AI · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to I did a 4 hour conversational audiobook on the history of data centers
Hi HN! I put together a 4-hour conversational audiobook tracing their history—from IBM punch cards to the internet, the cloud, hyperscalers, and today’s AI factories. It’s part of a new long-form series on the history of infrastructure (first two episodes were on coal). Would love your thoughts—both on the story and on whether this “conversational audiobook” format works.
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1BI
I'm a big fan of the BBC podcast In Our Time -- and (like most people) I've been playing with the OpenAI APIs. In Our Time has almost 1,000 episodes on everything from Cleopatra to the evolution of teeth to plasma physics, all still available, so it's my starting point to learn about most topics. But it's not well organised. So here are the episodes sorted by library code. It's fun to explore. Web scraping is usually pretty tedious, but I found that I could send the minimised HTML to GPT-3 and get (almost) perfect JSON back: the prompt includes the Typescript definition. At the same time I…
2023 · genmon.github.io · its alternatives →
- 2
A podcast all about data, science, stories, and time.
2017 · heavybit.com · its alternatives →
- 3
- 4IW
The book page links to a blog post that explains how I got about it (and has a link to sample content), but the TL&DR is that I could not find a lot of books that were on "our" history _and_ were larded with technical details. So I set about writing one, and some five years later I'm happy to share the result. I think it's one of the few "computer history" books that has tons of code, but correct me if I'm wrong (I wrote this both to tell a story and to learn :-)). My favorite languages are Smalltalk and Lisp, but as an Emacs user, I've been using the latter for much longer and for my…
Feb 2026 · berksoft.ca · its alternatives →
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Data/Stats/ML podcast with a great Mini series
2015 · dataskeptic.com · its alternatives →
- 7
The stories behind wonderful old school businesses
2015 · thedistance.basecamp.com · its alternatives →
- 8
On silicon valley, the dot-com bubble and web 2.0
2016 · internethistorypodcast.com · its alternatives →
- 9
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4000 years of history in an entertaining format.
2016 · podcasthistoryofourworld.com · its alternatives →
- 11
Full Stack Radio▲128A podcast for devs interested in building great products.
2015 · fullstackradio.com · its alternatives →
- 12
Context Matters▲102Podcast on intersection of business, technology & culture
2015 · its alternatives →
- 13
The show about modern data management
2017 · dataengineeringpodcast.com · its alternatives →
- 14
A podcast of Oxford-style debates on complex topics
2015 · intelligencesquaredus.org · its alternatives →
- 15
The history and future of EV, autonomous cars and more.
2016 · internethistorypodcast.com · its alternatives →
- 16
Curating the resurgence of the spoken word
2017 · inside.com · its alternatives →
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Prehype Podcast▲107Entrepreneurs speaking to people they think are interesting
2015 · podcasts.apple.com · its alternatives →
- 19
The road to IE
2016 · internethistorypodcast.com · its alternatives →
- 20
a16z Podcast▲74Insightful tech podcasts hosted by Andreessen Horowitz
2014 · a16z.com · its alternatives →
- 21
Interview with Maneesha Sane
2015 · pythonpodcast.com · its alternatives →
- 22
The intro to Microsoft's "Serial"-style Halo podcast
2015 · soundcloud.com · its alternatives →
- 23
What the future of banks might be
2016 · soundcloud.com · its alternatives →
- 24
A podcast that dives deep into ‘all things’ web
2015 · thewebplatform.libsyn.com · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →