Read HN twice a day for the last decade. Here's my list of S-Tier HN links

101 points by vivzkestrel 2 days ago

- Everyday I read 2 pages of HN in the morning and 2 in the evening for years now

- Of late, I noticed that most of the stuff on the 1st 2 pages is AI this, AI that, LLM this, LLM that, model here, model there

- Today I am going to attempt to break that trend by sharing the greatest resources on HN from my collection of 50000+ bookmarks over the last decade

- I have a process on my end for bookmarking

- The most visual explainers get S-Tier ranking

- Good info from reputed sources gets an A, non reputed gets B

- Opinion blogs are at the bottom of the barrel and maybe ranked C, D, E and even F depending on quality

- Here's my S-Tier list

- Animated explanation of how transformers work https://poloclub.github.io/transformer-explainer/

- Visual intro to K-means clustering algorithm https://k-means-explorable.vercel.app/

- Animated 3D intro to vision LLMs https://blog.mdturp.ch/posts/2024-04-05-visual_guide_to_vision_transformer.html

- Animated intro to machine learning https://r2d3.us/visual-intro-to-machine-learning-part-1/

- Animated intro to probability in math https://seeing-theory.brown.edu/basic-probability/index.html

- Building a 3D world from scratch in step by step animated manner https://aibodh.com/posts/bevy-tutorial-build-your-first-3d-editor-in-rust/

- Visualize algorithms https://algorithm-visualizer.org/

- Animated step by step sequence of how a request goes from your browser to the server https://200ms.thenodebook.com/#act-1-the-click

- Visual intro to the inner workings of a combustion engine https://ciechanow.ski/internal-combustion-engine/

- 3D real time robotics code simulator https://bittlex-sim.petoi.com/

- Animated explainer: Elliptic curve cryptography https://growingswe.com/blog/elliptic-curve-cryptography

- Rate limiting algorithms visualized https://smudge.ai/blog/ratelimit-algorithms

- Visual intro to the graphics pipeline! https://fremaconsulting.ch/blog/vulkan

- Animated explanation of how to build ReactJS from scratch! https://pomb.us/build-your-own-react/

- Mini game: How to build an entire CPU starting from a basic gate https://select.supply/game/chipbuilder

- Assemble a neural network from scratch https://graphgame.sabrina.dev/

- 3D visualization: how gravity works https://qunabu.github.io/Gravity/#what-is-gravity

- Mini game: how css grid works https://cssgridgarden.com/

- Animated math book for linear algebra, vectors etc https://immersivemath.com/ila/index.html

- Animated explainer: How FAISS vector search works https://fremaconsulting.ch/blog/faiss

- 3D animation of how to build a health wearable from scratch https://www.lumafield.com/scan-of-the-month/health-wearables

- 3D animation of how semiconductor manufacturing works https://ig.ft.com/microchips/

- Mini game: how git works https://learngitbranching.js.org/

- Mini game: SQL from scratch https://sqlpd.com/

- Another mini game: SQL https://lost-at-sql.therobinlord.com/

- Animated explainers showing how colors, screens, graphics, rendering, shaders, compilers, interpreters work https://www.makingsoftware.com/

- Animated explainer shows how networking 7 layer stack works inside out https://fazamhd.com/mental-models/networking/

- Animated explainers for linear & logistic regression, neural networks, machine learning https://mlu-explain.github.io/

- 3D explanation of collision detection, shaders, rendering, culling and gamedev related stuff https://krupitskas.com/posts/modern_culling_techniques/

- 3D animation and explanation of every exercise on the body https://musclewiki.com/

- Mini game: build an nvidia gpu from scratch https://jaso1024.com/mvidia/

- Animated explanation of forward & back propagation of neural networks https://aegeorge42.github.io/

- There are many many many more, I am getting a little tired of typing for today

- Anyways enough of those AI opinion posts flooding the front page, take that HN!

arnavpraneet 11 hours ago

I would love for you to share a sheet/table or something, perhaps a google sheet, of your larger collection if you are so inclined

  • vivzkestrel 4 hours ago

    - it definitely brings a big question or discussion here

    - i can see 3 columns being serial number, description and a link

    - how do we categorize, sort or tag them? any ideas? i am open to suggestions

big_toast 2 days ago

A lot of these visual tutorials/explainers remind me there's some disconnect between their creation and compensation.

We never really get whole curriculums of them. There's no equivalent to the games/book industry level production. Maybe some medical things. There were educational games for a while but those seem less common..

A whole industry around podcasts and youtube has spawned in a two decades. The scale seems smaller than it ought to be.

  • vivzkestrel 1 day ago

    i am more surprised people havent slopcoded threejs to create such visuals for many other concepts and ideas

    • big_toast 1 day ago

      Ya. I'm seeing some, and a few of them are very promising. The volume of good visualizations will definitely grow.

