It's basically moved to things like Urbit.
Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
71–80 of 286 posts
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#72You have the dark web left to explore. :)
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#73I 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
Thank you! I loved StumbleUpon, so I'm glad to see this around.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#74Recently I began "exploring the internet" again with the help of a niche search engine that was posted here on HN not that long ago [1]. Seems like it returns lesser known, interesting, contrarian websites where the authors speak their mind. For example I found websites that: speculate that milk and lactose might be a hidden cause for several chronic conditions [2]; try to re-explain evolution by re-positioning the r…
A lot of this was painful. I'll comment on bwo.life, since it is somewhat close to some of the things I know a little bit more about. > Despite all this life and death, I doubt whether anyone would be tempted to describe the embryo’s cells as “red in tooth and claw”. Nor do I think anyone would appeal to “survival of the fittest” or natural selection as the fundamental principle governing what goes on during normal d…
Regarding website [4] - I agree with you, I just showed it as an interesting example of what might be found.
But regarding bwo.life, I think you are missing the forest for the trees. I read quite a lot of articles on that site and your comment in no way disagrees with anything written there. Honestly speaking - I got the impression you just wanted to highlight some details you happen to know about development due to your field of work. And you disagree in the first paragraph, saying that there is some natural selection between cells. But then, it seems obvious that survival of the fittest cells cannot explain development alone, so you backtrack and say that this is not the full story while somehow remaining in disagreement with the author. I don't get it.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#75Something nobody seems to be mentioning: the 2008 crash happened.
The "cool" internet was largely populated by two things: People screwing around creating content in their spare time, with no expectation of profit ("Hobbyists"), and eager entrepreneurs burning through tons of money trying to find the "one weird trick" that would make them rich on the net. Most of #2 failed, but while it was happening it provided a host of interesting things to see, and spaces to hang out in online.
Then 2008 happened and it all came tumbling down. People tend to think more of the 90s ".com" crash, but there was another after the "recession." Suddenly there wasn't as much money to throw around, so #2 became more and more rare, and those that did exist were less casual and more dogged in their attempts to extract money. At the same time, #1 also collapsed, because people were losing their jobs, downgrading to worse paying jobs, working longer hours etc. People didn't have time for hobbies, and self-starters didn't have money for wild new experiments.
So innovation and expression on the web kind of ground to a halt. This happened culture-wide by the way, but certainly it was obvious on the net. What had once been a space for fun and experimentation became a wasteland ruled over by the handful of tyrannical companies that could survive the harsh conditions. That's why there are only 6 sites. Outside of SV, people aren't doing so well. They haven't been doing so well in a while. Maybe you noticed the protests and riots and crazy elections? People have other things on their minds besides having fun on the internet these days.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I originally searched for "exploration vs exploitation" but that lead to the "multi-armed bandit problem" on wikipedia, so I went with that on my post above.
I do that "exploration vs exploitation" is a better name for it though.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#77I 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 deliberately disable this type of exploration. You can query Google's index for a list of all websites with domain names that contain a certain keyword, but you will never be able to retrieve the full list of results, and certainly not in a "neutral" order such as alphabetical.
Arguably a web comprising a large number small, diverse websites, where each user may be visiting a variety of different websites, is less suitable for advertising than one where all web users are funneled through a few large websites that survive by selling online ad services, like Google. It stands to reason that those large, online ad services sites would have little interest in showing users an undiscovered portion of the web. They want users to congregate on "popular" sites. Good for advertising.
OTOH, using zone files instead of a search engine, social media or news aggregator site in the online ads (or VC) business, one can see all websites that have registered an ICANN domain name. No filters. No advertising-related algorithms. Popularity is irrelevant. The user determines relevance, not a third party.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 wri…
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Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#79Well 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"
You're right, it was never internet. For me it was net or web, but it was always surfing.
A little further back it advertising called it the "Information Superhighway"
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to exploring the internet?
#80[deleted]