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| | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----.
| || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --|
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on Gopher (inofficial)
HTML Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML A website to destroy all websites
constantcrying wrote 49 min ago:
The revealed preferences of the general population shows that the only
way to accomplish this, is by banning the alternatives.
All indication point to the fact that the general population really,
really likes getting angry at fake slop videos, endless discussion
about the most inane over discussed topics and today's celebrity
gossip.
Great educational content exists on the internet, social media could
easily be about close connection to people around the world, but people
evidently do not care about that.
coldblues wrote 1 hour 28 min ago:
The website to destroy all websites is [1] For however much I can
respect individuals for showing their creativity, the novelty of it
wears off. The majority of people in the Indie Web scene all blend
together. The presentation might be different, but the essence is
mostly the same. Not everyone needs to express themselves and voice
their opinions. "Lurk five more years before posting" as people used to
say.
The article is also laden with a certain kind of politics. You can
infer the philosophical premises that led to some of these conclusions.
HTML [1]: https://gwern.net
sylware wrote 2 hours 51 min ago:
classic web? noscript/basic (x)html? no whatng cartel web engine
required?
pryncevv wrote 2 hours 55 min ago:
We call this the alivenet -
HTML [1]: https://vvesh.de
npodbielski wrote 3 hours 21 min ago:
> The most self-evident, convivial answer is an old one: blogs. HTML is
free to access by default, RSS has worked for about 130 years
What the... How RSS which is an XML can predates internet and computers
and even transistors?
karol wrote 3 hours 25 min ago:
Open source values blah blah and still a personal dig at Brendan Eich.
scotty79 wrote 3 hours 30 min ago:
If only we could separate out social network from content.
I think chat apps are a good place to start. It's a place where
contents of your friends list matters. Where the only way to have
something recommended to you is asking someone for it or someone close
to you coming to the conclusion that you, personally might enjoy it.
What's left to figure out is how to connect these systems that have
strong identity and viciously curated friends lists to recommendation
engines and content mills in a way that's opt-in. That lets users
control the content that lands in their lap. That let's them decide
where they land between "I'm gonna ask a friend about what's cool" and
"just plug me to firehose" spectrum.
The connection should let users make available many freshly generated
pseudonymous identities so that content mills can only create ephemeral
profiles of you.
I imagine chat systems should let you tag your contacts and expose only
a part of your social network when you ask content mill for recommend
content.
There's so much more to discover beyond the modern status quo where we
basically surrendered everything.
lasgawe wrote 4 hours 9 min ago:
The idea behind the article is great. and I really like the UI design
of that page btw.
cadamsdotcom wrote 4 hours 51 min ago:
Love the idea but it still isnât easy enough for normies to host a
blog or a website.
I think thereâs 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. Thereâd be
high trust if itâs all locals providing services to locals. Host it
on a cheap VPS so the library doesnât even need infra; just a very
small budget for the initiative.
Itâd 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.
nathias wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
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.
vjay15 wrote 6 hours 47 min ago:
Incredible website, and I started my own blog just because of this,
maybe ill try integrating in the indieweb and webmentions to join the
community ^_^
m-hodges wrote 7 hours 22 min ago:
I've come to think something is deeply wrong with the assumption that
digital participation must mean audience acquisition. Whenever people
talk about leaving platforms, the immediate rebuttal is
"discoverability" or "reach" as if it's self-evident that pursuing an
audience is inherently good. It's rarely defended; it's just presumed.
This is often smuggled in under the language of "network effects," as
though the relationship were mutual. But "audience" is fundamentally
one-directional. It turns participation into performance.
I think a lot of internet nostalgia is really grief for a time when you
could participate without being on stage. Sure, you wanted lots of
people to read your blog, but we did have an era when posting didn't
implicitly ask: how big is your following, how well did this travel,
did it work.
Today, the "successful" participants (the successful audience-builders)
are called "creators", while everyone else (who is also creating, just
without large-scale traction) is categorized as lesser or invisible.
You can write a blog post, a tweet, a Reddit thread; you have
undeniably created something. Yet without an audience, you haven't
achieved the status that now defines digital legitimacy.
What I miss is a participation model that didn't say: audience or
perish.
rustystump wrote 6 hours 56 min ago:
Sadly, attention is all you need these days. If you get attention,
you will be âsetâ in part because ads=money but mainly because
human attention really is that valuable outside of advertising.
Survival is still what matters and so most people judge
âcreativesâ by big number because that means status.
I think people see the very western culture of haves and have nots
where all that matters is big number dominating the digital landscape
the way it does in the physical world. It is gross but not remotely
new. You put the audience or perish pressure on yourself when you
value big number go up opinions. Dont be friends with those opinions.
They change nothing and have no real power if you dont depend on them
for survival.
Atlas667 wrote 7 hours 52 min ago:
These types of cultural analysis always fails to be substantial because
they rely on "losing our way" argument consciously or even on a
subliminal moral level.
I think this one is kind of better because it tries to place social
transformations on a material base, but it still fails to do that
properly with tech.
Tech or the internet isnt a freeform thing that just exists and obeys
everyones psyches and wants. Tech is something made in factories from
specific industries by specific companies and organizations to fit
within certain monetizeable bounds.
The early internet obeys the grasp of the early industry. Very little
was monetized then.
The development of the internet follows the development of the
monetization of the internet, it follows the rules of capital.
blobbers wrote 8 hours 41 min ago:
I liked this article, and I had a website back in the days of having an
html directory in my university unix account.
So what stops me today? I don't have hosting.
Eventually livejournal, blogspot, etc. came around and provided a
decent approximation of what people wanted to do, for free. Yes there
might be a little ad on the side but it was basically 'okay'.
Eventually FB etc. came along and provided a decent approximation of a
blog and allowed easy readership. Friendfeed got bought and soon enough
everyone was in everyone's business.
The problem is facebook, linkedin etc. are too easy to propogate
information. My ramblings shouldn't show up on everyone's feed. They
should show up to people who inbound come want to actively seek them
out; those are the people for whom they might be interesting. It's kind
of like talking to your neighbor.
You find out what's going on in their life, but maybe you don't want
everyone on the street to know, but you're fine if they happened to ask
you about it. Chances are if someone is genuinely interested in you,
they'd come to your website... but do you want your boss to come?
I don't know maybe the internet was a little safer when it was not
anonymous, but at least somewhat selective as to who would access it.
noduerme wrote 8 hours 41 min ago:
Something that scares the shit out of me is the new American tourist
visa requirement that you disclose your social media accounts over the
last 5 years. This seems an ultimate example of the exclusion or people
who refuse to participate in a technology. I'm not on social media. If
more countries begin adopting this, what am I supposed to show the
immigration authorities? Am I supposed to create a wholly fake set of
accounts in order to prove I'm not a threat to them? Is telling them
that I'm not on social media a red flag in itself?
hobofan wrote 3 hours 59 min ago:
I think for the next 20-30 years it still wouldn't be feasible to
make it a red flag due to a non-negligable part of the older
population not being on social media at all. I assume it is right now
still be possible to enter countries with a mobile phone number, and
those have existed for longer and are used more widely than social
media accounts.
I would assume they also try to derive associations to social media
accounts via passport information if you don't provide any to them.
So I think it's rather an additional bureaucratic step added on their
side rather than a red flag.
OGEnthusiast wrote 8 hours 17 min ago:
That's by design. Many people in America today (including many in the
federal administration) want to transition to a world with much less
immigration and foreigners (including less foreign tourism) than the
levels of the past several decades.
noduerme wrote 8 hours 4 min ago:
I understand that, but that's not really my point. Yes, they have
an isolationist and xenophobic bent. But while it's understandable
that having a social media presence full of sketchy / terrorist /
trafficking / whatever might now be a reason for a country to deny
a visa, it creates the question of what they do with innocent
people who simply refuse to participate. My question is what
happens if you don't have any social media or smartphone at all?
Will we be completely excluded from being allowed to travel freely
unless we post our thoughts on a daily basis?
OGEnthusiast wrote 7 hours 47 min ago:
> Will we be completely excluded from being allowed to travel
freely unless we post our thoughts on a daily basis?
Yes, because even if you do, they will find other ways to exclude
you. Their stated goal is to exclude as many non-Americans from
the USA as possible, regardless of whether they consider you
"innocent" or not.
noduerme wrote 7 hours 41 min ago:
I mean, that is a US problem - or the problem of any country
which chooses to destroy its own tourism sector. And searching
social media is ancillary to that, as you say, if the main goal
is simply to exclude people.
