- Joined
- Dec 1, 2018
As agreed upon in my last thread, the quality of web search in finding stuff has degraded to the point where finding useful things requires going back to the geocities era of manually curated lists of web sites. This thread intends to fill that void. Post links to sites and articles that your fellow kiwis don't know about, but should. I'll vet each site as able, and if it's good add it the OP. Any sites recommended by at least 5 different people get fast-tracked to the front of the line. I DO NOT WANT TO BE THE SOLE ARBITER OF QUALITY. IF YOU THINK A SITE SOMEONE ELSE POSTED IS GOOD AND DESERVES INCLUSION OR A SITE ON THE INDEX IS BAD DESERVES REMOVAL PLEASE SAY SO. Websites are broken up into three categories, sorted alphabetically, and subcategorized as needed. The categories are:
Descriptions in quotes are verbatim from original submitter.
HALL OF FAME
WebOasis weboasis.app - The swiss army knife of finding stuff and a light shining in darkness. Fully redundant at https://github.com/weboasis.
Sites
Anime, Cartoons, Comics, and Manga - Pop Culture Emphasis
AniDB https://anidb.net - "db of anime shows and scene releases. Has reviews and forums. Good resource to find anime to watch and manga to read."
Archives - Large Repositories Spanning Multiple Categories
The Digital FAQ digitalfaq.com - No HTTPS (2021-07-21) "This is the place where the last remaining experts on video capture and conversion congregate. You can buy rare hardware in their marketplace if you have deep pockets." Original link was to the forum subpage, recommended viewing.
The Eye the-eye.eu - Large privately maintained archive with numerous valuable items, some of which may be under enforced copyright in your jurisdiction. Please don't download anything in violation of local laws!
The Internet Archive archive.org - An archive of basically the entire world. Is actively working to preserve all digital history and digitize analogue history so it can be preserved. Has Petabytes of audio, video, text, and binary data on every subject in existence and is a great source for everything you could ever want.
Macintosh Garden macintoshgarden.org - Archive and community dedicated to archiving and offering Mac abandonware. Per their policy everything hosted is no longer available for purchase.
T E X T F I L E S D O T C O M textfiles.com - No HTTPS (2021-07-21) "big ol' archive of text files on everything under the sun (direct link to directory)" One of the oldest privately maintained archives. The sysop, Jason Scott, now works for the Internet Archive and has a number of interesting talks there and on yt that OP recommends.
Educational - Fine Arts, Literature, & Soft Sciences
Art Renewal Center artrenewal.org/Museum/Home - "A very comprehensive collection of high-res classical artworks."
Kyoto University Rare Materials Digital Archive rmda.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/collection - "Digitized books and other materials, from both Eastern and Western sources. The mathematics section is particularly rich."
National Portrait Galleries US/UK npg.si.edu (US) npg.org.uk (UK) - "Two large collections of high-quality portrait art. The UK one will even make prints for you."
Educational - Hard Sciences & Also Economics
MIT OpenCourseWare ocw.mit.edu - "Free college course materials from MIT (completeness varies)"
National Center for Biotechnology Information ncbi.nlm.nih.gov - "Publicly available medical research and data. The "Bookshelf" section has free books."
Welcome to Rocketry jcrocket.com - "How to build rockets." Much love to any site that looks like the 90s but is still being updated in CURRENT YEAR.
Film/Movies, TV, & Live-Action Motion Pictures
DVDBeaver dvdbeaver.com - No HTTPS (2021-07-21) "Movie releases review site. Has a lot of great technical info on various releases. They usually include pics to compare releases." Reviews are terse, but the data and metadata are invaluable.
caps-a-holic.com caps-a-holic.com - "movie release comparison site. Includes technical info and hq screenshots."
Games & Vidya
GOG.com gog.com - "service where you can buy old and new vidya. DRM Free. once you download the installer, you have it forever. Some games that do have online multiplayer will have different servers than their steam counterparts."
Moby Games mobygames.com - "DB of vidya. Images, Descriptions, Reviews." The closest thing to an IMDB of vidya.
Open Source Game Clones osgameclones.com - "This site tries to gather open-source remakes of great old games in one place." Also includes sourceports and the like.
Ross's Game List accursedfarms.com/games - Patron saint of vidya Ross Scott created a list of potentially appealing games for your perusal.
replacementdocs replacementdocs.com/news.php - Self-signed HTTPS (2021-07-21)"archive of old videogame manuals."
Video Game Critic videogamecritic.com - "videogame review site which I'm pretty sure has been around since the 90s (and looks it). I think its literally one guy trying to review every game in existence for every console."
Vimm's Lair vimm.net - Useful resource for video game manuals and emulators. Also contains game ROMs still under enforced copyright in some jurisdictions, please don't download anything in violation of local laws!
Internet & Net Culture
Eternal September eternal-september.org - "Free Usenet accounts for posting/reading and can send control messages to create Free.* groups. Has useful statistics so you can see groups people are actually posting in as opposed to having to comb through the vast wasteland that Usenet has become."
