Besides Facebook, Google, Youtube, Reddit, Hubski, etc. I'm wondering what kind of smaller and lesser known sites the hubski crowd uses. I ask because I'm looking for websites to spend time on besides just Hubski and Reddit.
News sites? Any other aggregators?
What about social networking sites?
Perhaps not unknown, but I haven't met many people who are aware of khanacademy. If you're looking to learn, check this guy out. He knows what he's doing. And it's totally, 100% free.
Another amazing resource is MIT OpenCourseware! http://ocw.mit.edu/about/ There are many courses with all course materials uploaded, including videos of every lecture and links to all readings necessary. For instance, here is Introduction to Computer Science and Programming:
The way you say that I get the impression the whole site is put together and managed by that one fella.....is it?? That's....incredibly impressive if it is.
Just to complete the list with the other comment: edx.org is a pretty nice website, too. I did two courses already and currently doing my third one with a couple of upcoming ones already added to my list. Very recommendable if you like a course offered there!
I did the MIT 6.00.1x, which is very recommendable, since I still learned a bit, even having a CS degree. Especially since I wanted an easy entry into Python programming. I peeked into several others which were not that interesting (to me!) and also time-consuming. Currently I watched a couple of weeks of "UT.9.01x Effective Thinking Through Mathematics", which is sadly taking another course than I expected, I don't know yet if I'll stick to it. Last week "Think101x The Science of Everyday Thinking" started which already looks really interesting. Here is an overview of the course. Not time-consuming, interesting, great guest speakers and thought-provoking. I will very likely stick to that. A couple of other ones I marked to check out for me is "GSE1x Unlocking the Immunity to Change: A New Approach to Personal Improvement" and "ANU-ASTRO1x Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe". And I haven't really been browsing edx' catalogue lately, which increased by a lot, otherwise I'd have more on the list. Depending on how much time you want to invest, you can probably spent a 40 hour week on edx easily. What I like about edx, too, is the fact that I wouldn't be ashamed on putting the certificate to my CV / an application. Even the free ones offer at least a PDF with your name and the name of the course and a link to check if the certificate is valid. While this does not prove that you didn't cheat your way through the course, I highly doubt that this concern outweighs the knowledge, commitment, dedication and your personal interest into growing in an application interview scenario. There is absolutely nothing to lose and I felt it added a lot to my personal knowledge and in case I'll have another job interview, it's a super easy topic starter which reflects a lot of good characteristics.
kleinbl00 introduced me to the Council on Foreign Relations' Global Conflict Tracker -- such a great resource.
I'm a big fan of CFR's podcasts. While they are billed as a non-partisan research center they have many partisan scholars and speakers on both sides of many issues and super informative presentations on world events, religion and economics. CFR definetly provides a platform for their sponsors which interjects an extra dose of mostly economic rightish propaganda but I suppose they need to pay the bills (think Jami Diamond).
I am not sure that these are "unknown" so much but here are a few things: I often go to Matt Strassler's blog here: http://profmattstrassler.com/
Where he talks about current events in physics. I also used to go to http://www.quantumdiaries.org/ but they stopped updating as much. Hack A Day always has some cool stuff on there http://hackaday.com/ This is a little bit cheesy but it often helps to get me recentered it's sort of a just a meditative thing: http://thequietplaceproject.com/thequietplace The Feynman Lectures http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/ I actually own this series but sometimes I enjoy looking at them online.
Popehat is one of my favorite sites. It's a legal blog mostly concerned with 1st amendment issues but it covers a lot of other legal ground. I like Courthouse News Service. It mostly covers interesting or tawdry legal news. I read Slashdot every day. If I have nothing else to do I read Tech Dirt and Ars Technica. Arts & Letters Daily sometimes. Military.com is a pretty decent site if you are looking for a wide variety of perspectives on the war machine (ranging from super bigoted to informative, not the actual news pieces more the comments).
It's related to my job, but I really dig keeping an eye on spaceweather. There's a radio ham up in Canada who's got the best aggregate site for satellite and ground-based data pertaining to everything spaceweather, SolarHam.com. I'll check it a few times a day, just for fun.
You can also get great and accurate updates about the Aurora Borealis here: http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast
I waste my time in the futility closet sometimes. Not too often but it's a nice little site I rediscover from time to time.
Since I finally lost track about all my movies and series, I found a small nice website called trakt.tv. For anyone who knows anidb or MAL, it's basically the same for movies and series. For everyone else: You can manage the movies and series you own and / or watch and keep track on if you have seen them or not. On top of that, there's a neat calendar, which lets you easily follow the upcoming episodes of the series your watching. Also there's a wish list feature, which I use to add whatever movie trailer I see which wants me to keep that movie "on the radar". There's also a plugin for XBMC and some players (I think) to "scrobble" your files, meaning, that if you watch something, it will get marked watched on the website. It also has a recommendation area. What I also like about this page: the VIP membership is pretty cheap, and the features are really nice but not necessary, exactly like premium should be. What the best thing about premium us: you get to vote on what the next feature is, which should be developed by the admins. So you can directly influence the website. I think that's really cool. Also, I'm not affiliated with this website, I just like it that much :P
If you, like me, enjoy skyscrapers and infrastructure being built, I highly recommend the Skyscrapercity forums. There's active discussions on nearly every big city in the world. Literally dozens of millions of posts there. I enjoy designing transport maps so this Transit Maps tumblr is really cool. The guy reviews tons of new and old metro / rail maps and actually knows his shit, which is a rarity. Besides that I have some really specific forums I irregularily check, most which have something to do with either urban planning or rollercoasters (a hobby of mine).