The Day the Good Internet Died(theringer.com)
theringer.com
The Day the Good Internet Died
https://www.theringer.com/2021/7/21/22586870/google-reader-ode-end-of-the-good-internet
95 comments
Needs (1993). Hipsters.
1993 was when it went into intensive care. It died in 1995
What's about '95?
Internet was privatized and the prohibition on commercial activity was lifted https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=103050
See
https://www.webfx.com/blog/web-design/the-history-of-the-int...
> 1995 is often considered the first year the web became commercialized
https://www.webfx.com/blog/web-design/the-history-of-the-int...
> 1995 is often considered the first year the web became commercialized
Saw the title, thought "nope, they're wrong, that'll be the day the plug was pulled on Google Reader" -- and lo and behold, that's exactly what the article is about.
Confirmation bias for the win. Upvoted.
Confirmation bias for the win. Upvoted.
Wait, Google Reader was the summum of the "Good Internet"?
They seem to be using it as a line of demarcation between the internet that was much more decentralized, with lots of personal blogs, fansites, etc. and the current state, where most people just rotate between Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. I remember discovering and reading lots of video game-specific websites in the 90's and early 2000's; nowadays those are almost entirely replaced by subreddits and Discord communities.
A surprising number of the older sites still exist, they're just entirely buried under spammy, low-quality, ad-supported game publication search results, so you'll never find them by searching [name of game], or that plus "review" or "guide" or "mods" or whatever.
Some things I miss:
- A webring at the bottom of every website
- Websites having "awards" pages, full of random little picture awards given out by other random websites
- Hand-curated directories of everything imagineable
- When internet ads were just static 468x60 banners placed on individual sites by individual advertisers
- "Guided tours" in AOL chat rooms, where a host guided everyone in a live chat on a split-screen tour of their favorite websites
- MUDs
- Stumbleupon's stumble toolbar
- A webring at the bottom of every website
- Websites having "awards" pages, full of random little picture awards given out by other random websites
- Hand-curated directories of everything imagineable
- When internet ads were just static 468x60 banners placed on individual sites by individual advertisers
- "Guided tours" in AOL chat rooms, where a host guided everyone in a live chat on a split-screen tour of their favorite websites
- MUDs
- Stumbleupon's stumble toolbar
- people doing things for non-commercial reasons
- people trying brand new formats instead of filling in templates
- curated hierarchy, rather than every site feeling like querying a database
- weird people doing weird stuff
- visitor counters
- people trying brand new formats instead of filling in templates
- curated hierarchy, rather than every site feeling like querying a database
- weird people doing weird stuff
- visitor counters
> - visitor counters
I've kept those alive at w3counter.com since 2004 (before Google acquired Urchin and turned it into Google Analytics). It's not exactly an in-demand feature so I don't think it's even mentioned on the homepage, but after signing up, you can choose from a couple dozen counter styles, or the standard invisible tracking tag. Been working on redoing that site to re-launch it as a cookieless, zero-personal-data tracker later this year.
Actually I still host https://www.websitegoodies.com/ which I originally made in 1999, and that has a simple hit counter service too. So there are some counters I've been hosting for over 20 years.
I've kept those alive at w3counter.com since 2004 (before Google acquired Urchin and turned it into Google Analytics). It's not exactly an in-demand feature so I don't think it's even mentioned on the homepage, but after signing up, you can choose from a couple dozen counter styles, or the standard invisible tracking tag. Been working on redoing that site to re-launch it as a cookieless, zero-personal-data tracker later this year.
Actually I still host https://www.websitegoodies.com/ which I originally made in 1999, and that has a simple hit counter service too. So there are some counters I've been hosting for over 20 years.
I loved watching those numbers go up between visits! As a kid, I would naively think: "This many new people experienced this as well". Of course thinking back, many of those could have been repeat visitors, but it's still so cool to think about.
I remember being so ridiculously proud of myself when I realised I could make a cgi script to write each visitors IP to a text file then on each new visit collate that text file to display a counter of “unique visitors”, then display it next to a normal “hit counter”.. I thought I’d invented the idea of tracking unique-vs-visits. Then I got a job as a web dev for a big(ish) local company and realised every major website was already doing this and just not displaying it.
Wow, I haven’t heard the name urchin in a long time. For the longest time my favorite coffee shop had an urchin sticker on their tip jar. I wonder if it’s still there.
Oh damn, you just made me realize how much I miss hierarchies. When I used to go to a site everything was organized by topic instead of being a chronological stream of consciousness. You could open a gadget review site and see every review they did of a Sony product or a Palm product and know you hadn't missed anything. Now you have to type a word into their search bar and sort through a giant list of both relevant and irrelevant pages.
I think there is an enormous opportunity here. If there were a web search service that prioritized your first four points I would use it, and I suspect a very large number of others would as well. It's going to be a little more tricky to turn this into a business, because you'll be selecting for users who are allergic to websites doing things for commercial reasons, but perhaps there is a way.
One can dream.
One can dream.
I agree that the opportunity is there, but it doesn't seem like the VC wants to fund efforts in that direction. There are all sorts of ways to make social media better as well, but the VC doesn't want to fund that either.
Perhaps because in both cases, after some immediate improvement, the jobs get a lot harder as people fight back to bring their crap back to the top of the heap, but it sure would be nice if they had a corporate motto like "Cut the crap!" IMO...
Perhaps because in both cases, after some immediate improvement, the jobs get a lot harder as people fight back to bring their crap back to the top of the heap, but it sure would be nice if they had a corporate motto like "Cut the crap!" IMO...
While we're dreaming, the ultimate solution is an artificially intelligent agent that stands between you and the internet and can be instructed to pick out what you like and show it to you. It would ideally serve a variety of different types of users.
The current system basically amounts to loading code from remote servers and running it on your device in a leaky little sandbox, so it's a natural next layer of protection.
The current system basically amounts to loading code from remote servers and running it on your device in a leaky little sandbox, so it's a natural next layer of protection.
Maxthon2 could open search results in tabs. Like an upscaled version of the dial up days, one would open a bunch of tabs and let them load. I had it configured to open the first 100 results. It would somewhat prioritize the first page so that you could look at it while page 2 loaded. Eventually it was far ahead loading pages and one could tab though them (mouse gestures) and they would pop up as fast as desktop applications [use to be] There was a different gesture for next page and for close current + next page. I wrote a bunch of plugins [they were called] that are like browser extensions (without any security) They allowed selecting a sniplet of text on a page before making the next gesture. After eliminating the uninteresting pages I could export the remaining tabs (in that window) as a html sniplet with titles as links and the sniplets under them. It upgraded blog posts into pages people could spend hours or even days on.
I remember spending the better part of 15 min making a huge posts about UFO's (by repeating above process with various search queries) without reading much of anything and got comments from people who wondered why I spend so much time gathering all that "information". If I had to make that post using today's tools it would indeed take weeks.
