Astalavista.com - Was a site for hackers and script kiddies. Loved it because I wanted to be a "hacker".
Google Reader. Best free, web based RSS reader ever.
Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?
91–100 of 130 posts
Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?
#92Not a website, but I miss IRC from the early/mid 90's. I managed to discover it via mIRC and spent a lot of time chatting with other kids from around the world (in lieu of face to face communication of course). It exposed me to a lot of things, from programming to the hacker mentality (both white hat and black hat) to just talking to people from different cultures. Well, and seedier things like stolen credit cards, pornography and warez, of course.
It was an interesting place then, as hardly anyone in real life was aware what IRC was and online communication was virtually non-existent, but here was this place where people from all over the world could meet in one place and form groups in channels.
It still exists now, but I haven't found a channel that has the same stable group feel of like-minded individuals since the mid-2000's. I have less time, there's more distractions on the internet in general and people tend to communicate with those they already know.
Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?
#93Sunsite (and FTP sites in general). Hitoshi Doi's anime page (which is actually still up). MIDI Farm. Maz Sound. Damaged Cybernetics. HappyPuppy back before Jennifer Diane Reitz really lost the plot. FreshMeat. The GIA. I miss webrings. I miss hand-crufted HTML. I miss . I miss Gopher and Archie.
Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?
#94I don't recall the domain, but circa 1994 "what's new" was a succinct, daily list of new websites. Like, almost all of them :) I distinctly remember the original website for the Twinkie torture test...
I remember Netscape had "What's New" and "What's Cool" buttons built into the browser.
Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?
#95Cybertown.com. So much ahead of its time. 3D social network using VRML through a browser plugin called Blaxxun Contact.
Fun fact: Blaxxun was named for the Black Sun, the virtual club from Snow Crash.
Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?
#96slashdot -- it used to be really useful, interesting, etc. Now HN is much better.
Yeah, I do like Slashdot's time-linear format better than HN's fluid ranking, in that you can catch up from where you left off. However, the discussion in /. has gotten really old and bitter. HN has its own pervasive negative community aspects from the other direction, but certainly has more meaningful content in the discussions overall. The two sites still share a large percentage of links, though, and I read storie…
If you want a chronological sort of HN, try https://hckrnews.com/ . I don't go straight to the HN main page anymore.
Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?
#97The one I miss is one that may still be around, but not for long since it was a Flash page. It was, if I recall, a demo page to highlight the designers skills. I don't even remember the name. It was an anime style video that ended with a girl standing on a cliff with flower pedals flowing along the breeze that was blowing her hair as she stared off in the distance. I would love to find that site.
Try asking on https://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/
Sometimes they get very obscure stuff from vague descriptions.
Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?
#98I miss Google Reader. I used to read ~100 longer-form blogs that didn't publish daily. After Google Reader went away, I tried other RSS readers but they just weren't as convenient, and my online reading habits shifted to more Twitter. At first that seemed fine but over time it has become hard to keep my Twitter feed free of distracting trivia. Nowadays I just have a much smaller list of blogs I read regularly. I also…
I feel your pain on loosing Google Reader. I have tried dozens of replacements and finally landed at https://digg.com/reader if you can believe that... Also, I am sure you have seen them but just incase you haven't - https://theoldreader.com/home was super similar to Google Reader. Alas neither of these are the same but perhaps they will be "good enough".
Same here. In fact, I landed here right now from Digg Reader.
Reading the HN feed using RSS is much nicer than going to the main page.
Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?
#99Not a website, but I miss IRC from the early/mid 90's. I managed to discover it via mIRC and spent a lot of time chatting with other kids from around the world (in lieu of face to face communication of course). It exposed me to a lot of things, from programming to the hacker mentality (both white hat and black hat) to just talking to people from different cultures. Well, and seedier things like stolen credit cards, p…
I have been using IRC for as long as you, I guess (mid 90's). And I am active on a large set of channels with very active and stable groups.
They're mostly centred around various technologies on Freenode, so I'd recommend you check there.
Re: Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I do like Slashdot's time-linear format better than HN's fluid ranking, in that you can catch up from where you left off. However, the discussion in /. has gotten really old and bitter. HN has its own pervasive negative community aspects from the other direction, but certainly has more meaningful content in the discussions overall. The two sites still share a large percentage of links, though, and I read storie…
If you want a chronological sort of HN, try https://hckrnews.com/ . I don't go straight to the HN main page anymore.
Or just use the RSS feed. It also gives you a chronological views, and your reader will keep track of which ones you've already seen.