I'm talking about (per the article) whether self-exclusion from
social media will soon become a worldwide red flag for travel.
OGEnthusiast wrote 6 hours 8 min ago:
Oh my bad, since you mentioned American tourist visas I
assumed you were only talking about America. I have not been
following similar laws in other countries, maybe their
motivations are different than the American intentions of
completely shutting off immigrants from the USA.
topspin wrote 9 hours 26 min ago:
There is no "we." I can throw a dart at the a wall of HN usernames,
and the odds are rather high that the name I'd hit wants me
deplatformed, debanked and consigned to a GULAG. The implied threat
about the consequences of not somehow "fixing" my heart tells me
everything I need to know about the heinous purity spiral Internet and
planet you think you want.
Not just no. Hell no. If it were a choice between whatever you claim
to offer and an Internet that made me select from among curated sites
as if they were cable channels, I'd take the latter. I thank my maker
that such a choice remains hypothetical, and I feel no small amount of
joy that you can't "fix" that.
slybot wrote 45 min ago:
Cannot agree more... Tired of flags being waved at the wrong places
and times.
froggertoaster wrote 9 hours 23 min ago:
Unequivocally, 100% agree. Disagreeing with "them" on HN even on
these issues the author agrees with would also have me consigned to
the nearest gulag/re-education center. "As ever, unionize, free
Palestine, trans rights are human rights, fix your heart or die."
rexpop wrote 6 hours 37 min ago:
It's annoying that you guys clutch your pearls over an imaginary
gulag while actual people are being actually rounded up and sent to
camps.
amatecha wrote 9 hours 51 min ago:
Ah hell yeah that was great. Thank you for such an awesome post/site!
agnosticmantis wrote 10 hours 23 min ago:
Iâve started experimenting with Quarto[0] for scientific/technical
publishing on a personal website, and itâs been quite easy to use so
far. I especially like that it has builtin support for LaTeX, markdown,
code blocks and Jupyter notebooks. Only thing is I wish there were more
templates ready to use.
[0]
HTML [1]: https://quarto.org
performative wrote 10 hours 51 min ago:
first off: this is a beautiful article! but, it got me thinking about
how many times i found an interest that would then become a core part
of my identity by having a really cool piece of media relating to said
interest essentially force-fed to me by algorithmic feeds. i got into
rhythm games by seeing a livestream of osu! pop up on twitch, got into
archival fashion by seeing a really incredible outfit on reddit, got
into experimental pop by having clarence clarity's "no now" come across
my spotify feed.
as someone who grew up in a fairly insulated & isolated suburb, i think
those types of experiences were really important in turning me from an
unconfident, kinda angry kid into the aesthetically-engaged, witty,
openly-gay man w/ a pretty big breadth of creative interests i ended up
being. i'm truly not sure if i would've turned out this way if most of
the internet remained as undiscoverable as it was ~20 years ago.
though i have more appreciation for the slow web nowadays, where my
identity is a bit more solidified, i still feel a pretty strong pull
towards "the platform", and my visions for a healthier internet include
it. but, that's about as far as i've gotten.
camgunz wrote 11 hours 1 min ago:
These are collective action problems. The number of people who would
have to maintain personal websites full time in order to replace Reddit
is boggling and unachievable. These articles all reduce down to "I
don't love ads". Call your congressperson.
mmaunder wrote 11 hours 16 min ago:
Ad driven centralization bad. Go make independent websites using open
standards. I just saved you 5 mins.
This spends a lot of time on mood setting and analogy and doesnât
address: network effects, discovery economics, hosting and maintenance
costs, security, spam and abuse mitigation, user incentives.
Itâs aspirational rather than operational.
jppope wrote 11 hours 30 min ago:
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 ( [1] ). It's not the
web, its the people. Those people incentivize enshittification. People
will need to change, not the companies, the government, or the
creators... the supply is purely filling this demand. The indie web
isn't going to help a grandma see photos of her grand kids as easily as
facebook will. And the indie web won't help you find a used guitar as
well as craigslist will.
HTML [1]: https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margina...
heddycrow wrote 4 hours 9 min ago:
I'm with you. Thanks for the link.
garganzol wrote 11 hours 48 min ago:
To give it a different light: by using an indie web approach (i.e. self
host), there is an intrinsic guarantee that a publisher has put at
least some effort and resources to make their materials public.
This ensures that the published materials have certain authenticity and
inherent amount of quality. Publishing them "the indie way" functions
as a kind of proof of work: not a guarantee of excellence, but evidence
that something meaningful was at stake in producing and sharing it.
By contrast, the corporate web has driven the cost of publishing
effectively to 0. This single fact opens the floodgates to noise, spam,
and irrelevance at an unprecedented scale.
The core problem is that the average consumer cannot easily distinguish
between these two fundamentally different universes. Loud, low-effort
content often masquerades as significance, while quiet, honest, and
carefully produced work is overlooked. As a result, authenticity is
drowned out by volume, and signal is mistaken for noise.
To sum it up: this is not so much a problem of the internet as a lack
of discernment among its users.
andai wrote 7 min ago:
Yeah, until I hook up Claude to my NeoCities ;)
FarmerPotato wrote 8 hours 39 min ago:
Thank you. We should each try to be authentic, pay the cost, and
hope that is what gets us recognized by an audience we value.
Historical parallel: the advent of newspapers showed the same
catastrophe.
subdavis wrote 10 hours 57 min ago:
IME, this is just about the opposite of true.
I recently did a deep dive of an (allegedly) human-curated selection
of 40K blogs containing 600K posts. I got the list from Kagiâs
Small Web Index [1]. I havenât published anything about it yet, but
the takeaway is that nostalgia for the IndieWeb is largely misplaced.
The overwhelming majority of was 2010s era âcontent marketingâ
SEO slop.
The next largest slice was esoteric nostalgia content. Like, âLook
at these antique toys/books/movies/etc!â. Youâd be shocked at
the volume of this still being written by retirees on Blogger (no
shade, itâs good to have a hobby, but goddamn there are a lot of
you).
The slice of âthings an average person might plausibly care to look
atâ was vanishingly small.
There are no spam filters, mods, or ways to report abuse when you run
your content mill on your own domain.
Like you, I was somewhat surprised by this result. I have to assume
this is little more than a marketing ploy by Kagi to turn content
producers who want clicks into Kagi customers. That list is not
suited for any other purpose I can discern.
HTML [1]: https://github.com/kagisearch/smallweb
fabianholzer wrote 3 hours 45 min ago:
Do you intend to write it up? It would be interesting to get your
take on how the classification works. And personally, as I know my
feed is on the index as well, into which category my writing would
be sorted.
econ wrote 9 hours 24 min ago:
I once spend half a day or so gathering RSS feeds from fortune 500
companies press releases. I expected it to be mostly bullshit but
was pleasantly surprised. Apparently if one spends enough millions
on doing something there is no room for bullshit in the
publication.
CGamesPlay wrote 11 hours 34 min ago:
> To sum it up: this is not so much a problem of the internet as a
lack of discernment among its users.
This is very true. I've found that there's more good content than
there ever was before, but that there's also much more bad content,
too, so the good is harder to find.
RSS helps me, curated newsletters help me. What else helps build this
discernment?
Kovah wrote 3 hours 0 min ago:
Sorry for the shameless plug, but I built [Cloudhiker]( [1] )
exactly for this: exploring great websites.
HTML [1]: https://cloudhiker.net
nicbou wrote 4 hours 0 min ago:
Hacker News, plus a few specific authors who link to others.
Human curation is still where itâs at.
micimize wrote 12 hours 16 min ago:
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 for such a transformation
cannot possibly take root.
When asking such questions seriously, we must look at youtube, not
twitter. Mountains of innovations in media publishing, delivery,
curation, navigation, supplementation via auto-generated captions and
dubbing, all accreted over 20 years, enabling a density and breadth of
open-ended human communication that is to me truly staggering.
I'm not saying we should view centralized control over human comms
infra as positive, or that we'll be "stuck" with it (I don't think we
will be), just that we need to appreciate the nature and scale of the
"internet" properly if we're to stand a chance of seeing some way
through to a future of decentralized information technology
choppaface wrote 5 hours 37 min ago:
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 ...
> itâs 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.
moshun wrote 12 hours 5 min ago:
Agree with a lot that youâre saying here but with a rather large
asterisk (*). I think that ecosystems like YT are useless to the
wider web and collective tech stack unless those innovations become
open (which Alphabet has a vested interest in preventing).
