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I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

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Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#171

Post by peterburkimsher »

roboyoshi wrote: post #164
peterburkimsher wrote: post #11

My guilty pleasure is 9gag. It's blocked in the office (thankfully), so I spend way too much time on it when I'm not at work. I used to read a lot of webcomics (XKCD, Joy of Tech, Pon and Zi, QuestionableContent, Poorly Drawn Lines, The Brads) and user-generated art (DeviantArt). 9gag lowered the barriers to entry and made it easy for images to become viral. It's also now transitioned into auto-playing videos instead…

That sounds awesome and now I want to know how it performs. Is the dialogue like 2 teenagers communicating purely with memes? Also I'd love to get my hands on those 60k images.

Right now I'm still just sorting out the comics (with dialogue) from memes (without). If I transcribe them, I could build a chatbot like you describe. I'd rather just hand them over to friends who could translate them.

HowardInterprets has translated some comics from Chinese to English, and when one of those reached 9gag, I got my inspiration to use this with my tutor for weekly Mandarin class.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/Howardinterprets/photos

Do you have a server that can receive 7.12 GB? I like Mega.nz but it makes free users wait 5 hours after 2 GB. Make contact if you need the data; you should be find my email address without much difficulty.

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#172

Post by dx034 »

tluyben2 wrote: post #50
dchuk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m going to try and fire something up this week. I’ll do some research on software for it, I’m fine spending money on xenforo or vbulletin but it looks like there are quite a few options out there. I’ll announce it here when it’s ready!

I think it is important to curate it, but I applaud the idea. I would say; only allow people with over a certain karma score on HN (>1000)? That way you benefit from the quite strict moderation here. But indeed I remember the days on vBulletin forums; all my remarks against ‘you cannot make friends over 30’ that I uttered here come from there: most my current friends and one of my best friends I met on forums. It jus…

I wouldn't set the karma threshold that high. If you want to avoid spammers, a threshold of 50-100 is likely enough. That excludes any cheap spamming attempts.

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#173

Post by dx034 »

AstralStorm wrote: post #163
tluyben2 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you are right but how to prevent it from becoming a sales/recruitement/troll/showoff fest again?

Normal forums have categories for these things. Maybe except trolling.

Exactly that. I would explicitly allow it, esp since most have some interest in some of the topics. Even off-topic chat can be fine if it's in an extra category. The only thing to avoid is pure spam but with some threshold to sign up (e.g. verification) that can be kept relatively low.

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#175

Post by dx034 »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #58
taneq wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why don’t we just start a forum for the HN crowd? So HN doesn't count?

No. not compared to where we were. Usenet was like every HN, phpBB, digg, slashdot, and reddit in one. I await those days again.

Nowadays you have a much larger internet community. 20 years ago, the number of people online was maybe a few hundred million (likely lower), now it's several billion. That increases complexity, any forum that's too broad will attract so many people that you only get noise. HN works well because it's relatively unknown (esp outside of tech). Reddit only works because subreddits are individually managed (and it's a company that can dedicate resources to it).

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#176

Post by dx034 »

dchuk wrote: post #86
dchuk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve actually been thinking about this recently, as I was also a heavy forum user back in the day. Why don’t we just start a forum for the HN crowd? Not a new interpretation of the forum model or anything like that, literally any instance of vbulletin or phpbb or something comparable and “traditional”. If people are genuinely interested in this, I would be up for spinning something up over the weekend.

Update: Spent the evening researching software options for the "old school" style forums, and it seems like Xenforo is a solid choice in terms of active development, lots of addons/themes, and not crazy expensive. So I think I'll snag a license and put it on a droplet later this week when my wife is out for the evening :) Also think I found a good domain for it that I'll snag tonight as well.

That's one of the main issues with HN. Since there's no notification and/or messaging, few people will look back in this thread once you've actually set it up. A Show HN could at least be seen by some, but I too often miss those as well.

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#177

Post by rimliu »

skbohra123 wrote: post #124

I think it's the age factor. No one makes friends in their 30s and no one is excited to find new things as they get older. If you ask younger people, they can tell you a 1000 ways to waste time on internet, be it instagram, snapchat or other such apps which grown-ups don't even know about. You are just getting older.

I am 45 and right now I feel like I need to spend some time prioritising things I am excited about.

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#178

Post by oblio »

WA wrote: post #142
paxys wrote: post #141

This entire thread makes me realize that what people are missing isn't the internet but their own childhood.

I thought so, too. There are still enough communities hosted on phpBB, there are still enough ways to tinker around, join IRC, find ridiculous geocities-like websites or whatever. It's more that people choose to use FB, YouTube, Reddit, Instagram.

There's communities even in those places. You just have to go looking for them and be a naive kid, like all these people posting in this thread were 10-20+ years ago :p

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#179

Post by exodust »

strkek wrote: post #37

There's definitely something about forums that can't be found in social networks. I don't know what that is, but I know it's very unlikely that I'll have as much fun as in those days. Not sure if it's because I was a teenager back then and perceived the internet differently, but nowadays everything looks way too "serious".

What do you mean "those days"?

I still use forums today for all sorts of focused topics and community discussion around games, audio, design, software etc. The best forums have always been where you learn something and get help and share your work.

I'm still doing that because I have many hobbies from gaming to photography to 3d printing. If you don't have serious fun hobbies, what the heck are you going to talk about in an online forum?

Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

#180

Post by yoyogesh01 »

gkoberger wrote: post #44

I think a lot of people here are missing the point. Yeah, there's a lot more content to consume now. However, it doesn't feel like a community... it feels more like watching reruns on TBS. I remember making actual friends on message boards. Friends I eventually met in the real world. I don't think relationships like that are really formed anymore. Most of social media now is a broadcast, not a conversation. People (m…

I do feel the same. Back then i have published several blog of what i was learning, and interacting with visitor. I also met one of the friend i made online, guess what all that is past... Or May be i have become boring.
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