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I Miss the Old Internet

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231–240 of 317 posts

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#231

Post by dharma1 »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #147
shantly wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Same. It's the only place to find the sort of genuine, informed opinion that used to be common on the first page of Google results, on a wide variety of topics, without an awful lot of digging.

I am six months into reddit detox. The amount of time I have back is amazing. Only semi social site I read is this one. I have internet down to BBCNews, NHK, Reuters, HN, a few comics, Ars, next platform, the morning paper, Matt Levine and el reg. I am much happier :)

I only user Reddit a few times a month, specific focused subreddits, but find it invaluable for hive mind opinion/debate without product shilling (which is all you get on Google or Youtube). Reddit is great. It reminds me of Usenet back in the day

I suppose it can get addictive too, but I haven't found that to be the case for me, not yet anyway. HN on the other hand... :)

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#232

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

More and more I blame not just social networks, but the Web Search (and I mean Google) for strangling old-web community-centered resources. Many blogs and forums were shadowed by infinity of click-farms and other CEO'ed to crap sites, later adding tons of easily identifiable marketing black holes. Discoverability plummeted.

That's understandable, as Google have zero intention to lead to "real people" discussing things.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#233

Post by claudiawerner »

tenpies wrote: post #145
verylittlemeat wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spend enough time on 4chan and you'll realize reddit is a safezone kid gloves hug box. And 4chan isn't even that bad in terms of bad or illegal content so that goes to show how relative it all is.

4chan is outright fantastic in some aspects. /g/ is actually quite useful and friendly, especially the DPT (Daily Programming Thread), more-so if you're a beginner. /trv/ (travel) is just good and perfectly slow where you won't feel pressure to keep up with a thread because it will still be there tomorrow. /fit/ has good information and really encapsulates what happens when the internet meets bro-gym culture. Compare…

As a long time user of /g/ I must say that it is more and more frequently the case that threads which focus around gender, race or other controversial items, which users do not consider it a requirement to know anything about to speak on them, massively outstrip genuine threads like DPT. They're usually not removed by mods either.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#234

Post by Mizza »

kickscondor wrote: post #94

I keep a modern directory to the 'old' Internet at http://href.cool . I also track what's happening on blogs and wikis at http://www.kickscondor.com . There is a whole lot of great stuff going on, regardless of how popular it is. (I kind of think it's great that it's not.)

Hey man, I just have to say, I've randomly stumbled onto three(!) of your projects this week and love them all! Keep it up!

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#235

Post by WA »

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…

> You just won't find it on the top hit at Google because their business model is based on ad sales wankery.

And neither did you find it through Google in the "early 1990s" like in the article. Or in any other way, except by pure luck, because search was crap back then or simply didn't exist.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#236

Post by pmlnr »

"I Miss the Old Internet" - an article about another website WITHOUT LINKING THERE. Congratulations, you've played yourself.

What's murdering the old internet is the lack of links. Everyone is posting screenshots, twitter/facebook/etc all hijack links, and we're surprised we can't find the sites.

Link to eachother. That's why it used to work.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#237

Post by mjlee »

adg29 wrote: post #156
myrandomcomment wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am six months into reddit detox. The amount of time I have back is amazing. Only semi social site I read is this one. I have internet down to BBCNews, NHK, Reuters, HN, a few comics, Ars, next platform, the morning paper, Matt Levine and el reg. I am much happier :)

Curious but why do you qualify HN as semi social?

There's no real culture here of meta discussion or throwaway comments/in jokes like there is on more socially engaged platforms.

The majority of discussion here is "on topic" - which is good but very different to Reddit or Slack communities which tend to revolve more around personalities.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#238

Post by pmlnr »

therealmarv wrote: post #65

Any good tips&tricks to find this personal sites without exactly knowing what you are searching for? The crazy part is I have google but I tend to visit my 5 (mostly more commercial) news&tech websites nowadays. Gone are also the days with my well structured bookmark lists. Only thing I do nowadays is to keep a personal list of Markdown notes for all important topics to look up.

Try searching with https://millionshort.com/ as a first step, but it's not simple at all.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#239

Post by pmlnr »

sys_64738 wrote: post #80

gopher still works!

I made my site available over gopher a while ago[^1]; After reading https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19178885 and it's comments I curiously started up lynx and entered gopher the first time* and it was a massively unexpected ride into the forgotten oldskool internet.

* I'm from Hungary and gopher never really existed there. Besides, it kind of predates my internet-age, which really started around 1996.

[^1]: https://petermolnar.net/gopher/

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#240

Post by cannam »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #72
superkuh wrote: post #21

The old internet is still there, it's still growing. It's just covered in a thick layer of corporate shit sites. All you have to do is be the change you want to see. Start hosting your website from home. Code it by hand. Don't use any javascript frontends. It's a good time. As for finding others, well, HN isn't a bad place to start. Just install an RSS reader client and every time you find yourself enjoying an articl…

https://millionshort.com/ lets you exclude that thick layer of corporate shite. Search without the top million (or 100k, 10k etc) sites. !mill from DDG. Not perfect but often turns up those personal homepages, hobby sites and esoterica the early internet thrived on. Stuff that Google and co forgot existed - or is down on page 200+

Ooh, that's nice. I'm definitely using that. Thank you.
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