Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

buzzfeednews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 310 posts

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#301

Post by Can_Not »

rib3ye wrote: post #166
api wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope so, but if you mean cryptocurrency wake me up when there is more to it than speculation and gambling. Other than the "wire transfer" classic use case for Bitcoin I see nothing new that anyone is actually using that is not one of those two things.

Decentralized lending via Ethereum smart contracts is now a real thing. Check out this out in a dApp browser like Coinbase Wallet: https://app.compound.finance/ I’m current earning 3.5% apr by lending out USDC (Coinbase’s stablecoin) via dApp. EDIT: I guess I am being downvoted because people think this is spam? I only have a disincentive for people to use this dApp: as more liquidity gets added to the pool, my payou…

To be fair, "I give out vague loans in internet money" doesn't naturally default itself to being a good thing, and namedropping "smart contracts" and assuming that means anything aside from spam&scam technobabble to people outside of the ethereum is a bit of a miss on your part.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#302

Post by iso1210 »

zzo38computer wrote: post #192
iso1210 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IRC survived because it was too niche for spammers to target much but spam is the primary thing that killed Usenet and email as a truly open system. A year or so freenode was hit by spam, and now everyone needs to verify, so spam still exists, as does IRC. Even as late as 2000, usenet survived spam, conversations continued, and spam in email was far worse. Spam in email went the way of the dodo around mid-to-late 0…

I run my own email server, and use a separate address per correspondent. This avoids spam entirely. I have sometimes got some spam from some addresses but simply disable that address and then the problem is gone.

Do you accept wildcards, or create a new alias in advance every time? I used to accept wildcards around turn of millenium but spam was overwhelming.

How do you stop "mainstream" providers from sending your emails to spam?

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#303

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #295
LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. It's like saying anything else but fast food is too complicated. While in reality the net is full of cooking sites of all sorts. Let's do more cybercooking in our cyberkitchens! There is a saying that you are what and how you eat. What is the net? A medium for information of all sorts. Mindfood so to speak. Mind your diet!

Food is a necessity, eating out is more expensive than making your own, and you can make it healthier for yourself. Chat isn't usually a necessity, it's more or less free regardless of whether you use Discord or IRC, and using your own client doesn't make you any healthier.

I didn't mean to limit this to chat software. But now that you mention it, what if i only have small pans and pots, and/or only a single burner? And that thing with all the bells&whistles just wouldn't fit?

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#304

Post by zzo38computer »

iso1210 wrote: post #302
zzo38computer wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run my own email server, and use a separate address per correspondent. This avoids spam entirely. I have sometimes got some spam from some addresses but simply disable that address and then the problem is gone.

Do you accept wildcards, or create a new alias in advance every time? I used to accept wildcards around turn of millenium but spam was overwhelming. How do you stop "mainstream" providers from sending your emails to spam?

I do not accept (and never have accepted) wildcards. I create a new alias in advance every time.

I use the ISP's server for sending, and use my own server for receiving (the menu for install Exim has a "smart host" option which does this).

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#305

Post by jblwps »

throwaway17_17 wrote: post #238
JohnFen wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you use these services the cost is the monetization of your data. True. And if not using the services meant that those companies wouldn't spy on me, then I would have no complaint -- I already don't use their services. But it doesn't.

I’m genuinely uncertain as to how your data is being collected if you are not using these services, and again I’m not trying to argue or disagree with the underlying thesis that tracking/spying is a net negative, but I do want to understand the assertion that your personal data is being collected by companies you have no interaction with.

Just for example, Facebook tracks you even if you don't have a Facebook account.[0]

More generally, I think we need to approach discussions about data collection from the perspective that data being about a person doesn't mean that the person owns that data. Here's what I mean: The sort of data we're talking about is personal (read: "individual") merely in the sense that it is about persons. However, it's social (rather than personal) in its origin. For example, the list of my commercial transactions isn't originally (fundamentally?) data about my person. Rather, it's data about a social fabric of which I happen to be a part. So, personal data is not originally personal.

What's the significance of personal data being fundamentally social (by way of its origin)? Well, I would contend that it means personal/individual means of managing personal privacy are ultimately insufficient; your data (while it is about you) doesn't naturally belong to you. Therefore, my takeaway is this: If we want to make personal data (i.e. data about persons) practically personal (i.e. give persons control over their own data), then we need social mechanisms to protect it. My aforementioned point, about the insufficiency of personally-undertaken measures, is corollary to this.

For better or worse, it seems like most people these days equate "social mechanisms" with "regulation". However, there are in principle other social bodies (both formal (e.g. unions or guilds), or informal (e.g. various social movements)) that could be sufficient to make personal data truly personal. However, I'm unfortunately skeptical of the efficacy any non-governmental body could be when dealing with this problem. But that's beside the point.

[0] https://www.vox.com/2018/4/20/17254312/facebook-shadow-profi...

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#306

Post by zackmorris »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #287
zackmorris wrote: post #217

I'm more worried about technological and legal chokeholds on free expression like GDPR, whose main effect was to nag users with a popup about cookies on every major website. To me, it feels like the original possibility of inventing something, posting it online and earning a passive income is all but dead today. Too many hurdles now must be overcome. You pretty much have to learn a programming language, containerizat…

You know? In another galaxy, a long time ago there was some young guy who did freelance sysadmin and education for private people and small businesses, while assembling personal computers maindays in some omputer store. Let's call that time 1995, where one early evening young Largo was asked by the very established owner of some electronic parts import-export business with whom he was on good terms if he liked what h…

I hear ya, that's about the time I was coming up too. While your colorful vernacular isn't exactly how I might have put it, I think that it illustrates the frustration felt by many, ever since the beginning of personal computing.