I remember spending the better part of 15 min making a huge posts about UFO's (by repeating above process with various search queries) without reading much of anything and got comments from people who wondered why I spend so much time gathering all that "information". If I had to make that post using today's tools it would indeed take weeks.
You can find this on neocities https://neocities.org/browse
There are still some webrings out there. You can find them in the link section of some neocities websites. There is a link to one of them on my old-internet-style website (see my HN profile).
I love the old internet but this is not what people want anymore. I have to admit I rarely spend time on neocities despite my initial enthusiasm.
There are still some webrings out there. You can find them in the link section of some neocities websites. There is a link to one of them on my old-internet-style website (see my HN profile).
I love the old internet but this is not what people want anymore. I have to admit I rarely spend time on neocities despite my initial enthusiasm.
> - people doing things for non-commercial reasons
> - weird people doing weird stuff
There is more of both of these now than there ever was back in the 1990s. The modern internet is a utopia of interesting people doing interesting things for passion (even among people who also get paid - those things aren't mutually exclusive.)
The problem is too many people have become jaded hipsters who dismiss anything not in hand-written HTML on a personal domain as 'inauthentic.' Like, your old Metallica fanpage with the flame gifs and badly tiled background image wasn't exactly the pinnacle of art and expression.
> - weird people doing weird stuff
There is more of both of these now than there ever was back in the 1990s. The modern internet is a utopia of interesting people doing interesting things for passion (even among people who also get paid - those things aren't mutually exclusive.)
The problem is too many people have become jaded hipsters who dismiss anything not in hand-written HTML on a personal domain as 'inauthentic.' Like, your old Metallica fanpage with the flame gifs and badly tiled background image wasn't exactly the pinnacle of art and expression.
Hacker News is a phenomenal source of hatred for using modern browser features and standards. Any amount of javascript is defined as bloat and should be strictly optional eye candy - completely disregarding the fact that UI and state management frameworks like React have made developing the sort of advanced applications we demand exceptionally easy.
Does a personal blog need React or Vue? No, and my blog is made by a static site generator (Hugo, specifically). Do most web applications built nowadays need them? Almost 100% of the time for non-trivial applications, yes. You can do it without any JS, but with that same ideology you can also write your desktop applications in x86 assembly.
Does a personal blog need React or Vue? No, and my blog is made by a static site generator (Hugo, specifically). Do most web applications built nowadays need them? Almost 100% of the time for non-trivial applications, yes. You can do it without any JS, but with that same ideology you can also write your desktop applications in x86 assembly.
> Hacker News is a phenomenal source of hatred for using modern browser features and standards.
Complaining about JavaScript is mere table stakes! The true path of "the modern web is ruined" discourse on HN starts with complaining about webfonts, and progresses to laments about any styling whatsoever and "why should designers have any say in how a web page on my computer looks." It's pretty hard to top "images were a mistake," but you get extra points in the lightning round if you work in a reference to Ted Nelson.
Complaining about JavaScript is mere table stakes! The true path of "the modern web is ruined" discourse on HN starts with complaining about webfonts, and progresses to laments about any styling whatsoever and "why should designers have any say in how a web page on my computer looks." It's pretty hard to top "images were a mistake," but you get extra points in the lightning round if you work in a reference to Ted Nelson.
IPV6 was a colossal mistake, with its 128 bit host addresses.
But IPV4 was also a huge mistake, with its 64 bit host addresses.
We should have stuck with NCP, with its 8 bit host addresses.
Everything started going downhill once there could be more than 256 hosts on the ARPANET.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Control_Program
But IPV4 was also a huge mistake, with its 64 bit host addresses.
We should have stuck with NCP, with its 8 bit host addresses.
Everything started going downhill once there could be more than 256 hosts on the ARPANET.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Control_Program
> It's pretty hard to top "images were a mistake," but you get extra points in the lightning round if you work in a reference to Ted Nelson.
I really can't wait for the HN rant about how Geminispace has turned into Reddit and now we need to rebuild the web on an even stricter protocol.
I really can't wait for the HN rant about how Geminispace has turned into Reddit and now we need to rebuild the web on an even stricter protocol.
Im 29, never used myspace, really had access to the internet in 2011 & Im still suspect of how much utter crap web dev is deteriorating into.
> completely disregarding the fact that UI and state management frameworks like React have made developing the sort of advanced applications we demand exceptionally easy.
Till this day, no one has given me a straight answer on why they choose react beyond the dubious claims of performance++. Or even why build a web app to begin with. Nor have the users been asked if they want native-like apps on the browser.
I complain but I use react everyday on a web app Im sure no one cares if it loads 400ms faster than a server rendered jinja template.
Now we have massive overhead, npm libraries for everything and only god knows whats going on in the node modules folder, keeping up with the joneses by using Typescript - why use typescript when Java or C# do static typing so well? I can't ask silly plebian questions like that. we are modern is translated to yarn install everything and use VScode and dont forget the babel plugins. Can you imagine being looked down on for preferring plain javascript, the thing that Typescript compiles to, as being archaic?
I'm no old timer but that's some crazy shit.
> completely disregarding the fact that UI and state management frameworks like React have made developing the sort of advanced applications we demand exceptionally easy.
Till this day, no one has given me a straight answer on why they choose react beyond the dubious claims of performance++. Or even why build a web app to begin with. Nor have the users been asked if they want native-like apps on the browser.
I complain but I use react everyday on a web app Im sure no one cares if it loads 400ms faster than a server rendered jinja template.
Now we have massive overhead, npm libraries for everything and only god knows whats going on in the node modules folder, keeping up with the joneses by using Typescript - why use typescript when Java or C# do static typing so well? I can't ask silly plebian questions like that. we are modern is translated to yarn install everything and use VScode and dont forget the babel plugins. Can you imagine being looked down on for preferring plain javascript, the thing that Typescript compiles to, as being archaic?
I'm no old timer but that's some crazy shit.
I'm 37, it really wasn't ever any better. I just don't get the sense of nostalgia people have for the "old web." When I think about it, I remember all the ugly toxicity it all was absolutely plagued with. Software bugs were just as bad if not worse, and platforms were just absolutely silly with nonsense you had to put up with. Just to talk shit to someone who probably didn't deserve it because they did to you all because there wasn't much better to do.
There's very little about my past I would go back to.
There's very little about my past I would go back to.
> Till this day, no one has given me a straight answer on why they choose react beyond the dubious claims of performance++. Or even why build a web app to begin with. Nor have the users been asked if they want native-like apps on the browser.
The main reason is cross platform compatibility for things that don't need to make system calls. Ultimately I would prefer to distribute statically linked Go binaries that are command line applications, but if I was asked all "UI" would be a REST API with a manual. The market finds web applications are successful and lower the barrier of entry, and so they're made.
> I complain but I use react everyday on a web app Im sure no one cares if it loads 400ms faster than a server rendered jinja template.
With NextJS and server side rendering + static optimization I find that time to first (contentful) paint is the same or faster than Jinja without me having to configure a thing.