GNU gnu.org - "GNU's website is a good "hub" for finding other FLOSS sites/info. Also includes many articles that make for good reading whether or not you agree with them (example). Updated regularly."
Hacker Factor Blog hackerfactor.com/blog - "blog ran by some academic with a photo forensics website, majority of it is about that stuff but also other aspects of working with images and videos. Which also include his bemused rantings about dealing with CP uploaders from Russia and Ukraine."
Pouët.net pouët.net - "Your online demoscene resource." Huge demoscene forum and gateway to the scene as a whole.
InstallGentoo Wiki wiki.installgentoo.com - "wiki by the /g/uys on 4chan's tech board. Might bit a bit out of date." /g/entoomen have always been the best autists. Lots of interesting tech reading, but much of it is outdated.
Internet & Net Culture - Retro
Geocities Archive oocities.org - "A partial archive of GeoCities before it was taken down."
lolwut? lolwut.info - "Nostalgic ramblings over random topics that are still being updated." Highly subjective, highly autistic.
Neocities neocities.org - Remember Geocities, Angelfire, and Yahoo? Neocities remembers. Neo-retro world wide web at its finest.
Quote DataBase bash.org - No HTTPS (2021-07-21) The irc quote database, appears to be inactive. Good humourous popcorn reading.
Music & Audiophile Interest
Bandcamp bandcamp.com - I'm still surprised how few know about Bandcamp. The definitive pro-consumer music storefront. ~99% of music can be listened to in full as a "try before you buy", streaming support, lossless, and an equitable business model wherein they allow anyone to submit their music and collect 10% on all sales.
Discogs discogs.com - "DB of music releases. Eveything from Vinyl to DVD-A. Includes user reviews and a marketplace to buy releases. Extremely helpful for Music nerds and audiophiles."
Hydrogenaudio wiki.hydrogenaud.io - "Audiophile Wiki with a lot of technical shit."
Rate Your Music rateyourmusic.com - "music / movie site with user reviews and user currated lists. Been around since the mid-00s. Great source to find new music. They also have offshoots about vidya in beta. Not VPN friendly."
THE CORROSEUM thecorroseum.org - Pre-JS relic with ample information on both kinds of music: metal, and heavy metal.
News
68k.news - Text only news aggregator and exclusive home of Headlines From the Future. Probably the only news site to still support Netscape.
Tech - Privacy, Security, & OPSEC
PRISM-Break prism-break.org - "good info on skirting around the Government's eye" Catalogue of privacy and freedom respecting software and service alternatives to the 800lb gorillas.
Privacy Tools privacytools.io - "lot of good info. has links to other sites too" One of the oldest metasites on privacy in the modern era. Details privacy practice, software, and pop philosophy. Warning: implicitly endorses software and services that run counter to its stated goals and has a repressively censorious code of conduct.
Restore Privacy restoreprivacy.com - Blog containing many security and privacy guides.
Router Security routersecurity.org - "just what it sounds like."
Spyware Watchdog spyware.neocities.org - "Has a useful article ranking all web-browsers in terms of privacy if you're into such things." Extends beyond browsers, useful for finding software and scarequote "services" unscarequote that are spying on you.
Tech - Software & Services
8bitworkshop 8bitworkshop.com - "online/offline ide/debugger for various obsolete computers, selfhostable"
AnonFiles anonfiles.com - "Free file hosting for files up to 20GB in size that doesn't require an account, has has an api and respects your privacy."
Cockmail cock.li - "Yeah, it's mail with cocks." Pro-freedom, pro-transparency, pro-funny.
namazso namazso.eu - Host of a number of public civic service instances such as (as of writing) Invidious (youtube), Nitter (twitter), Teddit (plebbit), Lufi (file-sharing), and Privatebin (pastebin).
NixNet nixnet.services - A free host of a wide variety of privacy and freedom respecting libre services. Check out their IRC.
Sumopaint sumopaint.com - "Free photoshop-like online painter." Feature rich and nifty, but can get a little laggy.
This X Does Not Exist thisxdoesnotexist.com - An index of GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) generated services such as This Person Does Not Exist or This MP Does Not Exist.
VOGONS vogons.org - "forums dedicated to old pc stuff (think DOS/Win9x). Lots of helpful topics and posts."
WinWorld winworldpc.com - "'online museum dedicated to the preservation and sharing of vintage, abandoned, and pre-release software' Most recent OS available is Windows 2000." Great source of ancient software and history no one else bothered to preserve.
Uncategorized, Unique, & Not-Yet-Categorized
McBurgers geocities.com/mcburgers_com/McD.html - Ever wanted to reproduce the factory manufactured mediocrity of McDonalds? Here you go.
Guerrilla Gardening guerrillagardening.org - Fight the power by planting pretty flowers around your city. London focused but has worldwide comms.
StarbucksEverywhere starbuckseverywhere.net - Database of an insane person who has visited nearly every Starbucks worldwide. Contains photos and dates.
TheAlmightyGuru thealmightyguru.com - "it looks to be a personal spergatory wiki but it has some stuff in one place that I would have trouble finding if I looked for it. Like this: [link to pdf game manuals]"
Zeloof.xyz zeloof.xyz - Pair of applied machinist, chemist, physicist, technologist blogs with a heavy DIY emphasis.
