boom_Animation

rolfvandekrol 10y ago

We hugged the server to death. Cached version at Google: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:upCV-mXKwQ0J:kottke.org/17/04/these-websites-could-change-your-life&num=1&hl=en&gl=nl&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:upCV-mX...

agumonkey 10y ago
alternate cache http://archive.is/WZQ9p http://archive.is/WZQ9p

cJ0th 10y ago

I am surprised no one mentioned Reddit. Reddit really helped me gain perspective. For one thing, it made me realize how similar people all over the world are. No matter how specific a post is, chances are really high that someone else will chime in and echo the feeling/experience that has been expressed. In short, the positive message is: You're not alone! For another thing, it is (despite the horrible search function) relatively easy to discover communities that discuss the same topics from different angles. For instance, when it comes to international news that affect country A and B you can read the comments in r/a and /b and thus gain a deeper understanding of the issue.

dualogy 10y ago
> For one thing, it made me realize how similar people all over the world are. For me, it made me realize how similar redditors all over the world are.. =)
- H4CK3RM4N 10y ago
  4chan(/pol/ and /int/ in particular) is what did it for me. An Indian complaining about Pakistanis looks an awful lot like a German complaining about the French, or an Aussie complaining about Kiwis.
  - perilunar 10y ago
    I don't know about that. There's a long history of bloodshed between India and Pakistan, and between Germany and France. Australia and New Zealand have always been close allies. We only complain about each other in jest.
    - kerbalspacepro 10y ago
      I think that's the point. If two allies complaining about each other in jest is indistinguishable from two enemies complaining about each other in sincerity, then what's do the enemies complaining about each other really mean?
- 10y ago

_Codemonkeyism 10y ago

The Last Psychiatrist.

aub3bhat 10y ago
Oh man I really miss his writings. Btw if you want similar style essays but about DB/Bitcoin tech check out http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/03/01/what-did-not-happen-at-mtgox/ http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/03/01/what-did-not-happen...

curiousgal 10y ago

HN is on the top of my list!

golergka 10y ago

No TvTropes?

JetSpiegel 10y ago
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinY...

Dowwie 10y ago

Advice from Reddit's r/DIY and r/homeimprovement communities helped me take on repairs and improvements that I wouldn't have done otherwise. I learn a lot from the step-by-step photos, explanations of work, and feedback in the comments. Those forums are like the Stack Overflow of home improvement and are really great -- life changing!

curuinor 10y ago

Something about MeFi that makes it an oasis of basically what the lurid 90's folks imagined the Web would become. Probably because it's from the 90's, but it's a dingy dirty utopia of sorts

Kaibeezy 10y ago

Amazon / eBay. Urban-center level access to necessities and more helped enable a move to a rural, old-time village. The kids go out the door. I know my neighbors. No traffic. Lots of flowers and birds.

Symbiote 10y ago

Wikipedia. So much information, generally well written, and a good level of detail on many pages. I've used the "Random Page" link a few times. Just this morning I read "Apollo 8"[1], since I heard samples from the radio broadcast in a song last night. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8

TheAceOfHearts 10y ago

Hacker News changed my life, I found my first job thanks to a Who's Hiring post. :) I'm surprised that Khan Academy isn't listed anywhere. Their videos were incredibly helpful when I was in college.

pacnw 10y ago
Second this. I have learnt about so many new technologies from HN, that 1) it pushed me to finally start my own venture, and 2) the technologies I have learnt about and use in my daily stack all came from HN posts over the years

shouldbworking 10y ago

HN is up there for me. It gave me a much broader perspective on the happenings within the field. And it encouraged me to move to the great city I now live.

therealmarv 10y ago

Google

yomritoyj 10y ago

Terence Tao's 'What's New'[1] and Mathoverflow[2]. Books and papers in mathematics don't tell you much about the penumbra of stories, hopes and plans around the formal work, particularly at the higher levels. These sites make (some) of that intuitive knowledge accessible to everyone. [1] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ [2] https://mathoverflow.net/ https://mathoverflow.net/

waqasaday 10y ago

Here are some I like: https://archive.org https://archive.org http://meh.com http://meh.com https://www.1843magazine.com https://www.1843magazine.com http://ribbonfarm.com http://ribbonfarm.com

