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!
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).