Search
Books, Literature, Philosophical & Religious Texts
AddAll addall.com/used - "Multi-site search for books in general."
Internet Sacred Text Archive Home sacred-texts.com - "Archive of the worlds religious documents, multiple editions and translations where available. Also a bunch of new age woo"
Perseus Digital Library perseus.tufts.edu/hopper - "Online texts, mostly classical Greek and Latin works but also some others."
Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org - Looking for a book? If it's out of copyright, Project Gutenberg has it.
viaLibri vialibri.net - "The best multi-site search engine for antiquarian books."
Dictionaries
Dictionaries for the Study of Buddhist and East Asian Language and Thought buddhism-dict.net - HTTPS Only (2021-07-21) "Specialist dictionaries for obscure and abstruse terminology in Chinese/Japanese."
Education, Academia, & Research Papers
Google Scholar scholar.google.com - "Yeah, it's Google, but their academic search engine seems to have something of an aptitude for dancing around paywalls."
JSTOR jstor.org - "Search and access for academic journals. Free accounts get a number of free article views each month."
LibGuides guides.library.cmu.edu - "This has subject-specific indexes for research tools, databases, recommended books, etc. The quality seems to vary, but some are quite good indeed."
Sci-Hub sci-hub.do - Proxy for bypassing paywalled research papers.
Games & Vidya
Abandonia abandonia.com - HTTPS Only (2021-07-21) Repository of various abandonware games.
My Abandonware myabandonware.com - "Repository of abandoned PC games. A lot of old DOS era stuff but also a good number of more modern games."
Doomworld/idgames doomworld.com/idgames/?search - Looking for a DOOM wad? Look no further than the definitive collection.
Emulation General Wiki emulation.gametechwiki.com - "wiki about gaming emulation. Lots of great info." The closest thing to a PCGamingWiki equivalent for emulation.
PCGamingWiki pcgamingwiki.com - "a wiki about PC Games. includes a lot of handy info. comparing different releases out there, patches, mods, fixes." Has mostly accurate articles on nearly computer game released since the DOS era. Most useful for compatibility and quality of life assistance.
Internet & Net Culture
The Old Net theoldnet.com - "It's just pages from the way back machine, but I like the way the page is laid out and curated."
Telnet BBS Guide Telnet BBS Guide - "A database of Telnet BBS servers. You can play door games and chat with fellow autists."
The Wayback Machine archive.org/web - Technically a subsection of The Internet Archive, but important enough to get its own entry. Has archives of hundreds of thousands of dead sites. If you need to restore a link rot casualty this is the first, best place to look.
Wiby wiby.me - "Search engine for old-school style websites." Deliberately rejects 'Web 2.0' javascript and ad infested websites.
Music & Audio
Librivox librivox.org - The Project Gutenberg of audiobooks. Volunteers record audiobooks of public domain texts.
Public & Government Records
Connecticut Registered Voters connvoters.com - "(and related sites) - Public voter rolls from various US states." Only contains those registered in Connecticut.
Court Listener courtlistener.com - "Free access to documents from US courts."
Federal Election Commission fec.gov - "Dox anyone who participates in the US political process." Appears to have additional useful info. Please post if you can add to this description.
OpenCorporates opencorporates.com - "useful site for finding random businesses[...]used it before to find tiny LLCs that I couldn’t find elsewhere. It’s also easier then going through each states database individually"
Shopping & Commerce
Camelcamelcamel camelcamelcamel.com - "Searchable Amazon price history data." Supports alerts to notify you on price drops.
Tech
DownDetector downdetector.com - "offers real-time status and outage information for all kinds of services that users consider vital to their everyday lives and work."
Etherscan etherscan.io - "Online viewer for Ethereum wallets and transactions"
Open Standards open-std.org - No HTTPS (2021-07-21) "Documents for a number of ISO standards, most notably the C and C++ programming languages"
PDP-11.RU Mirrors Archive mirrors.pdp-11.ru -"There's technical documentation going back to the 1960s, as well as tons of software for 20th century computers and operating system"
Shodan shodan.io - IOT search engine and sobering redpill for anyone who believes the net is secure.
VGA Legacy MKIII vgamuseum.info - "Great site for information on obscure 3d accelerators"
W3 Standards w3.org/TR/ - "Standards for HTML, CSS, etc. God help you if you need this."
WalletExplorer walletexplorer.com - "Online viewer for Bitcoin wallets and transactions"
Travel
Matrix matrix.itasoftware.com - Metasearch of flights for times/locations, graded against price. By google but still worth checking out for travel.
Single Pages
Foreign (Outside the anglosphere) Interest
Doing Business in Japan https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/ - Insight into Japanese business and culture as reported by a rare foreigner salaryman-turned-entrepeneur.
Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html- The quintessential whinging post on the Chinese language, and still relevant decades on.
