The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back • Hacker News Board

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#151

Post by blihp » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 1:10 AM UTC

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…

Typically when people were using Usenet and email, they weren't on the Internet proper but rather connecting to a node (often via a terminal emulator over dialup) that often itself got batch updates via dialup using UUCP etc. Even when people started using their dialup services (AOL, Compuserve etc) as web gateways they often weren't technically on the Internet but rather just the WWW subset of it. When people started dialing in to ISPs and getting cable/DSL modems then they were on the Internet as they technically had access to all of its facilities and could connect to any other node on it. So there was a legitimate reason for not calling most of the earlier commercial/hobbyist services the Internet as they were just giving you glimpses at parts of it often without technically being on it.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#152

Post by taylorbuley » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 1:11 AM UTC

> By the way, I think it is sad that I can't even make a comment on Hacker News about this article, because I've been banned. When someone else posts my articles there, many people want to read them, but when I post them, they are blog spam.

Might be worth an unban, admin.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#153

Post by kxrm » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 1:12 AM UTC

The "old internet" never went anywhere. I've been running my own websites since the 90s. My oldest website is now 20 years old as of today. People still use it. It doesn't get enormous amounts of traffic but it's built for a very specific community.

I keep it going to keep myself sharp on how the underlying plumbing of the internet works. I definitely don't think it will scale well, but that isn't the point.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#154

Post by yazboo » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 1:12 AM UTC

These niche groups for enthusiasts, tilde club or mastodon or neocities or aral balkan or whatever can't ever bring the old internet back. It's not coming back, it's really not, you just have to accept that the world you used to love is gone and find some new way to do things. Why make a dollhouse of your past. You must move on!

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#155

Post by erulabs » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 1:13 AM UTC

corobo wrote: post #133

throwhauser wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you making this more complicated than it needs to be? I'm not sure. I guess if one trusts the default logging settings on the server software to be compliant, and only uses static HTML, maybe that's adequate? But as soon as any third-party code or data provided by some other server gets involved, it's hard to know what might be logged elsewhere as a result of visiting your site. I mean, would an old-fashioned w…

You can +1 a database `views` column without storing anything at all about the user. If you’re just doing that you’re good to go

I mean, most "unique view counters" store the users IP address, so that would be right out. I'm fairly sure even being aware of what complying with a complex legal documents implies constitutes enough of a complication that it's worth mentioning.

It is a complication, but I believe it's worded so that small companies and individuals are immune from its consequences.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#156

Post by PragmaticPulp » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 1:14 AM UTC

wolpoli wrote: post #67

kstrauser wrote: post #5

I sure hope that's right. It was the best feeling in the world to stand up an Apache server on my Amiga, and later my little FreeBSD server, and see my friends viewing the website I was hosting on my dialup connection. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't elegant, and it certainly wasn't fast, but it was mine . I made that. From installing the server to writing the HTML, I owned that service from end to end and had completely…

The barrier of entry was actually lower than that. We didn't need to stand up an Apache server. We could just sign up for a Geocities/Xoom/Tripod account and upload HTML or use the built in site editor to create content. Somewhere along the way, people stopped building well organized sites and started producing chronologically organized writings and content. These chronologically organized articles and content have d…

> The barrier of entry was actually lower than that. We didn't need to stand up an Apache server. We could just sign up for a Geocities/Xoom/Tripod account and upload HTML or use the built in site editor to create content.

Reading this thread feels like everyone is anchored to whatever methods were popular at the time they entered the internet as being the peak. The BBS people think it was all downhill after BBS declined. The self-hosting people think it was all downhill after sites like Geocities/Tripod/Xoom became popular. The Geocities people think it was all downhill after blogging platforms became popular. The blogging people think it was all downhill when social media became popular.

I think there's a heavy dose of nostalgia coloring the opinions in this thread. What people really yearn for isn't Geocities or Usenet or whatever. It's the feeling of excitement that came from first getting immersed in the internet when it was all new to you.

> Somewhere along the way, people stopped building well organized sites and started producing chronologically organized writings and content. These chronologically organized articles and content have dominated web content and social media ever since.