      But that growth seems different from the type of growth that happens in product-market-fit cases. Just makes me wonder what's the missing reagent.

Jahnavi_Aleti 1 day ago

As someone who is starting to get to know HN, thank you for the list, looks interesting.

  • vivzkestrel 4 hours ago

    thanks, HN algorithms pushed this to page 2 and then took it out for reasons i dont know. I wish it was on page 1, it would reach a lot more people that way

stillatit 2 days ago

Clickable:

- Animated explanation of how transformers work https://poloclub.github.io/transformer-explainer/

- Visual intro to K-means clustering algorithm https://k-means-explorable.vercel.app/

- Animated 3D intro to vision LLMs https://blog.mdturp.ch/posts/2024-04-05-visual_guide_to_visi...

- Animated intro to machine learning https://r2d3.us/visual-intro-to-machine-learning-part-1/

- Animated intro to probability in math https://seeing-theory.brown.edu/basic-probability/index.html

- Building a 3D world from scratch in step by step animated manner https://aibodh.com/posts/bevy-tutorial-build-your-first-3d-e...

- Visualize algorithms https://algorithm-visualizer.org/

- Animated step by step sequence of how a request goes from your browser to the server https://200ms.thenodebook.com/#act-1-the-click

- Visual intro to the inner workings of a combustion engine https://ciechanow.ski/internal-combustion-engine/

- 3D real time robotics code simulator https://bittlex-sim.petoi.com/

- Animated explainer: Elliptic curve cryptography https://growingswe.com/blog/elliptic-curve-cryptography

- Rate limiting algorithms visualized https://smudge.ai/blog/ratelimit-algorithms

- Visual intro to the graphics pipeline! https://fremaconsulting.ch/blog/vulkan

- Animated explanation of how to build ReactJS from scratch! https://pomb.us/build-your-own-react/

- Mini game: How to build an entire CPU starting from a basic gate https://select.supply/game/chipbuilder

- Assemble a neural network from scratch https://graphgame.sabrina.dev/

- 3D visualization: how gravity works https://qunabu.github.io/Gravity/#what-is-gravity

- Mini game: how css grid works https://cssgridgarden.com/

- Animated math book for linear algebra, vectors etc https://immersivemath.com/ila/index.html

- Animated explainer: How FAISS vector search works https://fremaconsulting.ch/blog/faiss

- 3D animation of how to build a health wearable from scratch https://www.lumafield.com/scan-of-the-month/health-wearables

- 3D animation of how semiconductor manufacturing works https://ig.ft.com/microchips/

- Mini game: how git works https://learngitbranching.js.org/

- Mini game: SQL from scratch https://sqlpd.com/

- Another mini game: SQL https://lost-at-sql.therobinlord.com/

- Animated explainers showing how colors, screens, graphics, rendering, shaders, compilers, interpreters work https://www.makingsoftware.com/

- Animated explainer shows how networking 7 layer stack works inside out https://fazamhd.com/mental-models/networking/

- Animated explainers for linear & logistic regression, neural networks, machine learning https://mlu-explain.github.io/

- 3D explanation of collision detection, shaders, rendering, culling and gamedev related stuff https://krupitskas.com/posts/modern_culling_techniques/

- 3D animation and explanation of every exercise on the body https://musclewiki.com/

- Mini game: build an nvidia gpu from scratch https://jaso1024.com/mvidia/

- Animated explanation of forward & back propagation of neural networks https://aegeorge42.github.io/

  • siri- 1 day ago

    doing god's work

  • vivzkestrel 1 day ago

    - very strange indeed, i think every link worked for me when i opened it but it is possible because i have an autoridrect to archive sites when a link does not work extension

    - ah crap that must be it

anmorgan 2 days ago

Unfortunately many links are 404.

Would have liked to have seen them.

  • vivzkestrel 2 days ago

    i tested each and every single one before posting, i only posted the working ones

  • mycall 1 day ago

    Is there an easy way to rewrite them to be archive.org links?

brudgers 1 day ago
  • vivzkestrel 1 day ago

    - forget below average

    - i ask stupid questions right here on HN all the time

    - you would literally see it in my history

    - all sorts of questions like why cant we have a language that looks like typed python but runs much faster than c++, rust and zig

    - why cant we have 1 sextillion transistors inside a single chip

    - why cant we use nuclear propulsion to reach 99% the speed of light for interstellar travel and what are the challenges here

    - every single time i literally prefix it like "stupid question: why cant we do xyz"

    • ceasesurthinko 1 day ago

      you call them stupid questions, but i say these are quite good, trivial-seeming but actually non-trivial questions that lead you to a deeper understanding.