Useful Websites Most People Don't Know Exist
Useful and obscure websites most people never stumble across.
Aeon
A digital magazine of ideas publishing essays and long-form articles in philosophy, science, society, and the arts from academics and public intellectuals.
Astral Codex Ten
Scott Alexander's blog covering psychiatry, rationalism, AI, economics, and book reviews with characteristically careful reasoning and steel-manned opposing views.
Atlas Obscura
Collaborative guide to the world's most unusual and overlooked places — over 25,000 destinations curated by a global community of explorers.
Bored Button
Press a button to be sent to a random, curated, interesting website from across the internet.
Damn Interesting
Long-form, meticulously researched articles on obscure true stories — history, science, and disasters most people have never heard of.
eieio.games
A collection of experimental browser games by Amos Wenger — including a multiplayer game controlled entirely through a shared Google Spreadsheet, a single-pixel multiplayer game, and other absurdist browser-native experiences.
Farnam Street
Shane Parrish's site on mental models, decision-making, and thinking clearly — drawing from business, psychology, philosophy, and history.
Feedbin
A clean, fast RSS reader that also lets you subscribe to email newsletters and read them in the same feed as your other subscriptions.
Flightradar24
Real-time global flight tracking showing the position, altitude, speed, and route of aircraft worldwide using ADS-B transponder data.
FMHY (Free Media Heck Yeah)
Curated directory of free tools, resources, and software across many categories.
Futility Closet
Daily collection of puzzles, curiosities, strange historical facts, and unsolved problems — running continuously since 2005 with no algorithmic filler.
Gwern.net
Gwern Branwen's personal research website containing long-form essays, statistical analyses, and experiments on psychology, AI, pharmacology, and prediction.
Hacker News
Social news site focused on technology and startups run by Y Combinator, famous for high-quality discussion.
Hacker Newsletter
A weekly curated digest of the best links from Hacker News, filtered down from the daily noise into a manageable Sunday read.
Have I Been Pwned
Check if your email or phone has appeared in a data breach.
How Normal Am I
An interactive essay that uses your webcam and on-device ML to analyze your face — estimating your age, attractiveness, BMI, and emotional state to reveal how these algorithms work and what assumptions they encode.
Internet Game Database (IGDB)
Comprehensive database of video games with metadata, screenshots, and release info.
JustDeleteMe
Directory of direct links and instructions for deleting your account on hundreds of websites and apps.
Kagi
A paid, ad-free search engine that ranks results by quality instead of ad revenue, with tools to boost or block specific domains yourself.
Kottke
One of the webs longest-running blogs — daily links and commentary on culture, science, and ideas since 1998.
LegiScan
A cross-jurisdiction legislative tracking engine providing open access to bill texts, voting records, and sponsor data across all 50 US states.
LessWrong
A community blog focused on rationality, decision-making, and AI safety, with a large archive of long-form essays going back over a decade.
Library of Short Stories
Free collection of classic short stories from various authors in a simple reading format.
LittleSis
Database mapping connections between powerful people and organizations.
Lobsters
Invitation-only technology link aggregator with tagging, comment threads, and a focus on technical depth.
Low-tech Magazine
A publication questioning the belief in technological progress, exploring historical low-tech solutions and their modern applications — the website itself runs on solar power.
Marginalia Search
Independent search engine that deliberately favors non-commercial, text-heavy, and obscure websites.
Marginal Revolution
Long-running economics blog by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, covering everything from policy to culture through an economist's lens.
MarineTraffic
Real-time ship tracking service showing the position and details of vessels worldwide using AIS transponder data, with port activity and voyage history.
Metaculus
A forecasting community where users predict the probability of future events — from elections to AI milestones — and track their own accuracy over time.
Metafilter
One of the oldest community blogs on the internet, with thoughtful long-form discussion since 1999.
MLC LLM
A universal LLM deployment engine that compiles models to run natively on laptops, phones, and browsers — the same model, the same weights, running on NVIDIA, AMD, Apple Silicon, or WebGPU.
Monkeytype
A minimalist, customizable typing speed test with live stats and dozens of modes.
Namechk
Checks username and domain availability across dozens of social networks and platforms simultaneously.