> Now we have massive overhead, npm libraries for everything and only god knows whats going on in the node modules folder
npm/yarn provides a pretty good developer experience but the way it accomplishes that is a touch horrifying, I agree. Babel and Webpack I find bring it most of the bloat, which is probably a good thing as you're not shipping those dependencies in production bundles. It definitely chews up storage space on the local machine though.
> keeping up with the joneses by using Typescript - why use typescript when Java or C# do static typing so well? I can't ask silly plebian questions like that.
Just to get out in front of it - I do not like Typescript. I find Typescript to be a waste of time. JS's type system is broken as hell, but in just the right way for web development. It makes it flexible and easy to write. With Typescript I feel like I spend most of my time making the compiler happy instead of generating any value for the business or myself.
The main reason is cross platform compatibility for things that don't need to make system calls. Ultimately I would prefer to distribute statically linked Go binaries that are command line applications, but if I was asked all "UI" would be a REST API with a manual. The market finds web applications are successful and lower the barrier of entry, and so they're made.
> I complain but I use react everyday on a web app Im sure no one cares if it loads 400ms faster than a server rendered jinja template.
With NextJS and server side rendering + static optimization I find that time to first (contentful) paint is the same or faster than Jinja without me having to configure a thing.
> Now we have massive overhead, npm libraries for everything and only god knows whats going on in the node modules folder
npm/yarn provides a pretty good developer experience but the way it accomplishes that is a touch horrifying, I agree. Babel and Webpack I find bring it most of the bloat, which is probably a good thing as you're not shipping those dependencies in production bundles. It definitely chews up storage space on the local machine though.
> keeping up with the joneses by using Typescript - why use typescript when Java or C# do static typing so well? I can't ask silly plebian questions like that.
Just to get out in front of it - I do not like Typescript. I find Typescript to be a waste of time. JS's type system is broken as hell, but in just the right way for web development. It makes it flexible and easy to write. With Typescript I feel like I spend most of my time making the compiler happy instead of generating any value for the business or myself.
> Do most web applications built nowadays need them? Almost 100% of the time for non-trivial applications, yes. You can do it without any JS, but with that same ideology you can also write your desktop applications in x86 assembly.
I would love to see a clear explanation of why this is viewed as true. I've seen this stated many times, but generally in a way that seems framed to an audience already inclined to accept it as true. I've never seen an explanation of this written and framed for people who wrote such applications before things like React or Vue existed, and genuinely don't understand (and want to) why the model they present is viewed as so much simpler.
I've genuinely looked for this, and I've found only either presentations of "here's how it works, doesn't this seem better?" (to which the answer always seems like "no"), or exhortations about how CSS and to some extent HTML are obsolete constructs except as tools to be manipulated by JavaScript.
I would love to see a clear explanation of why this is viewed as true. I've seen this stated many times, but generally in a way that seems framed to an audience already inclined to accept it as true. I've never seen an explanation of this written and framed for people who wrote such applications before things like React or Vue existed, and genuinely don't understand (and want to) why the model they present is viewed as so much simpler.
I've genuinely looked for this, and I've found only either presentations of "here's how it works, doesn't this seem better?" (to which the answer always seems like "no"), or exhortations about how CSS and to some extent HTML are obsolete constructs except as tools to be manipulated by JavaScript.
> I would love to see a clear explanation of why this is viewed as true. I've seen this stated many times, but generally in a way that seems framed to an audience already inclined to accept it as true.
To the credit of those that are skeptical, it is really difficult to explain exactly how much more productive it is without having experienced something it. The closest comparison I can make is how SCSS feels coming from plain CSS - it's like all of the things that you wish were easy are suddenly easy, while still being based off of something that you are familiar and already productive with. For people coming from traditional web development, I find that Svelte is the most comfortable tool for them to learn.
> I've never seen an explanation of this written and framed for people who wrote such applications before things like React or Vue existed, and genuinely don't understand (and want to) why the model they present is viewed as so much simpler.
I wrote such applications before React and Vue existed. I don't think I could ever go back. I would not describe it as a simpler model however - you're effectively writing two applications that communicate together to make one. The benefits you get for that are beyond worth it in my opinion. Assuming that you're using NextJS or something else that removes all of the boilerplate configuration, almost all of that complexity is hidden from you unless you need to modify it.
I don't know if I would be able to do very well explaining it myself, but generally - it allows for a more clean separation between systems. My backend exposes an API that my frontend can communicate with over background HTTP requests. I can swap out that backend on a whim (from Django to Rails to Express to Gin to...you get the picture) as long as it exposes the same API. With traditional web applications, I'd have to port over my templates and structure and state management system.
Most people don't switch backend frameworks on a daily basis though, I know I certainly don't. Some of the things that I enjoy are:
- Easier temporary messages/error handling (flash messages handle a limited version of this in traditional SSR environments) - Greater control of how my data is structured and posted (forms are simple enough once you learn them, but having your data structure dictated by DOM structure is less clean in my opinion) - Handling more complicated state is much easier - making a wizard interface with dynamically added and removed sections/questions doesn't need a large series of separate templates - Component structure is just better to work with than template structure (expanded upon below)
The real selling point for me is removing templating languages from your templates. I don't have to worry about what Jinja considers to be an acceptable replacement for control flow, I'm using a language that I already know and is fully integrated with the entire rest of the environment.
> I've genuinely looked for this, and I've found only either presentations of "here's how it works, doesn't this seem better?" (to which the answer always seems like "no")
Generally speaking, the larger and more complex your business requirements are, the more easily you can justify using an SPA framework. Every presentation I've found on that gives only trivial examples, likely for brevity.
> or exhortations about how CSS and to some extent HTML are obsolete constructs except as tools to be manipulated by JavaScript.
I believe that idea is part of the "make everything JS!" cargo cult. For apps that have very simple interactions, I use plain HTML+CSS and no JS. Use the right tool for the job, and all that. With that same mindset however, I'd be very hard pressed to say that there is no place or justification for the Reacts and Vues and Angulars of the world.
To the credit of those that are skeptical, it is really difficult to explain exactly how much more productive it is without having experienced something it. The closest comparison I can make is how SCSS feels coming from plain CSS - it's like all of the things that you wish were easy are suddenly easy, while still being based off of something that you are familiar and already productive with. For people coming from traditional web development, I find that Svelte is the most comfortable tool for them to learn.
> I've never seen an explanation of this written and framed for people who wrote such applications before things like React or Vue existed, and genuinely don't understand (and want to) why the model they present is viewed as so much simpler.
I wrote such applications before React and Vue existed. I don't think I could ever go back. I would not describe it as a simpler model however - you're effectively writing two applications that communicate together to make one. The benefits you get for that are beyond worth it in my opinion. Assuming that you're using NextJS or something else that removes all of the boilerplate configuration, almost all of that complexity is hidden from you unless you need to modify it.