If YT shut down tomorrow morning, weâd see in a heartbeat why
considering them a net benefit in their current form is folly. It is
inherently transitory if one group controls it.
The OP article is correct about the problem, but is proposing
throwing
mugs of coffee on a forest fire.
twitchisntgood wrote 11 hours 43 min ago:
This conversation on YT reminds me intimately of all the
competition Twitch got over time. By all accounts, Mixer was more
technologically advanced than Twitch is right now, and Mixer died 5
years ago.
Even Valve of all people made a streaming apparatus that was more
advanced than Twitch's which had then innovative features such
letting you rewind with visible categories and automated replays of
moments of heightened chat activity, and even synchronized metadata
such as in-game stats - and they did it as a side thing for CSGO
and Dota 2. That got reworked in the streaming framework Steam has
now which is only really used by Remote play and annoying publisher
streams above games, so basically nothing came of it.
That's how it always goes. Twitch lags and adds useless fake
engagement fluff like bits and thrives, while competitors try their
damnest and neither find any success nor do they have a positive
impact anywhere. The one sitting at the throne gets to pick what
tech stack improvements are done, and if they don't feel like it,
well, though luck, rough love.
basket_horse wrote 11 hours 20 min ago:
The one sitting at the throne is the one with the content, not
the one with the tech. People donât care about frivolous
features. There are like 20 different streaming services, Iâm
sure some have better tech than others but ultimately people are
only paying attention to what shows they have
micimize wrote 11 hours 51 min ago:
Mmm yeah I think I know what you mean. IDK if "If they stopped
existing, we'd realize we shouldn't have relied on their existence"
is plausible, but we have plenty of bitter lessons in centralized
comms being acquired and reworked towards... particular ends, and
will see more.
Also the collective capability of our IT is inhibited in some ways
by the silo-ing of particular content and domain knowledge+tech, no
question
65 wrote 12 hours 30 min ago:
Oh great, another one of these dumb posts about how social media is so
terrible and RSS, blogs, and HTML are so awesome. I'm getting sick of
Hacker News people upvoting stuff like this all the time since it's
just the same damn idea presented over and over again. Perhaps this
site has grown too large and is attracting the Reddit hive mind crowd.
iamwil wrote 12 hours 34 min ago:
The solution offered is pretty weak. I don't think it addresses why the
internet took the shape that it did. Publishing without centralized
services is too much work for people. And even if you publish, it's not
the whole solution. People want distribution with their publication.
Centralized services offer ease of publication and ease of
distribution. So unless the decentralized internet can offer a better
solution to both, this story will play out again and again.
jeffbee wrote 12 hours 36 min ago:
A lot to unpack here, but the article fails to tackle the question of
distribution. Creators put their videos on YouTube because that is the
way to reach a nearly global audience at zero cost. I can assure you
that although you can probably figure out how to host videos that
nobody sees, you cannot afford to host a popular video.
The author clearly spent a lot of time writing and presenting this, but
the facts and conclusions don't seem to warrant the presentation. In
particular the (useless, in the narrative) section about antibiotics
shows that the author is a deeply unserious person suffering from some
pretty severe fallacies. Nobody can have seen a chart of childhood
mortality over the 20th century and still believe such things.
rchaud wrote 10 hours 33 min ago:
> Creators put their videos on YouTube because that is the way to
reach a nearly global audience at zero cost.
If a tree fell and there was no one around, did it make a sound? A
cursory look through r/newtubers would show you that there are a lot
of people who get no views on their videos. Youtube's distribution
mattered when it was looking for user-generated content to splice ads
into. Today, it is filled with that content, and no longer has to
encourage people to post by giving them thousands of views overnight.
Besides that, people starting Youtube channels are looking for fame,
which is why they unquestioningly follow all the usual tricks for
"going viral": inane thumbnails, one-minute preambles before the
"like and subscribe" beg, engagement bait content to draw in
comments, etc. This kills whatever original voice the uploader may
have had, before their first video is even posted.
jeffbee wrote 9 hours 23 min ago:
This just sounds like a you problem. Don't watch those channels.
Don't upload those videos.
orliesaurus wrote 12 hours 45 min ago:
Web 1.0 nostalgia always skips the part where nobody read your
painstakingly handâcrafted blog. TikTok didnât âkillâ personal
sites, it just finally gave normies hosting, discovery, and an audience
without making them learn how to center divs.
williamtrask wrote 12 hours 25 min ago:
...with a price :)
bbor wrote 12 hours 50 min ago:
I love the design and the underlying message, but I just have to engage
on the three examples of "radical monopolies". Most pressingly, I don't
think any of the three show an example like that of the automobile,
whose ubiquity is mandatory!
1. Describing "proponents [of the industrial revolution]" as some
external group seems pretty absurd, and gives the rest of the piece an
unsettling Kazinsky vibe. Yes, of course there are a variety of
problems in the world related to the textile industry, that's obvious.
But blaming "wage theft" and "over consumption" on the technology
itself just seems absurd. You can still buy handmade clothes, and due
to transportation-enabled specialization, they'd almost definitely be
much cheaper and higher quality than they would've been in 1725!
2. Citing a 256 page report on antibiotic resistance[1] with no page
number for the vague claim that they were overprescribed to some extent
in the 1950s-70s is just plain rude! Regardless, there's no economic
system forcing antibiotics on you; if you really wanted to for some
reason, you could even save money by refusing them. Rather, the basic
realities of human health are what makes them so ubiquitous, in the
same way that they make food or hand washing ubiquitous.
3. This summary of the issues with LEO internet satellites is just way,
way oversimplified -- the most egregious part being the implication
that it is now "impossible to use earth-based sensors... to learn about
space"! More fundamentally, equating LEO telecommunications with
astrophysics research because they both involve things above our heads
is goofy and misleading. Even more fundamentally--and to return to my
overall point--there's no attempt to even vaguely gesture at a "radical
monopoly" here! It's fair to say that the vast, vast majority of people
only interact with LEO satellites when using GPS, which, again, is
absolutely not mandatory.
And, finally, the web:
The web is no exception to this pattern. A vision of
interoperability, accessibility, and usability, the World Wide Web was
first conceived in 1989... But the proliferation of access and ultimate
social requirement of access has spawned countless troubles for human
society...
I hope it's clear how "technologies come with downsides" is a much more
vague, obvious, and less-useful point than the Radical Monopoly thesis.
Itâs an industrial, production-minded way of approaching a
discipline that has all the hallmarks of being a great craft
I feel like the word "craft" is pretty telling here, as it strongly
implies a break from the marketplace. If you don't like "industrial"
websites, maybe take up issue with the concept of industry instead?
Hand-coded, syndicated, and above all personal websites are exemplary
I love personal websites, as do we all. The idea that more than, say,
5% of the population would be interested in them without radical
changes to our work-life schedules is a tad absurd tho, is it not? You
really think the millions of people who are happily sharing
AI-generated images of Jesus statues made out of plastic bottles on
Facebook could be tempted away to learn HTML and build their website
from scratch? Overwhelming [1] vibes from this section!
And, finally, my thesis:
The internet does feel genuinely so awful right now, and for about a
thousand and one reasons.
No. It can feel awful for one primary reason that dwarfs all others:
advertising, which is of course just a wrapper over capitalism. If you
want the internet to meaningfully change, no amount of artsy blogs will
do the trick: you need to change the economic forces that drive people
to contribute non-trivial intellectual products.
I, for one, see a world without advertising within our grasp --
still-capitalist or otherwise. We can do this. The Free and Open
internet can exist once again. [1]
HTML [1]: https://xkcd.com/2501/
HTML [2]: https://iris.who.int/server/api/core/bitstreams/a04b4607-0445-...
skeltoac wrote 13 hours 5 min ago:
Writer assumes reader is as cranky as writer. Reader loses interest.
zerocool86 wrote 13 hours 10 min ago:
The article mentions IndieWeb/POSSE but discoverability remains
unsolved. I'm working on a pledge system for local-first projects - a
/.well-known/freehold.json that crawlers can verify. Projects that
break the pledge get delisted publicly. More at localghost.ai/manifesto
subdavis wrote 13 hours 23 min ago:
Webmentions in particular are a totally unserious hobbiest technology
that will never reach anything like mass adoption. That the author was
willing to offer this as any kind of solution really colored my view of
the rest of piece.
Itâs like suggesting that everyone become HAM radio operators or join
Gemini (the protocol).
