171–180 of 196 posts
Has the community of people who wrote documents like this just dried up and vanished? Or have they all moved somewhere underground I can't find?
You should poke around in gopher. Has a very dial-up BBS feel, complete with FIGlets. Here is a nice web proxy: https://gopher.commons.host/
Poking through the posted site... I still remember when I discovered this[1] circa 1993-ish. It was the funniest thing ever back then.
Wow, I love this. Clicked on “Where are to files?” and discovered a treasure trove. I just dived into food files. Although it is not the type of artificial intelligence work people usually pay me to do, my passion is knowledge representation and automatically extracting meaning from text. textfiles.com looks like a great resource. Thanks for posting this.
This french soup recipe is a gem. I didn't know that I could use "3/4 cup of COCA COLA" to make onion soup.
While we're at it: @textfiles, any more awesome documentaries in the pipeline?
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Is it growing up? For me it’s more that everyone reads books like „How to brand yourself on the internet“ that’s why there is no personality left... the same goes for quirky software there is not much coming because everyone writes a sideproject notetaking electron app because it’s something everyone wants and can relate too. The problem with the modern web is not growing up it is the loss of personality.
> loss of personality Like ahlzeimers? It doesn't make sense that the graphics heavy world would have less personality than the constrained world of text.
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There are definitely things that I consider voodoo, like wetting the filter before you make your coffee, but there are tons of things that are just undeniable like: if you drink coffee from stale beans, your urine smells bad then next time you pee; if not, not. I'm always surprised when I drink some gas station coffee and then a couple of hours later "oh yeah, I normally drink better coffee, don't I?"
It's not voodoo; the concept of "supertasters" and other supersensory traits in humans is well-documented. Most legitimate sommeliers are likely supertasters. I'm a supertaster myself-- certain pungent/sour tastes will literally make me gag; I don't like foods with a million different components since I can taste all of them quite clearly. My wife on the other hand will smell things on the wind (like smoke) that I'll…
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Sommeliers claim to have incredible wine tasting powers, yet in a blind taste test I cannot reliably distinguish red wine from white wine. Maybe with more training I could, but shouldn't the difference be obvious without training? I've yet to be convinced that subtly in wine and coffee flavor is an objective matter.
There are definitely things that I consider voodoo, like wetting the filter before you make your coffee, but there are tons of things that are just undeniable like: if you drink coffee from stale beans, your urine smells bad then next time you pee; if not, not. I'm always surprised when I drink some gas station coffee and then a couple of hours later "oh yeah, I normally drink better coffee, don't I?"
Has the community of people who wrote documents like this just dried up and vanished? Or have they all moved somewhere underground I can't find?
Somewhere along the road the medium changed partly from text to video, this was initially surprising to me, but on the whole isn't particularly important.
Then Reddit ate the forums, and I'm not sure what happened to the blogs, but they don't feel the same either.
So they got spread out, got sold out, and overshadowed by louder people doing the same except with ads and for money.
I totally skipped over some bits of Internet history, but the point is, it used to be more open. Maybe harder to use and smaller. But it wasn't all being funded by gigantic ad corporations. Because the platforms they provide may technically seem capable of providing the same ground as for textfiles, they're also continuously pushing on their users to behave in certain ways to optimize advertising profits. And that kind of sucks the life out of everything, it seems.
Has the community of people who wrote documents like this just dried up and vanished? Or have they all moved somewhere underground I can't find?
The one's from 80's and 90's just grew up and dot-com era really gave more opportunities for the creative programmers. Younger people will never write on many of the topics in these files because it will land you in jail FAST. It used to be more anonymity back then. Phreaking, warez scenes were alive and well. Heck, even demoscence is not the same anymore. Anyways if you are into coding/hacking, working for a startup…
Can you expand on this? I used to be active in the demoscene 2 decades ago, but haven't really kept up lately, how have they changed?
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No there aren't. All HTTP traffic can be modified, which means it can deliver any malicious payload to the server or client. It's dangerous not to use HTTPS, period.
This is silly, as the endpoint you're connecting to could also be malicious. If you're worried about trusting your intermediary, you can just VPN to a trusted host and use it as a proxy.
this comment mentions their provider inserts ads in non-https traffic.
All are welcome, enjoy the site.
For example: http://textfiles.com/100/black.box gave me "application/vnd.previewsystems.box".