Sociology, Psychology, & Soft Sciences
The Cult of the Peacock https://blog.brendanvance.com/2014/01/05/the-cult-of-the-peacock/ - An interesting look in how at how many formerly artistic decisions have become weaponized as design decisions, viewed through the lense of game design
Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths - "required reading regarding internet subcultures" Articulates how popularity with casuals (looking at you, plebbit!) almost invariably leads to the death of scenes and subcultures.
I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How. http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800 - An experiment on how difficult it is to manipulate the media into endorsing spurious claims by using bad data and junk science. Io9 is plagued with ads, view an archived version instead.
Why Women Don't Code https://quillette.com/2018/06/19/why-women-dont-code/ - A deep dive on the sharp sex ratio in STEM fields and the underlying causes by an expert..
Tech & Internet - Cultural
27 Years of Warez Scene Release Info Leaked in Giant Database https://archive.org/details/predb - "27 years of NFOs." According to original TorrentFreak article, this is a db of millions of nfo files accompanying scene releases.
Cover Your Tracks https://firstpartysimulator.org/ - "Neat demonstration of how your browser sends out information that can be used to de-anonymize you." EFF initiative focused on raising awareness of browser fingerprinting by showing how exposed you are.
Five Geek Social Fallacies https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/ - Still relevant after almost two decades. A Rosetta Stone for internet and nerd communities and their accompanying drama.
Good, Cheap, and Fast Was 'The Best Shopping Site Around' https://www.johnwdefeo.com/my-work/good-cheap-and-fast - A case study in how big tech and especially Google actively and callously kills quality with no oversight nor recourse.
Make Frontend Shit Again https://makefrontendshitagain.party/ - An appeal to return to levity on the net and site design. Deliberately garbage in a campy retro way.
nohello https://nohello.gq/ - PSA don't send messages just to say hello.
Tech & Internet - Technical
Info-Mac Archive https://archive.org/details/info-mac-archive - "the info-mac ftp was the top distribution site for pretty much everything Mac related in the early 90s[...]it's pretty much the canonical source of drivers for pre2000 macs" - Categorized here because it's only available as a single archive.
GRC Ultra High Security Password Generator https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm - "generates a unique random string of characters (numeric, alphabetical, ascii) for use with passwords." Ideally you don't do this in the browser, but if you do this is the best way to do it.
Motherfucking Website Series http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ , http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ , https://evenbettermotherfucking.website/ , https://bestmotherfucking.website/ - The four greatest URLs on the entire internet, and MANDATORY reading for anyone in web design.
The Linux Command Line https://www.linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php/index.php - Recommended as one of best resources for learning to use the [GNU/]Linux CLI. At 500+ pages it's extensive, but written in such a way to be an appealing tutorial rather than an encyclopaedic reference.
VPN Comparison by That One Privacy Guy https://www.safetydetectives.com/best-vpns/ - "info on VPNs. Good resource." Probably the single most comprehensive resource on individual VPNs, and doesn't appear to be afflicted by the pay-for-play VPN coverage cancer.
Why Windoes 10 Sucks https://itvision.altervista.org/why-windows-10-sucks.html - "An autist breaks down the problems with Windows 10. He's been updating it about once a year since 2015." Editorial: OP emphatically disagrees with the author's assessment of Linux and its accompanying article on the grounds that most claimed "issues" are either solved or in no worse state than on Windows and MacOS, and further that the author deliberately makes himself unreachable. Windows users may consider Windows 10 Ameliorated.
Unsorted & Unique
The Canterbury Tales https://english3.fsu.edu/canterbury/ - "the excellent 1993 translation by Ecker and Crook which is now impossible to find."
Chronicling America https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ - "Searchable newspapers from 1777-1963,"
How to be a Responsible Music Fan in the Age of Streaming https://pitchfork.com/features/oped/how-to-be-a-responsible-music-fan-in-the-age-of-streaming/ - A look at the paradigm shift for consumers and creators caused by the end of owning music and the rise of streaming.
The Ian Knot https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm - The best shoelace knot ever. Two minutes will save you weeks of your life in tying time.
Leading Intellectuals Respond to Current Events https://humanities.psydeshow.org/political/ - "Collection of writings focused on 9/11 and its aftermath" Technically multiple articles and not a single page, but listed here anyway because of the very narrow focus.
Why Are Flags at Half Staff Today? https://flagsexpress.com/flags-half-staff/ - "Explains why flags are at half-staff on a paticular day in the USA."
Note Jan-9: Please submit links in https when possible. Should blogs with a singular, narrow focus be grouped in "Sites" or "Single Pages"?
Note Jan-21: Should entries that cover multiple subcategories be listed once for each category or only once total?
Should yt videos & channels be included in the index? If so how so and should there be subject matter notability requirements to merit inclusion?
- Sites - Websites that provide a software, service, or routinely high quality information such as blogs, tools, and whatever the fuck this is. Don't forget we have a Software Endorsements Thread! Thread overlap should be minimal.
- Search - Websites with useful information and can be searched directly, but generally doesn't show up in general web searches. Useful when search engines aren't turning up what you're looking for.
- Single Pages - Articles mostly, but any case wherein you recommend a single page or subsection of a website that isn't otherwise recommended. Mostly for when clickbait sites write the unicorn of actually worthwhile journalism.