Levitz wrote 13 hours 35 min ago:
This felt so detached from reality to me that I attempted to check if
the author was even old enough to have experienced the old web.
The current state of things is not something that spawned out of
nowhere. It's not some random trend. 2008 happened and normal people
got online. That is basically the whole story. It is not coming back
because people are not going to log off, as a matter of fact it's only
going to get worse and worse as people from worse-off countries
progressively get online.(Don't take that to mean that I think that's
bad)
You can tell people to build personal sites and such, sure, go at it,
I'm all for personal expression. Where are they going to find them?
Whoops, back to social networks. But that wasn't the case before I hear
you say? Yes, because we didn't have colossal enterprises which entire
purpose is to vacuum as much data as they could, you see, those didn't
make sense before, but they do now since normal people use the
internet. Google is dead and the only old-school forums still running
generally either have political inclinations that would induce a heart
attack to someone that still thinks Brendan Eich resigning over a
thousand bucks was good or are established niche places in their
communities.
>With some basic HTML knowledge and getting-stuff-online knowledge, a
handful of scrappy protocols, and a free afternoon or two, one can
build their own home to post bangers for the tight homies, make
friends, and snipe those new friends with those hits of dopamine they
so fiendishly rely on.
My brother in Christ people today are not even trusted to choose their
font when messaging their friends, what in the world makes one think
that there's a desire to build whole websites? Like who is this for?
It's definitely not for laymen, it's not for the majority of web
developers, it's not for programmers either, is it for the fraction of
designers who are also developers? Does that really make sense?
PaulDavisThe1st wrote 11 hours 21 min ago:
> This felt so detached from reality to me that I attempted to check
if the author was even old enough to have experienced the old web [
... ] 2008 happened and normal people got online.
Some of us remember Eternal September, roughly 15 years early than
2008.
lisbbb wrote 13 hours 58 min ago:
Delusion. The only thing that will make dead Internet come back alive
is another technological leap forward. Big Tech has total control.
panny wrote 13 hours 59 min ago:
>JavaScript is more progressively-ehanceable than ever, and enables
interfacing with a rapidly-growing number of exciting browser APIs
(still fuck Brendan Eich though).
I think the author should take a step back. He's complaining about
politicized brain rot while engaging in politicized brain rot. He
ruined his entire plea in one sentence. I was skimming to see if I
could find anything useful in his words before reading, saw this, and
closed the page.
econ wrote 14 hours 9 min ago:
The only issue I have is that there are only 6 parts to this. I've
installed the homepage on my telephone just to be sure.
theturtletalks wrote 14 hours 14 min ago:
>> The advent and development of tools & methodologies like POSSE
(Publish On your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere), ActivityPub,
microformats, and ATProto, itâs becoming quite achievable to generate
your own social network, interoperable with other networks like Bluesky
or Mastodon. That network, designed for ownership and decentralization,
is durable, designed around storytelling instead of engagement, and
free of the whims of weird tech billionaires.
Donât just stop at social networks, this paradigm can be used to
disrupt every marketplace!
In fact, Iâm building open source SaaS for every vertical and
leveraging that to build an interoperable, decentralized marketplace.
Social media is a marketplace as well. The good being sold is
peopleâs content and the cost you pay is with your attention. The
marketplaceâs cut is ads and selling your data.
dwa3592 wrote 14 hours 14 min ago:
Wait, this was a nice article. why are people complaining?
jazzcomputer wrote 7 hours 44 min ago:
I've often mused about how people get irritated by others being
optimistic about change when the observers have tried change in the
past and not been able to maintain it. I feel that the experience of
that can lead to a position of cynicism that is defined by ones own
limitations rather than the constraints of the system. They'll even
suggest that people should be stronger in their resistance against
the proven stickiness of platforms that use huge data to keep people
in their ecosystems.
lightandlight wrote 12 hours 14 min ago:
I'm with you. Surprised by the negative reactions here.
A possible piece of the puzzle: I originally read the article on
mobile, no issues. Then I opened it on my desktop, and found the
design quite jarring. The margins are much too large for my taste,
forcing the text into a single narrow column, and the header
animations were distracting and disorienting (fortunately the page
works perfectly with JavaScript disabled). Perhaps this triggered
people?
ryandrake wrote 10 hours 29 min ago:
I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really,
really, really hate the design trend of confining tiny text into a
tiny narrow column down the middle of my browser. It's an awful
stylistic decision, and this is the petty hill I'm willing to die
on. It's so bad that I really can't take a site seriously that does
it.
Now, someone's going to come out of the woodwork to remind me,
"Well, ackshually, research suggests that it's easier to read text
that's constrained by blah blah blah blah" I don't care. It sucks.
It's always sucked. It will forever suck. I have a nice 27"
monitor, and I want to use the whole thing. I don't want to have to
hit ctrl-] ten times just to have text that is readable and spans
my monitor.
xigoi wrote 1 hour 45 min ago:
Do you also like watching tennis matches from up close? Itâs a
similar head motionâ¦
65 wrote 12 hours 34 min ago:
It says the same few things that always get hive mind upvoted on
Hacker News. There is nothing new about this information.
Social media bad, Javascript bad, cars bad, old internet good, RSS
good, personal websites good, HTML good.
If you want to farm upvotes on Hacker News, write about these topics.
This content is like crack to developers.
dwa3592 wrote 12 hours 25 min ago:
while i agree with you; I also think that sound ideas are sound
regardless. i don't think the negative comments are helpful at all.
If people wanted new information, go read nature, science, cell.
There's plenty of journals. HN is not for new information, it is
for interesting information which allows refactored info imo.
snek_case wrote 13 hours 6 min ago:
Without wanting to sound overly pessimistic, I subjectively feel like
comments on Hacker News have become more negative and cynical over
the last 10 years. It often seems like the prevailing attitude is
"let me try and point to a perceived flaw" or "here is why this is
not good enough" rather than being helpful or supportive... We're
staying away from the hacker ethos IMO.
It's by no means a perfect article, but the general message seems to
be that we're not powerless to build the web we want, and you can
host your own website, which is still true.
GaryBluto wrote 12 hours 26 min ago:
Whenever I see something I like, I vote it. It feels awkward to me
to type a bland show of praise when many other users have already
done (and will continue to do) the same*. When I see something I
dislike or disagree with, I feel it easier to go into more detail
as to why, as I rarely see people sharing similar criticisms.
* As a sidenote, people who just say "This." and "Cool." irk me,
and I don't want to elicit the same annoyed reaction in others.
ltbarcly3 wrote 14 hours 23 min ago:
The internet was never good. The feeling that it used to be good is
just the creation of a golden age myth, it's just nostalgia. It was
exciting because you were young and it was new, but the reality is the
internet was almost useless. If you had to log into the internet circa
1997 or even 2002 right now you would have fun for about 2 hours, but
it would be the "hey remember this?" kind of fun, then you would
realize there was nothing worth doing and go do something else.
IvanK_net wrote 14 hours 30 min ago:
Internet is amazing, it is the best invention of humanity, and each
year, a person spends more time on the internet (on average) than a
year before, which shows that it is getting more and more useful for
everyone.
Those who enjoy saying "I do not learn enough, I do not improve myself
enough, I do not work hard enough" (but you say "the humanity" instead
of "I"), that is just your own fault. Let people use the internet the
way they want to use it.
jimbokun wrote 12 hours 23 min ago:
> and each year, a person spends more time on the internet (on
average) than a year before, which shows that it is getting more and
more useful for everyone.
In the same way heroin proves itself more useful for everyone year
after year.
Vegenoid wrote 12 hours 23 min ago:
Year over year, we eat more junk food and get more overweight than
the previous year. This demonstrates that junk food and fat are
becoming increasingly useful and beneficial.
palata wrote 14 hours 23 min ago:
> each year, a person spends more time on the internet (on average)
than a year before, which shows that it is getting more and more
useful for everyone.
How in the world does that sound like a reasonable conclusion?
FeteCommuniste wrote 13 hours 59 min ago:
Each year the gambler spends more time, money, and energy on slot
machines. Obviously his gambling habit is getting more and more
useful to him. /s
signatoremo wrote 9 hours 7 min ago:
Your comparison may be apt for Tiktok. The OP talks about the
Internet. Researching, learning, communicating, paying, shopping,
entertaining, via the Internet, have steadily increased.