I don't see the problem with chronological ordering. Most of those platforms and sites make it easy to search for related posts. Worst case, the author can just drop some hyperlinks into the posts to tie them together.

Curated and organized websites tend to fall out relevancy and decay very rapidly. Might as well just let people post as they see fit and then we can find it by searching.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#157

Post by gnubison » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 1:15 AM UTC

yazboo wrote: post #154

These niche groups for enthusiasts, tilde club or mastodon or neocities or aral balkan or whatever can't ever bring the old internet back. It's not coming back, it's really not, you just have to accept that the world you used to love is gone and find some new way to do things. Why make a dollhouse of your past. You must move on!

Because some of us enjoy the “dollhouses”…?

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#158

Post by PragmaticPulp » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 1:16 AM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #35

kstrauser wrote: post #5

I sure hope that's right. It was the best feeling in the world to stand up an Apache server on my Amiga, and later my little FreeBSD server, and see my friends viewing the website I was hosting on my dialup connection. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't elegant, and it certainly wasn't fast, but it was mine . I made that. From installing the server to writing the HTML, I owned that service from end to end and had completely…

Yeah. That sense of ownership has been lost. Now corporations own everything. Nobody wants a domain, they want a @name on some social media platform. Nobody wants their own website, they want to post on social media. ISPs have cgNAT now, nobody is directly connected to the internet. Everything is just so boring .

> That sense of ownership has been lost. Now corporations own everything. Nobody wants a domain, they want a @name on some social media platform. Nobody wants their own website, they want to post on social media.

I don't think the self-hosting people with their own domains ever went away. They're all still out there.

The difference is that the internet isn't just for those people any more. Everyone is online, and the average person has no intention of learning how to host and maintain and design their own website when they can just as easily post the same content on an easy to use platform.

A lot of the nostalgia in this thread isn't so much for the technologies of years past. It's for an internet that was just for us nerds, without the regular people participating.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#159

Post by netizen-936824 » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 1:17 AM UTC

wolpoli wrote: post #67

kstrauser wrote: post #5

I sure hope that's right. It was the best feeling in the world to stand up an Apache server on my Amiga, and later my little FreeBSD server, and see my friends viewing the website I was hosting on my dialup connection. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't elegant, and it certainly wasn't fast, but it was mine . I made that. From installing the server to writing the HTML, I owned that service from end to end and had completely…

The barrier of entry was actually lower than that. We didn't need to stand up an Apache server. We could just sign up for a Geocities/Xoom/Tripod account and upload HTML or use the built in site editor to create content. Somewhere along the way, people stopped building well organized sites and started producing chronologically organized writings and content. These chronologically organized articles and content have d…

The barrier to entry may have been lower if you were willing to host on someone else's hardware, but from my reading that's not truly decentralized or owned by the user such as in the spirit of the parent comment.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#160

Post by kevstev » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 1:17 AM UTC

taurusnoises wrote: post #115

I so wish these articles would give a 101 on how to make an old-school, decentralized website. So many of us want that, but just have no idea where to begin anymore (and I made websites in the late 90s....) Love these articles, tho. The more the better.

Is it really that obscure these days?

1. Have a computer in your house open exposed to the internet on port 80- port forward on your router.

2. Run an http server on that box. Apache is a reasonable choice but there are probably easier pieces of software out there to set up.

2a. Create an index.html or equivalent default page name and put some html in it even if it's just hello world- it can even be in plain text.

3. Technically you are now self hosted on the internet! Figure out your external IP from your router and point a browser to http://$YOURIP/ and you should see your page.

The next steps are optional but kind of required to have a "real" site.

4. Set up dns. Since you won't have a static IP from your ISP almost certainly, you will need to use a dynamic dns provider. Noip.com is a popular choice. Once this is working you can register a domain name with GoDaddy or whoever and then point that name to your dynamic dns provider. Now you can load up http://www.yourdomain.com (or whatever tld you choose)

5. Set up https. For some reason beyond my comprehension google is forcing everyone to use https if they want to really exist on the internet in any real way even if they are just serving static pages. Let's encrypt can you there for free. Now you can go to https://www.yourdomain.com and your page will show up and Google et al might even consider you to be a real presence on the internet and index you one day.