I don't know if I would be able to do very well explaining it myself, but generally - it allows for a more clean separation between systems. My backend exposes an API that my frontend can communicate with over background HTTP requests. I can swap out that backend on a whim (from Django to Rails to Express to Gin to...you get the picture) as long as it exposes the same API. With traditional web applications, I'd have to port over my templates and structure and state management system.
Most people don't switch backend frameworks on a daily basis though, I know I certainly don't. Some of the things that I enjoy are:
- Easier temporary messages/error handling (flash messages handle a limited version of this in traditional SSR environments) - Greater control of how my data is structured and posted (forms are simple enough once you learn them, but having your data structure dictated by DOM structure is less clean in my opinion) - Handling more complicated state is much easier - making a wizard interface with dynamically added and removed sections/questions doesn't need a large series of separate templates - Component structure is just better to work with than template structure (expanded upon below)
The real selling point for me is removing templating languages from your templates. I don't have to worry about what Jinja considers to be an acceptable replacement for control flow, I'm using a language that I already know and is fully integrated with the entire rest of the environment.
> I've genuinely looked for this, and I've found only either presentations of "here's how it works, doesn't this seem better?" (to which the answer always seems like "no")
Generally speaking, the larger and more complex your business requirements are, the more easily you can justify using an SPA framework. Every presentation I've found on that gives only trivial examples, likely for brevity.
> or exhortations about how CSS and to some extent HTML are obsolete constructs except as tools to be manipulated by JavaScript.
I believe that idea is part of the "make everything JS!" cargo cult. For apps that have very simple interactions, I use plain HTML+CSS and no JS. Use the right tool for the job, and all that. With that same mindset however, I'd be very hard pressed to say that there is no place or justification for the Reacts and Vues and Angulars of the world.
> For people coming from traditional web development, I find that Svelte is the most comfortable tool for them to learn.
That's a helpful endorsement, thank you. I'd found Svelte, and it did look promising and more comfortable.
> I would not describe it as a simpler model however - you're effectively writing two applications that communicate together to make one. The benefits you get for that are beyond worth it in my opinion.
> I don't know if I would be able to do very well explaining it myself, but generally - it allows for a more clean separation between systems. My backend exposes an API that my frontend can communicate with over background HTTP requests.
That's a much better explanation than anything I'd seen before. Every description I'd seen before holds up React and Vue as simpler or easier than traditional web development, and that didn't seem at all accurate. The potential architectural advantage, at a cost of simplicity, makes much more sense.
(I do rather like statically compiled type-safe templates, but at that point, that's a separate question of preferred development language.)
> - Component structure is just better to work with than template structure (expanded upon below)
That's one of the clearest advantages I've previously recognized. The idea of putting the HTML and CSS and JavaScript for a component in one place, and combining that with other components, makes perfect sense to me.
That's a helpful endorsement, thank you. I'd found Svelte, and it did look promising and more comfortable.
> I would not describe it as a simpler model however - you're effectively writing two applications that communicate together to make one. The benefits you get for that are beyond worth it in my opinion.
> I don't know if I would be able to do very well explaining it myself, but generally - it allows for a more clean separation between systems. My backend exposes an API that my frontend can communicate with over background HTTP requests.
That's a much better explanation than anything I'd seen before. Every description I'd seen before holds up React and Vue as simpler or easier than traditional web development, and that didn't seem at all accurate. The potential architectural advantage, at a cost of simplicity, makes much more sense.
(I do rather like statically compiled type-safe templates, but at that point, that's a separate question of preferred development language.)
> - Component structure is just better to work with than template structure (expanded upon below)
That's one of the clearest advantages I've previously recognized. The idea of putting the HTML and CSS and JavaScript for a component in one place, and combining that with other components, makes perfect sense to me.
No, they're complaining about unwarranted complexity, privacy invasion, and monopolies, in the best tradition of "hackers". The web was a means of really easy self-publishing; we didn't need yet another shitty app platform or had a desire to serve the needs of the likes of CompuServe, AOL, etc because that already existed long before the web.
Frankly, the fact that we use frameworks which could provide JS-free options at little to no cost to the downstream developer but don't is more condemnation than anything else I can think of.
> have made developing the sort of advanced applications we demand exceptionally easy
Yes, it's only moderately more difficult than making it in a native app would be, and only significantly more bloated.
> have made developing the sort of advanced applications we demand exceptionally easy
Yes, it's only moderately more difficult than making it in a native app would be, and only significantly more bloated.
> that same ideology you can also write your desktop applications in x86 assembly
Coding a desktop application in assembly would be more work than in a high-level language, not less. The criticism against using frameworks such as React where they aren't needed is that it is a lot more work and that the end result is more complex than necessary. It is quite obvious that resume driven development is a thing.
Coding a desktop application in assembly would be more work than in a high-level language, not less. The criticism against using frameworks such as React where they aren't needed is that it is a lot more work and that the end result is more complex than necessary. It is quite obvious that resume driven development is a thing.
I think monetization has pushed almost everything to video. I miss the old days when people would actually write up how to do things.
I think that's less about monetization and more about barriers to entry. Everyone has a cellphone that takes video now, in many cases it's easier to publish video to the web than it is to write an article.
It's also about Google massively priortizing video results in their search engine.
While I agree that there are many people still doing weird stuff/things for non-commercial reasons they are being hosted within bigger and often closed eco-systems that are much more commercially minded.
That's not always a bad thing - a medium post/facebook group/stack overflow answer is still helpful and without the barrier to entry that a DIY website and probably more useful than some of the gif laden monstrosities that predated them.
But the homogenous web does lake the personality and charm of the old sites (now let me put away these rose tinted specs before I get carried away)
That's not always a bad thing - a medium post/facebook group/stack overflow answer is still helpful and without the barrier to entry that a DIY website and probably more useful than some of the gif laden monstrosities that predated them.
But the homogenous web does lake the personality and charm of the old sites (now let me put away these rose tinted specs before I get carried away)
Yeah, everybody does it with wordpress now.
- Google (and other search engines) trying to fight and downrank or de-list, rather than giving up and embracing, webspam sites.
That's what's made what remains of, and the continuations of, the old Web, practically invisible. It's all top sites and blogspam or domain-name-spam sites on the first couple pages, now. Even those "skip the first hundred" or whatever sites don't really fix it.
That's what's made what remains of, and the continuations of, the old Web, practically invisible. It's all top sites and blogspam or domain-name-spam sites on the first couple pages, now. Even those "skip the first hundred" or whatever sites don't really fix it.
I think spam just won the war of attrition. The search engines finally gave up.
Any open system that becomes sufficiently large to be worth attacking will be destroyed by spam, malware, scams, and other types of exploitation. The Internet is a dark forest.
When GPT type systems really get figured out by the spammers it will be game over. No open forums will remain. I don’t even think open but regulated social networks like Twitter or Facebook will survive. They won’t be able to distinguish spam at all anymore so the whole platform will become bots trying to sell or propagandize bots.
The future is closed enclaves and walled gardens that cost something or require that you know someone to enter.