IvanK_net wrote 13 hours 47 min ago:
When somebody talks like this, ready to ban social networks,
videogames, pornography, the whole internet, and pretty much
everything that billinons of people enjoy, by comparing it to
gambling, it scares me quite a lot.
FeteCommuniste wrote 13 hours 40 min ago:
Nah, no bans. People should be free to spend their money and
time as they please, but let's not pretend that 2000 calories
of M&Ms a day is a healthy diet, either.
IvanK_net wrote 14 hours 2 min ago:
You choose to spend your time on a place A instead of the place B,
it means that the place A is better than the place B. Why else
would you do it, if B was better? It is a simple logic.
aaaashley wrote 12 hours 29 min ago:
Except social media feeds are designed to addict. A smoker will
spend their time smoking instead of not smoking. Does that mean
that smoking is good? Why else would they do it, if not smoking
was better? It's not that simple. When we blame the users, we
forget tech monopolies are spending billions to engineer systems
which are stealing our time.
arjie wrote 12 hours 38 min ago:
I'm sympathetic to that view, but I'm also aware of a particular
way it doesn't explain the world. Often I make local choices that
I enjoy while nonetheless regretting them later. Text social
networks are the most common way this happens to me. But the
other common failure mode was with food.
Without the retatrutide dose I'm on I frequently consume large
amounts of food. I love apples, and blueberries, and chicken and
rice. I can easily eat an entire Costco bag of Envy Apples at a
stretch. Inevitably, I regret this once I have exited my fugue
state of food consumption. So why do I do it? My behaviour on
retatrutide is far superior at getting me both total content and
joy (in the sense of area-under-the-curve rather than
point-in-time).
This concept has been explored for a long time[0]. The earliest
documented I know of is the concept of Akrasia [1] from the Greek
philosophers. But I think any notion of utility must build in the
notion of regret and perhaps the bicameral mind and perhaps also
the notion of non-rationality. My utility functions for the
things I do are not time-translation invariant, therefore I think
any model that optimizes for greater content and greater joy must
necessarily involve temporally non-local terms. I don't yet have
a strong model of this.
But we know this is common to many mental disorders. Part of
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is an interruption of some mental
pattern. My wife and I have a game we find amusing to play when
we want to overrule the other's temporally local preferences: we
challenge the other to a game of rock-paper-scissors to see
whether the countermanding applies. When she exercises it, I
frequently find that even if I win the momentary desire has
passed.
tl;dr: Utility functions have different values depending on the
temporal stride they take
0: Recently, Elon Musk claimed that the aim for Twitter should be
"unregretted user minutes". Sadly, despite this stated aim, I
found that his changes decreased these and increased regret so I
had to stop using his platform. I agree with the notion of
maximizing (value - regret) expressed in some abstract form,
however.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrasia
barnabee wrote 12 hours 44 min ago:
Itâs absolutely not the case that people are good enough in
general at optimising their time and lives that the things they
spend the most time on are the âbestâ they could have done.
Most people will readily admit to this, especially when it comes
to the internet, and itâs well documented that many people are
not happy with how much time they spend on the internet or how it
impacts their lives.
krater23 wrote 12 hours 50 min ago:
Correct. When I spend more time in the bar and fewer time at work
and with my family then this is a sign that the bar is more
useful and better for me than work and family.
nativeit wrote 13 hours 46 min ago:
Network effects and anti-competitive practices defy simple logic.
Intermediate logic is unavoidable, I'm afraid.
pacija wrote 13 hours 49 min ago:
Addiction & Tolerance.
You choose to take bigger doses of Heroin more frequently instead
of living a healthy life.
Your logic seems a bit too simple.
IvanK_net wrote 13 hours 45 min ago:
When somebody talks like this, ready to ban social networks,
videogames, pornography, the whole internet, and pretty much
every freedom that billinons of people enjoy, by comparing it
to drugs, it scares me quite a lot.
akoboldfrying wrote 13 hours 23 min ago:
I think the arguments you're currently having with people
come down to: To what extent do I control what I myself do?
People have a tendency to push blame to external forces
rather than take responsibility for their own actions. But
personal responsibility cannot be the full story, because
(almost) everyone acknowledges that drug addiction is
something over which people have starkly reduced control.
So the question remains: What about other things "in the
middle" like social media or porn "addiction"? Is it the
fault of the person, the external force (which you must admit
is consciously organised with the goal in mind of promoting
the addictive behaviour, since their bottom line depends on
it), or some mixture?
cgriswald wrote 13 hours 35 min ago:
Thatâs a massive leap. Recognizing a fact about those
things does not equate to being ready to ban those things.
The same is true of drugs!
mightybyte wrote 13 hours 58 min ago:
It also could happen because tech companies have optimized their
products to maximize the amount of time that people spend on
them, often in ways that directly result in a worse user
experience (by showing ads instead of the most relevant search
results, for example).
IvanK_net wrote 13 hours 53 min ago:
It makes no sense what you say. If the experience with A was
really worse than with B, people would stay with B.
cgriswald wrote 13 hours 39 min ago:
The original poster said âmore usefulâ, not âbetterâ,
so youâre already arguing something different than what was
said. I might spend more time with something less useful
because its time efficiency is one of the things that makes
it less useful now.
Regarding your argument of âbetterâ you seem to be
arguing by definition.
Edit: I now realize you are the original poster who said
âmore usefulâ, so why did you change it?
IvanK_net wrote 13 hours 16 min ago:
More useful is one of many ways of being better. What are
you talking about?
cgriswald wrote 12 hours 11 min ago:
If youâre arguing that there are different ways of
being better than your argument falls even further apart
since you might choose a worse option because it is
better in some wayâ¦
econ wrote 12 hours 55 min ago:
You vote with your feet. If you can only follow the world
would be exactly as simple as you make it out to be.
If you write things for your own website you would make
more of an effort and it would ideally find an audience
that enjoys your world view or insights into your topics.
It would be great to lure you into that experience. HN is
a terrible dating agency. Gathering down votes here is
the opposite of making friends. It is however great for
discovering authors like Henry.
He could have spend his time complaining on x how bad it
is.
econ wrote 13 hours 58 min ago:
Or that B got worse.
akoboldfrying wrote 13 hours 19 min ago:
Yes, but that still means A is a better choice than B to a
greater extent than it was before.
A lot of these arguments are really arguments about an unstated
"baseline" that we feel we deserve.
privacy2 wrote 14 hours 10 min ago:
Each year, I spend more time in my car during my commute (on
average) than a year before, which shows that being stuck in
traffic is getting more and more useful to me.
IvanK_net wrote 12 hours 51 min ago:
You chose to do it, so it means it was better to you than all
other choices. Why would you still do it otherwise?
If your goal is to suffer as much as possible, it does not
matter. You are still making choices that lead you to your goal
as fast as possible.
roughly wrote 12 hours 35 min ago:
I chose to give that nice man my wallet instead of taking a
bullet, but that doesnât actually reveal as much about my
preferences as you seem to think it does.
signatoremo wrote 9 hours 18 min ago:
No, you chose to be able to go back to your loved ones in one
piece. That very much reveals your preferences. Do you think
someone who was in depression, who had a terminal illness
might do differently?
dredmorbius wrote 10 hours 55 min ago:
This is absolute gold, thank you.
xboxnolifes wrote 12 hours 40 min ago:
It doesnt mean that it getting more and more useful though. The
alternatives could be getting worse and worse. Or there just
aren't alternatives.
Maybe this is just a disagreement of what it means for
something to "become more useful"? As an example, If I need a
bank account and every bank goes online only and shutters their
physical locations, that is not online banking becoming more
useful to me. I was perfectly happy going to the physical
location, but i am now spending more time doing banking on the
internet.
SonnyTark wrote 14 hours 42 min ago:
IMO things never go back to what they used to be, but they will
certainly never stop changing.
I do not for a second believe that the doom-scrolling brain-rot phase
will not pass. It will pass like the many before it, the important
question is what will replace it..
Effort should not be put into pulling us backwards as that's a fools
errand. Instead it should be invested in asserting some control over
current trajectories so we get something closer to what we like and
further from what we hate during the next cycles.
As far as web is concerned, I would really like to see more
decentralized services in every facet of our online usage. Mastodon to
me is exactly what I wished things become.
horacemorace wrote 14 hours 30 min ago:
Thatâs literally what TFA is about: how to proceed.
yakattak wrote 14 hours 45 min ago:
These are some ways Iâve been using the web in a way that keeps me
free.
