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The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

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Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#181

Post by infinitezest »

jmmarco wrote: post #88
mojuba wrote: post #33

In addition, what's changed between 2017 and now is that back then Google was still admired by the tech people. "Google is evil" sounded ridiculous only a few years ago. I've been ridiculed by my colleagues and fellow engineers every time I said it. But I think it began to change with the introduction of AMP, a growing list of products discontinued for no apparent reason, failures of some of the new products often pr…

” unfortunately there's no competition to Search on the horizon ”. What about duckduckgo? I’ve been using it roughly for a year and i’m happy with it.

I could be wrong but I think DDG is actually backed by Bing.

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#182

Post by ALittleLight »

>The Web’s diversity has granted space for multiple businesses to innovate and thrive, independent hobbyist communities to grow, and personal sites to be hosted on whatever physical servers can host them.

A few months ago I was feeling the same way, especially about personal websites. I tried to find StumbleUpon as that seemed like a good alternative to see random unique websites. However, I was saddened to see it had shut down or transformed itself into a kind of Pinterest like clone.

Given that StumbleUpon was gone, I tried to quickly recreate the core functionality - click button get random website, at https://stumblingon.com - there are still a bunch of small, personal, interesting websites out there. We just need a good way to find them.

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#183

Post by salawat »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #179
nathcd wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, we could stop sending people programs to track themselves on their own computers. Just use your server logs. I don't care how much of an inconvenience it is, you should never have started doing any client-side tracking in the first place.

What's the huge objection to client-side tracking over server-side tracking?

20+ years ago, we wouldn't discussing the ethics of server/client based tracking with a straight face, because that shit is creepy as fuck.

Now, everyone takes tracking for granted as if the option of not being tracked is some sort of unachievable goal.

That's the issue. It isn't tracking A as opposed to tracking B. It's tracking period.

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#184

Post by seppel »

microtherion wrote: post #121
the_duke wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been a lot of discussions on Google Search quality lately on HN. (eg here: [1]) I wonder how much of the negative sentiment towards Google is partially motivated by subconscious dissatisfaction with their main product. I think I'm probably guilty of that. Others have mentioned that the web environment has changed a lot and I've come to agree. PageRank style algorithms are probably pretty useless in an era…

When I started increasingly using DDG a while ago, it was primarily because I (1) thought it was "good enough" and (2) I wanted to preserve some diversity in the search ecosystem. But by now, DDG is simply better. An important use case for search for me is to copy and paste URLs for discussions etc. Google will still show original URLs when I hover over their links, but when I COPY them, I don't get the URL, but some…

> Google will still show original URLs when I hover over their links, but when I COPY them, I don't get the URL, but some redirect link through Google.

Google is doing that for a very long time. I use this extension to get rid of it:

https://palant.de/2011/11/28/google-yandex-search-link-fix/

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#185

Post by nathcd »

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #180
nathcd wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To folks saying to “Just use server logs”, it’s simply too hard to connect the dots unless you really know what you’re doing. No it's not, just stop overarchitecting your stuff. > Digging through my nginx logs to find that the majority of my users are dropping off at the second step of sending an invoice would be nearly impossible. Oh I could connect those logs to my api’s database, now I need a place to aggregate…

I don't know, it seems like an arbitrary line to me. If I logged everything about your visit in a file, then wrote some code to analyze and reconstruct a picture of you as a user, would it be OK with you because I call it a server log?

When I hit in a URL bar, or click on a link to a webpage, or fill out a form on the web, I know that I'm sending a request to a server. That's why I'm taking that action in the first place. But if you send me a program in a webpage to collect data about me, I'm not trying to send you that data, you're doing it behind my back.

You can still certainly be a jerk with data you collect in your server logs. (For example, I'd be pretty angry if you sold your log data to google or some other advertiser.) But your server is your computer, and the data in server logs is the data making up the HTTP requests that were explicitly sent to your server. That's your data, not mine.

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#186

Post by hnuser77 »

ttldude wrote: post #160
mindw0rk wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is ticker symbols of their stocks in the market.

Oh help, you can't be serious that he uses those on purpose.

It's a neat trick: it emphasizes that they are amoral companies required to do nothing but make money, and simultaneously that they're only companies like the thousands of other gyrating tickers on the stock market. This same author frequently uses the term "Microsoft Github".

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#187

Post by hnuser77 »

harimau777 wrote: post #135
tannhaeuser wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's no competition to Search on the horizon This is bunk, and it's time for this myth to die. DDG/Bing/Yandex will list the exact same pages that Google gives as a search result most of the time, and sometimes better ones. If you find that the pointless endless-scroll listing of millions of search results (in 0.333ms!) that Google and also DDG gives you isn't helpful, you can also try Startpage.com. What are yo…

Can you explain your feelings on YouTube in more detail? I find that I am often looking for information in video form (generally because I am trying to learn how to do some physical skill or to learn about something that is innately movement based such as dance). Although I often use Bing's video search in order to not just get YouTube results, the majority of them end up being on YouTube anyways. In general I haven'…

It looks like Bing SFW search is only Youtube, same as DDG. Only video search site I've seen lately is Petey Vid which searches the expected Vimeo, Dailymotion, but also Instagram, Twitter, Peertube, and a bunch of random non-US video sites.

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#189

Post by marcus_holmes »

salawat wrote: post #183
marcus_holmes wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the huge objection to client-side tracking over server-side tracking?

20+ years ago, we wouldn't discussing the ethics of server/client based tracking with a straight face, because that shit is creepy as fuck. Now, everyone takes tracking for granted as if the option of not being tracked is some sort of unachievable goal. That's the issue. It isn't tracking A as opposed to tracking B. It's tracking period.

I need to understand why my customers are not clicking on the "subscribe" button.

I'm not selling adverts to them. I'm not capturing personal information. all I'm doing is trying to understand who my customer is and why they're not buying my product.

Why is this unethical?

And why is it OK to analyse server logs, but not OK to use javascript, to do this?

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#190

Post by davidjnelson »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #108
irrational wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Windows OS these days? I haven't used it since the early 2000s. I think the last version I used was... XP? Everyone at my work uses a MacBook. Some of my children are in their early 20s now and have never used Windows. It has always been OSX/MacOS, iOS, Ubuntu, Android, or ChromeOS. I don't know if my kids are typical or not but if many of the rising generation don't grow up using Windows, will they want to us…

Windows still owns gaming which is going to keep it relevant to the youth despite anything it does poorly for some time to come. Just look how many front-page carousel blockbusters on Steam still only support Windows. I game on macOS and things are slowly getting better, but macOS is still mostly relegated to Aspyr ports. I'd be reluctant to claim that Windows is dying to youngsters until the state of gaming radicall…

Gaming is definitely the big use case for windows. Also, an ok os if you don’t want to pay through the nose for top end upgradeable hardware or run a Linux desktop or hackintosh.

Haven’t tried desktop Linux in 20 years, hopefully it’s gotten better. Back then it was common to have to seek out and compile your own drivers to get network, audio, printer type drivers working lol.

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