Shit(or really effective depending on perspective) search engines.
Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
151–160 of 286 posts
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#152I will sometimes start with a zone file, like com.zone. I search for keywords in registered domainnames. Then I filter by nameserver (registrar). Finally, I run a script to fetch the page titles. You would be surprised at how effective this can be in finding websites that you would never be able to find using simple Google searches. Of course, it is cumbersome; search engines can make this process very easy but they…
How can I get a zone file?
Today it is easy to create zone files from free, publicly available internet scan data, e.g., scans.io and censys.io. This is arguably a better solution than zone files. Not every domain name in a zone file necesarily corresponds to a website. Whereas scans allow to focus only on websites.
Requesting zone files from the registry was the traditional method. ICANN tries to require registries to provide them to the public, with limited success. Downloading com.zone/net.zone from Verisign should be relatively straightforward (not sure if edu.zone is available anymore). However with gTLDs there are hundreds of registries now, with potentially hundreds of different rules on zone file access; some registries like ccTLDs never had zone file access programs. Even registries that seem like they would be easy to deal with can have silly restrictions, e.g., the .org registry used to have a requirement that the requester needed to have stable IP address.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#153You could always visit https://stumblingon.com and see random indie pages.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#154Time for my pet theory! Search is orthogonal to exploration. At first Google/yahoo/etc we're so bad that improvements in their systems made everything better. But at some point they started trading one against the other because the easy wins were gone. Because Google is the market leader (at least by the time this becomes relevant) everyone tried to compete with them and follow their path. Google optimized search rea…
This is basically my theory too!
Put simply, the dominating means of navigation and discovery on the internet switched from directories (transparent, easy to explore) to search engines (black box, returns result tailored to your input). And each website you ended up at might have had its own directory inviting you to explore further! Though maybe that bit hasn't changed too much.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just wrote an answer to this post and saw your comment afterwards. I am over 30 and the pattern I explained in my comment all points towards getting older and mature. Does it mean that young people are still exploring the internet and computer today the way I use to back when I was young?
> Does it mean that young people are still exploring the internet and computer today the way I use to back when I was young? Yes, but they're exploring TikTok, YouTube and to a lesser extent, Instagram. There are oceans of content to explore on those platforms.
Don't forget Discord, Minecraft, and Roblox.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#156I read a lot of personal blogs. Bloggers tend to link to other blogs, so it's somewhat self sustaining. I've seen modern approaches to webrings and other reinventions of Web 1.0 sharing tricks, but none have really adhered to my habits. All of that to say: I think it's more about habits (and breaking out of the search engine hole) than anything else. It's still very possible (and easy) to explore the World Wide Web;…
How could I start to do this?
HN sometimes has interesting blogs but I don't get caught in a sustained loop of interesting things. That sounds nice. I'd want to join.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#157When I am in that type of mood I just head to my huge uni library and randomly pick a book. No unnecessary jabbering from the chimp troupe to deal with, and no wading thro all sorts of scams, advertising, self promotion etc. Todays internet just doesnt match a nice library.
If I could give you a thousand upvotes, I would. I have spent countless hours in libraries exploring the stacks, absolutely everything was at my fingertips. Nothing can compare.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here are a couple of user created content subreddits I like. They fall into the general overlapping categories of making and fixing things, and taking cool pictures of clouds, plants, and *nix desktops. :) If you prefer the new layout you can "s/old/www/g". https://old.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CLOUDS/ https://old.reddit.com/r/electronics/ https://old.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/ https://o…
let me add https://old.reddit.com/r/proceduralgeneration/
Wow, 16 year old me would've killed for this link in highschool. Thanks for this one!
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#159There’s still plenty to explore. Social media profiles, YouTube content, there’s a lot of stuff out there it’s just not in traditional website form.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#160What does “exploring” even mean?
Can someone explain how one used to “explore the internet?”