Any open system that becomes sufficiently large to be worth attacking will be destroyed by spam, malware, scams, and other types of exploitation. The Internet is a dark forest.
When GPT type systems really get figured out by the spammers it will be game over. No open forums will remain. I don’t even think open but regulated social networks like Twitter or Facebook will survive. They won’t be able to distinguish spam at all anymore so the whole platform will become bots trying to sell or propagandize bots.
The future is closed enclaves and walled gardens that cost something or require that you know someone to enter.
> I don’t even think open but regulated social networks like Twitter or Facebook will survive. They won’t be able to distinguish spam at all anymore so the whole platform will become bots trying to sell or propagandize bots.
Beautiful.
I want to go back to 1995-2005s Internet. Small communities like HN, not Reddit monoliths.
Did you pick your Snoovatar and switch to the mobile app? No? Well, have eight thousand reminders of it.
Beautiful.
I want to go back to 1995-2005s Internet. Small communities like HN, not Reddit monoliths.
Did you pick your Snoovatar and switch to the mobile app? No? Well, have eight thousand reminders of it.
I think it’s a mixed bag too. The enclave style network could be more interesting and less toxic and full of stupid crap, but it will be much less discoverable.
The golden age was after search but before spammers got really smart, and also before algorithmic timelines turned social media to shit. I’d say 1998 to 2012 roughly.
Things went to total shit after that, largely due to algorithmic timelines prioritizing engagement (which means triggering crap and trolls) and the emergence of industrial scale web spam. Cryptocurrency didn’t help either as a lot of today’s spam is linked to crypto scams.
The golden age was after search but before spammers got really smart, and also before algorithmic timelines turned social media to shit. I’d say 1998 to 2012 roughly.
Things went to total shit after that, largely due to algorithmic timelines prioritizing engagement (which means triggering crap and trolls) and the emergence of industrial scale web spam. Cryptocurrency didn’t help either as a lot of today’s spam is linked to crypto scams.
There are MUDs still around last I knew, but I think that Eternal September was the harbinger of the end.
I think we need to look at more P2P communication to make the web smaller again. Share things with only your connections again, not FAANG & the entire world.
If your friends want to signal boost something, sure they can to their connections, but the default should be that you get stuff from someone directly connected to you, not via systems run by giant companies trying to learn how best to sell things to & manipulate the world.
I think we need to look at more P2P communication to make the web smaller again. Share things with only your connections again, not FAANG & the entire world.
If your friends want to signal boost something, sure they can to their connections, but the default should be that you get stuff from someone directly connected to you, not via systems run by giant companies trying to learn how best to sell things to & manipulate the world.
Plug for my favorite: https://alteraeon.com/
> I think we need to look at more P2P communication to make the web smaller again. Share things with only your connections again, not FAANG & the entire world.
There's stuff like that out there now. Secure Scuttlebutt comes to mind.
There's stuff like that out there now. Secure Scuttlebutt comes to mind.
Yeah, I've heard of a few such things. The trick is to get more users onto them instead of FAANG products.
I’m actually building a website where you can navigate/explore my local national forest with the camps and trailheads are organized like rooms in a MUD.
I have it set up so you can navigate and traverse it using the numpad keys for the directions of a compass.
I have it set up so you can navigate and traverse it using the numpad keys for the directions of a compass.
Personal directories still exist. https://indieseek.xyz/ That's an example of one of those. Webrings are still kind of with us, some people tried to revive them. https://indieweb.org/webring
Believe it or not, MUDs are still around too. https://www.aardwolf.com/
RIP Stumble Upon. I miss its random weirdness.
A useful sitemap.
Another lament for the loss of organic spaces. But nature didn’t go away - it’s still out there, if you would only step outside the mall for a moment.
It's not like every other RSS reader died that day. You have plenty of them, as a service, as an app, as a browser extension and much more.
The point isn't RSS; it's that the demise of Google Reader coincided with a phase transition.
Not unlike the way AOL "killed" Usenet.
Overall, people don't scale. Any more than that joyous little stand-alone afternoon script in your favorite tool can survive blowing up to fully distributed, asynchronous cloud deployment.
The most fun I'm having in the age of social media is MeWe.
Not unlike the way AOL "killed" Usenet.
Overall, people don't scale. Any more than that joyous little stand-alone afternoon script in your favorite tool can survive blowing up to fully distributed, asynchronous cloud deployment.
The most fun I'm having in the age of social media is MeWe.
Exactly!! It's also not like RSS died that day. People say it is, but um... it's still around.
The 2012-2013 timeframe matches my general timeline for things as well, though mine is a bit hazier as it's a transition timeframe, not an event.
The 2012 era was when we really started to see the weaponization of attention take off. Smartphones weren't that terrible (Crackberry jokes aside) pre-2012, at least in terms of being attention vampires. In app purchases had become a thing a year or two before, and people were figuring out how to make it work - with 2012 being around the time they figured it out.
The variable reward "drive your users crazy" stuff hit around then, and with it, the wave of "algorithmic feeds" - not just chronologically ordered stuff.
Facebook moved to a more heavily algorithmic feed in 2011, mobile apps stared more actively driving their users crazy, etc.
So that timeframe was when the internet went from "Everyone sees the same thing on the same site, and you easily hit the end of new content if you care" to "It's a slot machine, and it's in your pocket, and there's a notification to get you back into the slot machine."
And it's just been downhill from there. :(
The 2012 era was when we really started to see the weaponization of attention take off. Smartphones weren't that terrible (Crackberry jokes aside) pre-2012, at least in terms of being attention vampires. In app purchases had become a thing a year or two before, and people were figuring out how to make it work - with 2012 being around the time they figured it out.
The variable reward "drive your users crazy" stuff hit around then, and with it, the wave of "algorithmic feeds" - not just chronologically ordered stuff.
Facebook moved to a more heavily algorithmic feed in 2011, mobile apps stared more actively driving their users crazy, etc.
So that timeframe was when the internet went from "Everyone sees the same thing on the same site, and you easily hit the end of new content if you care" to "It's a slot machine, and it's in your pocket, and there's a notification to get you back into the slot machine."
And it's just been downhill from there. :(
> Smartphones weren't that terrible (Crackberry jokes aside) pre-2012, at least in terms of being attention vampires.
Before smartphones and the web we used to waste time with email lists, minesweeper and paper publications. Most offices had newspaper subscriptions.
Before smartphones and the web we used to waste time with email lists, minesweeper and paper publications. Most offices had newspaper subscriptions.
the weekly posts like this always come off as self-centered to me, whining about how the world revolves around the author and how it really should've created the perfect community for them and sent it over without any effort on their part
I miss having real search engines like Altavista
I hate threads like this, because they tend to degenerate into extremely solipsistic negativity. I'm also pretty circumspect about claims like "the good internet died" which seem to me to reek of unexamined nostalgia. That throat clearing being done, one of the single greatest degradations of the internet I can remember is when The Ringer replaced Grantland.
Agreed. Threads like this make me want to quit HN. There's an overwhelming amount of cynicism and negativity on these forums.
