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Ask HN: What hyper-focused industry newsletters do you enjoy?
289 points by vwcx on April 11, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 145 comments
In my experience, HN users tend to have incredibly specialized interests. I'm curious about what newsletters are out there that deliver a depth of specialized knowledge?

For me, it doesn't get better than 'The Prepared' and the 'Future of Trucks' newsletters. Both provide a window into technicalities that I wouldn't otherwise think about in fields that I'm broadly interested in.

https://theprepared.org/ https://www.trucks.vc/newsletter




I enjoy this weekly and concise email from my colleagues focused on tech coverage outside the US/West. No ads, no promos, just very simple layout.

https://restofworld.org/newsletters/world/

While it definitely promotes our stories, I like the the "What we're reading" and "one more thing" which are usually interesting and external content. I think all this contributes to our fairly high open-rates and healthy organic subscription growth.

There are two other content driven newsletters for South Asia and Latin America but that global newsletter is my favorite.

https://restofworld.org/newsletters/


Rest of the world is a very neoliberal rag. Typical bay area socially liberal but fiscally conservative crowd. They will shake their fist and yell at the sky about alleged oppression elsewhere and praise the technocratic policies at the same time. Think New Yorker/The Atlantic for the SV crowd.


"bay area socially liberal"?

Um, if you say so. None are in the Bay Area is that helps.

Most of the writers (almost 90%) live or work in the countries that are covered (so are outside the US and EU).


It is bad faith to play submarine on this forum, editor.


I was going to say yeah, the title of the newsletter is a little ... revealing.


I assumed it to be poking fun at the use of that term in business (especially logistics) jargon.


RSS Feed: https://restofworld.org/feed/latest


My dog Walker publishes a WhatsApp thread with videos of all her dog walks on it


Your dog is called Walker and you taught her how to use WhatsApp? :)


You should ask OP about how he once helped his uncle Jack off a horse


I'm usually against quick jokes on this site but this one got me.


I would like to subscribe to your dog's newsletter!


Can’t get much more hyper focused than this!


Especially if the dog is reactive!


That would be so.. oddly comforting to me as a dog owner. I dig that.


Can you invite me?


Unzip - https://unzip.dev/ - is really nice. Each issue is focused on unpacking a specific dev trend / topic.

Self-promotion: https://newsletter.leadership.garden/ - A hand-curated newsletter for leaders and managers in tech.


Wow, unzip has a really cool signup form-- signed up just for that!!


Yeah, this is awesome!


Hi! I'm the creator of unzip.dev, thanks for the shout out!


Man, this is awesome, compact and to the point, I love it. Please don't add more content, or post more frequently just for the sake of it, it is perfect this way.


Thanks! These types of comments make my day! P.S. Don't worry about the content being too long and frequent. I do this because it is fun, the moment it doesn't feel that way I don't want to continue. So, I want to take my time researching a concept and give myself room to edit it - which takes a minimum of 10 days. Plus, I really like making things simple, long-form content tends to deviate from that way of thinking :)


automatic sub. loving the format of unzip.dev


Thanks! don't hesitate to dm me if you have any suggestion or question :)


Scuttleblurb, David Kim's SubStack, sends out in-depth write ups of companies. It's technically an investing newsletter, but it's really more about the mechanics of a given industry and how a particular company or group of companies operates within that industry. Similarly, and these aren't newsletters but they do come out at newsletter-like frequencies: the Company Man and the Wendover Productions YouTube channels.

Granted, these aren't specialized in terms of a single industry or single tech field, but, if you're a business enthusiast / love learning about industries you previously didn't know about, these are excellent.

https://www.scuttleblurb.com/ Company Man: https://youtube.com/channel/UCQMyhrt92_8XM0KgZH6VnRg Wendover Productions: https://youtube.com/c/Wendoverproductions


There's a really great epidemiologist who has been publishing data-driven articles on substack on the subject of COVID, from samples from waste water to control groups across the world. Her insights are often super valuable and she only speaks to what she knows and the rest goes off of data she comes across. I'd really recommend her thoughts on anything COVID-related

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/


A newsletter is the same thing as a blog post, right? In that case I think this one about the satellite imagery industry is interesting:

https://joemorrison.substack.com/

The main thing you learn is that outside of governments there isn’t much of a satellite image industry. Which is why there aren’t that many posts.


The Signal https://daily.thesignal.co/ it's more like a cumulative version of the daily news around the world mostly tech related.

Finshots https://finshots.in/?utm_source=emailHeader&utm_medium=mails... for Finance related content

either/view https://eitherview.com/ for politically focused content with both side of views


Love the quality content by Finshots.


Blender Guru (Andrew Price) has a newsletter I enjoy for all things Blender https://www.blenderguru.com/newsletter

Dave Verwer has IOS dev Weekly that always has something interesting https://iosdevweekly.com

Edit: and Animation Obsessive for a bit of weekly animation history https://animationobsessive.substack.com


For the silicon chip industry, the Linley Group’s Microprocessor Report [1] is amazing. I know of no better resource for high-end chip news. Here’s a bunch of cut down sample articles [2] and one actual one [3]

[1] https://www.linleygroup.com/mpr/

[2] https://www.linleygroup.com/sample.php

[3] https://www.nvidia.com/docs/IO/55972/220401_Reprint.pdf


I’ve been working on a robotics newsletter for close to 4 years now. Maybe someone here will find it interesting https://www.weeklyrobotics.com/


Was just about to CTRL-F for that, thanks :)


Wrestling Observer Newsletter[0]. Covers the pro wrestling (and MMA) business. Been going since the 1980s. The writer and publisher Dave Meltzer was featured in the New York Times a while back[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrestling_Observer_Newsletter

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/sports/wrestling-reporter...


For AR/VR, https://youtube.com/c/SadlyItsBradley is cringe, but he has solid supply chain info leaks about upcoming products and a surprisingly good understanding of the technology. Meanwhile, https://kguttag.com is by far the best place to learn about the many fundamental unsolved problems that are preventing the grand vision of metaverse AR glasses from being realized anytime soon, and the reality of what upcoming products will be like as they work around those problems in various ways.


weekly space news: https://orbitalindex.com/


I love the Orbital Index! It’s my only resource on space news and every week I’m learning a ton!


I greatly enjoy the in-depth articles surrounding Linux ecosystem from LWN.net


If I might, I would like to share the hyper focused newsletter that I do on embedded systems: https://embedsysweekly.com

From the feedbacks I have, a lot of professionals from the field like it.


Patrick McKenzie (patio11) continues to deliver really insightful commentary at the software/business interface. https://bam.kalzumeus.com/


It's more about the payments space (the newsletter is called "Bits about Money").


Moon Monday (https://blog.jatan.space/s/moon-monday/archive) covers every major update in our return to the Moon as well as exploration and science updates from across the globe.


Hey, thanks!


I'm in a weird place doing federal policy work that straddles a bunch of areas (tech, critical minerals, and defense mostly) but I like a few 1) The Global Lithium Podcast, 2) PetroNerds, 3) CQ Roll Call, 4) Breaking Points, 5) Conversations with Tyler


LLVM Weely: https://llvmweekly.org/


Somewhat 'technical': For anyone interested in health and longevity, I recommend Peter Attia's Newsletter and his Podcast. He gets really technical, but is still comprehensible for people without a medical degree.

https://peterattiamd.com/newsletter/

I think nearly all health related changes I made in my life, I made based on his content.


Pedestrian Observations is great for railroad systems https://pedestrianobservations.com/


Graphs for Data Science: https://graphs4sci.substack.com/

Visualization for Data Science: https://viz4sci.substack.com/

</ShamelessPlug>


These look interesting, thank you.

Anyone else annoyed by cheap trick of substack, not showing the pricing of the newsletter until you put your email?


PSA, both of those are paywalled


Only past posts. The most recent post is always free, you only need to pay to access older posts.


Posts are fairly few & far-between, but Cryptography Dispatches [1] always has very high-quality content; worth reading if you work in that space.

1: https://buttondown.email/cryptography-dispatches


Hanno Böck's monthly Bulletproof TLS Newsletter is an excellent summary of TLS/PKI goings-on.

https://www.feistyduck.com/bulletproof-tls-newsletter/


I do enjoy my wine, especially South African wines. This blog's news letter focuses on South African wines and other wine related topics. https://thewinedream.wine/


CLUI, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, has a yearly newsletter that I find absolutely fascinating; you can sign up here if you want an email notification when it's out:

https://clui.org/section/contact-center

and read past issues here:

https://clui.org/newsletter/archive

CLUI is "dedicated to the increase and diffusion of knowledge about how the nation’s lands are apportioned, utilized, and perceived."


