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

I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

sffworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 435 posts

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#171

Post by failwhaleshark »

npteljes wrote: post #97
jcfrei wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a lot of those nostalgic posts are made by people who were simply happier when they were younger. And they conflate this general decline in happiness with a perceived decline in quality (of anything, be it the internet, television, music, etc). But in most cases it's just that things change and they no longer fit their desired qualities - they haven't become worse per se. For a lot of people who are young…

That's absolutely the case. It's also them encountering the first X, and then the millionth X. And a bunch of other biases also come into play, like survivorship bias. The good old refrigerator that's chugging along just fine for the twentieth year. It's not like today's shitty refrigerators can ever last this long. What's unseen though is the huge pile of discarded refrigerators on the landfill.

The fridge I grew-up with lasted 30 years.

It does seem like an industry-wide conspiracy to make "durable" consumer goods last only as long as their warranties. And also, to make money on replacement parts and complete replacements. The "Just go buy another one"-mentality makes me cringe.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#172

Post by vkk8 »

sneak wrote: post #77
barney54 wrote: post #60

This sentiment of missing an older internet is one reason like like Hacker News. Slash dot was great in the day. Digg was so great in the day. Then the early days of Reddit were great. I’ve been her for over ten years and Hacker News is still good. So thank you to the team that runs Hacker News and everyone who comments for making it a good place to come to.

Slashdot still exists, and the text internet is still a thing. It takes a deliberate effort to seek out smaller communities. I run one myself, because I want more of them to exist.

Slashdot indeed exists, but its comment section is complete garbage and the news are less and less about science and technology and more and more about politics and nerd tabloid style journalism ("You wouldn't believe what Linus Torvalds said on the Kernel developer mailing list!").

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#173

Post by kwyjobojoe »

ethbr0 wrote: post #132
pixl97 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say "thank you Google" for this one. This is how they decided to monetize the internet.

"They" is a bit unfair here. The sequence seems to have been something like: (1) Advertisers: "We'll pay you $2 for a video ad, $1 for an image ad, and $0.20 for a text ad." (2) Google: "We should find a way to create more video ad space."

Google changed YouTube monitisation so that videos had to be over a certain length to make money. Short to the point videos mean that the creator gets zip, so padding with unnecessary crap is the way to big bucks.

So it's totally, 100% Google's fault that there is a majority of pointlessly long videos on YouTube

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#174

Post by fuckwarmweather »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #146
scambier wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost never watch videos, unless it's the necessary medium for the context (i.e. music teaching or movie analysis), because I _need_ text to learn. But. Two weeks ago there was a small video on Discord that crashed the client when you played it. Here's a 8m30s long video explaining how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuBNQ6tiNcI tl;dw: they used ffmpeg to stitch 2 videos with a different aspect ratio tog…

Why are you not skipping the bullshit? I feed most of my youtube addiction through mpv and have configured several key combinations which allow me to quickly bisect the video. These videos are always full of comments like "why did I have to spend 20 minutes on this", while they never take more than 15 to 20 seconds from me. By the way, with a proper youtube-dl config in place you don't even have to open the browser:…

Can you elaborate on the key combinations thing? Is it just for jumping around in the video or is there more to it than that?

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#175

Post by bjornjajayaja »

fabbari wrote: post #34

I miss text. It seems now that whenever I search for 'how to do X?' there is a lot of video results for sometimes very trivial things. A 10 minutes video with the usual 'subscribe and hit the bell icon', a word from the sponsor, a long winded introduction and then "click on menu, then click on this item, then select the size".

Honestly I think the downfall began with lack of no-script support. JavaScript is a great addition to add interactivity, but it is an obvious win for commercial interests.

It would be nice if instead of websites being forced to display cookie banners, what if they were forced to support plain HTML/CSS only mode? Not only would it increase privacy and prevent things like Canvas fingerprinting (oh wait, that’s what commercial interests use), it would also put content first.

JavaScript began as a way to add dynamism to HTML which CSS now can handle by itself.

What we need is a web framework that provides good fallback modes.

My challenge to folks: try to use HTML/CSS only to create interesting and dynamic websites which focus on content-first. And give that content good printer-friendly support :)

And for monetization, sell a product on there of some kind. Provide something useful. Don’t hide behind a barrage of ads. There’s always another way!

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#176

Post by scambier »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #146
scambier wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost never watch videos, unless it's the necessary medium for the context (i.e. music teaching or movie analysis), because I _need_ text to learn. But. Two weeks ago there was a small video on Discord that crashed the client when you played it. Here's a 8m30s long video explaining how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuBNQ6tiNcI tl;dw: they used ffmpeg to stitch 2 videos with a different aspect ratio tog…

Why are you not skipping the bullshit? I feed most of my youtube addiction through mpv and have configured several key combinations which allow me to quickly bisect the video. These videos are always full of comments like "why did I have to spend 20 minutes on this", while they never take more than 15 to 20 seconds from me. By the way, with a proper youtube-dl config in place you don't even have to open the browser:…

> Why are you not skipping the bullshit

Honestly? Because I was expecting to hear something interesting at any moment. When I saw the length, I expected to see a technical explanation, a step-by-step how-to, a live example with the ffmpeg CLI. Anything remotely interesting.

What I absolutely did not expect was a 6 minutes long "introduction" out of a 8:30 minutes video. All of that to finally say "it's 2 videos stitched together, like and subscribe"

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#177

Post by krychu »

It’s now mostly “top 10 whatever-you-search for”, or pages that generate automated comparisons. People unconsciously craved for authentic experiences after supermarkets, and chains. And same goes for the Internet.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#179

Post by JoeAcchino »

scambier wrote: post #107
fabbari wrote: post #34

I miss text. It seems now that whenever I search for 'how to do X?' there is a lot of video results for sometimes very trivial things. A 10 minutes video with the usual 'subscribe and hit the bell icon', a word from the sponsor, a long winded introduction and then "click on menu, then click on this item, then select the size".

I almost never watch videos, unless it's the necessary medium for the context (i.e. music teaching or movie analysis), because I _need_ text to learn. But. Two weeks ago there was a small video on Discord that crashed the client when you played it. Here's a 8m30s long video explaining how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuBNQ6tiNcI tl;dw: they used ffmpeg to stitch 2 videos with a different aspect ratio tog…

Linking that video you're playing their game, adding pointless rambling is a way to increase video length for more ads.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#180

Post by akamal90 »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #146
scambier wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost never watch videos, unless it's the necessary medium for the context (i.e. music teaching or movie analysis), because I _need_ text to learn. But. Two weeks ago there was a small video on Discord that crashed the client when you played it. Here's a 8m30s long video explaining how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuBNQ6tiNcI tl;dw: they used ffmpeg to stitch 2 videos with a different aspect ratio tog…

Why are you not skipping the bullshit? I feed most of my youtube addiction through mpv and have configured several key combinations which allow me to quickly bisect the video. These videos are always full of comments like "why did I have to spend 20 minutes on this", while they never take more than 15 to 20 seconds from me. By the way, with a proper youtube-dl config in place you don't even have to open the browser:…

what are those proper youtube-dl config?
Post reply on HN