Kenji 10y ago

After reading 3 feminist links, I gave up on the list. I don't like being patronised. EDIT: Ok, the SSRI article was good.

pervycreeper 10y ago
"This website changed me from a feminist into an even more extreme feminist". I have trouble believing that the people who proposed those links actually underwent any significant change in their own mindset upon reading those links. More likely, those websites reinforced their preexisting beliefs, and the readers imagine that they might be a good tool for converting others to their own belief system, their "life-changing" nature being entirely speculative, and claimed in bad faith.

obituary_latte 10y ago

For me it was a band fan club website. It was built on top of a highly customized version of phpbb. There were quirks so that people could change the color of text and embed pictures etc even though that wasn't allowed. That was what sent me down the rabbit hole: how did they change the color of the text?? Unfortunately, eventually it led me far enough that I found an xss vuln and upon reporting it they shut down the ability to comment/post/pm at all. So now it just sits there frozen in time. I eventually scraped the site (some 2GB of posts) and rebuilt the site from scratch with pyramid/sqlalchemy/postgres. I offered it up for use, but didn't get much traction. Still, that was a very fun project. Interesting how the site was still sending me down the rabbit hole all those years later.

zyb09 10y ago

So is this just a big page of links? Are AIs writing blog posts now?

skshogun 10y ago
kottke.org is just a collection of interesting links with short description. But I like it :)

neebz 10y ago

stackoverflow

neebz 10y ago

Stackoverflow

larzang 10y ago

There has only been one site that has been a consistent companion since I discovered it in high school in '99. One site that has served as a foundation in shaping my life. That site is zombo.com. You can do anything at zombo.com.

feld 10y ago
I have great news for you: https://html5zombo.com/ https://html5zombo.com/

erikb 10y ago

I love such summary sites, and probably will spend the next weeks reading/watching stuff from this one. However, I have to note a mistake I often make that other people may make as well: Often when we think "wow, that's life changing!" it's actually a strong emotional response of surprise. It is really helpful when it happens because the content provided demands it. It helps us to learn faster and stay motivated to the end of the content. But sometimes it's not the content itself, but the presentation. And just like Coka Cola may taste exciting when you haven't been drinking any sugary drink for years, the presentation itself may be the only thing exciting about it. It creates the emotional response by artificially triggering our buttons, but not because it really has some valuable lesson. I really need to remind myself of that before I start to dive in. Hope it helps some others to filter the real content from the sugar water as well.

cygned 10y ago

Never heard of Bullet Journal before. That will change my life.

avasylev 10y ago

Mr money mustache After living in US for a year or two, was very interesting to discover alternative view on "typical" lifestyle. While I don't agree with all his recommendation, I did buy cheap small car :)

erikb 10y ago
there are also some subreddits on frugal life, early retirement, management of your finances. While there is a lot of advertisment and untested theory in there as well, I have to agree that it helps a lot to gain some money skills. The one I can recommend the most is learning to write down and track your finances manually (i.e., without Mint). I'm a lazy bum, so I stop doing it after a few months every time I start, but when you hit a strain of bad luck that drains all your savings you will be happy as hell to have these skills navigate you through the storm. I'd say without these skills I would be insolvent right now, which is worse in my country than the US, afaik.
- mrweasel 10y ago
  While there are much good advise in those subreddit, much of the content is also extremely US-centric. That's fine of cause, that's where many of the users are, but some of the advise aren't really applicable in some other countries, and some is just plain bad advice in you're not in the US. The whole renting vs. buying of instance, Reddit users almost always recommend renting your home, but that just throwing money away in some countries.
  - erikb 10y ago
    Yes, I have the same problem. And it's really a pity that there is no local content in the same quality in my country. I also bought some native books, but they don't think strategically about money. It's just "grandma's advice" put on paper.
  - fragmede 10y ago
    Rent vs. buy is a great example of how useless broad unqualified advice is. Whether to buy or rent varies from district to district within the same city, as well as from city to city, and also state to state inside the US, never mind different countries. It also varies from individual to individual; their savings, their finances, where they are in their career.