- Run my own site (not much there yet)
- Use RSS Feeds instead of Reddit
- If a YouTube creator you like has a newsletter, SIGN UP!
- If a short form content creator makes long form content, watch that
instead
- Post on forums, instead of their subreddit/Discord (lots of Linux
distros have all three)
- Invest in my cozy web communities[1]
Speaking of the last one there, newsletters, RSS feeds and forums are
the best way to be in control of the hose of content.
Will these ever be as âbigâ as the monolithic platforms? No.
Thatâs okay.
1:
HTML [1]: https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest
kilroy123 wrote 1 hour 23 min ago:
Yup, I think human curration is the way forward. Email newsletters,
RSS, etc. It's "old school" but it's the sanest way.
I'm doing my part on the human curration side. My shameful plug: [1]
A human curated newsletter and site if you just prefer that. Lots of
people use email --> RSS. I don't block it or stop it.
HTML [1]: https://randomdailyurls.com
fantasizr wrote 13 hours 42 min ago:
rss and private forums are the soul of the internet. find your people
Imustaskforhelp wrote 13 hours 8 min ago:
Thinking about it. There are some things which can be done to
better sooth the private forums.
Like to me especially signing up to each and every forum and then
waiting to be accepted by a person feels good but has tons of
friction and has some stress attached because you never know how
strict the community is as well, it might take a day or two,
perhaps this is the reason why we got the dumpster fire of mega
internet forums called reddit or twitter of sorts
To me, federation feels better in this context since I can still
have a single identity of sorts across multiple forums and you got
better idea / ways to filter as well if need be
Another thing I feel about private forums where users have to wait
for permission signing up is that I feel like something even as
simple as having a cute cat or cute apple LOL or anything relaxing
could make it less stressful for people to join. I assume its
impact would be few but it would leave a deeper impact on those who
do want to join.
fantasizr wrote 9 hours 48 min ago:
not essentially private per se, but usenet groups and bbs had a
natural vetting because it required some competency to even
access it
FarmerPotato wrote 8 hours 36 min ago:
Listen while I tell of Christmas 1983, when every 14-year old
with a VIC-20 got a cheap modem.
Seriously, haven't we been working tirelessly to expand the
circle of access? Nostalgia reflects when the circle was
smaller, and we felt that we knew everyone in it.
nativeit wrote 13 hours 54 min ago:
I'm quite enthusiastic about my FreshRSS instance. I got to this
article/these comments from there, and I've even worked out how to
add YouTube subscription feeds, and comics. Just a straightforward,
chronological list of the things I've chosen to follow--no ads, no
BS. It's quite refreshing, I think it's had a material impact to
improve my mental health. Of course, the things that the people I
follow create, and the timing of their publications is inherently
influenced by algorithms, removing my direct exposure to
algorithmically-defined infinite feeds has been significant.
yakattak wrote 11 hours 57 min ago:
Yeah I've been using RSS to keep track of new mods for Cyberpunk
2077, Skyrim and Starfield. It's been fantastic to keep them all
organized.
Imustaskforhelp wrote 13 hours 2 min ago:
There is freetube which had rss really easy to work with for
youtube subscriptions.
One of my biggest issues was that on some occasions, Youtube
algorithm would give me home run so I would still frequent Youtube
algorithm
Another issue was that smh, youtube's rss feeds couldn't really
find the difference between shorts and normal videos.
So if you have a channel which makes lots of short form content,
you would see that so much more often.
Like I remember taking a few hours out of my life to fix it but
ended up giving up.
Although now thinking about it, I feel like what can be done is
seeing all the youtube videos and seeing all the shorts videos from
an api or similar I guess and then seeing the difference and having
it for an rss or such to pass another rss.
But one can see the pain in the ass for that and I am not sure how
that would even work.
I must comment, Hackernews has been the perfect spot between
algorithmically generated and completely self feed as it gives me
new things.
is there anything like Hackernews but for youtube/video content?
Tom1380 wrote 13 hours 7 min ago:
Could you please tell us a bit more? It sounds great
tracker1 wrote 14 hours 10 min ago:
On the newsletter front, I really don't keep up with them and have
thought about reducing the number I have showing up every week. I
mostly just mass delete a lot of the mail in my personal inbox a
couple times a week.
I wouldn't mind getting back to reading more from RSS over
aggregators, even though I often appreciate the comments on HN.
Aside: it's a shame that so many sites removed comment sections, and
any attempt to create a comment extension for any site turns into a
cesspool.
nicbou wrote 3 hours 57 min ago:
Treat it as something you can pick from, like a pile of books, not
something you have to finish, like a pile of books.
talkingtab wrote 14 hours 49 min ago:
The issue is good, the thought is good. But things happen for reasons.
Those reasons are often how systems work. Unless we understand how
those complex systems work, we cannot change anything. We end up with
cargo cult thinking. You need to understand the function that produces
the result.
Why does the internet function the way it does? It is really pretty
simple. The internet is primarily characterized by
very-high-volume-very-low-value transactions.
How much does it cost to send an email? When I send a real letter, I
buy a stamp $0.78. So if I can send an email instead, it will save me a
lot of money. You can try to calculate how many email transactions you
can provide on one VPS costing $5.00 per month.
Here is a great business opportunity! You sell people email stamps at
$0.01 per letter for 10k bytes. Cool. And 1,000,000 people each buy 10
stamps. Wow. That is a lot of money for your $5/month VPS, right?
But how do you get the money? You need to find a way for the one
million people to each send you a dime. You cannot do it. If they put a
dime in envelope and mail it to you, it will cost them $0.78. Etc.
So you have another idea. Why not let scammers include details of their
scam in all emails send and they pay for the email. Oops, I should have
used the term "advertisers". Now the people who email pay nothing and
the scamm.... oops advertisers pay for the cost.
And you surprisingly find many, many people and corporations from all
over the world are eager to exploit, oops target with advertising
users. Especially if you can identify what kind of target they are.
btbuildem wrote 8 hours 51 min ago:
Yes, the core issue underlying the rot as described in TFA is the
funding model for the internet. But that cancerous idea is older than
the internet -- adversing, hawkers and scammers, they've been around
since forever. It's an unfortunate side effect of "business" and if
you turn the sanitation dial far enough, you'll get professions like
Sales and Marketing.
So to fix the internet, you'd have to decouple the content from the
toll to access it.
ghusto wrote 14 hours 49 min ago:
At the risk of sounding trite; things that haven't hit the mainstream
yet are good, until they hit the mainstream. Once there's money to be
made (and the giants have finally started to slowly move in your
direction) it's done for.
Move on, and find the next thing before it hits mainstream.
meindnoch wrote 1 hour 5 min ago:
Related:
HTML [1]: https://img.ifunny.co/images/4664ef520c015b9017962facd187730...
ramon156 wrote 14 hours 55 min ago:
First 80%: "le web is le better" (sure, ok, it's a statement that u can
make)
then it's an instant jump to "Let's write down what we want", which
skips so many steps in between. why is the current internet bad, what
are the reasons and causes that go along with it?
I'm saying this because, if I add these steps, I always conclude that
it's just the past talking to me. The old internet also sucked, but for
different reasons. You were yearning for things you take for granted
now.
heddycrow wrote 4 hours 7 min ago:
But I'm le tired...
Okay, well have a nap and then fire ze missiles!
Aurornis wrote 14 hours 58 min ago:
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 the entire point of the exercise. This is coming from a site
that supposedly attracts the target audience for this type of page.
andai wrote 9 min ago:
I thought HN's ideal website was a text file?
It's beautiful to be sure, I wanted to actually read what the author
had to say, and stuff kept flying around my screen, so I did not get
far.
Maybe if I printed it out...
ludicrousdispla wrote 39 min ago:
I feel they have made stylistic choices that detract from the intent
of their writing.
defanor wrote 1 hour 49 min ago:
I thought the point is to pass along the message, though the one that
is brought up quite regularly: sharing the joy of making websites,
and such making as a way for anyone to contribute a little to the
overall construction/improvement of the Web. Besides, it does seem to
work without JS, though the layout is quite broken: header texts
overflow (whatever is the window width), the text column is 45
characters wide instead of occupying the window width, all of which
demonstrates the possible downsides of such diverse websites. That is
not to say that they outweigh the benefits, but such downsides are
not necessary to include, either.
vulk wrote 2 hours 28 min ago:
I think you are stepping in the same trap as the author. In search of
uniqueness you end up doing the same thing over and over.
