Ask HN: Where can I have good, technical discussion on random topics?

Stack exchange usually bans random discussion and Reddit is usually pretty service level.

I have had some decent conversation on HN, but the medium is semi poor for convo.

I’m wanting to get into studying DB implementation, btree optimizations, parsers, etc. Whats a good place for hackers to just passionately chat and learn from each other?

Open source is cool, but I’m speaking more generally