Computer Help and Support

"Best" respected sites, now that you clarified, might be Bluesky and Mastodon, though they might not have the reach you need (virality, I guess).

I frequent Hacker News, and it's not all VC's and hackers (white hat kind). Many topics come up, and while self-promotion is frowned upon, unless you are showing off some new concept or have some papers to share, it does get one some visibility.

Read the rules (1)

Like DU, I recall that most of the OP's are just links to news sites, but with a focus on tech, medicine, geology, whatever.

I use the two as news aggregators, though the shift from DU to Hacker News seems to lower the emotional temperature considerably. I'd go bonkers following just DU, and have cut back. I try to mostly post activist stuff, because heck, it's war out there.

I'm retired, so I try to add to the Hacker News tech history. A lot of us grew up in the microcomputer revolution, and carved careers out of what was a hobby. I never took a computer, electronics or optics course. But also to gain some cred, in case one of my forward thinking ideas gets some attention. (Oh, and a vast number of OP's are about AI, of course, but quite a few are critical, and some are alarmist. )

I don't know of any other sites with a large and relatively smart population.

Good luck.

(1) Rules? But you did see the notice, didn't you?
- Oh, yes. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign outside the door saying, 'Beware of the leopard!'

They exist somewhere.