Being in cybersecurity, all of those: https://github.com/TalEliyahu/awesome-security-newsletters


https://bitcoinops.org/

> This week’s newsletter describes a proposal for delinked reusable addresses, summarizes how the WabiSabi protocol may be used as an enhanced alternative to payjoin, examines a discussion about adding communication standards to the DLC specification, and looks at renewed discussion about updating LN commitment formats. Also included are our regular sections with summaries of new software releases and release candidates plus descriptions of notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.


Huge fan of SemiAnalysis run by Dylan Patel https://semianalysis.substack.com/

I have yet to find a better in-depth source for hardware ongoings.


I think there will be a lot of money in focused industry newsletters over the next ten years or so.

This will be basically identical to the corporate media business of yore: start in publishing, build audience, use that to sell events/training (and then, eventually, someone comes along and consolidates all of them). There will be a twist, but...basically.

We aren't even at the start of this trend imo (a lot of the industry news is still distributed physically, I don't think current publications have really "cracked" the format/content organization yet either) as the replies kind of demonstrate.


For synbio / biotech news: https://www.codonmag.com/archive

Was pleasantly surprised to see this newsletter reappear after a lengthy hiatus.


https://greenbuildingadvisor.com. Reading about advances in energy-saving construction techniques and HVAC is loads of fun.


Best technical software engineering newsletter is Quastor IMO.

The writer looks through all the various engineering blogs from Big Tech companies and sends out summaries of the most interesting posts.

https://quastor.org/

They also do technical writeups and deep dives on OSS projects and whatnot.

Here's one they did on Apache Spark -> https://www.quastor.org/p/the-architecture-of-apache-spark


Maybe not hyper-focused, but I joined CodeProject's Daily Insider newsletter in like 2005 freshman year of high school and despite considering a few times over the years opting out, it's been a consistent source of interesting links and news I hadn't heard yet.

Plus it has a slight Microsoft-technology bent, which breaks me out of my Linux/web programming bubble sometimes.

https://www.codeproject.com/feature/insider/


Asianometry[1]: Mostly about semiconductors, with YouTube videos [1]:https://asianometry.substack.com/


http://highscalability.com for anything related to large scale systems has always been full of interesting content.


Not sure I would call it "hyper" specialized, but Matt Levine's Money Stuff newsletter is probably the best thing I read everyday.


I want to know how he writes so much every day. Matt, if you're reading, give us some tips.


Practice. Conversational style of writing. Audience that is used to long posts with minimal editing (Dealbreaker had shorter articles but his posts grew in length, references added, and the audience grew into that style...old Dealbreaker was hilarious, I seem to remember Matt did the CFA Level 1...he was going to hit the strip club for lulz during the lunch break, didn't but went to a Mexican cafe and got drunk...Dealbreaker 2008-2012 was pure gold, nothing like it today).

I wouldn't try to replicate his style. Lots of people try, but it is like a virgin turning up to a BDSM orgy: you can't hang, don't try, find your own path.

EDIT: wow, that Dealbreaker story was over 10 years old...what have I done with my life.


I was going to post this too. He's exceptionally skillful in explaining, lucidly, the small wonkish details of financial market matters that make the gem of the story. I'm also impressed by the breadth of markets that he's able to cover with that clarity.


Stratechery. I've been a subscriber since 2016.

In the last couple years Ben added a private podcast stream with audio versions of his newsletters, which has been a huge quality of life improvement for me. I wish more newsletters did this, I would happily pay more.

Keeping up on reading newsletters was fine when I used to travel a lot, but now (with kids, post-COVID) I generally just consume the audio version while driving, working out, etc.


The Market Huddle. Macroeconomic trading/speculating/investing. https://markethuddle.com/

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. https://weatherguardwind.com/wind-turbine-podcast/


Not free, but if you're into fashion, Women's Wear Daily is the go-to source for news in that field.

It's been publishing fashion news every day for over 100 years.

I think it costs around $300/year. But it's important enough that a lot of fashion-related companies pick up at least part of the expense for their employees.


The Construction Physics substack is a great source of knowledge for both historic and current experiments in construction methods.

https://constructionphysics.substack.com/archive


If you want a breadth of industry publications physically delivered, I greatly recommend the Trade Journal Cooperative https://www.tradejournalcooperative.com/


https://www.theanalog.io/. Weekly newsletter focused on hardware and manufacturing, lots of interesting links related to the field. Strong EE focus.


As an aside is there a better way to consume these newsletters than email or unroll?


I read them in Feedbin. It provides me with a dedicated mail address and allows me to read newsletters as if they were RSS feeds.


Highly recommend the Thinking About Things newsletter [0], it's one link every other day.

[0] https://thinking-about-things.com


That URL doesn't work. It's https://www.thinking-about-things.com/


I use https://kill-the-newsletter.com/ to get an RSS feed :-)


Ya I sometimes just keep track of newsletters I like in a doc, then make the rounds when I'm in a reading mood


Edit: nevermind, I might promote it when it's more generally available.


would love to download this service, what's the name?


My personal favorite is the data visualization newsletter Chartr: https://www.chartr.co/

Provides visualizations of the top data driving the news on a given weekday.

My self promotion is the Future News report I started last year: https://news.youexec.com/

We read as many news stories and research papers a day as we can and highlight the top "shifts" (breakthroughs, government moves, or growing business trends) that will impact the future within the next five years.


Superfast Python focuses on Python concurrency. I am amazed by the author's prolific and excellent output.

https://superfastpython.com/


I absolutely love this one: https://www.cheapoldhouses.com/latestlistings/ it's literally just what the name suggests. It's homes (mostly in the US, but they have a list for "foreign" homes as well) that are < $100k with 3+ acres and usually they need lots of work.

It's fun to look at the history of the homes and think about how you could renovate it into a personal home, or a bed and breakfast or something.


Stefan Judis' newsletter about web development is pretty good: https://www.stefanjudis.com/


Benn Stancil’s newsletter on the data infrastructure economy is super interesting

https://benn.substack.com/


I recently subscribed to https://8bitnews.io for retro-computing news and haven't been disappointed.


Here are some audio fiction podcasts that buy + produce stories from a broad community of authors:

https://escapepod.org/ https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/ https://www.drabblecast.org/


Data Science / Data / AI news: https://www.datascienceweekly.org


the archives make it seem like this stopped publishing last summer


Demand curve has a great newsletter about marketing/growth: https://www.demandcurve.com/newsletter

Self promotion: I recently started https://saastips.com/ to catalog everything I learn about saas from podcasts, blog posts, etc


I love Podnews (Podcasting News)

https://podnews.net

Easy digest, to the point, always got something interesting


Thank you! :) Glad you enjoy it!

* Also via RSS: https://podnews.net/rss

* Also via audio: https://podnews.net/listen


This Week In Fintech by Nik Milanovic. Gives one a weekly digest of news, opinions, and all things financial technology. And also has content specific to different regions around the globe. https://thisweekinfintech.com/


Built for Mars is a good one, UI/UX breakdowns of popular products. I always find it really insightful and thought provoking


Near Future Lab [1] does a great newsletter on things happening in 'design fiction' space — https://buttondown.email/designfiction

[1]https://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com


https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/04/rocket-report-nasa-b...

The Ars Technica Rocket Report, edited by Eric Berger.

It will keep you updated about the launcher industry.


For anyone interested in the future of city infrastructure and technologies:

- [NextCity](https://nextcity.org/)

- [Shareable](https://www.shareable.net/)


Someone on HN recently linked to https://www.readsomethinginteresting.com. It seems to be focused on personal blogs and I've been really enjoying finding authors I didn't know about.


I would recommend the The Syllabus. It's curated and broken down by specific topics. If you subscribe, some additional customizations are available.

https://www.the-syllabus.com/


The RISKS digest is a newsletter on all things computer security, and their risks to the public. It’s been going since 1985.

https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/


Mobile GameDev Playbook (podcast) https://open.spotify.com/show/7KPT3GT0HI35dsd5dUsf5K?si=0dnd...


I've co-written and edited our newsletter covering climate tech and urban tech startups for over 8 years https://thirdsphere.com/updates/


I’m enjoying Read Max, a newsletter about Pop Culture. https://maxread.substack.com/

There was a Dune article that got some traction here a few months ago.


Dr. Pippa Malmgren's newsletter "Forces that drive today's world"

https://drpippa.substack.com/


Shameless plug: https://newsletter.dsebastien.net

My newsletter focuses mostly on bootstrapping and Personal Knowledge Management these days.


(shameless self promotion :-)

My Amazing CTO newsletter

https://www.amazingcto.com/cto-newsletter/


A great read about the media business: https://www.amediaoperator.com/


This one is good for the legaltech market: https://www.artificiallawyer.com


No CS Degree does interviews with self-taught devs

https://www.nocsdegree.com


Bug Bytes from intigriti. When you didn't spend the entire week on Twitter, they'll show you the best parts you missed.


Import AI is good https://jack-clark.net/


https://podnews.net/

All about podcast industry.


I created my hyperfocus api with the exact need for better aggregated financial news.


trucks.vc is definitely a better vertical newsletter than most, have read for years!


I remember someone comment about shipping industry but I forget the website.


I consider these cop-out answers, but Stratechery [0] and Money Stuff [1] are excellent. I'm bewildered daily by Matt Levines ability to write. Mobile Dev Memo is pretty good and follows mainly the mobile ad industry [2].

Apologies for the self-promotion, but in case any tech minded finns are reading this, I write a daily news letter about tech in finnish called Transistori [3].

[0]: https://stratechery.com/

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthe...

[2]: https://mobiledevmemo.com/

[3]: https://www.transistori.com/


http://bulletpitch.xyz is your source for concise content on high-potential startups! It's a must read


Let me know if I'm pronouncing this right: "lol"


https://tldrmarketing.com for SEO, social media marketing, and other digital marketing related things.

It's the only newsletter I've actually stuck with and enjoy.


I run that newsletter.


Whoa. It's an honor!


Phil Venables - cybersecurity management


gamediscover.co for games industry


https://bulletpitch.xyz/subscribe


This comment and the reply look highly inorganic to me, so take their recommendations with a pinch of salt.


three+ green accounts posting the same link... feels off to me too


Lowtechmagazine.com


I've seen a few people have already given https://bulletpitch.xyz a well deserved mention. Their newsletter reports on a new startup once a week with TL;DR in mind. It's written by these two college students who give a great GenZ perspective. This letter doesn't specialize in a specific industry of startups, but it does a great job of highlighting early stage companies. Worth checking out.


Finance:

- The Diff

- Money Stuff

- Front Month

- Bits about Money


Second the diff. big fan


I like TLDR newsletter - https://tldr.tech/


https://every.to/napkin-math/, https://www.productlessons.xyz/, https://ofdollarsanddata.com/


- https://www.milkroad.com/ - https://topstartups.substack.com/ - https://latecheckout.substack.com/ - https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/


Milkroad looks like the worst newsletter ever


None, ever. I never subscribe to newsletters. I hate spam. I subscribed to newsletters in the past to only regret my decision because it was used to funnel spam/ads and annoy me with meaningless updates.

I would appreciate a common spec where packages could ping new releases, something like rss I could then subscribe to and get new release notifications with a changelog.

But mail is something where I don't want spam. Email is for important messages and invoices. I'm trying to keep that space clean.


In case you didn’t know, you can subscribe to package releases on GitHub.


github is not the world. And it's certainly not the center of mine.


Week in Ethereum News: https://weekinethereumnews.com/


It's weird how few people seem to be aware of this but the whole field of economics seems to be undergoing some pretty big transformations. One of the best sources for keeping up with this shift has been Evonomics:

https://evonomics.com/


What is emerging? All I see is a scholarly rejection of neoclassical policy. Since 2007 we've seen the frightfully predictable upsurge in Keynesian ideas. The articles on that site don't seem to go beyond Keynes whatsoever.

Since 2007 there's also been a surge of interest in classical political economy, as forwarded by Anwar Shaikh and Michael Roberts. But there's no paradigm shift in this work, and I don't see any influence of this trend on that site anyway.


As an outsider, how can I evaluate the credibility of your two main claims?


Not being an economist: what's going on there and what transformation is going on?




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