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The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

cheapskatesguide.org

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Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#121

Post by josht »

jackson1442 wrote: post #59
pavlov wrote: post #30

> 'Some people use the term "Web 3.0" to refer only to decentralized blockchain-based networks without considering that all personal websites have essentially the same goals, be they on the regular Internet or on the new blockchain networks. Those who use the term "web 3.0" seem to have forgotten that self-hosted personal websites that run on home servers and are accessible over the regular Internet are inherently de…

I got bored the other day and thought it would be funny to make a copy of the most expensive NFT and set that as my Twitter profile picture because they added that silly feature. So I downloaded MetaMask, got everything set up, and went to one of the NFT marketplaces to try to make one. Uploaded the image and got a big scary warning: > (paraphrased; I don't have a screenshot) This image was found too many times on th…

> So I downloaded MetaMask, got everything set up, and went to one of the NFT marketplaces to try to make one. Uploaded the image and got a big scary warning:

One NFT marketplace shows you an error message and therefore the technology is not decentralized? That's a bit of a stretch. That NFT marketplace might have restrictions in place for their own legal reasons, but using that as an excuse to say that the technology isn't decentralized is unjustifiable.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#122

Post by stakkur »

technothrasher wrote: post #103
stakkur wrote: post #50

I remember the glory days of UNIX/Usenet/etc. in the 80s at college too. I had an email address at Compuserve in the mid-80s, though I mainly used it for talking to other Compuserve members (when we weren't using 'CB channels', for those that remember). I remember all the various things like Usenet before the 'Internet' too; I don't recall anybody in my group ever calling it the Internet until after the WWW came alon…

> I don't recall anybody in my group ever calling it the Internet until after the WWW came along. Really? I do. I spent the early years of the web trying to get all the new people who had suddenly joined the net to understand that the web and the internet were two very different things. I gave up after a while.

Everybody was 'new' to the web. I've noticed the same confusion, and finally gave up trying to explain. Today, it seems people say 'Internet' for everything and 'web' has become passe.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#123

Post by letsburnthis »

Have the definitions of web 1.0 and 2.0 authoritatively been decided? The general idea I've seen has been that web 1.0 was decentralized and web 2.0 is centralized, but it seems kind of odd to separate the generations of something as impactful as the internet the same way you would separate generations of the iphone. It almost seems like it would make more sense to define generations at the same scale as the internet itself which is communication.

(full disclosure zero research has gone into this, I didn't live through web 1.0, and I know nothing about how the web works).

In my head, web 1.0 was the automation of one-way communication. You could request a site and the equivalent of a newspaper was sent to you; and anyone else who requested the same site was sent the same newspaper. If you wanted to order something you had to call the phone-number listed on that website, same as if you had seen an ad in a newspaper. Two-way communication existed but it was the equivalent of a really fast mail and was for the most part was between people over the internet rather than with the internet.

Web 2.0, suddenly if you requested a site you get a different version with different ads than someone else making the same request; without a person choosing for you to see those different ads. You can place an order and human doesn't get involved until that item needs to be picked off the shelf to be transported in meat space. Now the internet is 2-way communication, you make a request and it responds to you in seemingly unique ways. The internet itself is replacing some of the human effort that goes into communication. Before it was just transporting human information, now it's responding.

So what's left now that the internet has conquered communicating in two-directions through space? Time. If you want information (ideas, values, whatever) to transmit through time you create institutions. Something that is resilient so that it survives mostly intact and that is enforced to ensure compliance. Web 3.0 seems to fit that. Immutable (if desired), enforcement is achieved from the immutable code itself, and it runs on belief (the more people that are part of it the stronger its self-sustaining characteristics). It might also explain why all the big blockchain uses have been activities traditionally controlled by institutions (money, property, contracts).

