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Strange.website

strange.website

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Re: Strange.website

#31

Post by noduerme »

GaryBluto wrote: post #7

I was just thinking to myself about how much the internet was lacking in self-important esoteric gibberish. I am unsurprised to see it came from the same person as "A Website to Destroy All Websites". I am especially befuddled by all the comments stating "This is how the web used to be!"; no it wasn't, and I can only imagine those who think so collate their view of web history purely through what others say on Mastod…

What's wrong with some retro-lite doom bait?

When I was a kid in the 80s there were fake 1950s diners everywhere, with jukeboxes and malt machines, bubble gum music and greasy hamburgers. They were a cheap nostalgic simulacrum of something not originally all that special. That was because there were still a lot of people alive who were teenagers in the 1950s and wanted to show their kids or grandkids something kinda-like the world they grew up in. It drifted further and further from reality along with the people who inhabited that world, who grew old and died. Now we just have faux 50s diners and a lot of old movies to look at.

Re: Strange.website

#32

Post by etage3 »

urban_alien wrote: post #15
adventured wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet is fantastic. The Web sucks. On the Internet: any movie I want to watch; any song I want to listen to; an endless parade of games to play via Steam et al.; about a zillion games I can play online with friends; numerous app store options, and an entire other world of smartphone games I can play alone or with friends; inexpensive LLMs I can do almost anything I want to with, wherever my imagination takes m…

Care to elaborate on where you're drawing the line between The Internet and The Web? Your comment doesn't make it clear.

I'm not sure, but the grand-parent might be drawing from Hakim Bey's distinction between Net and Web. This is from TAZ, The Temporary Autonomous Zone (1991):

We’ve spoken of the Net, which can be defined as the totality of all information and communication transfer. Some of these transfers are privileged and limited to various elites, which gives the Net a hierarchic aspect. Other transactions are open to all — so the Net has a horizontal or non-hierarchic aspect as well. Military and Intelligence data are restricted, as are banking and currency information and the like. But for the most part the telephone, the postal system, public data banks, etc. are accessible to everyone and anyone. Thus within the Net there has begun to emerge a shadowy sort of counter-Net, which we will call the Web (as if the Net were a fishing-net and the Web were spider-webs woven through the interstices and broken sections of the Net). Generally we’ll use the term Web to refer to the alternate horizontal open structure of info-exchange, the non-hierarchic network, and reserve the term counter-Net to indicate clandestine illegal and rebellious use of the Web, including actual data-piracy and other forms of leeching off the Net itself. Net, Web, and counter-Net are all parts of the same whole pattern-complex — they blur into each other at innumerable points. The terms are not meant to define areas but to suggest tendencies.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/hakim-bey-t-a-z-the-...

Re: Strange.website

#33

Post by noduerme »

con wrote: post #27

I just made a pretty strange one myself: https://currentcondition.tv I've added quite a few Easter eggs and a few old school games. Let me know what you think? Blue dots are locations of previous visitors.. it all works well on desktop, the games need a bit more love to work well on mobile.

It's cool.

Re: Strange.website

#34

Post by manuelmoreale »

boca_honey wrote: post #20
GaryBluto wrote: post #7

I was just thinking to myself about how much the internet was lacking in self-important esoteric gibberish. I am unsurprised to see it came from the same person as "A Website to Destroy All Websites". I am especially befuddled by all the comments stating "This is how the web used to be!"; no it wasn't, and I can only imagine those who think so collate their view of web history purely through what others say on Mastod…

Exactly. Have you noticed that most of these 'weird web' sites don't actually talk about anything besides the web itself? Every other 'indie web' site I stumble upon is just about the indie web.... or worse, just a list of links pointing to other similar sites. There’s no real value here. No new info, no original content. Just clunky web design and rants about 'social media bad.' That’s not how the web actually was.…

You are clearly not browsing enough of these “weird web” sites if that’s your take. Or the only ones you’re clicking on are the ones that are posted here on HN.

Try search something on https://wiby.me for example and then tell me if all you get are people writing about the web.

Re: Strange.website

#35

Post by manuelmoreale »

masswerk wrote: post #30

Curious detail: the button/widget icons of the browser chrome are composed of multi-layered box-shadows (i.e. one box-shadow definition per pixel or line, concatenated to a sting) of a `:before` pseudo element. (I don't think that I've seen anything alike before.) Meaning: also no images.

You want to check this one out then https://a.singlediv.com/

Re: Strange.website

#36

Post by supriyo-biswas »

GaryBluto wrote: post #7

I was just thinking to myself about how much the internet was lacking in self-important esoteric gibberish. I am unsurprised to see it came from the same person as "A Website to Destroy All Websites". I am especially befuddled by all the comments stating "This is how the web used to be!"; no it wasn't, and I can only imagine those who think so collate their view of web history purely through what others say on Mastod…

Apart from the sibling comments that makes some excellent points, the commercial aspect of any endeavor will almost always coexist, or in some cases, overshadow the "artisanal" aspect that the "indieweb" people seem to be going for.

Even if we completely deleted the Internet and started from scratch, or any other technology for that matter, enterprising people will want to use the technology to deliver some sort of value to society in return for goods and services. This is both a good thing for the people in question, as they can be paid for something they love doing, addresses previously thought of use cases (such as online shopping or video streaming, in the case of the Internet) that people would be willing to pay for, and leads to commercial exchanges with many positive downstream effects (internet providers laying infrastructure, companies investing in software, and associated employment for many people).

Certainly, I owe all of my jobs and many of the friendships that I continue beyond their meatspace boundaries, precisely because the Internet and commercial services on top of it that enabled it to happen.

Without this aspect, the Internet would likely be left in a niche, which makes it far less useful to most. This is the primary reason why projects like Gemini, etc. will not have much success, because it is intentionally designed to be not useful to most people; and guess what? You can always make plain HTML/CSS websites and set up a Matrix server for your buddies to talk to; you don't need a new protocol and sing praises about the indieweb to make this happen.

Re: Strange.website

#38

Post by con »

con wrote: post #27

I just made a pretty strange one myself: https://currentcondition.tv I've added quite a few Easter eggs and a few old school games. Let me know what you think? Blue dots are locations of previous visitors.. it all works well on desktop, the games need a bit more love to work well on mobile.

Also just made it open source - https://github.com/consti/currentcondition

Re: Strange.website

#39

Post by asukachikaru »

GaryBluto wrote: post #7

I was just thinking to myself about how much the internet was lacking in self-important esoteric gibberish. I am unsurprised to see it came from the same person as "A Website to Destroy All Websites". I am especially befuddled by all the comments stating "This is how the web used to be!"; no it wasn't, and I can only imagine those who think so collate their view of web history purely through what others say on Mastod…

His portfolio / blog site is aesthetically my favorite blog of all time out there.

https://henry.codes/

Re: Strange.website

#40

Post by Barathkanna »

con wrote: post #38
con wrote: post #27

I just made a pretty strange one myself: https://currentcondition.tv I've added quite a few Easter eggs and a few old school games. Let me know what you think? Blue dots are locations of previous visitors.. it all works well on desktop, the games need a bit more love to work well on mobile.

Also just made it open source - https://github.com/consti/currentcondition

Love the UI!!
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