To me it seems dangerous to go to the author's side of the split, if you work in tech: you won't be exposed, at all, to the web that most people experience. Which is bad for you, professionally speaking - it's bad to be completely in the dark about "the web" as most people experience it. It's bad if you work in a startup which is on that web. And it's bad if you're entrepreneurial and would like to make money off that same web: you literally don't know what most of your customer base is seeing. I would even go so far as to say it's not a viable strategy if you expect to be employed by tech cos. or startups. It would be like trying to get a job at Disney or Paramount, while saying "oh I don't watch tv or go to the movies."
Splitting the Web
91–100 of 201 posts
Re: Splitting the Web
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a them problem. 30 years ago we knew they'd be trouble if they ever adopted the web en masse and they (and the folks that prey on them) have proven that prediction right at every turn.
I mostly agree, but I do think we owe it to the normies to make our part of the web approachable. I don't want to feel like we've fed them to the machine when maybe they wanted out and didn't know how.
There's nothing unapproachable about a 100% static site with some server-rendered navigation elements, much like livejournal was in the early 2000s. Much like HN is today.
Perfectly 'approachable' even on mobile devices.
The only thing that makes sites like this and that 'unapproachable' is stunningly high (genuine, not stat-massaged) levels of functional illiteracy.
Re: Splitting the Web
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s why I feel like the author is trying to force a square peg into a round hole. WhatsApp is literally Facebook, but all my messages are end-to-end encrypted; I don’t feel like they’re tracking me the same way I do on Instagram. Meanwhile, plenty of people’s blogs have all sorts of nasty tracking shit. People love trying to fit things into dichotomies, but reality is always a lot messier.
> I don’t feel like they’re tracking me the same way I do on Instagram. They care mostly about the metadata, not so much about the content of your messages. They know who you write to, when you write to them, when you check the app (which for many people basically means when they wake up and when they go to bed), they have your whole list of contacts. They are really tracking you.
I mean, they do care about the data. The reason they can afford to not collect it from WhatsApp is that they can correlate the metadata with the data they collect from Facebook and Instagram.
You’re absolutely right that they’re tracking you either way, of course.
Re: Splitting the Web
#94Sometimes people complain about life sucking in very general terms. Other times they criticize specific things, one at a time. This post seems like a generic, zoomed-out sort of complaint, and that doesn’t appeal to me, because I’m not sure I learned about anything specific. I guess it’s about how it’s possible to stop using some business’s websites and interact with them in other ways? But which businesses? “Splitti…
Well the article describes a feeling which is shared by many (me included). It is interesting (again, at least for me) to see that others feel the same way. > I don’t think it’s a good idea to stop using a website I like due to generic concerns like this. I think that the idea is not to philosophically decide to stop using some websites. It is rather that some of those websites have become unbearable, and the author…
The author writes about actively blocking things and that's not something that just happens, it's something they chose to do:
> Yep, I’m probably blocking some important third-party JavaScript. No, I don’t care.
Occasionally I will try to help someone with a lot of browser extensions installed who is confused about why some website doesn't work and does care, and the first thing I will recommend is creating a fresh profile with no extensions and seeing if that works.
Meanwhile, I tend to browse with fairly vanilla settings, so I'm not going to see the problems they see. I do see ads sometimes. Maybe I should block them, but often I will just go to a different website. I guess that's similar?
In some sense, we are seeing a different Web because we are running different web browsers. That's going to be true anyway, though. People have different preferences about which websites they like.
Re: Splitting the Web
#95> It feels like everyone is now choosing its side. You can’t stay in the middle anymore. You are either dedicating all your CPU cycles to run JavaScript tracking you or walking away from the big monopolies. You are either being paid to build huge advertising billboards on top of yet another framework or you are handcrafting HTML. Is that happening? I feel like there's a ton of middle ground, and it's only ever expand…
I thought that there must be a middle ground after reading that part, too. But we, the people who know, run and support that cozy web, are actually a minority compared to the mass of internet users. It's not a good comparison, but my family and friends know absolutely nothing about all the things that make up the cozy web. Dozens of people and literally nobody knows what RSS, Mastodon or blogs are. When asked about p…
So, it's roughly like Linux in 1997 or something. It's out there, you can use it, lots of people love it, it's a whole community...and 99% have never heard of it.
That's fine. It can survive and even thrive with 1-2%. And, if it turns out to be superior in some important ways, and stable & persistent (vs the ups and downs of Windows and various former Unixes), it's got nowhere to go but up.
I remember there being similar contempt for Linux in those days: nobody cares, normies will never get it, it's a rounding error. It was viewed as just a weird little cult and a punchline.
Now grandma has an Android and aunt Betsie loves her Chromebook, and pretty much everybody interacts with Linux systems every day--and that has resulted in more variety, better driver & software support, and more features for us geeks.
This may be the beginning of something similar. If it is, it'll begin as a niche community of like-minded geeks, like that described in the article.
Of course, this could also be a short-lived fad that dies out in a couple years as people get bored and return to the normie web. If so...it's fun in the meantime.
Re: Splitting the Web
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mostly agree, but I do think we owe it to the normies to make our part of the web approachable. I don't want to feel like we've fed them to the machine when maybe they wanted out and didn't know how.
There's nothing unapproachable about a 100% static site with some server-rendered navigation elements, much like livejournal was in the early 2000s. Much like HN is today. Perfectly 'approachable' even on mobile devices. The only thing that makes sites like this and that 'unapproachable' is stunningly high (genuine, not stat-massaged) levels of functional illiteracy.
Also that unless you play the stupid SEO games, your approachable site is never going to rank on Google. And as we know, the normies won't even scroll the search page, let alone go to page 2 (or use a better search engine). So they'll only get whatever scammy ridiculous clickbait the SEO agencies have put together for the corporate sites so they can rank for that keyword (and not even relevant keyword - ranking for any keyword is "good" now).
Re: Splitting the Web
#97looked at kagi.com. paid search ? hmmm
Re: Splitting the Web
#98Wait, doesn't everyone use an ad blocker?
Re: Splitting the Web
#99It's not symmetric, however. Those of us on the "full web" are still able to access everything. Which is why I don't feel compelled to "pick a side". Still, I do feel the enshittification that they're talking about. I hate that Google is less reliable and that (e.g.,) reading a recipe online requires shoveling away a mountain of spam. I think this is just the natural consequence of funding the web through ad clicks.…
Everything beyond the main page is a 404. I just wanted a technical description of how it works.
Apologies--still working on everything (which is why I didn't post the URL).
But here's a technical description:
1. Imagine we build a platform abstraction layer on top of the typical nodes of a datacenter: web servers, database storage, etc.
2. We also create a remoted UI layer on the platform that renders on browser clients as HTML/JavaScript. Think of it like X Windows but higher-level and rendered on a browser.
3. Now we build a VM that can execute byte code and runs on the platform layer. We can now create programs that run entirely on the server/datacenter, but can render UI on the client. From the program's perspective, it thinks it has full control over a machine, but the platform layer takes care of remoting as appropriate.
4. Also, we have abstractions for shared memory, so that multiple programs can share data, even if they happen to be running on different nodes. Multiple programs, each potentially run by different users, can collaborate.
Effectively, all programs think that they are running on a single, giant, global computer.
Happy to answer questions if this is at all interesting.
Re: Splitting the Web
#100looked at kagi.com. paid search ? hmmm
it works surprisingly well. the main problem is that you won't know what to do SEO wise but if you're actually looking for info, it's good.