Both are incredibly smart blogs, with very smart commenters. Their main shtick is bringing historical perspective to contemporary problems of government and economics. The result is fascinating and eye opening. I've learned more history from these two blogs then I learned from majoring in history at Yale.

Though the discussion is chiefly about algorithms and programming, it attracts brilliant people from top universities and research organizations around the world.

For non-hacker topics I don't have any I would visit regularly, so I am also looking forward for another comments.

And, of course, I read Slashdot regularly, and enjoy it quite a lot. I think it's the only news site my co-founder reads.

A lot of the population there doesn't have a CS degree, and hasn't bothered to give themselves an equivalent education by reading, and so find basic stuff like the "Sources of Disk Latency" to be "Interesting" and "Informative." But the site works for real signal, because eventually some expert is pissed off enough to post a page long in-depth spiel.

I'm surprised there aren't more sysadmin related posts actually. (Wiring Servers? How do YOU do it?)

Over the last 2-3 years, it's went into the crapper. More political ranting from the left, more pointlessly provocative articles, and more anti-MS bashing.

It's just a cesspool over there. I blame the new editors.

I will say that it's good for jokes. Also there is a very small percentage of posts which are ranked interesting and are actually interesting.

Yes, you come across some ignorant and rude comments at times, yet I find that when taking into account the number of posters and posts, the number of quality comments - which is why I have been reading it almost daily for over three years now - is actually quite high . . .

. . . and the humor. I don't laugh that easy, but I find some of the comments to be incredibly humorous, and that has value to me, a good laugh can make a difference in one's day.

HN is just the right mix of it, because you have intelligent people giving their view points, but they are all busy people, so there is no 5 page replies.

lulz you can tell where my interests lie...

For legal issues, there's the Volokh Conspiracy. I believe that Eugene Volokh is a libertarianish law professor somewhere.

Is the Becker/Posner blog still around? I believe that both of them have a Nobel prize in Economics.

Greg Mankiw has a good blog, with a good community.

Most of the internet sucks for intelligent discussion. That's what happens when you let any-old-body in.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/forumdisplay.php?f=47

A couple recent threads: - Is my vote mathematically meaningless? - Intelligence, intelligence tests, and psychology - What is space made of? - Professors, Doctors, Lawyers, who's smarter?

Atheism discussions are a particular favorite (which should generally indicate it's the type of forum you're looking for).

http://use.perl.org

lots of ridiculously scienc-ey,mathy, yet pragmatic finance dudes there. Some humor when trolls/know-it-alls arrive.

The hard thing would be to make sure people voted up and down for the right reasons.

And yes, I have stairs in my house.

http://www.itulip.com

ducks