Live data from Hacker News

A website to destroy all websites

henry.codes

111–120 of 420 posts

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#111

I'll counter propose a website to destroy all websites: https://bellard.org/ That's all we need. Maybe throw in a few images: http://www.candlekeep.com/

Back when I first got on the net I remember spending a lot more time on sites like Bellard's, where "like" means "no style (or would it be transparent style? brutalist style?) but tons of substance."

Yeah really love the density of information, and also love the discussion boards and irc. Back then we gathered together on those boards or in the channels to wait for the new year.

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes no sense what you say. If the experience with A was really worse than with B, people would stay with B.

The original poster said “more useful”, not “better”, so you’re already arguing something different than what was said. I might spend more time with something less useful because its time efficiency is one of the things that makes it less useful now. Regarding your argument of “better” you seem to be arguing by definition. Edit: I now realize you are the original poster who said “more useful”, so why did you change i…

More useful is one of many ways of being better. What are you talking about?

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#113
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is so depressing, but at the same time so Im addicted to it. It’s like tiktok but for people who enjoy plain text and hacking related stuff. When I first visited HN more than 10 years ago (without account) like, 90% of the content was exciting and you got to learn something. Nowadays it’s about 40-50%, and the rest is crap (including comments). I have been trying to leave HN, let’s see if I can do it in 2026.

I do feel like 40-50% signal ratio is still good compared to 90% HN did give me some leads in the start of just cool things to follow and I have been able to make an understanding of what things interest me and what don't due to it. And this has also been the reason I read a lot of comments etc. and content here, maybe more than I should. I don't know to me, building my own website and forum etc. are possible but the…

I always forget about lobste.rs because I never comment since I don’t have an account and don’t know anyway of getting an invite.

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#114

I think the comments here are a great example of why this idea always sounds better in nostalgic reminiscence than in practice: As I write this, nearly half of the comments here are complaining about this website. There are complaints about requiring JavaScript, the font size, the design, the color choices, the animations. Complaints about everything the designer did to make this site unique and personal, which was t…

[flagged]

> It has become political (toward the left)

I don’t feel this way at all. Maybe it’s one of the only places you’re actually consuming mixed opinions.

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#115
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only be blind for things you cannot notice. What you cannot notice is what shapes your "noticement" ability. The best design is the shape of your perception. The best design is already implemented in your reception of reality. The quest for "good design" is a game. On the other hand, your aesthetical culture and the shape of your perception create a system in which elements are more or less "understandable",…

Sure, the medium is the message. But if the medium distracts from the message it means they are not aligned well (side note I put your comment into LLM to make sense of what it meant re my comment without mentioning HN, it said "this is a classic Hacker News–style metaphysical sidestep: You made a practical design aphorism, He responded with ontology and epistemology. That usually signals polite disagreement or intel…

> (side note I put your comment into LLM to make sense of what it meant re my comment without mentioning HN, it said "this is a classic Hacker News–style metaphysical sidestep: You made a practical design aphorism, He responded with ontology and epistemology. That usually signals polite disagreement or intellectual one‑upmanship" LOL)

Woah homie, watch out for the model which is trained on reddit comments dataset to talk about intellectual one-upmanship xD

Also another thing but holy shit, LLM's are sycophantic man, it tries uses big words itself to show how the person has intellectual one-upmanship while cozying you up by saying practical design aphorism.

Like I agree with both of you guys and there's nuance but I am pretty sure that nobody's tryna sound intellectual hopefully.

Sorry for turning this into a rant about LLM's being sycophantic but man I tried today watching big bang and asked it if sheldon and raj were better duo in more common about physics (theorist and astrophysicist) since I was watching a episode where they both have dark matter in common and chatgpt agreed

Then I just felt the sycophancy in my heart so I opened up a new thread and I think I used the same prompt and changed it to sheldon and leonard and it ended up saying yes again.

The problem felt so annoying to me that I ended up looking at a sycophancy index being frustrated of sorts and wrote a lengthy ddg prompt lol to find this https://www.glazebench.com/

We really don't need more yes man's in our lives and honestly I will take up a less intelligent model than a sycophantic one. So I am curious what your guys opinion are on it too as sometimes I use LLM's as a search engines to familiarize myself with things I don't know and I am lately feeling it will just say yes to anything even silly ideas so I would never know what's the truth matter of the reality ykwim?

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#116
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only be blind for things you cannot notice. What you cannot notice is what shapes your "noticement" ability. The best design is the shape of your perception. The best design is already implemented in your reception of reality. The quest for "good design" is a game. On the other hand, your aesthetical culture and the shape of your perception create a system in which elements are more or less "understandable",…

Sure, the medium is the message. But if the medium distracts from the message it means they are not aligned well (side note I put your comment into LLM to make sense of what it meant re my comment without mentioning HN, it said "this is a classic Hacker News–style metaphysical sidestep: You made a practical design aphorism, He responded with ontology and epistemology. That usually signals polite disagreement or intel…

Pragmatically, you can design things to be highly readable for yourself and people that are "like you".