The indie web is alive and well. The bar to creating awesome products has lowered and indie developers are working on cool shit daily. Go check Product Hunt, Makerlog (disclaimer: I made it), or Twitter. Dozens of indie apps and websites launching every sunrise.
The indie open web isn't dead, not by a long shot. It's only got better.
A new generation of indie developers are rediscovering what it means to be a small creator online, embracing their communities and building products that put the user's interests first.
The indie web is alive and well. The bar to creating awesome products has lowered and indie developers are working on cool shit daily. Go check Product Hunt, Makerlog (disclaimer: I made it), or Twitter. Dozens of indie apps and websites launching every sunrise.
The indie open web isn't dead, not by a long shot. It's only got better.
A new generation of indie developers are rediscovering what it means to be a small creator online, embracing their communities and building products that put the user's interests first.
Makerlog says you started it in 2018 while in high school, and your age really is showing in this comment.
>The indie open web isn't dead, not by a long shot.
You can't even use makerlog without a twitter or facebook account. Do I really need to say more?
Fact is you created yet another centralized and walled garden, that maybe hopefully won't turn on it's users when VC money comes knocking or whoever the centralized gatekeepers are beholden to (advertisers, governments, media, web hosts, api partners, insiders, business partners, investors, internal politics) says so. The web wasn't always this way.
>It's only got better.
I'm barred from using your newer better indie web because I refuse voluntarily consent to global-scale social engineering experiments like twitter and facebook. The web wasn't always this way.
Your website also has the dark pattern of filling the screen with nothing but 'make an account' when you load the homepage. The web wasn't always this way.
Your page takes longer to load on a 1000mbit connection and a top of the line computer than many lightweight pages took to load on dialup... and yours is light years ahead of many other modern websites. The web wasn't always this way.
Its making a comeback, for sure, but it's in spite of and parallel to the modern web. There's a lot of crossover with the dweb folks.
>The bar to creating awesome products has lowered
Agree wholeheartedly. But the modern centralized web is designed to exclude 'indie' products to the maximum extent possible.
Edit: I realize my comment comes off harsh, I'm really not trying to shit on your webapp. It looks neat and I love the readily available API, that's something the modern web needs much more of.
>The indie open web isn't dead, not by a long shot.
You can't even use makerlog without a twitter or facebook account. Do I really need to say more?
Fact is you created yet another centralized and walled garden, that maybe hopefully won't turn on it's users when VC money comes knocking or whoever the centralized gatekeepers are beholden to (advertisers, governments, media, web hosts, api partners, insiders, business partners, investors, internal politics) says so. The web wasn't always this way.
>It's only got better.
I'm barred from using your newer better indie web because I refuse voluntarily consent to global-scale social engineering experiments like twitter and facebook. The web wasn't always this way.
Your website also has the dark pattern of filling the screen with nothing but 'make an account' when you load the homepage. The web wasn't always this way.
Your page takes longer to load on a 1000mbit connection and a top of the line computer than many lightweight pages took to load on dialup... and yours is light years ahead of many other modern websites. The web wasn't always this way.
Its making a comeback, for sure, but it's in spite of and parallel to the modern web. There's a lot of crossover with the dweb folks.
>The bar to creating awesome products has lowered
Agree wholeheartedly. But the modern centralized web is designed to exclude 'indie' products to the maximum extent possible.
Edit: I realize my comment comes off harsh, I'm really not trying to shit on your webapp. It looks neat and I love the readily available API, that's something the modern web needs much more of.
> Makerlog says you started it in 2018 while in high school, and your age really is showing in this comment.
You could make your point without age-related condescension. Had you not added this part, I'd honestly entered the whole comment much more receptively.
> Fact is you created yet another centralized and walled garden
That's quite true, you're right. Because it's the only way a one-dude team like me can create a product that solves problems like the one it solves.
> You can't even use makerlog without a twitter or facebook account. Do I really need to say more?
You can if you send me a message via email asking for a regular account. After all, in this new indie web, there are humans behind the screen that do care about these issues.
I've manually created accounts countless times. I'd gladly make one for you! The social login part is a spam prevention measure (and a very effective one, I must say, as I recently closed email signups due to spam).
> Your page takes longer to load on a 1000mbit connection and a top of the line computer than many lightweight pages took to load on dialup
Yeah, we're not in the 1990s anymore. Cope. Users expect more and products can do better.
You could make your point without age-related condescension. Had you not added this part, I'd honestly entered the whole comment much more receptively.
> Fact is you created yet another centralized and walled garden
That's quite true, you're right. Because it's the only way a one-dude team like me can create a product that solves problems like the one it solves.
> You can't even use makerlog without a twitter or facebook account. Do I really need to say more?
You can if you send me a message via email asking for a regular account. After all, in this new indie web, there are humans behind the screen that do care about these issues.
I've manually created accounts countless times. I'd gladly make one for you! The social login part is a spam prevention measure (and a very effective one, I must say, as I recently closed email signups due to spam).
> Your page takes longer to load on a 1000mbit connection and a top of the line computer than many lightweight pages took to load on dialup
Yeah, we're not in the 1990s anymore. Cope. Users expect more and products can do better.
Could you give this an RSs feed? Especially for the recent/latest things.
> Makerlog says you started it in 2018 while in high school, and your age really is showing in this comment
I only just saw this, but it was an egregious violation of the rules here. Personal attacks are not allowed, and importing someone's personal details to use against them in an argument is seriously not allowed. No more of this, please.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I only just saw this, but it was an egregious violation of the rules here. Personal attacks are not allowed, and importing someone's personal details to use against them in an argument is seriously not allowed. No more of this, please.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Just because they were both started by the same guy does not make one a replacement for the other. ESPN ran Grantland into the ground ages before The Ringer was even launched.
It was less than six months between Grantland shutting down and The Ringer starting, and less than a year between Simmons leaving and The Ringer starting. I was definitely not the only one who hoped The Ringer would continue what Grantland was.
I do not have strong feelings about whose "fault" Grantland's failure was. I didn't intend for what I wrote to be an attack on Bill Simmons.
I do not have strong feelings about whose "fault" Grantland's failure was. I didn't intend for what I wrote to be an attack on Bill Simmons.
To some extent Google did us all a favor. You really should be using a self-hosted feed reader or app that is not pumping interest data to a privacy-shredding monster like Google.
The organic variety of internet destinations of those days in particular. Now it’s just a choice of which walled garden of algo driven attention optimising dark pattern-ish place you prefer.
There must be more sites these days I’d imagine but it sure doesn’t feel that way. All roads seem to lead back to Rome/ major platform.
That’s also what makes hn so nice. It’s maintained some of that old vibe somehow not just in atmosphere but also in the links.
There must be more sites these days I’d imagine but it sure doesn’t feel that way. All roads seem to lead back to Rome/ major platform.
That’s also what makes hn so nice. It’s maintained some of that old vibe somehow not just in atmosphere but also in the links.
