I'm a mechanical engineer by training but interested in tech stuff. Have been reading HN for a while and wonder if there's something the same or similar to HN, but tailored for hardware/physical product. Thanks!
You could try reddit. It has subreddits and multireddits (packages of subreddits) on all sorts of specialized topics you can subscribe to. I'm not a computer scientist but you can search/explore suggested multireddits by topics, and subscribe to lists curated by other users.