The author starts with "weâre doom-scrolling brain-rot on the
attention-farm, weâre getting slop from the feed." and continue
with a web page that dooms scrolls emphasizing on big titles with
pictures out of context, hard to read layout etc. There is a lot of
valid criticism in the comments.
Of course uniqueness and beauty is probably subjective thing but I
think about this often about the web. For example if you spend some
time in websites like awwwards, dribbble, framer gallery you are
going to end up with same design over and over.
I am not sure when exactly but probably in the early 00's graphic
prints started to get into web, and sure it does seems cool, and
different but I don't think the web should be a graphic print.
I am really struggling to find unique web pages, websites these days
they are all the same, and in search of their "uniqueness" they often
fail big with the user experience.
One website that is unique in my opinion very well taught is - [1]
everything about it makes sense, the pages, the labels, colours,
buttons at every step on the website you know why are you there you
know purpose of everything it is hard to get lost, and not understand
the purpose of the page. It looks very simple but the design is
sophisticated.
HTML [1]: https://usgraphics.com/
alex1138 wrote 8 hours 32 min ago:
I can't take HN seriously, I just can't. It's where I get a lot of
information but the naval gazing is endemic here. It's a certain type
of culture, mixed in with the genuinely good posts and people who
work in the industry
venturecruelty wrote 10 hours 16 min ago:
I don't know when this retcon happened, but this was never actually a
site for hackers. People here complain because they like the modern
web, because it pays their salaries. They get fabulously rich because
of the steady enshittification of the web.
raincole wrote 10 hours 38 min ago:
If you name your site "A website to destroy all websites" you're
basically inviting people to judge it with extremely critical
standard.
Nevermark wrote 7 hours 45 min ago:
These are people who don't understand whimsy or other forms of
contrast enhancing rhetoric. Designed to make reading interesting,
points extra clear, etc.
Not designed to fool anyone into some random extremist view.
It may be that people who don't pick up on subtext humor, post more
than average.
kawfey wrote 9 hours 9 min ago:
My blogpost titled âMillennials are killing ham radioâ has
received the most hits out of all of my other posts. It got me an
interview with IEEE Spectrum and basically cemented my name as a
ham radio influencer.
Amateur radio is a remarkably niche hobby so that kind of attention
is rare, but it took ragebait to do it. A title like âThe Next
Generation of Ham Radioâ would have flopped. I know this because
thatâs what I titled it first, and after 40 views in 2 months I
slightly rewrote it and reposted it under the new title and within
a day it appeared on just about every ham radio forum, facebook
group, numerous email reflectors, and so on.
youoy wrote 41 min ago:
I finished reading this comment wondering what should I take away
from it. Is it better to include alarming titles and be read? Or
the other way around? Or what would be the sweet middle point?
ludicrousdispla wrote 36 min ago:
I'm really curious how a blogpost titled âMillennials are
killing ham sandwichesâ would fare, in comparison.
Kholin wrote 11 hours 25 min ago:
Actually they could turn on reader view mode if they use Firefox,
because this is website, all content present as the W3C standards,
users could read the content as any form as they like.
pavlus wrote 12 hours 32 min ago:
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 remind ourselves to be more critical to the content we
consume, regardless where it comes from.
cataphract wrote 57 min ago:
I think we can agree it's uncomfortable to read though: the font is
too small, for instance. I had to use Firefox's reader mode.
mattmanser wrote 43 min ago:
Depends on your age. I remember being warned in my 20s that older
people couldn't read 10pt font, 12pt was a stretch, I didn't
really believe them.
Now I'm in my 40s, oh wow. Small, illegible, font is everywhere.
Instructions on food is especially bad for this. At least on the
computer you can usually force 125% font rendering.
Point being, the site is probably quite legible to people in
their 20s.
elestor wrote 2 hours 57 min ago:
I did the opposite, I opened the website before looking at the
comments and thought it was like a beautiful art gallery too. Then
I read the top comment, and thought 'What are they talking
about??'. Had a complete opposite feeling.
nicbou wrote 4 hours 2 min ago:
I read the post first. The website is gorgeous, but not pleasant to
use on an iPad Mini. I couldnât keep reading without reader mode.
But damn, it is absolutely beautiful. The fonts and paintings, wow.
KellyCriterion wrote 4 hours 45 min ago:
Me too!
The website actually looks like a curated art version of something;
beautiful font.
bartread wrote 4 hours 57 min ago:
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.
hirako2000 wrote 2 hours 52 min ago:
To some it felt like nothing as they couldn't render the content.
The challenge when tackling difficult problems is to bring in
solutions to those problems.
Subway offered an alternative to junk food. By offering custom
flavors of choice, giving consumers more control over what they
eat. I don't see any fresh food at subway. Does it mean what they
did is futile? No. Can't we point out this is another type of
junk ? We better do.
The site is wonderful when rendered with JavaScript. A web to
aspire to is one where the system font is set by default, at
least could be chosen.
All valid concerns looking at an endeavor discussing a better
web. The author may even take note and iterate, there was no
claim it was definitive work.
blobbers wrote 8 hours 38 min ago:
A little art gallery museum exhibit-y. Is that bad?
emodendroket wrote 8 hours 54 min ago:
I don't think it's a bad analogy but I think there's some tension
between the visual interest and making a design that makes it
pleasant for someone to actually read your article through. Though
even if you format it optimally for that few people bother so maybe
this guy has the right idea.
baubino wrote 10 hours 13 min ago:
I too think itâs a beautiful website and really refreshing in its
simplicity. Too often âgood designâ means âneedlessly
complex.â The design of the site also nicely fits the argument
being made in the text.
tren wrote 7 hours 43 min ago:
I thought the same when loaded it on mobile. When I went to the
desktop version, it is kind of glitchy and the images overlap the
text:
HTML [1]: https://i.postimg.cc/bJgjcDD1/desktop.png
II2II wrote 10 hours 24 min ago:
> 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 can accomplish").
alex1138 wrote 4 hours 59 min ago:
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)
stephendause wrote 10 hours 42 min ago:
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 on the arguments being made. It's just not my cup
of tea.
bartread wrote 4 hours 46 min ago:
> 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.
janalsncm wrote 8 hours 2 min ago:
> My personal taste for the presentation of a piece of writing is
that less is more.
TFA works with iOS reader mode, which is all that matters to me.
I use it instinctively as it makes style more or less uniform and
lets me focus on the content of the article.
ryandrake wrote 10 hours 25 min ago:
I think when you make such strongly opinionated design decisions
on your website, you're deliberately inviting strong criticism.
They could have used a readable vanilla bootstrap theme and HN
would be actually discussing the actual text content instead of
the design, but they didn't, and here we are.
noduerme wrote 9 hours 18 min ago:
The idea that opinionated design is intended to court
controversy or criticism is, itself, very cynical. The
corollary to that is that all design should be vanilla to make
it as unobjectionable to the widest audience possible.
Design and content are inseparable. When design reinforces the
point of the content, that is good design, even if it's ugly,
even if it's not aesthetically pleasing to you, even if it's
not how you'd do it.
But I'd argue that questing for neutrality is worse than taking
a stance, even the wrong stance. Besides which, what one now
considers "neutral" is also a giant set of design decisions -
just ones made by committees and large corporations, so the
blame for its drawbacks can be passed off, and there's
plausible deniability for the designer.
Someone takes risks and makes something creative they consider
artistic. You're reducing their choices to a question of
whether they intended to be popular or to court criticism,
flattening the conversation into one about social media credit,
and completely discrediting the idea that they had true intent
beyond likes and points. That response itself betrays something
slightly cowardly about the ethos of neutrality you're
proposing.
yawnr wrote 9 hours 24 min ago:
Actually, HN wouldnât be discussing it at all, most likely.
At least not this much. The design is not only good, it has
also successfully incited a passionate response from a bunch of
people who donât appreciate it. Win-win!
100721 wrote 10 hours 43 min ago:
I think it'd be good to keep in mind that Hacker News is mostly
populated by a demographic commonly referred to as "Tech Bros" who,
for the most part, are here as part of their journey in creating
profitable businesses.
quijoteuniv wrote 3 hours 46 min ago:
Profitable (very) was Thomas Midgley Jr. when he introduced lead
petrol for cars, it took 75-100 years til the «profit» was
stopped. What did we learn?
LoganDark wrote 10 hours 30 min ago:
Is that the definition of tech bros? I thought tech bros were
people who shilled cryptocurrencies, NFTs and other grifts.
