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Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

franzoni.eu

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Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#131

Post by TeMPOraL »

phillc73 wrote: post #97
chongli wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine to say that, but this phenomenon is even older than the Internet. Think of the hip bar that gains a sudden influx of customers following a New York Times story. Yogi Berra remarked on this phenomenon with one of his famous quotes "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded!" Another idea related to the general phenomenon is gentrification: the cool artist colony suddenly overwhelmed with yuppies who drive…

I call it wankerisation. That is, a place, location or destination has become overwhelmed with wankers. "I don't go to that bar anymore, it's too wankerised." "I don't visit Facebook anymore, it's become wankerised." "The neighbourhood is too wankerised, I can't afford to live there."

For communities and interests, I usually call it simply "getting mainstream", and the invaders "general population".

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#132

Post by themacguffinman »

peterwwillis wrote: post #85

Elon Musk said that as time passes, technology continuously degrades, not improves, if people don't make a hard effort to keep improving it. The Egyptians knew how to build giant pyramids, and forgot how. The Romans built fantastic aqueducts, and forgot how. We built vehicles that landed on the moon in the 60s, and the next vehicle we built could only go into earth orbit, and then we no longer even had a vehicle that…

I'm skeptical the Egyptians simply "forgot" how to build giant pyramids (especially as pyramid construction seems to be well-documented today). It seems more likely that the age of pharoahs ended and giant pyramid construction was no longer an important skill. Technology hadn't "degraded", it had adapted.

Just like we didn't forget how to build lunar vehicles, we just decided that it wasn't worth it in its current state. It's still very possible to do another moon landing, it will just cost a ton of money that corporations won't risk and governments won't spend without a clear political goal like the old space race.

Space technology isn't degrading, it's becoming more cost-oriented. A SpaceX rocket only reached orbit but it was relatively very cheap. Cost efficiency helps space technology reach more people and create greater impact, ultimately making the technology more valuable to society.

It's the same with the web. You say that the web is bloated "instead of trying to improve people's lives" but the reason the web platform is so heavy is because the platform is rapidly adding features and APIs and tools that make it easier for developers of all skill levels to make complicated applications. Letting more developers make stuff in less time improves people's lives. Maintaining backward compatibility at the cost of bloat also improves people's lives.

Society has been constantly evaluating the web and it has consistently reached the same conclusions: RAM is cheaper than developers, a slower platform with a bigger audience is worth dealing with over multiple native platforms, and weird legacy stuff is fine if it means we can run 15 year old websites.

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#133

Post by jacquesm »

alanfranzoni wrote: post #118
foreigner wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about implementing an RSS interface on top of the likes of Twitter and Facebook by screen scraping? Would have to take authentication of course. Then we could consume it via RSS readers just like the good ol' days. Does that already exist? I would pay for that.

Most probably it would be illegal, against each website's TOS. If such tool catches up, it will be removed - and you still need to account for upstream changes that periodically kill the functionality.

Against the TOS does not make something illegal.

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#134

Post by [deleted] »

chongli wrote: post #40
plaguuuuuu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet is decentralized. It doesn't matter that all the 13 year olds are congregating on Club Penguin or whatever; we can set up our own communities. That's why HN is great (and other small communities). It's intrinsically hostile to the wider internet simply by virtue of the subject and the format of its content.

The issue is when the unwanted folks follow the cool kids around. This happens a lot on Reddit. People will make a subreddit with the type of community they want. Others will join. Eventually people will complain that the quality has deteriorated. Then the cool kids will start a new one and migrate there. Rinse. Repeat... ad infinitum . Edit: I don't know if there's a general name for this phenomenon, but I believe i…

[deleted]

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#135

Post by TeMPOraL »

yosito wrote: post #57

My own theory about why our ability to focus on what we want to on the internet is Attention Capitalism. Our attention is the latest resource to be exploited by capitalism, and each company is attempting to control what we focus on for their profit. I've noticed this trend; very little software let's me control what information I see anymore. It's almost all controlled by some algorithm making me see what they claim…

> It's almost all controlled by some algorithm making me see what they claim I want to see.

The algorithm is known as "doing what users want". Very popular with companies and even open source projects nowadays. It works like this: you do some "analytics" of your product, or look what sells for others, assume it reflects what users want (and the things that are missing are obviously not wanted by users), and do those.

This algorithm ignores the fact that a lot of the time, users don't get any way to express preferences. Users buy/use what's available and what's popular. Through this algorithm, producers make choices for the consumers, and then use statistics to justify them.

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#136

Post by Jaruzel »

zafiro17 wrote: post #6
interfixus wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, at least it's sort of not dead.

I just reposted this article to comp.misc, where we've been keeping up a parallel discussion for years. Usenet doesn't have the sheer numbers it used to, but anyone still there is there because we love it. Usenet's flaws remain unmended, but its strengths remain unfettered. :)

I lurk on comp.misc via Google groups RSS feed:

https://groups.google.com/forum/feed/comp.misc/topics/rss.xm...

I'm on the hunt for a good dedicated Windows NNTP reader, failing that I might have a go at writing my own (that supports text posts only - none of that dodgy binaries rubbish!).

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#137

Post by Jaruzel »

z1mm32m4n wrote: post #43
zafiro17 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just reposted this article to comp.misc, where we've been keeping up a parallel discussion for years. Usenet doesn't have the sheer numbers it used to, but anyone still there is there because we love it. Usenet's flaws remain unmended, but its strengths remain unfettered. :)

Out of curiosity (as someone who never had the chance to see Usenet at its prime), what are Usenets strengths and weaknesses?

Strengths:

Totally de-centralised - your post on your local NNTP server, and it gets replicated across the NNTP mesh to all the other servers.

Built in threading... Actually HN is very similar to how a fairly busy newsgroup would look back in the day.

Weaknesses:

Posts used to take hours (sometimes days) to replicate across the whole mesh. Not so much nowadays tho.

Text only; no native support for rich media or Unicode (although some might see that as a Strength)

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#138

Post by SyneRyder »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #59
vosper wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Facebook I scroll down until I see something I've seen before, then I stop. Doesn't seem very hard, and I imagine its what most people do. If I want to revisit older things then I keep scrolling, but that's almost never the case.

I used to do this with Twitter, but that's impossible these days.

Still possible with Twitter if you use a 3rd party app, like Tweetbot on Mac / iOS and Fenix on Android. I don't think it's possible on the website or official app (and if I was forced to use Twitter as currently designed, I think I'd give up on it).

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#139

Post by TeMPOraL »

sotojuan wrote: post #33
beefsack wrote: post #17

The problem is that it appears most people actually want noise, and it's becoming especially apparent as a lot of these content channels become more mainstream. Anyone who's been on Reddit for the majority of the site's existence will probably have noticed monumental shifts in popular content, which I feel is essentially a movement away from serious diverse discussion towards entertainment and self validation. I don'…

My view has always been that after a day of work or school, the last thing most people want to do is engage in a deep discussion. Instead they want to scroll down funny content (I do this myself or just play video games, just in case I sound like a snob).

In a way it's good that many people do that during work/school time, leaving some cognitive reserves for an actually productive evening.

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#140

Post by agumonkey »

d--b wrote: post #127

As much as I really liked using IRC back in the day, I still think I spent way too much time on it. I mean you got to know the people there, and after a couple of years most discussions were like office conversations. Plus the takeovers, the trolls, the noobs, the never ending screwing around with the bots, etc. I've never done much newsgroups because I didn't like public speaking without anonymity. ICQ and others we…

Good points, especially the last point. I approach "internet" differently these days.

I have twitter for high freq thin data, reddit for a bit more dense information~. For deeper information I could read serious journals, books. But I rarely need that, or am not capable of digesting it.

The force fed thing is inherent to the change of importance and structure of the web.. Remember when Google was an entry point to the mess and not the conductor ?

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