- NOT POST ANY SITE THAT EXISTS SOLELY FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. ANY "QUESTIONABLE" SITE YOU POST SHOULD HAVE A SIGNIFICANT, NON-INFRINGING USE UNDER THE LAW WHERE KF IS HOSTED (USA AS OF WRITING) YOU CAN ARTICULATE IF NEEDED. LAW'S A BITCH AND THEN THIS SITE DIES
- NOT USE THIS AS A PROXY WAR FOR POLITICS FAGGOTRY. IF A LINK APPEALS TO A SINGLE POLITICAL DEMOGRAPHIC, IS OF ONLY NATIONAL INTEREST, AND/OR ONLY RELEVANT CONTEMPORARILY YOU ARE CANCER AND YOU HAVE TO GO BACK
- NO REDDIT, NO DISCORD. YOU NIGGERFAGGOTS RUIN EVERY SINGLE THING YOU TOUCH AND NO, YOU AND YOUR SUBREDDIT ARE NOT THE EXCEPTION. IF YOU SEE SOMEONE POST THIS LIST ON YOUR SUB/DISCORD REPORT THEM FOR HATE SPEECH AND PHOBIAS/ISMS LIKE THIS ↓
- BE EXCELLENT TO EACH OTHER
Descriptions in quotes are verbatim from original submitter.
HALL OF FAME
WebOasis weboasis.app - The swiss army knife of finding stuff and a light shining in darkness. Fully redundant at https://github.com/weboasis.
Sites
Anime, Cartoons, Comics, and Manga - Pop Culture Emphasis
AniDB https://anidb.net - "db of anime shows and scene releases. Has reviews and forums. Good resource to find anime to watch and manga to read."
Archives - Large Repositories Spanning Multiple Categories
The Digital FAQ digitalfaq.com - No HTTPS (2021-07-21) "This is the place where the last remaining experts on video capture and conversion congregate. You can buy rare hardware in their marketplace if you have deep pockets." Original link was to the forum subpage, recommended viewing.
The Eye the-eye.eu - Large privately maintained archive with numerous valuable items, some of which may be under enforced copyright in your jurisdiction. Please don't download anything in violation of local laws!
The Internet Archive archive.org - An archive of basically the entire world. Is actively working to preserve all digital history and digitize analogue history so it can be preserved. Has Petabytes of audio, video, text, and binary data on every subject in existence and is a great source for everything you could ever want.
Macintosh Garden macintoshgarden.org - Archive and community dedicated to archiving and offering Mac abandonware. Per their policy everything hosted is no longer available for purchase.
T E X T F I L E S D O T C O M textfiles.com - No HTTPS (2021-07-21) "big ol' archive of text files on everything under the sun (direct link to directory)" One of the oldest privately maintained archives. The sysop, Jason Scott, now works for the Internet Archive and has a number of interesting talks there and on yt that OP recommends.
Educational - Fine Arts, Literature, & Soft Sciences
Art Renewal Center artrenewal.org/Museum/Home - "A very comprehensive collection of high-res classical artworks."
Kyoto University Rare Materials Digital Archive rmda.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/collection - "Digitized books and other materials, from both Eastern and Western sources. The mathematics section is particularly rich."
National Portrait Galleries US/UK npg.si.edu (US) npg.org.uk (UK) - "Two large collections of high-quality portrait art. The UK one will even make prints for you."
Educational - Hard Sciences & Also Economics
MIT OpenCourseWare ocw.mit.edu - "Free college course materials from MIT (completeness varies)"
National Center for Biotechnology Information ncbi.nlm.nih.gov - "Publicly available medical research and data. The "Bookshelf" section has free books."
Welcome to Rocketry jcrocket.com - "How to build rockets." Much love to any site that looks like the 90s but is still being updated in CURRENT YEAR.
Film/Movies, TV, & Live-Action Motion Pictures
DVDBeaver dvdbeaver.com - No HTTPS (2021-07-21) "Movie releases review site. Has a lot of great technical info on various releases. They usually include pics to compare releases." Reviews are terse, but the data and metadata are invaluable.
caps-a-holic.com caps-a-holic.com - "movie release comparison site. Includes technical info and hq screenshots."
Games & Vidya
GOG.com gog.com - "service where you can buy old and new vidya. DRM Free. once you download the installer, you have it forever. Some games that do have online multiplayer will have different servers than their steam counterparts."
Moby Games mobygames.com - "DB of vidya. Images, Descriptions, Reviews." The closest thing to an IMDB of vidya.
Open Source Game Clones osgameclones.com - "This site tries to gather open-source remakes of great old games in one place." Also includes sourceports and the like.
Ross's Game List accursedfarms.com/games - Patron saint of vidya Ross Scott created a list of potentially appealing games for your perusal.
replacementdocs replacementdocs.com/news.php - Self-signed HTTPS (2021-07-21)"archive of old videogame manuals."
Video Game Critic videogamecritic.com - "videogame review site which I'm pretty sure has been around since the 90s (and looks it). I think its literally one guy trying to review every game in existence for every console."
