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Irony: The web page that rails about the web being user hostile is coded so that Safari's user-friendly reader mode is disabled.
Author here. Is it? It works on my end. Could you tell me which OS/Safari version you're using? Thanks.
This is a good an informative essay. However, there's another element of "user-hostile" that I didn't see addressed (maybe I missed it in my haste?) -- that is the websites trying to control exactly how the content is consumed by the user. It seems increasingly that web content is being delivered in video form. That itself is hostile to some people. Some of us want the freedom to read (or scan quickly). But many of t…
And what if some of us want the freedom to watch? Maybe I'm illiterate? Just like you, I could say that putting something in writing instead of a video is 'hostile' if it doesn't meet my preferences.
Talking about 'hostile' is hysterical.
This is a good an informative essay. However, there's another element of "user-hostile" that I didn't see addressed (maybe I missed it in my haste?) -- that is the websites trying to control exactly how the content is consumed by the user. It seems increasingly that web content is being delivered in video form. That itself is hostile to some people. Some of us want the freedom to read (or scan quickly). But many of t…
I’ve noticed this thing on social media lately where a single image is turned into like a 10-second video...of nothing but the still image (and sometimes stock background music). This is usually done by low-effort clickbait sites, but I don’t get why.
The Web was doomed the moment we let Javascript initiate connections and (less significantly) modify form content.
now we get loads of bad news websites, shallow overgrown aesthetic trends pushed as social advances, perpetual ads ..
"For many of us in the early 2000s, the web was magical. You connected a phone line to your computer, let it make a funny noise and suddenly you had access to a seemingly-unending repository of thoughts and ideas from people around the world. "It might not seem like much now, but what that noise represented was the stuff of science fiction at the time: near-instantaneous communication at a planetary scale. It was a b…
The SV culture made it valuable for startups to amass a large amount of users.
Where as before this bubble started, it was more profitable for development shops to build (and sell) software that anyone can use to host their own site/forum/whatever.
This might not be the entire solution, but I think it would be a step in the right direction:
We need more products that are developed for people to deploy on their own private servers. They have to have some very compelling points that I think are still lacking in many existing solution:
- They have to be really really fast. Nothing in "python" or "nodejs" or whatever.
- They have to be really really easy to deploy. No requiring a separate database server such as mysql. Just use SQLite. Also, no copying over of tons of files. Just a single executable. All other data should live in the database (sqlite file). Maybe have two database files: one for user generated content, and one for bundling application resources (images, etc). I'm not exactly sure what's the best setup, but something along those lines.
- They have to be profitable for people who develop them.
This is more of a cultural issue.
I love open source, but requiring all software to be "free" means that it's much more profitable to create a product for yourself only and try to lure as many users as possible, just like facebook.
To this end, I think something like the physical source initiative makes a lot of sense: if you buy the software, you have the right to make changes to it. But you don't have the right to also copy it and distribute it.
Irony: The web page that rails about the web being user hostile is coded so that Safari's user-friendly reader mode is disabled.
Author here. Is it? It works on my end. Could you tell me which OS/Safari version you're using? Thanks.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2999600/how-to-disable-s...
Safari Version 11.0 (13604.1.38.1.6)
The Web was doomed the moment we let Javascript initiate connections and (less significantly) modify form content.
Yes, it really has been downhill since then. I wish js apps just had their own protocol and port. js://js.server.tld could open up your js browser and you could use that when it was something you needed. Then you could just trust browsing around the normal web, knowing its just documents.
Among other implications, it should be much easier for regular people to create content, and applications should be free of the document-focused legacy.
Firstly the downfall in the geocities-web came in many phases:
1. Spam Email Phase
2. Phishing / Nigerian phase
3. Popup phase
4. Autoplaying Flash/ActiveX phase
5. Pagerank phase (forums being ruined until rel=nofollow)
Now google, previously the main gateway to discovery, is pretty much useless for discovering new non-commercial content.
The way this could go away is only from a market shift; deleting your facebook won't bring back geocities. The fact is, if I had a geocities page it'd be undiscoverable due to pagerank, so I have no incentive to publish unless I have another avenue of attention (resume, Hn profile).
Can a non-commercial search engine ever exist? I suppose reddit/HN voting is one semi-successful method of content ranking...
"For many of us in the early 2000s, the web was magical. You connected a phone line to your computer, let it make a funny noise and suddenly you had access to a seemingly-unending repository of thoughts and ideas from people around the world. "It might not seem like much now, but what that noise represented was the stuff of science fiction at the time: near-instantaneous communication at a planetary scale. It was a b…