> walled garden of algo driven attention optimising dark pattern
The devices are further enabling this. My first smartphone had a physical keyboard. It was the best. Now you can't find one at all. Makes me just that less likely to attempt to type what I'm really looking for and instead to scroll to what the algorithm thinks I want, or pull-to-refresh. If I do venture to type/swipe, I often mangle it terribly or wind up leaning on another algorithm that thinks it knows what I want to say.
The devices are further enabling this. My first smartphone had a physical keyboard. It was the best. Now you can't find one at all. Makes me just that less likely to attempt to type what I'm really looking for and instead to scroll to what the algorithm thinks I want, or pull-to-refresh. If I do venture to type/swipe, I often mangle it terribly or wind up leaning on another algorithm that thinks it knows what I want to say.
Physical keyboard phones still exist.
Probably not how you want it, though.
https://www.unihertz.com/titan.html
Probably not how you want it, though.
https://www.unihertz.com/titan.html
> The organic variety of internet destinations of those days in particular
Ironically, this is what a lot of people criticised Google Reader for: "it's killing variety in the space, empowering Google to control the RSS ecosystem as a whole". Which it did - the death of Reader was the death of that ecosystem.
Ironically, this is what a lot of people criticised Google Reader for: "it's killing variety in the space, empowering Google to control the RSS ecosystem as a whole". Which it did - the death of Reader was the death of that ecosystem.
http://battleblimps.com/lakehurst.html
Larry Rodriges chronicles his life as a blimp jockey in Geocities. His daughter keeps this running after he passed away. This is the good internet.
Larry Rodriges chronicles his life as a blimp jockey in Geocities. His daughter keeps this running after he passed away. This is the good internet.
I really want a Yahoo style internet portal back. It could be wiki-style. You click down through subjects until you find what you're looking for. It could effectively be the anti-Amazon if you include alternative options to buy item xyz.
That site is inscrutable, have the owners ever used a web browser?
The good internet died when suck.com did.
No, it was the September that never ended.
I want to post something positive here, so all I'll say is at least Newgrounds.com is
1. Still around
2. Still independent (and run by Tom Fulp)
I'm a proud paying member on two accounts (one from '05, one from '07, though I lurked as early as '02) and I hope it never, ever goes away.
1. Still around
2. Still independent (and run by Tom Fulp)
I'm a proud paying member on two accounts (one from '05, one from '07, though I lurked as early as '02) and I hope it never, ever goes away.
If I were to be nostalgic, I would say I miss majordomo mailing lists filtered by procmail, and not just to be a kermudgeon.
If this predates you, imagine the content of your favorite subreddit or HN, where membership itself was curated by people credible in a topic, where you could read sincere conversations and arguments between knowledgable (or perhaps just enthusiastic) indviduals, with a defacto Chatham House rule around opinions and pseudonymity, and read it at your leisure without the risk of missing anything, without ads, cookies, popups, or PII hoovering, and with a real-time responsive threading interface (via mutt or even pine) where you could use simple / or vi-like commands, where you could index and pile the whole thing into a database if you wanted to.
What made the old internet good was it was mostly a privilege to be a part of it, granted and revoked by the communities themselves, and not by a back end layer of unskilled governance activists.
I managed news servers back in the day, and I'm tempted to just spin up an NNTP server again with my own damn cabal (TINC!LLTC!) and to hell with everyone else. The main change I would make is limit the binaries hierarchy, strip any and all markup for anything that isn't code, provide support only for an open pyCurses client, provide a robust killfile interface for filtering low energy shitposts, facilitate reasonable pseudonymity, no idiotic picture profiles, and probably apply some modern ML moderation tools.
HN already does about 40% of this today, but the idea of starting something that emmulates the platforms today only with a different political flavour is predicated on the same fundamental problem that it is for the public instead of being for people who can pass a basic skills and literacy bar.
The fediverse is based on real time addictive interaction, whereas time in news threads was measured in days and weeks. Discord seems to be for people who really want to talk to you, but you don't really want to talk to them. Blockchains appear mainly to be a market for matching money launderers with people nurturing untreated mental illness. (together at last!), and one-off radical political sites are just honeypots for patsies to get set up to justify law enforcement budgets.
As far as I can tell, an influencer on a social platform is just someone who shares pictures of their butt, and twitter seems to have found their sweet spot as a broadcast system for people united in their shared predicament of having nothing challenging to say.
The text based internet solved a lot of problems platforms struggle with today using simple rules, because the platforms have scaled beyond their use cases, and their future looks a lot like that of AOL/Compuserve. The good internet is still ahead of us, and probably using tools we have neglected.
If this predates you, imagine the content of your favorite subreddit or HN, where membership itself was curated by people credible in a topic, where you could read sincere conversations and arguments between knowledgable (or perhaps just enthusiastic) indviduals, with a defacto Chatham House rule around opinions and pseudonymity, and read it at your leisure without the risk of missing anything, without ads, cookies, popups, or PII hoovering, and with a real-time responsive threading interface (via mutt or even pine) where you could use simple / or vi-like commands, where you could index and pile the whole thing into a database if you wanted to.
What made the old internet good was it was mostly a privilege to be a part of it, granted and revoked by the communities themselves, and not by a back end layer of unskilled governance activists.
I managed news servers back in the day, and I'm tempted to just spin up an NNTP server again with my own damn cabal (TINC!LLTC!) and to hell with everyone else. The main change I would make is limit the binaries hierarchy, strip any and all markup for anything that isn't code, provide support only for an open pyCurses client, provide a robust killfile interface for filtering low energy shitposts, facilitate reasonable pseudonymity, no idiotic picture profiles, and probably apply some modern ML moderation tools.
HN already does about 40% of this today, but the idea of starting something that emmulates the platforms today only with a different political flavour is predicated on the same fundamental problem that it is for the public instead of being for people who can pass a basic skills and literacy bar.
The fediverse is based on real time addictive interaction, whereas time in news threads was measured in days and weeks. Discord seems to be for people who really want to talk to you, but you don't really want to talk to them. Blockchains appear mainly to be a market for matching money launderers with people nurturing untreated mental illness. (together at last!), and one-off radical political sites are just honeypots for patsies to get set up to justify law enforcement budgets.
As far as I can tell, an influencer on a social platform is just someone who shares pictures of their butt, and twitter seems to have found their sweet spot as a broadcast system for people united in their shared predicament of having nothing challenging to say.
The text based internet solved a lot of problems platforms struggle with today using simple rules, because the platforms have scaled beyond their use cases, and their future looks a lot like that of AOL/Compuserve. The good internet is still ahead of us, and probably using tools we have neglected.
> I managed news servers back in the day, and I'm tempted
> to just spin up an NNTP server again with my own damn
> cabal (TINC!LLTC!) and to hell with everyone else
I've thought about doing this exact thing over the years, but could never get anyone else interested. If you do it, I'd happily join and contribute
I've thought about doing this exact thing over the years, but could never get anyone else interested. If you do it, I'd happily join and contribute
> If I were to be nostalgic, I would say I miss majordomo mailing lists filtered by procmail, and not just to be a kermudgeon.
