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A website to destroy all websites

henry.codes

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Re: A website to destroy all websites

#271

Post by choppaface »

micimize wrote: post #169

The title is all bluster. Nothing wrong with going off to play in your own corner but I don't think it does this movement any good to play-act at some grand conflict. Personally, I believe it would be better if we had more technological self-direction and sovereignty, but this kind of essay, which downplays and denigrates the progress and value of our modern systems, is a perspective from which the insights necessary…

Appreciate the nature and scale of the internet... and also how it's changing though, yeah?

While I agree with much of the article's thesis, it sadly appears to ignore the current impact of LLMs ...

> it’s never been easier to read new ideas, experiment with ideas, and build upon & grow those ideas with other strong thinkers on the web, owning that content all along.

But, "ownership" ? Today if you publish a blog, you don't really own the content at all. An LLM will come scrape the site and regenerate a copyright-free version to the majority of eyeballs who might otherwise land on your page. Without major changes to Fair Use, posting a blog is (now more than ever) a release of your rights to your content.

I believe a missing component here might be DRM for common bloggers. Most of the model of the "old" web envisions a system that is moving copies of content-- typically verbatim copies-- from machine to machine. But in the era of generative AI, there's the chance that the majority of content that reaches the reader is never a verbatim copy of the original.

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#272

Post by zassy »

rustystump wrote: post #268
Uehreka wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The definition of “Tech bros” is “tech people you don’t like”. There’s no agreed upon definition (just like how people disagree about what is/isn’t a “grift”) because it’s not meant to be descriptive, it’s a rhetorical device.

No, this is too dismissive. There was a large shift in the culture of people over the last decade or so as the bay area money printers started printing faster than finance firms were printing. Eg tech money attracted a culture of people wed normally label “finance bros”. Patrick Bateman types but without the explicit murder. Status, money, often born outstandingly privileged. This is the tech bro people speak of. It…

That’s how you use the term because you don’t like those people.

I’ve heard people use the term to disparage Linus Torvalds and even Aaron Swartz because they didn’t like them.

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#273

Post by nathias »

It's good to have private websites and keep them weird, but this will and can in no way change the internet in general, centralization of content is a very good feature, at least functionally it is necessary.

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#274

Post by alex1138 »

II2II wrote: post #211
pavlus wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read your comment before visiting the site, and it got me wondering -- how bad can it be? Can it be worse than those acid green on red sites of the 90s-00s? Imagine my surprise, when I opened the site and it looked and felt just like a museum or art exhibit. This was the literal feeling I had -- being at an art gallery, but online. I guess, these comments tell more about the commenters, than TFA. We should remin…

> Can it be worse than those acid green on red sites of the 90s-00s? I think people are nostalgic for the social environment that enabled people to create websites of all fashions, may they be well or poorly designed. We simply hold up the poorly designed websites as an example of how accessible content creation was ("hey, anyone can do it"), though perhaps we should hold up the better sites ("hey, look at what we ca…

Myspace was a problem with this

On the one hand, the pages were kind of ugly. Nobody likes autoplaying music. On another hand, they ruined their own site with a (separate) series of boneheaded decisions. On the other hand, Tom didn't seem quite as odious as Zuck (Myspace had a visible wall, you otherwise knew what you were dealing with with the privacy settings, and the wall was a good way to have network effects and connect with people). On another hand, Myspace worked (there was Friendster too and apparently their problem was the servers only worked half the time) because in 2006 relatively few people were online, so you knew you could find people on there

I don't know how it would have evolved if Murdoch(?) hadn't ruined the site; yes it was always a bit messy, but still. (At the same time, they completely lost all user data in some 2015 (possibly 2016) database incident, so so much for that)

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#275

Post by bartread »

pavlus wrote: post #148
Aurornis wrote: post #25

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…

I've read your comment before visiting the site, and it got me wondering -- how bad can it be? Can it be worse than those acid green on red sites of the 90s-00s? Imagine my surprise, when I opened the site and it looked and felt just like a museum or art exhibit. This was the literal feeling I had -- being at an art gallery, but online. I guess, these comments tell more about the commenters, than TFA. We should remin…

There's an assumption, that people sometimes state explicitly, on HN that the discussion is more interesting or valuable than whatever's on the end of the posted link. Sometimes that's true - often even - but sometimes it's not.