Vimm's Lair vimm.net - Useful resource for video game manuals and emulators. Also contains game ROMs still under enforced copyright in some jurisdictions, please don't download anything in violation of local laws!
Internet & Net Culture
Eternal September eternal-september.org - "Free Usenet accounts for posting/reading and can send control messages to create Free.* groups. Has useful statistics so you can see groups people are actually posting in as opposed to having to comb through the vast wasteland that Usenet has become."
GNU gnu.org - "GNU's website is a good "hub" for finding other FLOSS sites/info. Also includes many articles that make for good reading whether or not you agree with them (example). Updated regularly."
Hacker Factor Blog hackerfactor.com/blog - "blog ran by some academic with a photo forensics website, majority of it is about that stuff but also other aspects of working with images and videos. Which also include his bemused rantings about dealing with CP uploaders from Russia and Ukraine."
Pouët.net pouët.net - "Your online demoscene resource." Huge demoscene forum and gateway to the scene as a whole.
InstallGentoo Wiki wiki.installgentoo.com - "wiki by the /g/uys on 4chan's tech board. Might bit a bit out of date." /g/entoomen have always been the best autists. Lots of interesting tech reading, but much of it is outdated.
Internet & Net Culture - Retro
Geocities Archive oocities.org - "A partial archive of GeoCities before it was taken down."
lolwut? lolwut.info - "Nostalgic ramblings over random topics that are still being updated." Highly subjective, highly autistic.
Neocities neocities.org - Remember Geocities, Angelfire, and Yahoo? Neocities remembers. Neo-retro world wide web at its finest.
Quote DataBase bash.org - No HTTPS (2021-07-21) The irc quote database, appears to be inactive. Good humourous popcorn reading.
Music & Audiophile Interest
Bandcamp bandcamp.com - I'm still surprised how few know about Bandcamp. The definitive pro-consumer music storefront. ~99% of music can be listened to in full as a "try before you buy", streaming support, lossless, and an equitable business model wherein they allow anyone to submit their music and collect 10% on all sales.
Discogs discogs.com - "DB of music releases. Eveything from Vinyl to DVD-A. Includes user reviews and a marketplace to buy releases. Extremely helpful for Music nerds and audiophiles."
Hydrogenaudio wiki.hydrogenaud.io - "Audiophile Wiki with a lot of technical shit."
Rate Your Music rateyourmusic.com - "music / movie site with user reviews and user currated lists. Been around since the mid-00s. Great source to find new music. They also have offshoots about vidya in beta. Not VPN friendly."
THE CORROSEUM thecorroseum.org - Pre-JS relic with ample information on both kinds of music: metal, and heavy metal.
News
68k.news - Text only news aggregator and exclusive home of Headlines From the Future. Probably the only news site to still support Netscape.
Tech - Privacy, Security, & OPSEC
PRISM-Break prism-break.org - "good info on skirting around the Government's eye" Catalogue of privacy and freedom respecting software and service alternatives to the 800lb gorillas.
Privacy Tools privacytools.io - "lot of good info. has links to other sites too" One of the oldest metasites on privacy in the modern era. Details privacy practice, software, and pop philosophy. Warning: implicitly endorses software and services that run counter to its stated goals and has a repressively censorious code of conduct.
Restore Privacy restoreprivacy.com - Blog containing many security and privacy guides.
Router Security routersecurity.org - "just what it sounds like."
Spyware Watchdog spyware.neocities.org - "Has a useful article ranking all web-browsers in terms of privacy if you're into such things." Extends beyond browsers, useful for finding software and scarequote "services" unscarequote that are spying on you.
Tech - Software & Services
8bitworkshop 8bitworkshop.com - "online/offline ide/debugger for various obsolete computers, selfhostable"
AnonFiles anonfiles.com - "Free file hosting for files up to 20GB in size that doesn't require an account, has has an api and respects your privacy."
Cockmail cock.li - "Yeah, it's mail with cocks." Pro-freedom, pro-transparency, pro-funny.
namazso namazso.eu - Host of a number of public civic service instances such as (as of writing) Invidious (youtube), Nitter (twitter), Teddit (plebbit), Lufi (file-sharing), and Privatebin (pastebin).
NixNet nixnet.services - A free host of a wide variety of privacy and freedom respecting libre services. Check out their IRC.
Sumopaint sumopaint.com - "Free photoshop-like online painter." Feature rich and nifty, but can get a little laggy.
This X Does Not Exist thisxdoesnotexist.com - An index of GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) generated services such as This Person Does Not Exist or This MP Does Not Exist.
VOGONS vogons.org - "forums dedicated to old pc stuff (think DOS/Win9x). Lots of helpful topics and posts."
WinWorld winworldpc.com - "'online museum dedicated to the preservation and sharing of vintage, abandoned, and pre-release software' Most recent OS available is Windows 2000." Great source of ancient software and history no one else bothered to preserve.
Uncategorized, Unique, & Not-Yet-Categorized
McBurgers geocities.com/mcburgers_com/McD.html - Ever wanted to reproduce the factory manufactured mediocrity of McDonalds? Here you go.
