A retrospective of my time on the internet • Hacker News Board

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#311

Post by mghackerlady » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 4:14 PM UTC

someonebaggy wrote: post #296

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. You meant provisions for simplified automated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentiment_analysis That aside, does it really matter if one can attach reactions to one text, spanning just one, or several lines, instead of 'reacting' sequentially in the following lines? Discord, Slack etc. are just conveniences for lazy smombies which find IRC too hardcore, or smth. Like irremovable training wheels on a bicycle. Or mi…

It doesn't matter what I think about the feature. People clearly enjoy the feature and IRC will never have it because IRC cannot acquire new features like that. Even if the IRCv3 group write a specification, it won't be widely adopted.

Someone could easily do it in a way similar to how apples text reactions work. If you don't support imessage or are on an older version of imessage you just get "Doe liked this" or something like that

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#312

Post by ramijames » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 5:37 PM UTC

giobox wrote: post #250

ramijames wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you don't have to compulsively save anymore! Autosave is everywhere!

I don't think I'll ever stop pressing ctrl + s/cmd + s every 5 minutes, the habit is too deeply ingrained at this stage!

I eventually stopped. For the longest time I used CMD+S as a "thinking tool" and would just tap it.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#313

Post by jackzhuo » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 1:47 AM UTC

maybe add your age before commenting this post. :)

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#314

Post by someonebaggy » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 9:11 AM UTC

mghackerlady wrote: post #311

someonebaggy wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter what I think about the feature. People clearly enjoy the feature and IRC will never have it because IRC cannot acquire new features like that. Even if the IRCv3 group write a specification, it won't be widely adopted.

Someone could easily do it in a way similar to how apples text reactions work. If you don't support imessage or are on an older version of imessage you just get "Doe liked this" or something like that

The IRCv3 people tried and it never caught on. This is because they don't control the big implementations.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#315

Post by scrapcode » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 1:11 PM UTC

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #310

scrapcode wrote: post #149

I used to pride myself on being the first redneck in our neighborhood to have high-speed interwebs. Sweet sweet DSL, baby. No more disconnection from my Delta Force 2 game when my sister picked up the phone to call her boyfriend. The days of waiting 4 days for Limewire to download that new *.mp3.exe? Over! When I drag and drop the index.shtml into CuteFTP, it's INSTANT! Couldn't wait to tell the boys in IRC. I really…

DSL v. CableModel crew, checking in. Also got online in early 90s, first with a 14.4k via several janky adapters (none intended for interwebs). Also first with cable internet , circa 1998, in my redneck part of the world (Texas) – Dad got tired of the phoneline never working. Decades later, I worked datacenters, including those with the last gasps of usenet – what a time to have been alive on the internet. Back then,…

I never made it to any hackercons, and haven't kept up with many of the folks I "ran" with back in the day (before social media). And I'm not really sure if I would even remember their handles and such if I saw them today. I remember a fella that went by "proph3t," I believe he was in a band or at least helped with George Smith's website End Effect (looks like it is still up). That guy was a bit older than I was but I remember him being extremely patient and gracious with his time helping me when I was learning PHP.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#316

Post by monknomo » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #255

monknomo wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ejecting jerks is something forums did better than social media, even if the definition of jerk varied widely and was forum-specific. I can't imagine a forum doing something like promoting the user with the most interacted with posts; they'd probably lock the thread and consider banning

The undercurrent here for me is barriers to entry and monopolies and network-effects, ex: Con: You had to search to find a community. Pro: There were lots of independent communities that had competition in case one was badly moderated.

well said, I think that is a significant portion of what I see as the problem. That and moderation/curation scaling very poorly

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#317

Post by ProllyInfamous » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 2:08 AM UTC

scrapcode wrote: post #315

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DSL v. CableModel crew, checking in. Also got online in early 90s, first with a 14.4k via several janky adapters (none intended for interwebs). Also first with cable internet , circa 1998, in my redneck part of the world (Texas) – Dad got tired of the phoneline never working. Decades later, I worked datacenters, including those with the last gasps of usenet – what a time to have been alive on the internet. Back then,…

I never made it to any hackercons, and haven't kept up with many of the folks I "ran" with back in the day (before social media). And I'm not really sure if I would even remember their handles and such if I saw them today. I remember a fella that went by "proph3t," I believe he was in a band or at least helped with George Smith's website End Effect (looks like it is still up). That guy was a bit older than I was but…

Even though we were literally young children (running competing technical repair guides online), Motorola didn't know this and had cited his very unique name and URL in their official product documentation (this was mid 90s, for a bespoke computerline, still paper-printouts-in-boxes).

I also knew he was black – so when I saw a fellar with this name and feature, I immediately knew it was going to be a memorable moment. It was. We laughed. Such big posturing. Dreams.