I Miss the Old Internet • Hacker News Board

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#261

Post by notacoward » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:06 PM UTC

I always find it a bit weird when people wax nostalgic about the "old internet" when they're still talking about the web. The real old internet had existed for a while before the web, BBSes and Usenet before that. Eternal September[1], of which the early web was effectively a continuation, practically obliterated those communities.

There's a lot to like about being able to do my banking, shopping, etc. online. I value the contacts I've been able to make and maintain via Modern Social Media. Still, the loss of something that existed before looms larger for me than any differences between different generations of websites. The author is missing the middle period interent, and that's OK, but some of us also miss the truly old internet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#262

Post by tim333 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

pmlnr wrote: post #247

tim333 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://mayvaneday.art/ by the way

Not the point; typing the quoted text in duckduckgo gave me the url. The problem that what makes the web a web is glue between the components: the links. Without that, there's no web or net.

and no ht in http

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#263

Post by art4ur » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:21 PM UTC

The internet is a better place when it's treated like a network of people instead of a network of Brands™.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#264

Post by Dissley » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:30 PM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #160

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…

You may be interested in https://millionshort.com , a search engine that lets you filter out results from the top 100 to 1,000,000 (your choice) sites. Depending on the search and the number you pick, it'll give you lots of personal websites and small forums. I also just found https://boardreader.com , which searches forums exclusively.

millionshort.com looks promising! I will give it a try. Do you know what engine they use? Google or Bing, or something completly different?

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#265

Post by randcraw » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

pcnix wrote: post #248

stelonix wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be Quora! But I agree, Reddit has pretty poor quality discussions, sometimes with as little depth as most Facebook comments.

This might just be my experience, but I've found Quora to be of extremely poor quality questions/answers with a few outliers. Reddit on the other hand seems to have both good answers and people just horsing around, but not as much astro-turfing as I find on Quora answers.

StackExchange consistently has the most technically informed content of any site I know. And the most focused / on-topic comments, which limits its social appeal of course.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#266

Post by solarkraft » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:35 PM UTC

aaronax wrote: post #125

solarkraft wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing this is being downvoted because after all, for unpopular stuff, you're still going to be the one hosting your content.

If it is unpopular, then the resources required to host the content are manageable. If it is popular, the IPFS users seed it to each other so your load is still manageable.

Good point!

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#267

Post by jodrellblank » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

jiggawatts wrote: post #230

JohnFen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do and it saddens me. It reminds me of the end days of Slashdot, right before I stopped commenting there entirely after a decade of positive interactions with like-minded people. More than half of the top-voted content on Reddit is indistinguishable from bot-generated random memes. Someone please explain to me what "blursed" means and why it's use means that it gets to go straight to the top of "/all" regularly...

“Blursed” is a mix of blessed and cursed, it’s a sweet-n-sour style tension in a comment or picture that doesn’t resolve cleanly one way or the other, and from that it’s more interesting than a basic setup with a 180-degree twist ending that has a definite answer to whether it’s nice or nasty, wholesome or mean, kind or cruel, etc.

And because most of Reddit is young people with lots of time on their hands, looking for entertainment and pastime, content with no particular niche and with a twist that isn’t an explicit joke or reference, is widely engaging.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#268

Post by JohnFen » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

verylittlemeat wrote: post #142

JohnFen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

True. I learned a long time ago that 4chan is not my sort of place at all, and never bother going there. I do pop into Reddit every so often, though.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#269

Post by account42 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:28 PM 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.

Then you aren't hosting your own website from home anymore.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet

#270

Post by cortesoft » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:34 PM UTC

hnzix wrote: post #166

cortesoft wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't thought crimes, but they are views that will get you ostracized... and they should. The rule is fairly simple, and does not require a list; if you believe that someone should have a different set of rules and expectations just because of a characteristic outside or their control, that is not acceptable.

Dividing the discourse into Correct people and The Others Who Shall Be Shunned is exactly the kind of binary thinking that is killing rational discourse. You are never going to change someone's mind by shouting at them.

Are you suggesting that there are NO viewpoints that are worth rejecting out of hand? If someone thinks that all black people should be killed, we need to entertain his views?

There are limits, and some views are not just a difference of opinion. Some viewpoints need to be shunned.