Recommended Blogs and Newsletters for AI and Self-Hosting

What This Article Covers

• Which blogs, newsletters, and communities are worth following for local AI, self-hosting, and homelab.
• Where to find German and English sources.
• Which medium works best for different needs.

Introduction

The AI landscape shifts constantly. Blogs and newsletters are the best way to stay current on new models, tools, and techniques without reading arXiv daily. This list is curated: only sources that deliver relevant content regularly and aren’t just marketing vehicles.

Blogs on Local AI and Open-Source Models

German

• BotServ.de - Self-promotion, but we write with a practical focus on Ollama, Open WebUI, agents, self-hosting, and the broader stack. Start here: Lokale KI and KI-Agenten.
• Heise Online - KI-Ressort - heise.de/ki. Current news and background reporting, often emphasizing data protection and German providers. Heavier on news than hands-on tutorials.
• Golem.de - IT news with strong AI coverage. Good for product announcements, less depth overall.

English

• Ollama Blog - ollama.com/blog. New models, features, and integrations straight from the tool many use here.
• Hugging Face Blog - huggingface.co/blog. Fresh papers, models, and libraries. Updated daily.
• LangChain Blog - langchain.com/blog. Essential for anyone working with agents and RAG.
• vLLM Blog - blog.vllm.ai. Performance optimization and inference techniques.
• Sebastian Raschka - sebastianraschka.com. In-depth technical explanations of LLMs and training. The “Ahead of AI” newsletter is highly recommended.
• Lilian Weng (OpenAI) - lilianweng.github.io. Thorough technical articles on agents, RAG, and transformer architecture.

Blogs on Self-Hosting and Homelab

• Self-Hosted Podcast (Jupiter Broadcasting) - selfhosted.show. Weekly podcast covering self-hosting, homelab, and Linux. The website archives all episodes.
• r/selfhosted - reddit.com/r/selfhosted. Active community with daily setups, reviews, and discussion.
• r/homelab - reddit.com/r/homelab. Hardware, networking, virtualization. Great for project inspiration.
• ServeTheHome - servethehome.com. Hardware reviews for servers and homelab. Solid buying guidance.
• Linuxserver.io Blog - linuxserver.io/blog. Docker images and tutorials for self-hosting.
• Techno Tim - technotim.live. YouTube channel and website covering Kubernetes, homelab, and self-hosting.

Newsletters

• Ahead of AI (Sebastian Raschka) - Weekly. New papers, models, and technical explanations. Free.
• The Batch (DeepLearning.AI) - Weekly. AI news curated by Andrew Ng’s team. Free.
• TLDR AI - tldr.tech/ai. Daily, short summaries. Great for a quick overview.
• Self-Hosted Weekly - selfhostedweekly.com. Weekly newsletter on self-hosting tools and projects.

Communities for Questions

• BotServ Discord - For questions about local AI setups, agents, and self-hosting. Linked directly from the header.
• Ollama Discord - Active community around Ollama, model selection, and troubleshooting.
• Open WebUI GitHub Discussions - For Open WebUI-specific questions.
• n8n Community - community.n8n.io. Workflow automation and AI integrations.

How to Follow Sources Effectively

• Use an RSS reader: Feedly, Inoreader, or self-hosted with FreshRSS or Miniflux. Most blogs offer RSS feeds.
• Pick one newsletter instead of five: Ahead of AI or TLDR AI covers the essentials.
• Subscribe to Reddit: r/selfhosted and r/LocalLLaMA are the most active subreddits for these topics.

Further Reading

• Literatur - Overview of books, papers, and blogs.
• KI-Buchempfehlungen - Curated book recommendations.
• Papers - Important research works.
• Lokale KI - The main section where most blog topics originate.

FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Do these sources cost anything? All blogs and newsletters mentioned are free. Some offer premium versions, but they’re not necessary to get started.

English or German? For AI research and current developments, English is essential. German works for news and overviews, but technical depth exists almost exclusively in English. BotServ aims to bridge that gap.

How do I stay current without feeling overwhelmed? One newsletter (Ahead of AI or TLDR AI) and one subreddit (r/LocalLLaMA or r/selfhosted) are enough to start. Add more sources later if needed.