Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Does anyone remember websites?

tttthis.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 386 posts

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#341

Post by Hedja »

CM30 wrote: post #313
djur wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Wikia looks like it's in the process of becoming a cautionary tale, with its recent move to start injecting its own video content into certain high-traffic wikis and a general decline in customizability and independence.

Wikia seems to be gradually being replaced by self hosted wikis, at least where larger fandoms are concerned. The Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance (Mario Wiki, Zelda Wiki, Bulbapedia, etc) are one example, the Square Enix Wiki Alliance are another, and I'm sure the likes of the Simpsons Wiki have moved away from the service as well.

Zelda Wiki is hosted on Gamepedia. It's like Wikia but specifically for Video Games and less obstrusive.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#342

Post by pluma »

Blahah wrote: post #309
pluma wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh god yes. The other day I saw a marabou bird in a wildlife documentary and was surprised by the hair-like stuff on its gular sack (the pink bag hanging from its neck). Wikipedia doesn't mention it and if you search for "marabou feathers" you only find that the world apparently obsesses about the fuzzy white crest on its neck that inspired fashion some decades ago. "Marabou hair" and "marabou hair feathers" likewise…

In case you didn't find the answer to your question, those feathers are called 'filoplumes' [1]. Relatively obscure anatomical detail like this is more easily discoverable in the scientific literature than on the web. I found the answer by searching Google Scholar for "marabou stork", browsing the results for a paper about the "gular sac" (although it has other names), then reading the most promising looking paper -…

Ah, interesting. Odd that even the article only describes them as "filoplume-like" not simply filoplumes. But based on what I find when I search for "filoplumes" it seems their function and evolutionary origin isn't entirely clear.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#343

Post by nickpsecurity »

r00fus wrote: post #145
q845712 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a subscription to Consumer Reports and have been happy with the two purchases I made on their recommendation (headphones in the $100 range, and a new food processor). Do you consider them compromised? It's actually just about time to renew my subscription and i've been wondering whether I should. I've also used your strategy of reading the bad reviews on Amazon!

The appliances I bought using their advice has been hit/miss - ranges are decent but the fridges and dishwasher I bought are noisy and required service barely outside warranty period. These are big name brands too. I don't necessarily fault CR but I with the hundreds of models released all slightly similar but different (I hear partly to prevent price-matching across stores) it must be as impossible to review for CR…

I wouldn't count the appliance reliability against CR as this great article shows appliance industry is doing it on purpose:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13909365

Typical cartel-like, profit-boosting activity of oligopolies which appliance market seems to be with a handful of companies owning most brands.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#344

Post by sebtoast »

ambrosite wrote: post #45
KGIII wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsing vs. searching. We don't seem to do much browsing anymore. We search and selectively pick what we consume. It's faster but, as you say, I don't think it is as fun. I used to enjoy picking a subject and then clicking all the DMOZ or Yahoo! links. I'd dig through webrings and and link aggregators with wild abandon. Now, I search a term and click on the first few results, at most. Sure, there are exceptions but…

>> I used to enjoy picking a subject and then clicking all the DMOZ or Yahoo! links. I'd dig through webrings and and link aggregators with wild abandon. Yep, that's exactly what I used to do. That's really what "surfing the web" meant back in those days -- that you would spend hours just clicking links, seeing where they would take you. And of course, they would quite often take you to completely unexpected but cool…

Some websites used to have a "webring" where they would link to each other and you could just click on "next" and it would take you to another site on the same topic.

I used to like those.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#347

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

brlewis wrote: post #329
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Follow a link, lose your place and have to start over.

I don't get this. What's wrong with the back button plus visited link colors? I feel like the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction and the number of open tabs makes things more confusing.

Usually, the next page also has interesting links, and the tree quickly becomes painful to traverse.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#348

Post by zargon »

PuffinBlue wrote: post #276
userbinator wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To emphasize this point, just the other day my 4-year-old asked me "how do seeds inside tomatoes grow?" Does the query "seeds growing inside tomatoes" (without the quotes) give you any relevant results?

The quoted string returns just one unhelpful result for me. Contrary to the GP comment, the unquoted string returns pretty much the exact answer to the 'question' as the top result: https://uconnladybug.wordpress.com/2014/04/11/seeds-sproutin... > hormone controlling the seed dormancy is exhausted or runs out, letting the seed grow in the moist environment inside the fruit. This warm, moist environment is perfect for…

That link has nothing to do with the original question.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#349

Post by mojuba »

dogcow wrote: post #167

Check out the search engine at http://wiby.me From their about page: Search engines like Google are indispensable, able to find answers to all of your technical questions; but along the way, the fun of web surfing was lost. In the early days of the web, pages were made primarily by hobbyists, academics, and computer savvy people about subjects they were interested in. Later on, the web became saturated with commercia…

> But finding things you didn't know you wanted to know...

... is exactly the thing that I'm most worried about losing. Especially when I hear about all sorts of "adaptive" crap that learns about what I do and adjusts my daily feeds, search results etc. accordingly. It probably works great for most people, but I'm definitely not one of them and I want to opt out of the adaptiveness of modern Web. Most of the time there is no clear way of doing that.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#350

Post by loopbit »

stmw wrote: post #177
JohnBooty wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. The only way I can find product buying advice is: 1. To find a community of enthusiasts and see what they have to say about products in that space. This works pretty well for products that actually have enthusiasts. 2. Go to Amazon and read a product's bad reviews. The good reviews are nearly useless. But, with bad reviews, you have to weigh the number of bad reviews against the product's popularity. If…

Good trick on the #2, reading the negative reviews. Of course, now that you've mentioned it here - soon enough that'll be gamed, too.

Not OP, but tbh, I thought that was more or less common practice. Many people I know do that already.

I tend to only look at 1-star reviews and 5-star reviews in passing. The first ones are obviously pissed with the product and that will colour their opinions. The latter are either enthusiasts that will love everything about it or people that heve just received it and/or are still on the honeymoon phase. I think ignoring them outright is as bad as focusing only on them, but I don't pay them too much attention.

I find that focusing on the reviews around the middle (and, of course, the number of those compared to the total number of reviews) usually gives me a better idea of the pros and cons of a product.

Post reply on HN