That's not necessarily a value judgement on the discussion though. From me, at any rate, it's more often a personal perspective: sometimes I'm just more interested in or charmed by the thing, and in digesting and coming to my own conclusions about it, than I am in reading other peoples' thoughts and perspectives on the thing.

But, yeah, to me it felt almost like an old magazine: the typography, the layout, the way images are used. A lot of the discussion about web design in the 90s came about as a result of people coming from a traditional publishing background and really struggling to do what they wanted with the web medium, so to me it sort of hearks back to that a bit, does a good job of embracing some parts of that older aesthetic, but works well with modern web capabilities. Mind, I'm looking at it on a desktop browser, and maybe the experience on mobile is less good (I can't say), but overall I like it. It has some personality to it.

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#276

Post by alex1138 »

lisbbb wrote: post #74
tkiolp4 wrote: 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.

The site that is really, insufferably toxic is LinkedIn.

Their UX is not steamlined. They seem to also opt you in by default to every conceivable category of notifications. It feels like a clown website. If they fixed some of this it could genuinely be enjoyable though of course I get the point that it's employment networking as opposed to a social media 'connect with friends' site

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#277

Post by cadamsdotcom »

Love the idea but it still isn’t easy enough for normies to host a blog or a website.

I think there’s a way though.

Modern self-hosted open source is easy to run for semi-experts, so what if communities banded together to host stuff at the local library?

A bunch of enthusiastic teens could form a volunteer core that runs a bunch of services for their community and teaches anyone interested, giving kids a chance to learn how to host stuff online. There’d be high trust if it’s all locals providing services to locals. Host it on a cheap VPS so the library doesn’t even need infra; just a very small budget for the initiative.

It’d be super decentralized. And the teams running these services would provide high quality feedback to the developers on features & operating of their services.

Seems win-win.

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#278

Post by bartread »

stephendause wrote: post #202
pavlus wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read your comment before visiting the site, and it got me wondering -- how bad can it be? Can it be worse than those acid green on red sites of the 90s-00s? Imagine my surprise, when I opened the site and it looked and felt just like a museum or art exhibit. This was the literal feeling I had -- being at an art gallery, but online. I guess, these comments tell more about the commenters, than TFA. We should remin…

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My personal taste for the presentation of a piece of writing is that less is more. I usually find artwork that accompanies a text to be distracting. I love reading work that can stand on its own, invoking images in the mind. I also dislike animations that seem to be made for a certain scroll speed. Having said all of that, I certainly don't think it's bad, nor is it a commentary…

> I usually find artwork that accompanies a text to be distracting. I love reading work that can stand on its own, invoking images in the mind.

But the images are a part of the work, not separate from it, no?[0]

You might have a preference against that, which is absolutely fine, but I think you're making an artificial distinction.

[0] There's obviously a separate conversation to be had about how much that part contributes or detracts with any such work, but the point stands that I tend to view such works as all of a piece including all constituent parts.

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#279

Post by KellyCriterion »

pavlus wrote: post #148
Aurornis wrote: post #25

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…

I've read your comment before visiting the site, and it got me wondering -- how bad can it be? Can it be worse than those acid green on red sites of the 90s-00s? Imagine my surprise, when I opened the site and it looked and felt just like a museum or art exhibit. This was the literal feeling I had -- being at an art gallery, but online. I guess, these comments tell more about the commenters, than TFA. We should remin…

Me too! The website actually looks like a curated art version of something; beautiful font.

Re: A website to destroy all websites

#280

Post by heddycrow »

jppope wrote: post #184

Pandora's box has been opened, per the story all that remains is hope. You can't go back in time and change history. If you want to make a better world from a better internet you need to save people from the tyranny of the marginal user ( https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi... ). It's not the web, its the people. Those people incentivize enshittification. People will need to change, not the c…

I'm with you. Thanks for the link.
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