Live data from Hacker News

Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

blakewatson.com

151–160 of 388 posts

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#151

> In the fall of 2022, I started using Twitter more. I don’t know why; probably a curious desire to see how bad Elon Musk would screw it up. I stopped reading there. I'm not interested in using a product made by someone who regurgitates ESG nonsense without thinking. I want these people and these ideologies out of my life. They need to do some soul-searching. What is bad about Elon that you want him to fail? Anyone w…

Do you have a habit of making up people to be mad at, like you're doing right now?

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#152

That’s a fun set of features, but I don’t see the connection with the community. You can browse their mastodon feed and it’s just a bunch of vaguely liberal vaguely tech posts? I’d like to see which accounts are using the services for a better community

[flagged]

If you're looking for an oasis of 'gloves off' discourse, 4chan and its ilk already fits that niche. omg.lol harks back to a time on the internet where people were at worst just 'silly' to each other, and people would talk to random strangers on AOL or ICQ and the like with genuine curiosity and hope for the future of the internet.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#153
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Where I grew up, that was called being polite and it didn’t automatically rule out anything other that liberalism. There’s a ton of room between disagreement and harassment.

[flagged]

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#154

That’s a fun set of features, but I don’t see the connection with the community. You can browse their mastodon feed and it’s just a bunch of vaguely liberal vaguely tech posts? I’d like to see which accounts are using the services for a better community

That's the shortcoming of every alternative protocol and "indie web" community I've come across. They only attract existing techies and have a weird sheen of forced kindness about them. If you're just chatting with other programmers under American HR communication standards, then how is it any different to work?

The true magic of the early web was somebody genius but decidedly untechnical like David Bowie shitposting at his own fans. There's no special line of code that's going to foster that. You have to ruthlessly curate a community to avoid a critical mass of sensitive nerds, but guess who the early colonizers of these alt platforms are. None of these communities will attract today or tomorrow's David Bowies.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#155

> I don’t know why; probably a curious desire to see how bad Elon Musk would screw it up It’s been interesting to watch people go from nerd-crushing on Elon (omg rockets! omg electric vehicles yay climate!) to loathing him in the blink of an eye. Goes to show what’s really important to some people…

Why can't I like the rockets but also think he's bad at twitter?

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#156

It's nice, the only problem I got with omg.lol is that Wayback Machine archives are unavailable for all domains. I'm concerned that this part of the internet won't be saved for others to see in the future.

I think that's great.. archiving should be opt-in not opt-out You can read and access my work/words as I want. And once I don't or change my mind you can't. Once someone posts something, you don't have a right to it in perpetuity .. That's how things should work - but that's just my opinion

That's why I have alt accounts - one for each of my different personalities.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That internet is not dead, you know? It’s just the the other part grew so massively. There are still people writing blog posts and websites that don’t require you to dismiss 5 popups before you can interact with it. It can be done.

It’s just hard to find. Google returns trash

Try out kagi...they have a filter for "smallweb" posts: https://kagi.com/smallweb

The list of sites is on github: https://github.com/kagisearch/smallweb

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#160
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even without taking into account the time investment in maintaining your own infra, it compares favorably with everything else. Even the most dirt-cheap VPS is a few bucks more expensive on a yearly basis by itself, and you still have to buy domains and similar. Running your own infra only really works out if you either have access to great hardware for super-cheap or WANT the experience from setting everything up.

It consistently surprises me how much software engineers devalue the effort of software engineering when it comes to their personal lives. If you're a SWE in an English-speaking country, you almost certainly make $20 post-tax for at most one hour of work - 30m at SV salaries, as little as 15m if you're at a FAANG-ish company. Is it conceivable that you would spend less than an hour a year maintaining something like t…

I get where you are coming from, but I think the answer for a lot of us is... for the experience.
Post reply on HN