Alignment between the shape and the content is done in a circular fashion : what you see educates you to fabulate about design, once you fabulated enough you begin to say things are bad or well designed.

I often express myself online by writing a bit what goes through my mind, in a joyful and not very attentive manner, and I find it amusing to be barely understandable sometimes (I like the fact you had to use an LLM, lol) because, well, I feel it may bring a certain color to the otherwise often too uniform and immediate/instantaneous world of internet -- So, what I said previously is also mostly what occurs when you let your mind wander;

now, if I rejoin my own person and body, I can agree with you that my culture of good design is about the testimony of the removal of intention, in such a way that I feel content is highly readable, (fictionnaly) devoid of style, and somewhat raw or pure.

But again, at the "philosophical stage" all of this is pure fiction, and with a certain mindset, I am pretty sure I could shift my habits to adapt to what I feel as weird design, ugly, barely readable etc... It would be totally useless and absurd, but I could (given I have no specific perception-related medical conditions) !

We saw the web become a repetition of the same design, and while it IS good design in our "minimalism" addicted brains, I am pretty sure stumbling upon weiiiiird websites makes us great good sometimes, so much that maybe we also start to think about the absurdity of our standards : we arrived to the point in the "lie" where we identify this specific style as "the shape" of our perception, and yes : it become invisible to us, and is good design, but also it is a bit depressing.

My window manager and my emacs/vim/terminal configuration aren't what I call good design. They are highly readable but stratosphere-reaching levels of kitsch (yes ! I WANT to cosplay and feel as if I was writing code for aliens or to fight the matrix at work, and yes that's a bit cringe but at least I am honest with myself).

I don't wish the world and internet to be "more like that" and am ok with the actual state of design. Nevertheless I find that's a bit arbitrary and somewhat boring.

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#117
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is so depressing, but at the same time so Im addicted to it. It’s like tiktok but for people who enjoy plain text and hacking related stuff. When I first visited HN more than 10 years ago (without account) like, 90% of the content was exciting and you got to learn something. Nowadays it’s about 40-50%, and the rest is crap (including comments). I have been trying to leave HN, let’s see if I can do it in 2026.

Haven’t people been saying that since the late 2000’s?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

The actual quote has links, the first of which is to a comment from 2009.

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#118
The article mentions IndieWeb/POSSE but discoverability remains unsolved. I'm working on a pledge system for local-first projects - a /.well-known/freehold.json that crawlers can verify. Projects that break the pledge get delisted publicly. More at localghost.ai/manifesto

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#119

These are some ways I’ve been using the web in a way that keeps me free. - Run my own site (not much there yet) - Use RSS Feeds instead of Reddit - If a YouTube creator you like has a newsletter, SIGN UP! - If a short form content creator makes long form content, watch that instead - Post on forums, instead of their subreddit/Discord (lots of Linux distros have all three) - Invest in my cozy web communities[1] Speaki…

rss and private forums are the soul of the internet. find your people

Thinking about it. There are some things which can be done to better sooth the private forums.

Like to me especially signing up to each and every forum and then waiting to be accepted by a person feels good but has tons of friction and has some stress attached because you never know how strict the community is as well, it might take a day or two, perhaps this is the reason why we got the dumpster fire of mega internet forums called reddit or twitter of sorts

To me, federation feels better in this context since I can still have a single identity of sorts across multiple forums and you got better idea / ways to filter as well if need be

Another thing I feel about private forums where users have to wait for permission signing up is that I feel like something even as simple as having a cute cat or cute apple LOL or anything relaxing could make it less stressful for people to join. I assume its impact would be few but it would leave a deeper impact on those who do want to join.

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#120

These are some ways I’ve been using the web in a way that keeps me free. - Run my own site (not much there yet) - Use RSS Feeds instead of Reddit - If a YouTube creator you like has a newsletter, SIGN UP! - If a short form content creator makes long form content, watch that instead - Post on forums, instead of their subreddit/Discord (lots of Linux distros have all three) - Invest in my cozy web communities[1] Speaki…

I'm quite enthusiastic about my FreshRSS instance. I got to this article/these comments from there, and I've even worked out how to add YouTube subscription feeds, and comics. Just a straightforward, chronological list of the things I've chosen to follow--no ads, no BS. It's quite refreshing, I think it's had a material impact to improve my mental health. Of course, the things that the people I follow create, and the…

Could you please tell us a bit more? It sounds great
Post reply on HN