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Using the internet like it's 1999

joshblais.com

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Re: Using the internet like it's 1999

#111

Post by dannyw »

anilakar wrote: post #110

We should also also embrace offline mode more. Disable all network connections until you make a conscious choice to go online. Heck, make a Windows 3.1-esque GUI for it and call it Trombone Winsock just for fun. If any program complains it needs network connectivity for offline features, it goes into the Recycle Bin.

Offline mode, and self-hostable apps. I'm very happy with my self-hosted and open source apps; e.g. photo library, media centres, etc; the convenience of cloud, but my cloud that I fully control.

Re: Using the internet like it's 1999

#112

Post by ben_w »

9dev wrote: post #101
jjbinx007 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find it strange when people refer to twitter and YouTube etc as apps rather than websites.

That's what they are by now, though. The websites of social media sites are crippled and bug-ridden - try using Instagram in a browser, for example. They want to coerce you into using their apps, because that gives them better tracking opportunities.

Sometimes. YouTube (and Google Maps, and old.reddit.com but not default reddit) I find to be better on the website than the app.

Re: Using the internet like it's 1999

#113

Post by vaylian »

dannyw wrote: post #111
anilakar wrote: post #110

We should also also embrace offline mode more. Disable all network connections until you make a conscious choice to go online. Heck, make a Windows 3.1-esque GUI for it and call it Trombone Winsock just for fun. If any program complains it needs network connectivity for offline features, it goes into the Recycle Bin.

Offline mode, and self-hostable apps. I'm very happy with my self-hosted and open source apps; e.g. photo library, media centres, etc; the convenience of cloud, but my cloud that I fully control.

Not to discourage you from these things, but the cloud wasn't a thing in 1999. Storage space was also an issue.

Re: Using the internet like it's 1999

#114

Post by swingboy »

Does anyone remember that Pokédex game that the original Pokemon website had in the late 90s where you could collect/unlock Pokémon? I feel like you could trade them too but maybe not. I tried to ask ChatGPT but it doesn’t seem to know exactly what I’m talking about. Maybe this is a Mandela effect thing.

Re: Using the internet like it's 1999

#115

Post by theandrewbailey »

NDlurker wrote: post #52
rootusrootus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still pretty prevalent at that time, definitely, but DSL was definitely a thing by the time 1999 rolled around. I even had pretty fast DSL for the time -- 640 kbps. But otherwise totally agree with the critique. Modern connection speeds have enabled a huge amount of bloat. I grew up when 1200 baud modems were the latest rage, and patience when downloading was a hard requirement.

I lived in rural North Dakota and had dial up until 2005. It really sucked the last couple of years.

I was raised by cheap boomers that would never pay more than the absolute minimum for anything, no matter how shitty the option, and most of my friends lived way out in the country. Paying $40/month for DSL or cable internet was off the table, because the library ran a free dialup ISP, so thats what we used even though their line was almost always busy. The cheap ass modem wouldn't reset the line correctly either, requiring someone to physically pull the phone cord out and back in the modem, otherwise the line wouldn't hang up, so redialling on a busy signal required physical intervention. (At some point, I recall my mom's friend/neighbor convincing her to pay $99/year for a dialup ISP that connected the first time.) I moved off dialup when I got a fast food job in 2005.

Re: Using the internet like it's 1999

#116

Post by theandrewbailey »

drfloyd51 wrote: post #31
Loughla wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a lot more careful about clicking things when it took a full minute to load. Now I know that it'll be open in less than a second and I can leave immediately if I need to, so there's WAY less thinking beforehand.

When I found my first tabbed browser. Netcaptor. It changed everything. Open in new tab. Open in new tab. Open in new tab. Go back to the first tab which has finally finished loading. Consume.

I would open links in new windows instead. By the time I got done reading one forum thread, the 5 others would be loaded.

Re: Using the internet like it's 1999

#117

Post by theandrewbailey »

Dwedit wrote: post #81

1999 was Dialup for me. The modem said "56k" but didn't actually connect at that speed, it was more like 4.4KB/sec max. The biggest thing I grabbed then was an overnight bulk-downloading session from animewallpapers.com, made possible by using GetRight. It had a download queue, as well as the "GetRight Browser" which presented the links on a html page as files to select, or other html pages as directories to view.

56k was bits, your 4.4KB was bytes, which is 36k bits. That was a pretty typical real world speed for dialup around 2000.

Re: Using the internet like it's 1999

#118

Post by klondike_klive »

9dev wrote: post #101
jjbinx007 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find it strange when people refer to twitter and YouTube etc as apps rather than websites.

That's what they are by now, though. The websites of social media sites are crippled and bug-ridden - try using Instagram in a browser, for example. They want to coerce you into using their apps, because that gives them better tracking opportunities.

That's just what I've been doing after deleting Instagram from my. phone. I can't trust my evening dopamine-seeking behaviour with the phone app, but there's much much less stickiness in the browser.

Re: Using the internet like it's 1999

#119

Post by rvnx »

zugi wrote: post #46
jakedata wrote: post #11

Just go to fark.com, a lingering glimmer of light from before the dead web. They are still aggregating human curated news and hosting reasonably civil discussions. Then buy a Totalfark subscription so they don't need to bend over backwards to show more ads just to keep the lights on. See ya there!

Fark is farking great! Though its old-school HTML doesn't flow so well on mobile. Can we get the best of 1999 with the best of 2026? Probably not...

There is slashdot.org also

Re: Using the internet like it's 1999

#120

Post by tsylba »

Albeit I agree with the general thesis, I find it funny that the very next sentence after the author say:

> the moment I find something that crosses my desk which starts with “it’s not this, it’s THIS”, I immediately click off and move on.

He follows it by his very own "It's THIS, not this" statement:

> I want real people, real creators, and real content in my feed, not LLM slop.

The Machine must have learn it somewhere I guess.

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