Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet? • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by ahub » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:01 AM UTC

I agree with most of the opinions in the comments. Might be you, might be the internet might be both.

Might be you: You're bored and you're searching wrong. For a feel similar to geocities try the 'gemini' protocol. Its a text-only web that really feels like the 90s'. Lots of personnal passionnate content, new world to discover !

Might be the internet: There is a classic article "Geeks, MOPs and sociopaths" that present a classic subculture cycle [0]. 1:Passionate people start it. 2:It gains traction and looses some of its original taste. 3:Someone finds a way to make a profit out of it and optimizes it for money. Maybe the internet is just in stage 3 and we're going to move forward ?

Might be both: There are websites that still have this old feel. I discovered some niches where things are like that. (Banjo playing, forging, local botany, local archeology) The common factor seem to be that the authors are usually neither young, nor technologically oriented. So they tend to do old-looking websites and cross referencing SPIP pages instead of "creating content" on a famous platform.

[0] https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

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

#242

Post by mdp2021 » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:10 AM UTC

hunter-2 wrote: post #239

I think the need for AI/machine learning to predict what you want has kind of brought us here. Imagine a Facebook or Instagram not mining your data to show you what they think you want - the results in your timeline will be a grand hash of all the think that's new and happening. That would have been a vastly different experience. Except for perhaps Reddit, every other big site today personalizes your content and this…

> Except for perhaps Reddit

The Reddit apparent algorithms I experienced create a very biased content proposal: browsing its content with an account has the effect of increasing restrictions in the offer instead of its expansion. (Again a huge basic fault: it "corners" you into a claustrophobic virtual reality, instead of enhancing freedom (today this should be a theoretical tenet) and "pluralism with relevance". Not only that: it seems to decide your affiliations with the dumbest prejudice.)

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

#243

Post by truly » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:11 AM UTC

The interesting content is still there, but it is hidden under SEOed content. It is simply not as popular in relative terms.

Most of the popular content you see on FB or other aggregators are simply "preview"s to get your money. A "thoughtful" article that just mentions half-way through a book you should buy. A blogpost on some technical matter that just mentions they are looking for new hires. A funny video to get you to see ads. And so on, and so forth.

It is still possible to find interesting communities, like HN, but you should probably dig around the niche that you enjoy. Discord has some good servers. IRC is still around. It all depends on what you are interested in.

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

#244

Post by another-dave » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:13 AM UTC

MarblePillar wrote: post #168

noduerme wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm old enough that I had to hand-write all my web code when I started in the business, and I still do. Primarily because I never liked templates or wanted to learn how to tweak them - that's learning someone else's framework and being at their mercy. As it turns out, writing your own code is a lost skill and the companies and individuals who do need that service are willing to pay an arm and a leg for it. So I can c…

> As it turns out, writing your own code is a lost skill and the companies and individuals who do need that service are willing to pay an arm and a leg for it. Where do you find companies and individuals willing to pay $200/hr for basic, non-templated web code? (Or is it one of those things where they find you...)

Yeah I was wondering that too. If you worked a four day week & took 12 weeks holidays a year, that's still over $250k annually.

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

#245

Post by another-dave » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:14 AM UTC

chmod775 wrote: post #94

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…

> I got Guy Nadon, an actor in nothing I've ever seen How exciting! You might discover a movie or series nobody in your bubble has ever heard of! It might be cinema of a kind you've never even dipped your toes in! Whether something is boring or exciting is almost completely subjective and it doesn't really matter how much you already know, since there's just so much stuff .

I remember there was a Spotify playlist of 'songs with 0 plays', so as soon as someone listened to it anywhere it was removed from the playlist. Perfect for 'I listened to this song before it was cool' street cred.

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

#246

Post by new_guy » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:21 AM UTC

Ideally we need a new search engine that just automatically disregards the 'top' 10,000 Alexa sites, all the spam, paywalls, content farms etc, indexes the Show HNs and the subreddits where people post their own stuff.

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

#247

Post by mdp2021 » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:22 AM UTC

JJMcJ wrote: post #141

Disappearance of RSS. So a rotation of a small number of sites. Because who wants to click through hundreds of bookmarks when 99% of the time there is no new content. Not a complaint, just that most sites don't update every day.

> Disappearance of RSS

Some daily download feeds from hundreds of sites: it's not really a «disappearance». Where there are lacks (some sad cases are surely there), one should probably push and be vocal to request the service.

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

#248

Post by sriprasanna » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:23 AM UTC

Kovah wrote: post #42

I asked myself this question about a year ago. There are a lot of sites similar to Stumbleupon, but all of them were exhausted quite fast or had the same sites listed. That's why I built my own internet discovery website based on what I remembered from Stumbleupon. https://stumbled.to

I am glad I discovered this today, thanks for sharing.

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

#249

Post by fauria » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:39 AM UTC

The Internet is not limited to websites.

I find the resurgence of newsletters really interesting, reminds me of fanzines/textfiles from years ago.

Some subscriptions I find interesting:

  - Stratechery
  - Suma Positiva (Spanish)
  - The Pragmatic Engineer
  - Unsupervised Learning

If you want to discover publications, Substack would be a good starting point: https://substack.com/home

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

#250

Post by akshayrajp » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 8:46 AM UTC

https://wiby.me/surprise/

Sometimes, I like visiting the older corners of the internet using the above link. I feel nostalgic somehow. It also helps you see how far we've come in terms of web design and development.