I literally just had an email arrive from a mailman list, which from what I remember (it's been 20 years since majordomo) is pretty much the same as majordomo.
I literally just had an email arrive from a mailman list, which from what I remember (it's been 20 years since majordomo) is pretty much the same as majordomo.
I still use an RSS reader <https://sumi.news>.
It's not Google Reader, but it's a clean interface for reading RSS, Twitter, and newsletters. And there's a view of the latest post from each feed, so I don't get lost in the firehose and miss out on updates from people who post less frequently.
It's not Google Reader, but it's a clean interface for reading RSS, Twitter, and newsletters. And there's a view of the latest post from each feed, so I don't get lost in the firehose and miss out on updates from people who post less frequently.
If you can’t achieve the same levels of joy and curiosity with the Internet of 2021 as you could 10 or 20 years ago, that’s on you. The moment I fell in love with the web in the early 90s was looking at weather satellite images, and realising I could see stars in the background. I was sat at my dad’s computer, talking to a satellite in space, beholding the universe. And yet the internet’s immeasurably more powerful and magical now.
I know people mourn the ‘decentralised’ web of the blogosphere but I really think people forget some of the failure modes of that world. Much of the conversation was driven by ‘A-listers’ who in many cases were garbage human beings. It was hard to get eyeballs and interactions on your stuff without them though. Most of the time you were writing for half a dozen friends. Hint: that’s what you miss! You can still do it though. You used to have your corner of the Internet and now most people hang out in a busy mall, but there’s nothing stopping you going back. There are all sorts of niche sites or corners of other platforms out there (many of which still have RSS if that’s your actual problem). But I think if most people are honest, deep down they find these venues a bit parochial now and avoid them while simultaneously lamenting their loss. Many of them are also run by young people you no longer have much in common with.
I’m as much of a curmudgeon as anyone but I find these increasingly regular articles about how the Internet is rubbish now absolutely baffling. The pie got much bigger, it’s flavours more diverse. Yes you maybe have to work harder to find your place in it. In exchange, everyone now has a place in it. That’s good.
I know people mourn the ‘decentralised’ web of the blogosphere but I really think people forget some of the failure modes of that world. Much of the conversation was driven by ‘A-listers’ who in many cases were garbage human beings. It was hard to get eyeballs and interactions on your stuff without them though. Most of the time you were writing for half a dozen friends. Hint: that’s what you miss! You can still do it though. You used to have your corner of the Internet and now most people hang out in a busy mall, but there’s nothing stopping you going back. There are all sorts of niche sites or corners of other platforms out there (many of which still have RSS if that’s your actual problem). But I think if most people are honest, deep down they find these venues a bit parochial now and avoid them while simultaneously lamenting their loss. Many of them are also run by young people you no longer have much in common with.
I’m as much of a curmudgeon as anyone but I find these increasingly regular articles about how the Internet is rubbish now absolutely baffling. The pie got much bigger, it’s flavours more diverse. Yes you maybe have to work harder to find your place in it. In exchange, everyone now has a place in it. That’s good.
Maybe what they mourn is that that WAS "the internet" whereas now it's on the fringes while "the internet" by and large is brainwashing corporate shit sites that bleep and bloop like a kid's toy every 5 seconds to try and keep your attention.
If you’re just angry that your specific preferences aren’t centred on the Internet of today I don’t really know how to console you. That said, I don’t know how anyone can compare today’s Internet to peak Flash and accuse it of being too bleepy and bloopy.
Yeah, I mostly agree. I'm on a niche interest-based Discord server with about 20 other people and it feels exactly the same as it did on IRC 20 years ago, except that I can do it on my phone and I don't miss anything when I'm not connected.
People really look at this stuff through some bizarre rose-tinted glasses. IRC, Something Awful, etc. were on average just as toxic if not worse than the average modern-day online community.
People really look at this stuff through some bizarre rose-tinted glasses. IRC, Something Awful, etc. were on average just as toxic if not worse than the average modern-day online community.
Ugh I went from immediately disagreeing with you to realizing that ofcourse you're correct.
Eternal September?
Oh no, it's someone lamenting the loss of a program which didn't even exist until 2005.
Things were always better in the past, that's because we don't remember the bad things. Apart from Punch the Monkey.
The internet is what you make of it. There are risks to it in the future (centralisation of DNS and requirements on centralised SSL being the current ones), but there always have been. Some things are easier (running your own server, or multiple servers, on multiple contents, with tons on bandwidth), some things are harder (getting other people to accept your email), but the internet is what you make of it, and there's far more you can make of it today if you want once you stop worrying what other people do.
Oh no, it's someone lamenting the loss of a program which didn't even exist until 2005.
Things were always better in the past, that's because we don't remember the bad things. Apart from Punch the Monkey.
The internet is what you make of it. There are risks to it in the future (centralisation of DNS and requirements on centralised SSL being the current ones), but there always have been. Some things are easier (running your own server, or multiple servers, on multiple contents, with tons on bandwidth), some things are harder (getting other people to accept your email), but the internet is what you make of it, and there's far more you can make of it today if you want once you stop worrying what other people do.
Is it one of the usual "eternal September" article?
Eternal September started in 1993. I think it is the first time the "good internet died". I wasn't there, I really started to use the internet somewhere in the late 90s, with a home dial-up modem, making me one of the people who "killed the good internet".
The author of the article, and many people here are probably eternal September kids too, so internet killers accusing other, younger ones of killing the internet. The youngest ones are already from a lineage of internet killers and are getting ready to designate the next in line.
My opinion: despite everything we like to complain about, today's internet is the best internet, and tomorrow's internet will be even better. I have my nostalgia too, and some things really became worse, but there is so much we can do with it now, a lot of it we take for granted that I don't think I want to go back in time. Let memories be memories.
Eternal September started in 1993. I think it is the first time the "good internet died". I wasn't there, I really started to use the internet somewhere in the late 90s, with a home dial-up modem, making me one of the people who "killed the good internet".
The author of the article, and many people here are probably eternal September kids too, so internet killers accusing other, younger ones of killing the internet. The youngest ones are already from a lineage of internet killers and are getting ready to designate the next in line.
My opinion: despite everything we like to complain about, today's internet is the best internet, and tomorrow's internet will be even better. I have my nostalgia too, and some things really became worse, but there is so much we can do with it now, a lot of it we take for granted that I don't think I want to go back in time. Let memories be memories.
That day I switched to feedly.com, it's good, but I miss the social features of Google Reader, where I could just mark things as interesting and I and other friends could see what each other thought was interesting without it polluting other channels.
Tip: it didn't actually die. I use Miniflux, which is a self-hosted RSS reader. It has a page with all the feeds on it, when you click on a feed, it displays the articles for that feed. You can also just look at the river, like the HN front page. I never do it that way though lol.