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#125

Post by Miner49er »

idiotsecant wrote: post #61
pavlov wrote: post #30

> 'Some people use the term "Web 3.0" to refer only to decentralized blockchain-based networks without considering that all personal websites have essentially the same goals, be they on the regular Internet or on the new blockchain networks. Those who use the term "web 3.0" seem to have forgotten that self-hosted personal websites that run on home servers and are accessible over the regular Internet are inherently de…

It's worth noting that there is a core of people doing real work in crypto who are not trying to peddle NFTs or other sleight of hand rungpulls designed to separate the gullible from their money. Ethereum, for example, is full of people building interesting things like off-chain low-cost trading using non-interactive zero knowledge proofs and actively working to make crypto less energy intensive and more useful. They…

You can't trust Ethereum at all. When it comes to picking between their principles, and money, they'll always pick money. This is all shown by the hard fork when the DAO was was "hacked". The code was supposed to be law, until it meant they lost some money.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#126

Post by throw_nbvc1234 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #44
aluminussoma wrote: post #31

The Internet today feels like a big box strip mall in suburbia. While visiting my home town, I looked for a local, independent hardware store. There was only Home Depot and Lowe's. Then I realize how few independent businesses were left. On the Internet, you have Google, Amazon, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter. Much of the good content is hidden in their secret gardens (Facebook, Twitter, and increasingly Reddit). Discover…

> Discovery needs to be reimagined. Google search directs traffic but now everyone has a SEO manager to get their site to the top. If we want to see the Internet like before, original content needs to be prioritized over content like Pinterest, without needing to do anything special. Discoverability is a big part of why the independent web is struggling. And it's not just big tech's fault, people are really bad at li…

I definitely agree with this point. Discovery in the long-tail of content (without resorting to sort by new which is a nightmare) is a must solve problem in a independent/decentralized web.

I have a feeling the "answer" is "all of the above" options; the ability to choose what discovery/recommendation mechanisms to use. Being intentional about which lens your viewing your recommendations through. Being able to easily swap between lens. Allowing for corporation owned lens and community owned lens. Allowing yourself to look at an issue through the lens of an individual or institution that you trust.

> people are really bad at linking to each other I wonder if the underlying point here is that the initial set of recommendations comes from small "communities". The readers of a certain blog suggest similar content to others in a non-spammy way. An independent music label links to artists that they enjoy listening to. I think there's missing infrastructure that makes it hard to form these communities though; any barrier to entry makes it less useful. I could see the "web3 ownership economy" thing helping here if it ever becomes a thing; creating this infrastructure as a side effect of the other stuff they want to accomplish. It'd be like if a subreddit was automatically created for every content creator, which could then be used to find recommendations of similar content.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#128

Post by johannes1234321 »

ravenstine wrote: post #96
InefficientRed wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verizon FIOS residential fiber. (I've never had an ISP that allowed hosting HTTP servers in its TOS. But I've always hosted HTTP servers, and I've never had any issues. FWIW Gemini servers are also servers.)

Same, although I'm no longer doing what you're doing. With today's average bandwidth usage, I don't know why an ISP would seriously give a crap about someone hosting an HTTP server on their home IP unless it was dealing with some insane amount of traffic.

since they want to sell the more expensive business plan. And forbidding something in the terms makes it easy for them to cancel your account in case they have a different reason.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#130

Post by gitfan86 »

hunterb123 wrote: post #119
gitfan86 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes there are people with 100% good intentions working in this space. There were also people with 100% good intentions working at Theranos.

You're proving his point, there are also people with good/bad intentions working in "web2" and everywhere for that matter. Don't criticize the tech, criticize the individual bad actors, like you did with Theranos. One of the main talking points "web3" critics yell is "scams!", like they don't exist elsewhere. If you do want to criticize the tech, leave the moral crusade out of it and say technically what is wrong wit…

The tech is great. I'm a huge fan of all crypto use cases that actually exist today and are actually used by people and don't involve money laundering or accidental Ponzi schemes.
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