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The internet isn't dying, it's changing

coryd.dev

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Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#61

Post by bruce511 »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #21
bruce511 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people say the Internet is dying, they typically don't even mean the Web, they mean one site on the Web that matters to them. The article us a rebuttal to [1] where someone is complaining that Reddit is going public. For some reason this strategy, or indeed the need for reddit to earn revenue, seems to be shocking to the author. To anyone with half a brain, and has seen the internet since it was an infant in the…

A basic test is to ask how quickly you can find information about a topic that is unbiased by commercial interests. On some topics it's nearly impossible: - medicine - cosmetics - cooking/nutrition/recipes For many other topics, it's only really possible by finding forums where people who are not blog spammer discuss things. This used to be possible by appending "reddit" to a search term, but this is getting harder a…

>> A basic test is to ask how quickly you can find information about a topic that is unbiased by commercial interests.

I'm not really sure that test tells you anything about the state of the web in general, and less the state of the internet, other than (perhaps) how good one site is at one specific query.

Plus you've picked categories (medicine, cosmetics, nutrition) which are rife with commercial interests, endless fringe theories, and plenty of "bad science". And, to be honest, the searches I've done for recipes over the past few years have all been very successful. But hey, maybe I'm lucky.

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#62

Post by bruce511 »

icehawk wrote: post #49
bruce511 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people say the Internet is dying, they typically don't even mean the Web, they mean one site on the Web that matters to them. The article us a rebuttal to [1] where someone is complaining that Reddit is going public. For some reason this strategy, or indeed the need for reddit to earn revenue, seems to be shocking to the author. To anyone with half a brain, and has seen the internet since it was an infant in the…

> It's waaaay better now than it has ever been, and a pale shadow of examples it will become. Why do you think it's better? I think we have different definitions of "better." Having to wade far more websites that want to sell something isn't better. My time is a finite resource. Because of this, its worse.

>> Why do you think it's better?

It's faster. It's always on. I can host at home, I don't need to host on someone's else server. The web part more secure - most everything is over HTTPS now. I can buy almost anything I want online. I can easily find information on just about anything. I can easily find videos showing me just about anything. I can (formally or informally) learn about any topics, to whatever depth I like. I can correspond with people all over the world, in real-time. I can work remotely from home. I can do remote support by seeing people's screens and see what they are doing. I can keep up to date with world affairs by reading a couple well-selected web sites. I can monitor the health of hardware remotely.

I could go on. But if a few web sites selling stuff is your main objection to the whole internet, then, I suggest you're letting imperfection get in the way of magnificent.

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#63

Post by charcircuit »

chmod775 wrote: post #52
charcircuit wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MAU of the internet continues to grow. How is it a corpse when it hasn't even reached its peak yet?

A decomposing body will be full of active organisms and life too! You could have made the same argument about settler colonialism: No, the culture of the indigenous population isn't being destroyed. How can it be dying when there's more and more people living there?

That's not even remotely the same argument.

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#64

Post by bruce511 »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #28
bruce511 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people say the Internet is dying, they typically don't even mean the Web, they mean one site on the Web that matters to them. The article us a rebuttal to [1] where someone is complaining that Reddit is going public. For some reason this strategy, or indeed the need for reddit to earn revenue, seems to be shocking to the author. To anyone with half a brain, and has seen the internet since it was an infant in the…

To those of us who remember them, internet forums were amazing. You'd have one or a handful of cool people who'd pay for hosting, and then you'd have a completely free to use web forum for whatever niche interest you had and wanted to learn more about, converse about, meet others over, etc. Then, companies like reddit came on the scene with tons of borrowed money. Suddenly those forums were less attractive because, w…

Firstly, you're free to continue using Reddit. Clearly nothing is stopping you doing that.

Secondly, it's not like reddit is the only forums on the internet. The internet is as full, probably fuller, of communities than it's ever been. If you're only used to reddit (which clearly you're not, since you're here) I encourage you to explore a bit and find out where else you'd like to hang-out.

Thirdly, it's easier now than ever before to host your own forums. That way you can offer the free service you desire to many other people. And it'll cost you next to nothing since you can literally host it from home.

The change that is constantly happening brings opportunity.

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#66

Post by icehawk »

bruce511 wrote: post #62
icehawk wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's waaaay better now than it has ever been, and a pale shadow of examples it will become. Why do you think it's better? I think we have different definitions of "better." Having to wade far more websites that want to sell something isn't better. My time is a finite resource. Because of this, its worse.

>> Why do you think it's better? It's faster. It's always on. I can host at home, I don't need to host on someone's else server. The web part more secure - most everything is over HTTPS now. I can buy almost anything I want online. I can easily find information on just about anything. I can easily find videos showing me just about anything. I can (formally or informally) learn about any topics, to whatever depth I li…

> It's faster.

It's marginally faster than 20 years ago. There's a 10x raw transfer rate speed up, but I've needed that 5 times for less than 30 in the past week. And even then it was 20% of the the max. I don't want 1Gbit/sec of crap.

> It's always on.

It was always on for me in 2004.

> I can host at home, I don't need to host on someone's else server.

Which I was doing in 2004.

> The web part more secure - most everything is over HTTPS now.

Everything is encrypted now, which better protects randos from looking at it, yes.

