That was inconvenient for the state dept aka google.
Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
61–70 of 286 posts
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#62Well for starters, we used to call it "Surfing the Internet" not "exploring the internet". The modern web was designed to rope you in and keep you there. Look up random stuff that interests you, not using a big name search engine. Then if you find a site on a webring, and look at connecting sites.
Haha I'm sure it was "surfing the web" ... I never heard anyone say "surfing the internet"
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#63Here's a tortious causal chain that I think explains everything. Computing evolved up the point of Multics. The military has always been a driver of computing research to some extent. The deployment of computing resources to help plan airstrike missions showed a critical need for developing a system in which a single computer could handle multiple levels of secure data. The research resulted in capability based secur…
I generally don't like to bring any attention to language, but I do wonder if you mean tortious.
Thanks to you I just learned the word tortious!
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#64I've put some thought on this topic, and I think the driving force between the Internet seeming so small nowadays is a combination of changes to how search engines work, as well a move from forums to big social media which has meant a shift from organic community discovery to being drip-fed content from based on what an algorithm thinks will be engaging. The Internet, as you remember it, still very much exists. Some…
people always go towards laziness and convenience, that seems to be a axiom of life.
I'm not sure I'm convinced about that. The desire for convenience may be a widespread cultural message, but I wonder if it comes from people and not marketers. A lot of people seem to suffer in perpetual convenience, they may not be able to articulate it, but it makes them uncomfortable. After a while they feel restless and crave some sort of meaning in life, something to engage with, an interesting idea, a hobby, a project. Some form of work, not for salary but to create something or learn something or do something. Something real and authentic.
This thread is actually a good example of that, and OP isn't the only one who has noted that the Internet seems to have turned into a soulless mall where nothing has any effort or thought put into it. Well, it hasn't, but when you engage with the Internet through certain tools it sure looks that way.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#65You 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 (or at least, new to them) and post it. Most of that new stuff is dull, because most stuff is dull.
You can always hit up Wikipedia's random link and start galumphing about from there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I got Guy Nadon, an actor in nothing I've ever seen, though he provided French dubbing for some video games I've heard of. Don't care? Me neither. That's life. The vast majority of it is dull.
That means it's time to turn off the Internet and go outside.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I generally don't like to bring any attention to language, but I do wonder if you mean tortious.
Yeah, I really don't think you should (and neither should I), since we're never as smart as we think we are. The author did not mean tortious, but instead tortuous . But one immediately gathers this from the context anyway. Who cares what the spelling is?
"Tortious" is just as self-deprecating in that sentence. Is it an unfair slight to identity-based security systems, or a overlong Rube Goldbergian explanation of how the current state of the internet came to be?
> Who cares what the spelling is?
People trying to figure out whether an author means "tortious" or "tortuous."
I think it's very respectful to the author to make sure you're reading what they intended to write. When it comes to anything I write/say, please don't separate the art from the artist - just ask the artist what he meant to say.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#67Quite a few people thanked me for recommending: https://theuselessweb.com/
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#68Could 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…
Interesting hypothesis.
My personal experience is that I've shifted away from "exploring the Internet" to exploring other domains of lived experience. I suppose in this sense, I am now "exploiting the Internet", but I would not say that I have overall shifted to a more exploit-focused regime.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#69Could 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…
I'm guessing there's a more general name for the concept, but drawing a blank. This is essentially the reason advertisers tend to target the young - those over a certain age are more set in their ways and not looking for new options.
It's called "exploration vs exploitation". Unless you meant the idea that older people need to explore less because they're already done it. I don't think there's a name for that specific idea.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#70Long before MS deprecated "the blue E", you could still "walk the web" with Yahoo Categories. Yahoo shut down dir.yahoo.com years ago:
https://searchengineland.com/yahoo-directory-close-204370
I don't know if there are any replacements for it.
Most of the archive.org links are still working and the directory is still worth exploring:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140927131133/https://dir.yahoo...