[GEEK] Sources of Cool Sci/Tech News?

[jducoeur]

Okay, here's another question I toss out for opinions. As a self-declared geek, I have a deep fondness for Cool Science and Technology. I'm pretty broad-based in my interests, fascinated in everything from the latest specialized computer languages to the hippest cosmological theories to the current advances in nanotechnology. I pick this stuff up from various sources, and have a few favorites -- indeed, part of what keeps me reading The Economist is that their weekly three-page Sci/Tech column has a surprisingly geekly bent.

I will admit to a strong dilletantish streak: I like to have a pretty good overview of everything, but am only occasionally interested in the deep details. One-to-five page articles tend to be my speed: enough to grasp the high concept, but not necessarily every nuance. (When I decide that a subject is interesting enough to want more details, I'm entirely capable of finding them on my own.)

But I've never found a single source that really grabbed me as The Best Source For Cool Sci/Tech News, and I'm wondering if there is one. So here's the question: if you are an aficionado of such stuff, what is your favorite source, and why? I'm open to any sort of periodical, whether based on dead trees or electrons. I'd like to know what's worth looking at regularly...

Comments

[qedrakmar.livejournal.com]

I subscribe to the AIP's weekly-ish Physics Newsletter. I think it's a good one, and only has very recent things, like, what some professor found last week. It's a little dry, and doesn't discuss a lot of different issues, but it's very informative.

Send a message to (listserv at listserv dot aip dot org) with "subscribe physnews" in the body and a blank subject.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Heh. My dad used to work for the AIP...wonder if that's the listserv he set up. ;-)

[qedrakmar.livejournal.com]

I almost forgot, if you want, get a subscription to Physics Today. It's a monthly magazine, though if you're only casually interested, it may be a bit much. http://www.physicstoday.org/subscribe.html

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Short answer for me: no but RSS. I haven't found a single feed, but SciScoop, BCC/Sci, etc., have feeds. Too bad New Scientist doesn't, at least not for free.

In practice I also just have a folder of "sci news" bookmarks I open every day or three.

[laurion]

I'm in the RSS camp myself. I have a few dozen feeds that I graze through on any given day, including things like Gizmodo, archaeology today, sca today, etc. You can get feeds from any number of science and technology sources. Of course, I also use it for things like web comics, craigslist searches, the notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Pepys Diary, and I even made a custom style for my LiveJournal Friend's list so I could turn that into an RSS feed. I go too far sometimes, but it means I can an awful lot of my incoming information through one easy to manage point.

[ian-gunn.livejournal.com]

Scientific American should is a good generalist source and there is a feed here at sciam, I don't think the feed gets all of the print articles but quite a bit.

www.slashdot.org I would expect to be on many computer geek list of info sources. There is an RSS feed for it but I tend to go to that site directly when I'm in the mood. The same thing for www.thinkgeek.com.

www.eetimes.com, and its print counterpart,is a good place to keep up with the current state of the art in electronics.

Being an optics geek I'll poke at the news section of www.optics.org occasionally, and at www.laserfocusworld.com.

MIT puts out a technology newsletter I've subscribed to on and off I forget the exact name at the moment. I don't have time to follow it at the moment.

Hummm, I don't think any of those quite satisfy your request for a single source of interesting geeky news/tech. All of them have some slant or holes. I guess I'm interested in whatever you find too.

nasa related

[zephyrrs.livejournal.com]

NASA and JPL have a few interesting e-newsletters. I have them subscribed and set up to go into a folder in outlook.

If you have an interest in a specific field more than another -- this is a resource to find more:
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/society/

Also check out:
https://www.ieeecommunities.org/

Now I'm sending that email to Physics News - cool!

[dsrtao]

I'm probably too specialized for you. Here's my list,though:
- TechDirt (has an LJ syndication)
- What's New (join-whatsnew@lists.apsmsgs.org) "Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the University of Maryland, but they should be."
- Engadget and Gizmodo (gadgets)
- The Register and The Inquirer (high-tech news)
- Politech (technopolitics)
- Interesting People (Internet technopolitics)
- NANOG and INET-Access (where the technopolitics meets the fiber)
- CRYPTO-GRAM (all crypto news, once a month)
- The Cook Report (not currently sub'd, can't afford it)
- Eristocracy (the weirdest of real new science)
- Ars Technica (general computing)
- Kernel Traffic (Linux kernel summary)
- Storage Review (all drives all the time)
- GrokLaw (theoretically law issues around free software, actually complete coverage of SCO vs Universe.
- GrepLaw (actually law issues around free software)