I Miss the Old Internet • Hacker News Board

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#111

Post by agumonkey » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 12:37 AM UTC

notJim wrote: post #5

I generally agree. I've taken to appending "reddit" to many of my search queries, because flawed though it is, reddit is one of the few places you can read an actual human thought. It feels like nearly all content on the internet is some de-personalized corporate "content marketing" blog at this point. Just give us your email address and we'll send you a PDF (and a drip marketing campaign.) I think the old internet w…

Same. I find it very interesting how crude, limited and untrendy (old)reddit was and yet you kept coming back. It wasn't engineered value, it was something else.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#112

Post by chx » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 12:40 AM UTC

NightlyDev wrote: post #52

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Start hosting your website from home. This isn't feasible for a large chunk of the population, mainly because ISPs like Comcast love to give you 500 mbps down while limiting your upload to a pitiful 10 mbps. Host a single 100K image that hits the front page of reddit and your home internet gets hugged to death.

Put it behind cloudflare, problem solved.

Even better, you can store images on B2 for just 5 USD/month/terabyte and front it with Cloudflare for free traffic. https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217666928-Using... https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010017893-Ho...

You can host your HTML/JS/CSS on Github Pages fronted by Cloudflare again for free.

For dynamic stuff, I just set up an ElasticSearch cluster with three VPSes from https://php-friends.de/vserver-ssd/vserver-schnupperspecial-... for the grand total of 10EUR/month... these are some serious hardware for 4 EUR (inc German VAT): dedicated two dedicated Haswell or Broadwell cores, 6GB RAM, 65GB SSD. Slap Ubuntu on them, then https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/serverguide/automatic-updates.ht... and https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-live-patch-ubuntu-linux-... will keep your server secure.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#113

Post by hnick » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 12:41 AM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #30

notJim wrote: post #5

I generally agree. I've taken to appending "reddit" to many of my search queries, because flawed though it is, reddit is one of the few places you can read an actual human thought. It feels like nearly all content on the internet is some de-personalized corporate "content marketing" blog at this point. Just give us your email address and we'll send you a PDF (and a drip marketing campaign.) I think the old internet w…

Do you not find Reddit to be a bit of a cesspool? I tend to avoid it for that reason, but how true it is probably depends on which subreddit(s) we're talking about.

It has all the ups and downs of humanity as a whole of course, but as other users have said specific subs (usually less popular and well moderated) are where the gold is.

My main problem with Reddit is the repetitive in-culture jokes, memes, and reposts. A lot of content is pandering to the Reddit audience with a flavour that is calculated to win over the crowd (see all the complaints on /r/pics of political signs or weight loss progress pics - it pisses a lot of people off because there's better places for it, but gets upvotes from the masses).

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#114

Post by BostonFern » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 12:44 AM UTC

lethologica wrote: post #83

esotericn wrote: post #28

It's all still there, the major search engines are just broken because they've been co-opted by SEO. Tons of people still own and operate their own websites; BBSes exist; IRC is still here; mailing lists are still here; and so on and so forth. You just won't find it on the top hit at Google because their business model is based on ad sales wankery. Whilst we're on the topic, I'm gonna take the chance to write - if yo…

>if you work on this corporate shit and you're doing stuff you despise day in day out - please re-assess whether you could change things in your life to prevent that I once worked for an SEO agency and ended up quitting after 4 months. Everything about it went against my morals. I was disgusted with myself for pushing rubbish sites, snooping on peoples browsing behaviour, and working to squeeze every cent from it all…

I also think it's unethical, and I think it's disappointing how rare it is to hear someone speak honestly about what SEO actually is in practice.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#115

Post by crtlaltdel » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 12:49 AM UTC

and here i thought this was going to be about compuserv or prodigy. those experiences, along with aol, were the means by which many people experienced "the internet" in the "olden days". the only place i used the "internet" was at the computer lab in my school...all my friend's parents had signed up for one of the walled gardens and had no idea what else was "out there".

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#116

Post by JahWob » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 12:51 AM UTC

Maybe someone could take inspiration from Blizzard and create a "Classic Internet" ;)

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#117

Post by ethagnawl » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 12:52 AM UTC

I generally agree with the author's sentiment regarding "the Old Internet". However, using "voat" and "thank goodness" in the same breath raised a red flag for me about the author and their motives. They mentioned being kicked off raddle.me for posting links to their site (the one that's currently linked to on the top of the HN homepage); maybe that was with good reason and not a result of gatekeeping?

For example, from _Men and Women and Marriage_:

> In contrast, from what I've observed of women's behavior, most women marry for money. Some of them marry several times for money. You see, women understand why marriage exists. It exists to ensure that women will be provided for while they raise their children. This is why so many marriages are dissolved after the children leave home. From the woman's perspective: no more children, no more reason to be married.

Perhaps, in addition to the conveniences, opportunities (learning, employment and otherwise), etc. the "New Internet" has afforded us, making this sort of trash harder to find is a bit of silver lining.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#118

Post by jasoneckert » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 12:55 AM UTC

I enjoyed reading this.

However, a better title would be "I miss the old Information Superhighway" (the stark 90s name for the Internet)

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#119

Post by amiga-workbench » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:03 AM UTC

esotericn wrote: post #107

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. You can basically pick any subset of web technologies and just use those. And honestly, when teaching the average person how to make a website, they should just be taught the minimum required to make a valid HTML document. I think it's something like: My first webpage Hello, World!

More like: Hello, World!

HTML is bloat :)

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#120

Post by ratsmack » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:03 AM UTC

Like the author, I too had made an account on Raddle. After lurking for a while, I came upon a post about the Proud Boy March in Portland, and I made one single comment with a slightly cynical tone. Within a period of five minutes I was banned from the site.