Guerrilla Gardening guerrillagardening.org - Fight the power by planting pretty flowers around your city. London focused but has worldwide comms.
StarbucksEverywhere starbuckseverywhere.net - Database of an insane person who has visited nearly every Starbucks worldwide. Contains photos and dates.
TheAlmightyGuru thealmightyguru.com - "it looks to be a personal spergatory wiki but it has some stuff in one place that I would have trouble finding if I looked for it. Like this: [link to pdf game manuals]"
Zeloof.xyz zeloof.xyz - Pair of applied machinist, chemist, physicist, technologist blogs with a heavy DIY emphasis.
Search
Books, Literature, Philosophical & Religious Texts
AddAll addall.com/used - "Multi-site search for books in general."
Internet Sacred Text Archive Home sacred-texts.com - "Archive of the worlds religious documents, multiple editions and translations where available. Also a bunch of new age woo"
Perseus Digital Library perseus.tufts.edu/hopper - "Online texts, mostly classical Greek and Latin works but also some others."
Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org - Looking for a book? If it's out of copyright, Project Gutenberg has it.
viaLibri vialibri.net - "The best multi-site search engine for antiquarian books."
Dictionaries
Dictionaries for the Study of Buddhist and East Asian Language and Thought buddhism-dict.net - HTTPS Only (2021-07-21) "Specialist dictionaries for obscure and abstruse terminology in Chinese/Japanese."
Education, Academia, & Research Papers
Google Scholar scholar.google.com - "Yeah, it's Google, but their academic search engine seems to have something of an aptitude for dancing around paywalls."
JSTOR jstor.org - "Search and access for academic journals. Free accounts get a number of free article views each month."
LibGuides guides.library.cmu.edu - "This has subject-specific indexes for research tools, databases, recommended books, etc. The quality seems to vary, but some are quite good indeed."
Sci-Hub sci-hub.do - Proxy for bypassing paywalled research papers.
Games & Vidya
Abandonia abandonia.com - HTTPS Only (2021-07-21) Repository of various abandonware games.
My Abandonware myabandonware.com - "Repository of abandoned PC games. A lot of old DOS era stuff but also a good number of more modern games."
Doomworld/idgames doomworld.com/idgames/?search - Looking for a DOOM wad? Look no further than the definitive collection.
Emulation General Wiki emulation.gametechwiki.com - "wiki about gaming emulation. Lots of great info." The closest thing to a PCGamingWiki equivalent for emulation.
PCGamingWiki pcgamingwiki.com - "a wiki about PC Games. includes a lot of handy info. comparing different releases out there, patches, mods, fixes." Has mostly accurate articles on nearly computer game released since the DOS era. Most useful for compatibility and quality of life assistance.
Internet & Net Culture
The Old Net theoldnet.com - "It's just pages from the way back machine, but I like the way the page is laid out and curated."
Telnet BBS Guide Telnet BBS Guide - "A database of Telnet BBS servers. You can play door games and chat with fellow autists."
The Wayback Machine archive.org/web - Technically a subsection of The Internet Archive, but important enough to get its own entry. Has archives of hundreds of thousands of dead sites. If you need to restore a link rot casualty this is the first, best place to look.
Wiby wiby.me - "Search engine for old-school style websites." Deliberately rejects 'Web 2.0' javascript and ad infested websites.
Music & Audio
Librivox librivox.org - The Project Gutenberg of audiobooks. Volunteers record audiobooks of public domain texts.
Public & Government Records
Connecticut Registered Voters connvoters.com - "(and related sites) - Public voter rolls from various US states." Only contains those registered in Connecticut.
Court Listener courtlistener.com - "Free access to documents from US courts."
Federal Election Commission fec.gov - "Dox anyone who participates in the US political process." Appears to have additional useful info. Please post if you can add to this description.
OpenCorporates opencorporates.com - "useful site for finding random businesses[...]used it before to find tiny LLCs that I couldn’t find elsewhere. It’s also easier then going through each states database individually"
Shopping & Commerce
Camelcamelcamel camelcamelcamel.com - "Searchable Amazon price history data." Supports alerts to notify you on price drops.
Tech
DownDetector downdetector.com - "offers real-time status and outage information for all kinds of services that users consider vital to their everyday lives and work."
Etherscan etherscan.io - "Online viewer for Ethereum wallets and transactions"
Open Standards open-std.org - No HTTPS (2021-07-21) "Documents for a number of ISO standards, most notably the C and C++ programming languages"
PDP-11.RU Mirrors Archive mirrors.pdp-11.ru -"There's technical documentation going back to the 1960s, as well as tons of software for 20th century computers and operating system"
Shodan shodan.io - IOT search engine and sobering redpill for anyone who believes the net is secure.
VGA Legacy MKIII vgamuseum.info - "Great site for information on obscure 3d accelerators"
W3 Standards w3.org/TR/ - "Standards for HTML, CSS, etc. God help you if you need this."
WalletExplorer walletexplorer.com - "Online viewer for Bitcoin wallets and transactions"
Travel
Matrix matrix.itasoftware.com - Metasearch of flights for times/locations, graded against price. By google but still worth checking out for travel.