> I can buy almost anything I want online.

I though this was great, but was recently reacquainted with how much less work I need to do to see if I liked using something when I played with it in the manner I wanted to use it for.

I don't know where I stand on it.

> I can easily find information on just about anything.

I'd actually say this has gotten a LOT harder than 20 years ago because people keep wanting to sell me things when I'm not looking to buy something. I don't need storefronts when I am looking up how to use something I already own.

> I can easily find videos showing me just about anything. I can (formally or informally) learn about any topics, to whatever depth I like.

I read faster than I can listen to someone. And if I'm searching for something, I want to find it and then get on with my life.

> I can correspond with people all over the world, in real-time. I can work remotely from home. I can do remote support by seeing people's screens and see what they are doing. > [...] I can monitor the health of hardware remotely.

These were all things I was doing 20 years ago. Yes, I can now do it from the passenger seat of a car, but those are improvements in infrastructure unrelated to any of the major players on the internet.

> But if a few web sites selling stuff is your main objection to the whole internet, then, I suggest you're letting imperfection get in the way of magnificent.

Its not just "a few web sites selling stuff", its the fact that "a few web sites selling stuff" have caused everything else to die on the vine.

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#67

Post by reactordev »

dbttdft wrote: post #47
reactordev wrote: post #6

The internet is dying. All hail the new islandnet powered by AI. In all seriousness, the open web is under siege too. Hosting choices dwindled. Cloud providers few. Dark web isn’t the answer. Decentralized isn’t either (the web is already decentralized). We need legislation that protects humans and not corporations . Common carrier. Fair privacy law. Following privacy laws. And ending the piracy of content for the sa…

What law do we need? More ignorant idiocy like banning incandescent bulbs? How do we get good law if nobody understand what they're doing in tech?

By electing more engineers to help lawyers instead of more lawyers.

But really we need to make it a requirement for congressional folks (parliamentary too) to divest from corporate sponsorship in order to be in office and that they understand that their seat can be revoked should they not follow the “will of the people” or whatever your constitution says.

In the US, more and more Congress people are on the boards or funded by Big Tech to the point where all it takes is a little one-on-one meeting and your entire stance flip flops. Is the US banning TikTok? Not? Yes? No? Now we aren’t? Oh it’s back on? Nope, nevermind.

I lost hope that Congress would ever understand science after Bush vs Gore.

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#68

Post by reactordev »

dbttdft wrote: post #55
scubbo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To provide an opposing opinion which might help you understand why you're getting downvoted (though I didn't) - the reason this doesn't ring true to me is that none of your source-of-truth is actually hosted _on_ Cloudflared (they're just a proxy - you still control your own content), and the switching costs are minimal (especially if you're brave enough to raw-dog it on the public Internet without a CDN). That disti…

You're both wrong. Cloudflare is breaking the internet by doing interactive verification of users, meaning the web is no longer an open protocol. I'm referring to that "enable javascript" page and "one more step" page. They require you to have Firefox or Chrome, neither of which are acceptable, which they verify with scripts and deep packet inspection. Contrast this to old school communication protocols which I could…

Only for sites that use Cloudflare. There’s a huge portion of the web that doesn’t.

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#69

Post by reactordev »

Dalewyn wrote: post #57
scubbo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To provide an opposing opinion which might help you understand why you're getting downvoted (though I didn't) - the reason this doesn't ring true to me is that none of your source-of-truth is actually hosted _on_ Cloudflared (they're just a proxy - you still control your own content), and the switching costs are minimal (especially if you're brave enough to raw-dog it on the public Internet without a CDN). That disti…

I counter with the fact that hosting something means nothing unless connections can be made. Well, unless hosting in itself is your end goal. Even here on HN, there are plenty of comments about how someone can't connect to a website because it uses Cloudflare and Cloudflare decided to block them due to a dirty IP address, shady (read: hyper privacy focused) user agent, CAPTCHAs that don't work (see prior factor), or…

Yes but it was the hosters choice to leverage cloudflare as a cache/cdn instead of other methods (that probably would have succumbed to the HN hug of death).

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#70

Post by Ferret7446 »

icehawk wrote: post #66
bruce511 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Why do you think it's better? It's faster. It's always on. I can host at home, I don't need to host on someone's else server. The web part more secure - most everything is over HTTPS now. I can buy almost anything I want online. I can easily find information on just about anything. I can easily find videos showing me just about anything. I can (formally or informally) learn about any topics, to whatever depth I li…

> It's faster. It's marginally faster than 20 years ago. There's a 10x raw transfer rate speed up, but I've needed that 5 times for less than 30 in the past week. And even then it was 20% of the the max. I don't want 1Gbit/sec of crap. > It's always on. It was always on for me in 2004. > I can host at home, I don't need to host on someone's else server. Which I was doing in 2004. > The web part more secure - most eve…

> I read faster than I can listen to someone

That's just a matter of practice. Average reading speed is ~230 WPM, listening speed can easily reach 300 WPM (YMMV of course). Note that speaking speed is ~170 WPM. I'd wager you can easily reach 2-3x on most voiced content after a few weeks of practice.

Also note that audio processing is computationally much cheaper than video processing, which I don't think is just a coincidence.

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