fnsa 10y ago

another good one: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com http://www.mrmoneymustache.com

petra 10y ago

Pubmed clinical queries section: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/clinical https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/clinical If you or your family have any sort of medical issue, that's the best place to get high-quality, reliable medical information, especially in the "systematic reviews" section - which is basically journal quality summarization of the relevant research. EDIT: to get the maximum benefit, you'll probably need to use Libgen together.

futurix 10y ago

Funny enough, I don't remember precise websites that really changed my life - usually they would trigger a flurry of activity and would be forgotten themselves. I don't remember where I read in 1997 that being gay is 'okay' and normal - but that was a major revelation for a geeky teen in a notoriously homophobic and close-minded country (no more suicide attempts for me, yay). Co-incidentally that led me to work hard on improving my English, as all information was in it. And my improved English led me to start my own website - the only website that changed my life and I still remember all the details of it (even though it is no longer online). It was dedicated to my hobby project - the project that led a foreign company to hire me and relocate me to a Western country. Which triggered a chain of events that brought me to the UK, to a much happier and fuller life than I ever hoped to have. And finally, I don't remember where I read an article describing the author's struggle with an eating disorder, but I realised that I'm going through exactly the same thing and that I need help. It improved my life dramatically, pretty much kept me alive - but I don't remember what or where it was...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ThomPete 10y ago

On the top of my head: https://www.well.com/ https://www.well.com/ http://spacecollective.org/ http://spacecollective.org/ http://www.kurzweilai.net/ http://www.kurzweilai.net/ http://lesswrong.com/ http://lesswrong.com/ and of course https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/ I am sure I forgot a few.

ludicast 10y ago

Rescuetime has been great for me so far. Really helping me stay on track and motivated. Coursera and edx can be great too, but potential time-sucks if you don't manage your interests carefully.

jameskegel 10y ago

board.shodown.net, k10k, phong, surfstation.lu, designgraphik, submethod, designiskinky, zoorex, zylonzoo, arkinect, pixeldust, deviantart, gmunk, chapter3.net, threeoh, the list goes on...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dghughes 10y ago

The original Slashdot was an interesting site for me it introduced me the social web format. Previously my only social interaction was IRC. I don't think it changed my life but at the time slashdot certainly opened up a new world to me.

stevoski 10y ago

Joel Spolsky's joelonsoftware.com and the now-dead "Business of Software" forum he hosted. I discovered that it was possible for normal developers without any business training to independently make and sell software online for a living. That's what I've been doing now for 10 years.

samirillian 10y ago

https://www.couchsurfing.com/ https://www.couchsurfing.com/ Was a big one for me. Along with Wikipedia, it's what I think of when I want to believe that maybe the internet wasn't such a bad idea after all.

hashhar 10y ago

REDDIT: Reddit's /r/diy got me to learn a lot about electronics. The extremely detailed guides which led to something that could ACTUALLY BE USEFUL was a very good motivator. /r/StopDrinking was also a lot of help for me (to help a friend). I owe a lot to the community there for helping my friend take control of his life again. /r/fitness also helped me reach a healthy weight and lifestyle after I had a recent health scare. /r/randomkindness helps me feel good by doing good for others. /r/cscareerquestions helped me get a great job and taught me a lot about programming (/r/programming and language specific subs) and career. Humans of New York: This photoblog by Bradon Stanton was instrumental in helping me develop a much more open mindset about people and eventually led me to volunteer for the UNICEF after they covered a young girl directly impacted by UNICEF. The European Refuge Crisis was a similarly transforming moment for me. Toastmasters International: This is kind of like Alchoholics Anonymous for people who haven't given a public presentation before. Countless TED talks also helped shape my thinking and gave me perspective. Since a lot of the HN populace doesn't like Reddit I wanted to clear it up that the key to using it productively is to follow only subreddits that fill a niche in your life. And prefer subreddits which have more text posts than link posts. Discussion with a wide variety of people is one of reddit's key strengths. As an example, I usually discuss and read comments about foreign policies on multiple country subreddits so that I can get an idea of how it impacts other countries and what the people are concerned about in the other places.

tomsaj 10y ago

Domaining.com, people make money with domains. Lots of amazing information.

sjs382 10y ago

None moreso than OkCupid.

kahrkunne 10y ago

I'd say 4chan probably changed my life the most. Not only did it have a big influence on my tastes to this day, it also (indirectly) introduced me to some of my best friends and taught me a lot of social skills