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Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?

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Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?

#221

Post by mdp2021 »

> Where would I even go to find other sites that might be of interest?

Here?! HN is a collection of references to articles from the most varied www sources...

n submissions per day over m different sites, from l users which provide partial indirect profiles: you think one may not find new interesting sources? It would be a job in itself, to check where the submissions lead you.

(n, m, l: maybe dang could provide stats, it would be interesting. Edit: since we are here: most common www sources; www sources with the best upper quintile of upvotes in submissions (i.e. when they are noted, they really are)...)

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?

#223

Post by hello4353 »

jfengel wrote: post #65

You explored it. That's it. Turns out there's less of it than you imagined. There are, of course, plenty of sites that you could visit. Most of them will be incredibly boring. Years ago you found that interesting just because it was all new, but you don't any more because you've seen similar things already. I suspect that most of those "5 to 6 sites" are aggregators like Hacker News where people seek out new stuff (o…

Not in my experience. Once in a while i find very interesting sites that has existed for several years and i have found very recently. For example gwern.net schneier.com .

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?

#224

Post by bserge »

You don't really explore "the Internet", you explore interests. Interested in custom router/PC/phone mods? Start by using Google and major aggregators and visit all the user posted links, that's where the unique stuff is.

Sadly, you're right, the same few sites are in a circlejerk, with Google enabling them. You don't get many results from independent forums like you used to in the past, they're mostly buried. Still, it's doable.

The people's attitude however, that's what changed. I guess with the influx of not so knowledgeable/curious people it was bound to happen.

Used to be you'd ask "how to overclock X" and get replies with advice or more interested people. Now the comments are 80% "it's not possible", "the cooling can't handle it", "TDP is too high", "that's dangerous", which is barely relevant to the question.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?

#225

Post by wott »

cuddlybacon wrote: post #41

Could it be that your over 30? There is a problem known as the multi-armed bandit problem[0]. The problem deals with situations where you have to chose between different options you could take, but you don't start off with full knowledge of the options. You can spend time learning the options (exploring) or you can spend time using the best option you already know of (exploit). Importantly, you can't do both at the s…

What you describe for humans may be applied to the Internet itself: it turned 30.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?

#226

Post by RGamma »

imarg wrote: post #48

For some reason this post brought to my mind the website of Fravia [1]. It is defunct now (he died 10+ years ago) but it is archived and various mirrors exist (have a look at the wikipedia page [2]). I never really got to explore the website in depth but the few articles I've read I remember to have been very interesting. More important he had some tips on how to make better searches to uncover websites that might no…

There's alternate search engines that prioritize their results differently, like millionshort or wiby.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?

#227

Post by wott »

mdp2021 wrote: post #221

> Where would I even go to find other sites that might be of interest? Here?! HN is a collection of references to articles from the most varied www sources... n submissions per day over m different sites, from l users which provide partial indirect profiles: you think one may not find new interesting sources? It would be a job in itself, to check where the submissions lead you. ( n , m , l : maybe dang could provide…

> It would be a job in itself, to check where the submissions lead you.

Most likely, straight to the comments section.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?

#228

Post by kaetemi »

bduerst wrote: post #99
jfengel wrote: post #65

You explored it. That's it. Turns out there's less of it than you imagined. There are, of course, plenty of sites that you could visit. Most of them will be incredibly boring. Years ago you found that interesting just because it was all new, but you don't any more because you've seen similar things already. I suspect that most of those "5 to 6 sites" are aggregators like Hacker News where people seek out new stuff (o…

Also new technology = new plateaus to explore. Internet really boomed and flourished in mid 2000's, and then the mobile and the app space took off in mid 2010s, where we had new content/ideas/innovation. Even way before then, VHS kicked off a video golden age in the 1980s. Kind of curious to see the next frontier that gets propped up by a technology this decade. I thought it was going to be consumer robotics but it's…

Decentralised apps seem to be a booming 'wild west' creative outlet nowadays. NFTs are popular, but there's definitely potential for more interesting use cases.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?

#230

Post by nivenkos »

heavyset_go wrote: post #97
smusamashah wrote: post #87

Earlier 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.

TikTok is the closest thing to the early Internet IMO, although it's becoming much more commercial like Instagram now.

But that sort of democratisation of view points and content is great.

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