Nautilus
A science and culture magazine organized around themes, publishing interconnected articles across biology, physics, psychology, and philosophy each issue.
Neal.fun
Collection of interactive web experiments and games by developer Neal Agarwal.
Nicky Case
Nicky Case's portfolio of explorable essays — interactive simulations and games that teach game theory, network effects, cognitive bias, and mental health through systems you can play with and break.
Numbeo
The world's largest crowd-sourced database of city and country data covering cost of living, quality of life, crime, healthcare, and traffic indices.
Old Book Illustrations
A curated archive of high-quality public domain engravings, woodcuts, and lithographs sourced from historical books and publications.
Privnote
Creates a one-time link containing a private note that permanently self-destructs after being read once — no account required. Optionally set a passphrase, expiry time, or receive an email notification when the note is read.
Quanta Magazine
An editorially independent online publication covering developments in mathematics, physics, biology, and computer science for a general but intellectually serious audience.
Rewind AI Web Tools Directory
Curated listing of AI and productivity tools organized by use case.
Ribbonfarm
Venkatesh Rao's long-form blog exploring organizational behavior, technology, and culture through an idiosyncratic systems-thinking lens.
SDF Public Access UNIX
A free shared UNIX system running since 1987 that gives anyone a shell account, email address, web hosting, and access to a community of thousands of technically curious users worldwide.
SearchSystem
Directory of specialized search engines categorized by topic and data type.
SearXNG
A public instance of the open-source metasearch engine that aggregates results from dozens of search engines without tracking you.
Slashdot
One of the internet's oldest tech news and discussion sites, still running — "News for Nerds" since 1997, with a distinctive threaded comment system.
Spacehey
MySpace-inspired social network that lets users build fully customizable profile pages with HTML and CSS.
Techmeme
Algorithmically-curated tech news aggregator that surfaces the top stories across hundreds of sources in a single scannable page.
The Browser
A daily digest of five links hand-picked for quality writing — essays, journalism, and criticism curated rather than algorithmically ranked.
The Forest
A one-button portal into the weird, personal, and overlooked corners of the internet.
The Kid Should See This
Curated collection of smart, curiosity-sparking videos for kids and curious adults.
The Marginalian
Maria Popova's long-running blog of essays exploring ideas at the intersection of science, art, philosophy, and literature, drawing on a vast reading life.
The Pudding
Collection of visual essays explaining cultural and data-driven topics interactively.
This Person Does Not Exist
Generates a photorealistic face of a person who has never existed using StyleGAN neural network.
TinEye
Reverse image search engine that finds where an image appears online.
Type Here
A distraction-free online typewriter with mechanical key sounds, an aged paper aesthetic, and no save button — everything you type exists only in the moment and disappears when you close the tab.
Uses This
Short interviews asking creative and technical people one simple question: what hardware and software do you use to get things done?
VirusTotal
Upload any file or paste any URL and VirusTotal scans it simultaneously against over 70 antivirus engines and security vendors, returning a detailed report on whether anything flagged it as malicious.
Wait But Why
Tim Urban's long-form illustrated blog tackling big questions in science, society, and human nature with deep research, hand-drawn diagrams, and irreverent humor.
Wander
A virtual travel experience that drops you into curated Google Street View locations worldwide, with guided regional tours and an exploration mode for wandering with no destination in mind.
Webamp
A pixel-accurate web recreation of Winamp 2.9 that plays MP3s from your local files or URLs — including the equalizer, playlist editor, visualizations, and support for thousands of original Winamp skins.
WebLLM
In-browser LLM inference powered by WebGPU — runs full language models entirely inside Chrome or Edge with no server, no API key, and no data leaving your device.
WhatTheFont
Tool that identifies fonts from uploaded images using visual matching.
Wiby Search
Search engine for the old web — indexes only simple, hand-crafted websites without JavaScript or tracking.
WiFi SPC
Community-powered global directory of free WiFi hotspots with location search, daily updates, and coverage across more than 200 countries.
Window to the Universe
Educational site explaining space science, Earth systems, and astronomy concepts.
xkcd
Randall Munroe's webcomic covering science, mathematics, programming, linguistics, and culture — with 2,900+ strips ranging from genuinely instructive to profoundly absurd, updated three times a week.