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

If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

tttthis.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 637 posts

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#471

Post by coopsmgoops »

polishdude20 wrote: post #225
aazaa wrote: post #178

The best way to bring back blogs is to start with your own. It looks like this is the author's fourth post and s/he hit a home run with the top post on HN. But that's rarely how things work. The thing few people tell you when you start blogging is how futile it will seem - for a long, long time. You'll start by posting something you put a lot of work into. You'll publish, thinking of all the comments and emails you'l…

I often notice when I start writing on a particular topic, I learn more about my thoughts and opinions of it and realize my thoughts are wrong or not really novel. Halfway in I give up since I feel like, "oh, this actually isn't really adding anything new to the conversation". Then I leave with a new humbleness about my beliefs but also a sense of "when am I actually going to know enough to warrant writing about it?"…

I'm the same way, I remember getting that feeling of sudden understanding right at the end of writing an essay in school. But I no longer had any time left to actually present my new found understanding.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#472

Post by loquor »

mirimir wrote: post #470
mesaframe wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> used against you in job interviews I used to think blogging come as complementary to your skills. How will anyone use them against you?

Well, it depends on what you blog about. If, say, you blog about some social/economic/political position that is (or becomes) unpopular/unacceptable, your career may be toast. Such as, for example, happened for James Damore. So if you're going to blog as your meatspace identity, you gotta protect your brand. If you want to blog carelessly, you'd better do that using a persona that can't readily be linked to your meat…

Can you leverage Mirimir ever in your real life? If Mirimir writes some stupendous essays but 5% of his posts are critical of say, some aspect of the LGBT community, then wouldn't it be a huge risk to your IRL reputation? Then you couldn't admit that you're Mirimir to others IRL.

But I like the idea of blogging under a fake name! This will sound ridiculous, but I'm a young individual with big ambitions. I don't want to blog, lest my future enemies figure out my psyche to use it against me.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#473

Post by Hedja »

pmlnr wrote: post #77
jobigoud wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by private blogs?

Hidden; sort of. These days if I want to get the RSS for a site, I need to look for 'alternate' links in the code.

My blog does this. Not because I want to hide it. Since RSS is a standard, I expect anyone wanting to add my blog to their RSS would just use the current URL and the reader will grab the alt meta tag. I have multiple feeds, one for each tag, so if a reader uses a blog post URL they'll be given a choice on what tag to subscribe to (or everything). Having separate RSS links on the page for this would add clutter.

Before, Firefox used to show the RSS icon but they killed it. It really should be a browser-level thing, it's no different from favicons, rather than requiring users to hunt down a link somewhere on the page.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#474

Post by langitbiru »

adrianN wrote: post #467
Reelin wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble with that is that once you post something to it you can never associate it with yourself (even accidentally!) or deanonymization of everything else posted by that identity will also occur. Half baked idea: A decentralized and properly anonymized (at the protocol level) service intended for long-form articles. Employ cryptographic primitives to allow association of a single article with one or more identit…

That won't be safe for very long. De-anonymization based on writing style is pretty good already.

Maybe AI that changes the writing style to monotonous style would help.

Say, you always write like Yoda speaks, "Great you are." Then the AI would change it to, "You are great."

I know, I know, it's a tall order.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#475

Post by jstanley »

Reelin wrote: post #379
throwaway1777 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start an anonymous blog. I have one. Also an anonymous hacker news account. :)

The trouble with that is that once you post something to it you can never associate it with yourself (even accidentally!) or deanonymization of everything else posted by that identity will also occur. Half baked idea: A decentralized and properly anonymized (at the protocol level) service intended for long-form articles. Employ cryptographic primitives to allow association of a single article with one or more identit…

How would such a system be "abused"? What does abuse of a blogging platform even look like? People might write text that others don't want to read?

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#476

Post by loquor »

marban wrote: post #453
cyberferret wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been blogging on and off for the past few years now (not going to publish the link here in case it is seen as self promotion). Mainly as a way of leaving my life story and thoughts for my family to have something to remember my life when I am no longer around (My dad had some incredible life stories, and I wish we had recorded them in some form before he passed). I think what is missing now is the rich set of to…

Posterous: I just launched https://flipso.com — Does more or less the same.

Is there a sample post that we can see?

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#477

Post by tome »

loquor wrote: post #472
mirimir wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it depends on what you blog about. If, say, you blog about some social/economic/political position that is (or becomes) unpopular/unacceptable, your career may be toast. Such as, for example, happened for James Damore. So if you're going to blog as your meatspace identity, you gotta protect your brand. If you want to blog carelessly, you'd better do that using a persona that can't readily be linked to your meat…

Can you leverage Mirimir ever in your real life? If Mirimir writes some stupendous essays but 5% of his posts are critical of say, some aspect of the LGBT community, then wouldn't it be a huge risk to your IRL reputation? Then you couldn't admit that you're Mirimir to others IRL. But I like the idea of blogging under a fake name! This will sound ridiculous, but I'm a young individual with big ambitions. I don't want…

> I don't want to blog, lest my future enemies figure out my psyche to use it against me.

I think you overestimate the sophistication of your future enemies. The bigger risk may be that by not blogging you don't figure out your psyche, to use it for you.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#478

Post by mirimir »

loquor wrote: post #472
mirimir wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it depends on what you blog about. If, say, you blog about some social/economic/political position that is (or becomes) unpopular/unacceptable, your career may be toast. Such as, for example, happened for James Damore. So if you're going to blog as your meatspace identity, you gotta protect your brand. If you want to blog carelessly, you'd better do that using a persona that can't readily be linked to your meat…

Can you leverage Mirimir ever in your real life? If Mirimir writes some stupendous essays but 5% of his posts are critical of say, some aspect of the LGBT community, then wouldn't it be a huge risk to your IRL reputation? Then you couldn't admit that you're Mirimir to others IRL. But I like the idea of blogging under a fake name! This will sound ridiculous, but I'm a young individual with big ambitions. I don't want…

Yes, that is indeed a limitation. Nobody IRL will ever know that I'm Mirimir. Also, I can't attend physical events as Mirimir, or do anything with audio/video.

I suppose that you could use other personas for totally non-controversial stuff. Indeed, you could have a range of them, and disclose some if you like.

There is the issue of writing style. At this point, Mirimir is my only persona that writes extensively in English. There are a few others that are basically Mirimir's pseudonyms. But my IRL identity doesn't post much in English. For some others, I've translated into other languages, using offline software.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#479

Post by stevehb »

lethologica wrote: post #376
lowwave wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It looks like this is the author's fourth post and s/he hit a home run with the top post on HN. Think this is NOT his fourth post. It may be a new front end: Check out the other blogs: http://tttthis.coolstuffinterestingstuffnews.com

What is this bizarre URL? Their site is http://tttthis.com I remember it because I sometimes try to find it. I quite liked a post of theirs called "Remember websites" or something to that effect.

Might be this one: http://tttthis.com/rememberwebsites.php/

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#480

Post by renewiltord »

freehunter wrote: post #461
renewiltord wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not my experience at all. The mods plus fanmade expansions community is bigger than ever. And so is open source. Way more stuff is free now than ever before.

It's not about giving things away for free, it's about doing things you like to do just for your own satisfaction. While there is a lot of that in the mods and open source space, there's also a lot of resume building, portfolio projects, etc. There's an insane amount of pressure to always be "shipping to production" no matter if your hobby is crocheting, gardening, writing code, blogging, building robots, playing mus…

I'm sorry you feel this way, but I do not think this is true for most creators. Too many of my friends have made wonderful things for the sake of it. And they're so self-effacing, they won't even mention these things.
Post reply on HN