Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?

#211

Post by technofiend » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:23 AM UTC

Lammy wrote: post #88

geocrasher wrote: post #73

The old slashdot.org The old digg.com Web Rings were amazing, and I think the idea still has merit. Why did everyone stop using them? My ealiest memories were pre-net, on Prodigy and AOL, long before they were 'net connected and could email each other. I learned what connectivity was at 2400 baud. I didn't discover BBS's until much later, around 1993-4,and was at 14.4k at that point. I never really understood fidonet…

The old SomethingAwful for me. > Web Rings were amazing, and I think the idea still has merit. Why did everyone stop using them? They stopped having web pages and started having Xangas/Friendsters/Myspaces that had the networking feature built-in.

Fark/Totalfark was fun for a while but descended into an echo chamber of cliques and in-jokes. It was a good preview of what reddit would eventually become.

Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?

#212

Post by rhblake » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:26 AM UTC

pimlottc wrote: post #144

hattori wrote: post #35

Old school quake 1/2/3 news portals! Those were fun. Classic example today would be https://www.quakeworld.nu/

Oh yeah, so many hours spent reading all the original Quake sites back in the day, Joost Schuur's Aftershock, Blue's Quake Rag, sCary's Quakeholio, Redwood's Quake Stomping Grounds... such an exciting time, it seemed like there was something new happening every day.

Stephen "Blue" Heaslip is still at it, ~24 years later, doing daily updates [0]. Full archives stretching back to 1996. Quite a bit of history in there.

[0] https://www.bluesnews.com/

Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?

#213

Post by pixelperfect » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:26 AM UTC

philistine wrote: post #210

pixelperfect wrote: post #207

- old GameFAQs (before the GameSpot merger) - Homestar Runner - YTMND - Newgrounds - ieatcrayons.com (a webcomic that 11-year-old me found very amusing) finally, not a website, but Ragnarok Online was the first MMO I played and the one I have the best memories from

You'll have to be more specific about GameFAQs. I use it extensively to track Game Boy game credits and release dates and it never fails to amaze me how much information is on there.

I meant the GameFAQs message boards

Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?

#214

Post by nocman » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:26 AM UTC

I was going to say I missed http://zombo.com/ (because at some point I had checked, and it no longer worked).

But I just tried it, and it's working again.

Hurray! -- "you can do anything at zombo com!" :-D

Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?

#215

Post by EamonnMR » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:26 AM UTC

ken wrote: post #105

bdcravens wrote: post #101

So many sites that technically still exist but have changed slashdot shoutcast pricewatch anandtech - now it has such a sterile, corporate feel - back in the day in addition to reviews they'd do write-ups on their own infrastructure - not in the nebulous sense, but actually step by step, detailing what they were running (ColdFusion at the time as I recall) allaire.com (no longer exists) - before Github or any of the…

wunderground. It used to be fast and simple even on a 14.4K modem. Now it's slow even on broadband.

That was our go to radar site. With dark sky off Android, what's good now?

Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?

#216

Post by personlurking » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:26 AM UTC

fian wrote: post #198

personlurking wrote: post #148

There was one site that had something like 100(?) brain teaser exercises - I suppose you could also call them puzzles - which became successively more difficult as you moved on (ie, hours to figure out just one of them). Each was distinct and challenged you in a different way. I only used the site once, around the early 2000s, but I forgot its name and never found it again.

Was is programming focused? https://projecteuler.net/

When I look at the Archives on Project Euler, the same general idea is there but the site I miss wasn't programming focused. I seem to recall a giant red, blue or green background and the puzzles weren't just text-based, but visual.

Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?

#217

Post by dotancohen » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:28 AM UTC

cmdrtaco wrote: post #56

vardump wrote: post #7

1996 or so: altavista.digital.com! I loved (and got pretty good at due to daily training, heh) using boolean operations to find whatever I wanted. No Google back then. Nowadays Google finds so much noise that I wish I could use boolean operations once again to weed out the spam. Also liked slashdot.org in its early days.

Me too.

Your handle looks suspiciously familiar. How's Kathleen doing?

Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?

#218

Post by EamonnMR » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:28 AM UTC

arrty88 wrote: post #85

not a website, but the old battle.net, and irc in general

Also the StarCraft role-playing scene.

Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?

#219

Post by beamatronic » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:29 AM UTC

Echo.com - steaming audio

Sidewalk.com - social events

Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?

#220

Post by Emore » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 3:30 AM UTC

Oink's Pink Palace. Yes it was a torrent tracker so arguably illegal, but the breadth and depth of music it cataloged (not to speak of the community) is still unmatched.