Single Pages
Foreign (Outside the anglosphere) Interest
Doing Business in Japan https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/ - Insight into Japanese business and culture as reported by a rare foreigner salaryman-turned-entrepeneur.
Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html- The quintessential whinging post on the Chinese language, and still relevant decades on.
Sociology, Psychology, & Soft Sciences
The Cult of the Peacock https://blog.brendanvance.com/2014/01/05/the-cult-of-the-peacock/ - An interesting look in how at how many formerly artistic decisions have become weaponized as design decisions, viewed through the lense of game design
Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths - "required reading regarding internet subcultures" Articulates how popularity with casuals (looking at you, plebbit!) almost invariably leads to the death of scenes and subcultures.
I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How. http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800 - An experiment on how difficult it is to manipulate the media into endorsing spurious claims by using bad data and junk science. Io9 is plagued with ads, view an archived version instead.
Why Women Don't Code https://quillette.com/2018/06/19/why-women-dont-code/ - A deep dive on the sharp sex ratio in STEM fields and the underlying causes by an expert..
Tech & Internet - Cultural
27 Years of Warez Scene Release Info Leaked in Giant Database https://archive.org/details/predb - "27 years of NFOs." According to original TorrentFreak article, this is a db of millions of nfo files accompanying scene releases.
Cover Your Tracks https://firstpartysimulator.org/ - "Neat demonstration of how your browser sends out information that can be used to de-anonymize you." EFF initiative focused on raising awareness of browser fingerprinting by showing how exposed you are.
Five Geek Social Fallacies https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/ - Still relevant after almost two decades. A Rosetta Stone for internet and nerd communities and their accompanying drama.
Good, Cheap, and Fast Was 'The Best Shopping Site Around' https://www.johnwdefeo.com/my-work/good-cheap-and-fast - A case study in how big tech and especially Google actively and callously kills quality with no oversight nor recourse.
Make Frontend Shit Again https://makefrontendshitagain.party/ - An appeal to return to levity on the net and site design. Deliberately garbage in a campy retro way.
nohello https://nohello.gq/ - PSA don't send messages just to say hello.
Tech & Internet - Technical
Info-Mac Archive https://archive.org/details/info-mac-archive - "the info-mac ftp was the top distribution site for pretty much everything Mac related in the early 90s[...]it's pretty much the canonical source of drivers for pre2000 macs" - Categorized here because it's only available as a single archive.
GRC Ultra High Security Password Generator https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm - "generates a unique random string of characters (numeric, alphabetical, ascii) for use with passwords." Ideally you don't do this in the browser, but if you do this is the best way to do it.
Motherfucking Website Series http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ , http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ , https://evenbettermotherfucking.website/ , https://bestmotherfucking.website/ - The four greatest URLs on the entire internet, and MANDATORY reading for anyone in web design.
The Linux Command Line https://www.linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php/index.php - Recommended as one of best resources for learning to use the [GNU/]Linux CLI. At 500+ pages it's extensive, but written in such a way to be an appealing tutorial rather than an encyclopaedic reference.
VPN Comparison by That One Privacy Guy https://www.safetydetectives.com/best-vpns/ - "info on VPNs. Good resource." Probably the single most comprehensive resource on individual VPNs, and doesn't appear to be afflicted by the pay-for-play VPN coverage cancer.
Why Windoes 10 Sucks https://itvision.altervista.org/why-windows-10-sucks.html - "An autist breaks down the problems with Windows 10. He's been updating it about once a year since 2015." Editorial: OP emphatically disagrees with the author's assessment of Linux and its accompanying article on the grounds that most claimed "issues" are either solved or in no worse state than on Windows and MacOS, and further that the author deliberately makes himself unreachable. Windows users may consider Windows 10 Ameliorated.
Unsorted & Unique
The Canterbury Tales https://english3.fsu.edu/canterbury/ - "the excellent 1993 translation by Ecker and Crook which is now impossible to find."
Chronicling America https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ - "Searchable newspapers from 1777-1963,"
How to be a Responsible Music Fan in the Age of Streaming https://pitchfork.com/features/oped/how-to-be-a-responsible-music-fan-in-the-age-of-streaming/ - A look at the paradigm shift for consumers and creators caused by the end of owning music and the rise of streaming.
The Ian Knot https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm - The best shoelace knot ever. Two minutes will save you weeks of your life in tying time.
Leading Intellectuals Respond to Current Events https://humanities.psydeshow.org/political/ - "Collection of writings focused on 9/11 and its aftermath" Technically multiple articles and not a single page, but listed here anyway because of the very narrow focus.
Why Are Flags at Half Staff Today? https://flagsexpress.com/flags-half-staff/ - "Explains why flags are at half-staff on a paticular day in the USA."
Note Jan-9: Please submit links in https when possible. Should blogs with a singular, narrow focus be grouped in "Sites" or "Single Pages"?
Note Jan-21: Should entries that cover multiple subcategories be listed once for each category or only once total?
Should yt videos & channels be included in the index? If so how so and should there be subject matter notability requirements to merit inclusion?
Last edited:
