I love Hacker News and will always be a user. But the community has a very narrow interest/belief set. I'd like to read some other opinions and get a more diverse opinion on the internet.<p>What I really want to know is where do people that don't care about starting a business or developing software hang out on the internet.
You might want to checkout Stack Overflow and the community of programmers that converse there. There's a whole network of related sites, too, and there is some really great discussion there. If it's partially the comments that attract you to HN, then you'll probably like Stack Overflow.
I used to like the Joel on Software fora about 2-3 years ago. They weren't overly technical, but they had more than a few people who always seemed to have something interesting to say (Bored Bystander comes to mind). Unfortunately, Joel killed them off for varying reasons and I haven't found a good substitute since. There's still one focused on ISV development called Business of Software, and I think the Bingo Card guy (Patrick McKenzie?) posts there quite a bit.<p>Some of the other Joel posters went to a place called CrazyOnTap, but I wouldn't recommend that. It makes YouTube comments look sane.