Newsletters and podcasts are somewhat decent replacements worth considering.
If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs
571–580 of 637 posts
Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs
#572Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Not necessarily that tall: you just need copies of a long enough text, written in different writing styles.
Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs
#573Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Blogs ... show up easily in search results if a post matches a relevant query. No, they don't. This comes down to two main changes in how Google operates: 1) Google no longer respects search operators so that users can get fine-grained results, and 2) Google has chosen to progressively delist old content, even if many blog posts from the early millennium remain just as relevant today because no one has posted at le…
> 1) Google no longer respects search operators so that users can get fine-grained results They do. Search for "javascript vscode" and "javascript -vscode" completely different results.
Today Google kinda, sorta respects minus signs. You are right that you can often get a different set of results by including one. However, Google does not strictly interpret those operators anymore, which you can verify for yourself by trying to search for exact strings in pages from a range of times.
Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs
#574I’ve learned a lot from blog posts and still follow a handful of outstanding blogs by experts in specific domains.
That said, I rarely read company blog posts any more as many companies seem to be phoning it in. Writing high quality blog posts likely to be useful to an audience is a lot of work.
I’d love to see the return of blogs as a priority not an after thought done mostly for SEO.
Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs
#575Many of my favourite blogs mutated into (video) podcasts. Unfortunate because a 5 min read turned into a 50 min listen.
Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs
#576In the blog post it says "Blogger was shut down by Google years ago" which is not true as far as I know. Google just did a big update to the Blogger interface, which is not something they do to (the many) platforms they abandon. I blog frequently about games and art and have a steady audience of between 3k and 4k readers monthly.
Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs
#577Earlier quoted context omitted.
What complex social problem? All I see are a few technical problems regarding security, anonymity, and interrelations between nodes on a graph. There's also a closely related ease of use (ie UX) problem regarding the convenience (or rather lack thereof) of publishing things in a reasonably anonymous manner. All the social problems, such as the underlying reasons for wanting or needing anonymity in the first place, re…
It is a social problem because even the strongest, most bullet-proof cryptography solution can't prevent people slipping up and making mistakes, which a motivated attacker can then use to de-anonymize and connect their various identities together. And people will slip up and make mistakes. A lot.
I agree that the potential for making mistakes could contribute to a social problem, but it's one that already exists. I also wasn't proposing to solve it - hence my earlier response.
Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs
#578The 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'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…
https://feedly.com/ is a good free alternative. I too miss Reader and my experience with that and Google+ made me extremely wary of Google, I frequently back up my data in case they decide to abandon Google Docs or Google Photos or who knows what else.
Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs
#579I disagree with the author’s idea that blogs shouldn’t have a focus. I think the best blogs are these sort:
1. By an expert in a specific domain.
2. Blogs by someone in the process of developing expertise, documenting what they learned along the way. The idea is it really helps the learning process to learn something well enough to write about it cogently and teach others.
Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs
#580Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Not judging you or your friends, but perhaps those who can do hobbies just for fun are in a position of privilege (enough time, money, financial and professional security) to be able to do so? The "hustle culture" is very real and is I think a side effect of the gig economy and the end of the 9-5 secure job with its strict boundaries of work and leisure time. If you still have that kind of job it's easier to have hob…
Interesting. It's exactly the opposite. The guys I'm talking about are all running their own startups or at startups. So definitely not 9-5s.