121–130 of 263 posts
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You could do signatures/MAC without encryption to guarantee that the message was not modified
Okay! Cool! Let’s just (nonsensically) develop a new protocol for this small group of nerds’ fetish for ‘retro tech’. A protocol that nobody will use. You do realise that “is it technically possible?” Is like 1% of the question in computing, at most, yes? HTTP and HTTPS are what we’ve got.
I don't expect many people to agree but I think that the "small web" should reject encryption, which is the opposite direction that Gemini is taking. I don't deny the importance of encryption, it is really what shaped the modern web, allowing for secure payment, private transfer of personal information, etc... See where I am getting at? Removing encryption means that you can't reasonably do financial transactions, ac…
> If you want to make a tiny web server, like on a microcontroller, encryption is the hardest part Even an esp32 can (just) handle TLS. Given relatively modern designs, you end up on remarkably small chips before TLS is a real blocker
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What inspired me to pursue computer related fields was making little badges and forum signatures in Photoshop as a teen. Heartwarming to see this tradition has persisted
I can't be the only one with an ancient collection of artistically-mismatched "under construction" graphics.
That was my understanding before it grew - it's a web of small indie sites.
It's sad how the snall web became invisible. I used to use all sorts of small websites in 2005. But by 2015 I used only about 10 large ones. Like many changes, I cannot pinpoint exactly when this happened. It just occurred to me someday that I do not run into many unusual websites any longer. It's unfortunate that so much of our behavior is dictated by Google. I dint think it's malicious or even intentional--but at s…
> I dint think it's malicious or even intentional--but at some point they stopped directing traffic to small websites. Small websites have small dollars?
If I search for 'astronomy', Google doesnt earn any money whether i go to the Wikipedia page for astronomy, or Joe's astronomy site, right?
I have no idea if Gemini can help revitalize the small web or not; I am a pessimist b nature so who knows. I fear so many things have changed in the last 20-30 years that some things may be permanently lost. For instance, in the early 2000s or so, a local university offered personal homepages for every student. This stopped in like 2010 or so. And never came back. At any rate, I welcome any idea to try to rescue the part of the world wide web not already destroyed by commercial interests. People seem to use private entities though; I saw that with discord. Then compared it to oldschool mIRC on freenode or galaxynet. Discord is private. I hate that.
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What inspired me to pursue computer related fields was making little badges and forum signatures in Photoshop as a teen. Heartwarming to see this tradition has persisted
I can't be the only one with an ancient collection of artistically-mismatched "under construction" graphics.
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Right, but that basically works as a retro alternative to scrolling through social media. If you're looking for something specific, it's simultaneously true that there's a small web page that answers your question and that it's not on any "small web" list because the owner of the webpage never submitted it there, or didn't meet the criteria for inclusion. For example, I have several non-commercial, personal websites…
Feel free to suggest changes to criteria for inclusion. It is mostly the way it is now as the entire project is maintained by one person - me :)
A fun trend on the "small web" is the use of 88x31 badges that link to friends websites or in webrings. I have a few on my website, and you can browse a ton of small web websites that way. https://varun.ch (at the bottom of the page) There's also a couple directories/network graphs https://matdoes.dev/buttons https://eightyeightthirty.one/
my main problem with such links is... how often do you update them? how often do you check those websites to see that they're still active? I remember going through all the blogs linked on terry tao's blog - out of like 50 there were only 8-ish still alive :(
I follow the same set of websites with my feed reader too. There is an OPML file at the end of that page that I use with my feed reader. I keep the list intentionally small so that I can realistically read every post that appears on these websites on a regular basis.
Although I usually read new posts in my feed reader, I still visit each website on the list at least, roughly, once a month, just to see these personal sites in their full glory. These are blogs I have been following for years, in fact some of them for a couple of decades now! So when a new post appears on one of these websites, I make time to read it. It is one of the joys of browsing the Web that I have cherished ever since I first got online on the information superhighway.
Keeping the list small also makes it easy for me to notice when a website goes defunct. Over all these years a few websites did indeed sadly disappear, which I then removed from my list.