I also wish that HyperCard had been a bigger influence on the early web. It was written in human terms for techno-novices trying to get real work done. As HyperTalk evolved into AppleScript, it lost its original elegance and is now just another cryptic toy language that is difficult or impossible to write without a manual.

IMHO to fix all of this, we need to bring back ideas like research budgets of perhaps 5-25% and every company over say 50 employees or $5 million/yr gross having some form of 20% time for in-house projects. That can't happen as long as everyone is competing with each other just to survive though. And not when the leading internet companies plow most profits into share price and dividends instead of free and open source community tools.

I wish we had more stories of individuals and groups that made enough money to retire, but instead of just reinvesting into the status quo, went on to fund real innovation through philanthropy or alternative business structures like co ops.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#307

Post by ergothus »

StevePerkins wrote: post #152
Timberwolf wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought similar. To me what Buzzfeed are calling the "old Internet" here is something I very much remember bemoaning as the "new Internet" in which dedicated protocols such as NNTP and IRC got displaced by brattish commercial upstarts whose web-based versions had 10% of the quality-of-life features and about 5% of the community etiquette. However they displaced everything that came before them because you could emb…

I started college, and discovered the Internet, in fall of 1993. An epoch infamously known as "Eternal September" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September ). The old-timers on Usenet and IRC at the time thought that me and my classmates were idiots. That we killed the "old Internet". From my perspective though, the "old Internet" died when Deja News sold out to Google. When phpBB forums started replacing Use…

> The old-timers on Usenet and IRC at the time thought that me and my classmates were idiots.

FWIW, my view at the time was a bit different - the normal cycle was that fresh students et al would join each year and they would either take time to learn the community conventions or they would leave. All of us were new once (indeed, I wasn't "new", but neither was I an old timer), so the issue wasn't the newcomers being idiots. The issue is that the community worked because of the conventions. We'd say "lurk for a while. Read the FAQ that I'd regularly posted. Learn how to quote and trim so many people can have manage an in-depth conversation that is spread over time and space".

Some considered this elitist snobbery and left. Others learned and stayed (and newcomers DID bring change - the conventions werent static).

But this sort of community cant survive the fast paced ephemeral connections that the eternal September brought.

What exists now is different. Better or worse? Too complex to answer. But definitely the kinds of conversations that were had then do not exist in the replacement media. They cant, anymore than the reverse could.

I'm not aware of any culture that survives integration with a larger one if that larger one has no regard for the smaller one.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#308

Post by armandhammer »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #142
rasengan wrote: post #4

The old internet died long before these centralized services appeared. The old internet was when we ran our own servers, built and hosted our own websites, and we were truly free in the wild wild west. Its easier than ever to run your own servers, but today few do. The old internet is dead (for now) and it looks more like the BBS era today. But we innovated past that then, and we will innovate past that now. I am gre…

The "old internet" isn't dead. It just looks dead, because the BILLIONS of people who joined the internet since 2002 simply never venture outside of the major centralized services. There are more privately run servers, self hosted websites and bb's now than there were back then. Its cheaper, safer and easier to start and run your own network and service today than ever. So in aggregate, there is 100x (1000x?) the nic…

What sucks is that it's now really, really, really hard to find the quality personal / enthusiast sites and blogs that are out there unless you already know what specific search terms will lead you to it. Searching using terms on Google that _should_ spit out a first-page result to those sites no longer does. Google now prioritizes results containing fake SEO-optimized pseudo blogs and paid-for "review" sites.

It's crazy how useless Google has become for discovering independent niche content -- it used to be so easy. And DDG and Bing aren't any better. So yeah there may be more out there than ever before, but if you can't find it... does it really exist?

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#309

Post by marcus_holmes »

zozbot234 wrote: post #116
marcus_holmes wrote: post #66

Interesting that they don't mention the business model that powered the old internet: VC money based on a vague promise that a large enough user base, coupled with ad revenue, would bring untold riches. As TFA says, most of those sites switched to paid accounts as the promise of "build a huge audience and work out how to monetise them later" didn't actually deliver any money. So it's not that they died (they're mostl…

> I think the next decade will see this more and more: people actually paying for the things they use on the internet, because they realise that's the only way this will work now. I think that "pay what you want"/crowdfunding models can fund a lot of the stuff that used to be provided "free" back in the day. The thing about paying for stuff on the internet is that many people find it quite inconvenient. It's not abou…

I'm curious, what's the "everything else"?

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#310

Post by 34679 »

orthecreedence wrote: post #200
34679 wrote: post #74

Buzzfeed did not watch and do nothing, they actively participated in creating its replacement. The author of this article is so tone deaf that he rails against social media giants dominating the netscape in an article with "Tweet" and Facebook "Share" buttons at the top.

I can dislike the state things are in and still use the tools available to spread a message or advance a cause without compromising my morals.

Not if what you dislike about the state of things is having a few major entities control the spread of messages.
Post reply on HN