Yup the internet sure does suck now...example...I was banned for the shit I said before I was banned...bahhhahahahahaha
I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore
291–300 of 340 posts
Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore
#292I'm getting weary reading the constant lament of the "internet" as a massive entity. These articles take the same form: - "ugh social media is terrible, remember forums" - "aren't rss feeds great" - "remember when sites were HTML based" - "back in my day the internet was just me and a few cool people" The internet is not a monolith. What people are complaining about is the corporate internet; the parts of the interne…
Independent does not work at all because random websites are no longer discoverable.
In the old days of the internet discoverability was via word of mouth, portals/aggregators or old "topic rings".
You had bulletin boards as well.
The original reason for e.g. Reddit to exist was to be an aggregator and recommendation service. However it started handling discussions which it is not equipped to deal with at all and then went downhill.
A similar aggregator is HN. Again, it is not equipped for discussion. Both are curated by users which further lowers signal to noise ratio and causes popularity contest plus short lifespan of valuable content.
Both are essentially RSS feeds with HTML/JS interface, comment and vote functions.
Forum software is equipped for discussion but requires manual curation to serve as an aggregator limiting volume. Likewise newer chat software.
Facebook and Twitter are inferior compared to forum software in almost all cases. They are broadcast media with major limitations that are user curated.
Facebook main reason of existence is remembering and tracking people not matchmaking or contact - it is not equipped for that well if at all - the chat handles maybe a few people at most, comments under posts are a total mess.
Nobody really cares about volume. (Unless they sell ads.) Quality is what matters and it really went down with user curated sites.
For social talk and matchmaking, you need a platform that allows discussion in the long term. Neither Facebook nor Twitter help with it as a profile or a post is not a topic.
The old chat survives alongside some bigger forims still, both IRC and newer platforms like Slack, Discord, Twitch etc. These have a problem with discoverability because they're rarely indexed.
The major differentiator is again "user curated" vs moderated; broadcast vs chat.
Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore
#293I've often wondered what happened to those hours spent trawling for interesting stuff on the web. I spend more time than is probably healthy on YouTube now, but that's just a second TV via iPad while the wife watches shows on Netflix. I think that it was the newness of the experience back then. Nascent technology is always more fun, as are novel experiences. Now, the net permeates our lives. We work on it, we play on…
I got the impression that MUDs evolved into MMORPGs. But I have thought for a while that a text-based MUD with a lot of modern polish might be a good idea.
Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
And leads to "toxic" behavior. If you behaved poorly in a dedicated server environment you could be banned from multiple servers in one go as each clan might host multiple servers. Eventually all that would be left for those people would be a handful of lawless servers, enough threat of punishment to deter shitty behavior, not enough of an impetus to buy a new cd key and reimpose yourself on others. In practice, most…
Going down the rabbit hole a bit further, I was always a bit pissed off with the 'match at exact skill level' method. The best thing I ever did to progress in skill in a game was to play with/against people far better than me. I don't want to learn how to beat people who are only as good as I am; I want to learn the techniques and skills to beat the people who are at the top of the game.
I agree with this idea. The problem, I think, is that you can't choose what kind of game you get. Lots of times I want to have a reasonable chance at winning, but now and then I want to play really good people and see how they play. You can't ever choose to do this in current matchmaking schemes, and there should be a way to do that.
Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
The leveling and statistical stuff is so lame anyway. I feel like CS and TF, the point was to dick around and shoot people. It was cool because you bought half-life and could play these two totally different games (we referred to them as “total conversions” at the time). The ranking stuff is all just trying to capitalize on esports, which is weird because the vast majority will never be that good anyway. It’s a big p…
What was the first thing to be called a "total conversion"? The Aliens: Total Conversion mod of Doom?
Yeah, definitely one of the doom mods.
I'm not familiar enough with the history as I was pretty young when doom came out. Hacking on Doom and Marathon mods was my first experience with programming of any sort.
Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a major factor is the fact that the internet is now mainstream. In the early days, you had something in common with everybody, simply by being on the internet. The place was silly with people absolutely floored by the idea that they were casually chatting with someone halfway across the continent, something only possible on very expensive phone calls until then. Everybody was also, by necessity, an early tech…
Great metaphor, the infrastructure. Like a street you go somewhere, if there is somewhere to go. And like a pipe something come down the shoot, but do you want it in the first place?
Thanks, but it's not really a metaphor. The internet is literally infrastructure. Sometimes, when new and exciting infrastructure opens, such as the first metro line in a city, it's a destination in it's own regard for a brief while, and a good place to meet fellow railroad nerds, but then it just becomes infrastructure, and it's not a particular good place to meet anyone.
Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What's wrong with Discourse? It seems to be a popular choice. Here are some more ideas: https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted#social-networ... Flarum looks like a worthwhile option: http://flarum.org/
Nothing is wrong with it, it's just a different interpretation of forums that is a departure from the "classic" bulletin boards we are discussing here.
Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is pretty much how I felt as a long-time TF2 player super excited for Overwatch to come out, and then very sad once I realized what kind of game it was. You grab your friends and play Overwatch, while you play TF2 and meet your friends. And also a parallel, TF2 obviously still exists, but all of the servers I used to play on are gone now. Haven’t found anything else quite yet. FFXIV actually was super enjoyable…
This is a thing that's bugged me for a long time: the death of dedicated game servers. Game servers had to be run by communities, and they were gateways and feeding grounds for those communities. However, games don't typically use dedicated servers anymore; they use matchmaking. You're right -- matchmaking means you gather your friends first. More insidiously, it means you probably won't see the same players again, a…
FYI- MidAir is a new TRIBES like game that is using dedicated servers.
Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Love seeing another agentjayz fan here! Want to spend hours watching somebody repair marine props and shafts on machine tools? Keith Fenner does excellent, detailed repairs. Regular car reviews makes incredible car reviews of mostly normal cars (this detailed review of the PT cruiser is amazing. Watch the WHOLE thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoxqtnI4I4c ) Ben Krasnow (on applied science) is an intellectual an…
> Love seeing another agentjayz fan here! Honestly his stuff just comes first to mind as "outstanding, fascinating videos I would never have seen without this platform." Say what you want about Youtube but they sure have enabled an amazing flourishing of creativity and sharing. Will check out your others! RcR though... there really should be a warning. That is some advanced cynicism. Don't get me wrong, I love them.…
If you have 2 minutes to spare it will not be better used than by watching this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIz3klPET3o
And if you can't find time in your life for 2 minutes of art.. I don't wanna be ya
Re: I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scuttlebutt is a gossip protocol, so you are essentially connected to content through friends of friends. I started by downloading Patchwork, one of SSB's clients, and going to local hackerspaces and following whomever was on the network. After that I could branch out and find other people that seemed interesting. After awhile you're pretty much connected to the whole ecosystem and you have to start pruning connectio…
So, out of the box you are only going to have the kind of people on the network that go to hackerspaces, and they will only post the kinds of things that they would like the people that met them at a hackerspace to see?
Well, those are the things I'm interested in, so that is where I started. Gossip networks have to grow organically as they are decentralized and based off of connections. Just like the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, it doesn't take long before you branch out to everyone on a network.
I personally don't like being in a filter bubble, so I follow as many people as I encounter and try support as many interests as possible to flourish. But eventually the content has to be created by someone with interest, and that person has to be also aware and interested in the decentralized platform, so yes, the first content will likely be centered around tech, programming, or groups that looking for safe space outside of centralized social media.