From my side, I'd say "I have better things to do". If I can find interesting things here, or another aggregator, then I can more than fill my time exploring already at least somehow vetted articles rather than aimlessly browsing. Kind of the same thing that happened (for me) towards exploring books. If I have a backpile of dozens or hundreds of books that I know have some chance to interest me, there is no need to actively look for more, it's just more efficient.
Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
251–260 of 286 posts
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess this proves the original poster right that there are only 5-6 interesting websites left on the internet. I also only check these 5 sites+HN.
Those sites are vast. There are billions of videos, subreddit posts, etc. It's all under one name but so was all of Geocities. You couldn't even begin to consume all of what is produced on those sites. Most of it sucks, but it always sucked.
They are also algorithmically curated and have a heavy bias towards new content.
Those sites vs the old Internet is basically the difference between a modern supermarket and a flea market, both provide you with lots of stuff, but it's a completely different experience.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#253We need the quirky geocities pages back.
You might like this. https://twitter.com/wayback_exe?lang=en
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#254Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#255> I seem to have collapsed down to checking 5 to 6 sites. I check about 20 sites regularly even when I have other interesting things to do. > Where would I even go to find other sites that might be of interest? Search engines? > Whatever happened to the idea of “exploring the Internet”? It sounds like you would like to find lists of recommended sites that people used to have on their homepages. Most people don't main…
> Search engines Which search engines in 2021 give you real, interesting websites and not SEO gamed content pages that exist only to serve ads?
> Which search engines in 2021 give you real, interesting websites and not SEO gamed content pages that exist only to serve ads?
You could try https://searchmysite.net/ which only includes user-submitted and moderated websites, and tries to keep out spam by detecting pages with adverts and heavily downranking them in the results.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#256I 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…
Is this something that could be scripted with some foo to be a basic search engine in itself? Anyone know if something like this exists?
What I have wanted to do for some time, well over a decade, is to create a search engine that just searches page titles. Not as a substitute for any other search engine but as a high throughput discovery tool to screen for websites which can then be explored and searched further.
There are, e.g., search engines that search for strings in the page source, e.g., to detect use of certain Javascript files. These are slow and not free.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#257Number one: In 1945, corporations paid 50 percent of federal taxes. Now they pay about 5 percent. Number two: in 2004, 90 percent of traffic went to small websites; now it’s about two percent.
It’s called consolidation. Strengthen large corporations, weaken individuals. With internet advertising, this can be done imperceptibly over time.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#258Internet access became a commodity, that's what's happened.
Back in the days we had dial-up. I remember the rush. The excitement. The thought that every minute I was paying 6 cents. The monthly bill my parents received, and the (justified!) speech I got for being online too much. I remember downloading entire Usenet groups, reading them offline (cheap!). I also remember my browser crashing after I logged off [from the internet], while it contained various windows (tabs didn't exist yet), and it couldn't handle it for whatever reason. Session Restore? Haha, no, that didn't exist yet. It'd be like a reinstall of an OS: fresh. You'd have to put effort and patience into a post, too. Because you had to dial-in to post it, and who knows what might've been posted in the meantime?
Now we got always-on. Everything is very graphical, Web 2.0. You can get any content you desire. Any movie, any music, any book. Its all available, without any issue. It devalues the works, as does Web 2.0 with templates and what not. Its the same with synthesizer-based music. Everything is VST now. Back in the days, you needed an expensive hardware synthesizer (e.g. a 303) which was a specific investment. Its like the difference between the bioindustry daily and eating a piece of free-range meat every once in a while. Not to mention, search engines have become so good, it defeats the purpose of manually exploring in your own way. Efficiency killed curiosity.
And you grew up. As you grow up, things become less new and exciting. You can still explore though. For example, you could go to HN's newest submits [1] and upvote of the few which were worth reading. If a few do this, and its a match, interesting content gets more coverage on the HN front page. But that's the thing, too: you're doing work for other people. That's also part of what exploring is about: sharing your findings.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#259I wonder why no1 makes social network just for links, like i honestly don't care about other people's inarticulate opinions i constantly get on facebook and twitters. I do however care about links some share.
I think that's the first form of reddit - link sharing.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Link us!
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…
A few more
/r/battlestations
/r/buildapc
/r/GameDeals
/r/Rainmeter
/r/diyaudio
/r/fixit
/r/TronScript
/r/AutoHotkey
/r/bookmarklets
/r/homeassistant
/r/nodered
/r/Bogleheads
/r/juststart
/r/Optionswheel
/r/qyldgang
/r/thetagang
/r/VegaGang
/r/patientgamers
/r/slavelabour
/r/Anki