The Book of Secret Knowledge – A collection of lists, blogs, hacks | Hacker News Reader

The Book of Secret Knowledge – A collection of lists, blogs, hacks

github.com

256 pointstrimstray30 comments

There's also https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome

What's causing the rise of these curated lists? Some things I've been pondering:

  * quality decline of Google search results
  * less people using bookmark aggregators (del.icio.us)
  * the trend towards feeds or transient info (fb/twitter/reddit)

Or a good archive that could be referred later. that could be an easy option with delicious but these aggregation helps in very quick reference of something that's required. Also browser and device independent.

Strange it might seem, I'm managing a personal list https://github.com/amrrs/Interesting_Links which helps me to read later and share it with someone in future.

Personally, what I like about it is that it steers me in different directions of learning. When a list like this is curated by the right person, it can help you weed through a lot of low-value content sites, with similar information.

> What's causing the rise of these curated lists?

People with good intentions that want a repo with a high star count. Getting over 500 stars on these readme-only/awesome/"curated" list is very easy.

The problem is that curating these lists isn't easy work - people will throw 50+ PRs at you adding their random project. Most maintainers blindly accept them and then the list becomes useless.

Sindre (original awesome list author) is one of the few who actually curates their lists.

I do it only for stars... really man? Creating and maintaining such a list is not a simple thing. It's not awesome or other shit in the name.

This is a collection of my short notes, one-liners, useful links, tools and more. I added it to gh, to share with others and get other interesting things. Not for stars! The amount of them is obviously nice but not crucial.

What is the value of GitHub stars?

You're worth more as a person with more stars. They're like upvotes, basically.

>worth more as a person

LOL! Social Capital gone insanely, nakedly wrong? Or just a Freudian-style slip?

It's meant tongue-in-cheek, not seriously.

The quality decline is real:

I'm searching for one line of text. Every click gets me 100 meg of browser-choking script that leaves me bashing at the close tab button just to get the session back.

> * quality decline of Google search results

I don't think that's necessarily true, Google is really good at answering questions, it's not so good at "give me a good set of recommended resources on this topic" which requires human input.

Honestly, I'm disappointed that there isn't any prose / new content involved in this "book".

I think it would be nice to have an actual "book", with community-composed chapters. They would follow the same topics listed here, but with actual cohesive explanations and background, rather than just a list of resources.

For example, looking at the first section (Shells), it would be nice to have an actual bit of writing which tells you about the evolution of shells and why some might be preferred over others.

Awesome Lists[0] already does a pretty good job of maintaining a collection of curated lists.

0: https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome

"I think it would be nice to have an actual "book", with community-composed chapters. They would follow the same topics listed here, but with actual cohesive explanations and background, rather than just a list of resources." - hmm... PR welcome :) Prove yourself man.

I really find this list awesome as it is. And the short explanations are really good IMHO.

Without any offense intended, if you need more writing then maybe you need first to read some of the documentation resources before going back to this list?

Also, what I really like is that the author doesn't try to justify why and that's refreshing and lightweight, thanks for that!

But that's like my opinion, man ;-)

It seems a bit redundant to have a list if I need to read the documentation of the things on the list in order to gauge the value of the list.

Why call it secret when "It is intended for everyone and anyone"? I can't understand the idea behind it.

It creates enough mystery for someone to open the github page so they can read "intended for everyone"?

So it’s clickbait?

Or, you know, an enticing name.

Not everything has to be "clickbait". Let's keep it to those who make money off of news posts, and blatant examples like "You won't believe what Lindsay Lohan did...".

I chalk it up to wanting an attractive title. The information is not actually secret in that the reader or writer is bound to keep the information secret. Rather, the knowledge was previously difficult (to some degree) to come by, and is now co-located, thus lifting the shroud of secrecy (by obscurity).

It's the same as code names that describe exactly what a project is about leaving no doubt about its purpose.

Because for me it was secret knowledge? And I wanted to share this knowledge with others?

Obviously because it alludes at the "books of secret knowledge" of yore, hard to find books, compiled by masters of some domain and filled with useful knowledge.

It's like calling your Chinese restaurant "Golden Palace". It's not golden and its not a palace. It's just meant to convey "typical chinese", "luxury", etc.

Another list similar to this is - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/List_of_applications

Wow it's really good. I'll add this list to repo, thx

+1 The entire Arch Wiki is itself a gem of "secret knowledge". (:

None of this is secret and it's not a book, but okay

At the meta level, I think using a .md to host informational documents is cool. A step up from a blog, allowing a better way to discuss/propose additions.

I've been thinking of doing a piece of doing Defcon on the cheap (harder in recent years).

thanks

This is okay, was hoping it would be about life and not CS.

Every time someone recommends an install/read, I am wondering the break even it takes to learn, implement in practice, and implement IRL for a useful application..

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