Uehreka wrote 9 hours 35 min ago:
The definition of âTech brosâ is âtech people you donât
likeâ. Thereâs no agreed upon definition (just like how
people disagree about what is/isnât a âgriftâ) because
itâs not meant to be descriptive, itâs a rhetorical device.
rustystump wrote 6 hours 44 min ago:
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 âfinance brosâ. Patrick Bateman types
but without the explicit murder. Status, money, often born
outstandingly privileged.
This is the tech bro people speak of. It is that psychopathic
desire for status at all costs which sadly is learned,
emulated, and exalted. Ironically, yc is the poster child for
breeding this culture over the last 8 or so years and the
place it is most often complained about outside of reddit
ofc.
zassy wrote 5 hours 23 min ago:
Thatâs how you use the term because you donât like
those people.
Iâve heard people use the term to disparage Linus
Torvalds and even Aaron Swartz because they didnât like
them.
davkan wrote 3 hours 1 min ago:
Using tech bro on Torvalds is well outside the pattern of
usage Iâve seen, which trends more towards GPâs
definition, at least in the past 5 years.
Nevermark wrote 7 hours 57 min ago:
Saying we don't like someone because we deem them to be a
tech bro, is indeed a circular argument.
But saying we don't like someone that calls themself a tech
bro? Well they had it coming.
ch4s3 wrote 12 hours 21 min ago:
Yeah, its a really beautiful site.
PunchyHamster wrote 13 hours 6 min ago:
Unique is not a quality hard to achieve
And they are complaining precisely because it has pompous title. If
it was "badly designed but personal website" there would be much less
of that
jaapz wrote 12 hours 58 min ago:
It's just a fun title, don't read so much into it
arjie wrote 13 hours 30 min ago:
I think that social networks are not meant to be moderated at scale.
We are meant to have what I call 'overlay networks': we occupy the
same infrastructure but see content filtered to the style that befits
us. Most social networks have the notion of friend symmetry, but I
think that read-time filtering needn't be like that.
To that end, I made a trivial Chrome extension and an equivalent CRUD
backend that just helps me store lists of users I like and dislike.
The former are highlighted, and the latter are simply removed from
comments.
As an example, the user I'm responding to is someone whose comments I
like so I have had them in my highlight list for two months now and
not regretted it [1] My personal tool is particularly idiosyncratic
but I think information sieving is particularly important these days,
so I recommend everyone build something like this for themselves. One
thing I've found it particularly helpful with is the usual outrage
bait. But I also killfile users who I think particularly
misunderstand the comments they respond to, and I also killfile users
who express what I think are low-information views.
HTML [1]: https://overmod.org/lists/view?pk=ELpqNsanTYP9_wZXNjdF-FcEOc...
willtemperley wrote 9 hours 0 min ago:
> We are meant to have what I call 'overlay networks'
As Terry Pratchett observed in a 1995 interview with Bill Gates:
âThereâs a kind of parity of esteem of information on the
netâ.
Equal internet votes means any propagandist with a human or machine
bot army can bias whatever they want. Now we have people with
unimaginably large propaganda machines drowning out those who act
with integrity, intellectual nuance and selflessness.
I definitely want an "overlay network" for those sites that have
hijacked the term "social network". Also I'd like one for movie
reviews too please.
GaryBluto wrote 12 hours 20 min ago:
I designed an extension with a roughly similar aim that filters
based upon various phrases and characteristics rather than the
poster of the comments themselves. It collapses comments (via
automatic triggering of HN's built-in collapsing feature) and adds
a "reason" tag to the comment information, so I can choose whether
or not to read it anyways. I feel the features with the most
positive differences are the capitalization detector (hides all
caps or all lowercase) and the character requirement.
arjie wrote 12 hours 1 min ago:
That is very cool. It would be cool to see what you decided to
filter on (other than the same-case filter and the char limit). I
had a similar idea where I would run comments through a fast
cheap LLM to evaluate whether they could be tagged in a certain
way. I originally tried just pure word-stemming and phrase-based
blocking and found that I couldn't tune it well for my uses. I
also found that collapsing comments lead to my opening them out
of curiosity.
Thank you for sharing what works for you. I think it's great
other people have been doing this style of read-side filtering.
It's a pity that there's no way to inject code into mobile apps
safely (i.e. this is an easy path to app-store rejection).
Perhaps there's no option there but to push `shouldFilter` out to
a server where you can run the logic. My use of my phone is the
weakest link in my filtering strategy.
esseph wrote 12 hours 35 min ago:
Beware of trapping yourself in a manufactured social bubble of
emotional comfortable
Nevermark wrote 7 hours 51 min ago:
I think the problem really is more of: Beware of being actively
trapped by deep dossier leveraged algorithms, in a manufactured
social bubble of emotional comfortable, created by corporations
that are expressly farming you.
People talk about social media is if it were passive, when its
deep intel, deep analysis, manipulation. Where everything we do,
is not just used to manipulate us, but in aggregate, improves
manipulation overall.
It is amazing what toxins people will accept, if the toxins
become baseline familiar.
bentcorner wrote 11 hours 38 min ago:
Is that bad?
I black-hole plenty of sites via pihole above and beyond the
typical adblock lists. On a very few rare occasions I have
turned off the pihole to unblock a site because I was curious
after following a link that was blocked by said pihole. Every
single time I quickly learned why that site was blocked, and
visiting that site gained me nothing.
arjie wrote 12 hours 21 min ago:
If it happens it happens. I can only hope that the result is
boredom rather than increased engagement.
rapidfl wrote 11 hours 13 min ago:
that's an interesting point. A echo chamber could lead to
fatigue and boredom.
Reels is able to keep me engaged because it is able to surface
similar content I would like but from different users. And they
have such a breadth of producers these days.
The X home feed algo is not so good apart from it being text
only, even for infotainment content. YT shorts also does not
work as good as the Insta algo
thorum wrote 13 hours 40 min ago:
The real trend is toward personalization on the userâs side of
things. Instead of interacting directly with a website, your
web-browsing agent will extract the parts of the website you actually
care about and present them to you in whatever format, medium and
design style you prefer.
PunchyHamster wrote 12 hours 25 min ago:
I miss RSS too
IAmGraydon wrote 13 hours 34 min ago:
Where is that a trend? It really doesnât work in most cases
because often the information and the design are not separable. One
needs the other to convey the intended meaning.
ChuckMcM wrote 13 hours 55 min ago:
Yup. Pretty much everything seems better when you're being nostalgic.
And that is singularly due to the human tendency to forget the bad
parts and remember only the good ones (it's a solid self care
strategy).
I had fond memories of programming my CP/M machine back in the day,
built a re-creation and was painfully aware of how limiting a 25 line
by 80 character display could be. Nostalgia, remembering the good
times, reality some things really sucked too.
Then there is the paradox of freedom to deal with, specifically if
everyone is free to change anything they like to be the way they like
it, other people will hate it and the entire system will be "bad."
But for everyone to use the same basic frame work, and the dislike
for the lack of freedom will be a common cause that builds community.
Back in the early days of the web and SGML, the focus was reversed,
which is to say "web" sites would just publish content and the "user"
could apply what ever style they liked to get a presentation that
worked for them. This infuriated web site authors who had their own
idea about how their web site should look and act on your display.
You were the consumer and they presented and if you didn't like it go
somewhere else. You can still see vestiges of that with things like
"use this font to show things" Etc.
So yeah, nostalgia is never a good motivation for a manifesto. :-)
Imustaskforhelp wrote 13 hours 20 min ago:
Y'know, the thing which you did is probably the best way to make
use out of nostalgia.
Like of course you had your CP/M machine and it had its
restrictions but you are seeing them now with the added information
of the current stage
There were also things that you liked too and still like and they
may be better than somethings in current time
So you can then take things that you like and add it to modern or
remove previous restrictions by taking access to modern upgrades.
> So yeah, nostalgia is never a good motivation for a manifesto.
:-)
I think the problem's more so spiritual. The social contract is
sort of falling off in most countries. So there is a nostalgia for
the previous social contracts and the things which were with them
like the old internet because to be honest the current monopolistic
internet does influence with things like lobbying and chrony
capitalism to actively break that social contract via corrupt
schemes.
People want to do something about it, but speaking as a young guy,
we didn't witness the old era so we ourselves are frustrated too
but most don't create manifesto's due to it and try to find hobbies
or similar things as we try to find the meaning of our life and
role in the world
But for the people who have witnessed the old internet, they have
that nostalgia to end up to and that's partially why they end up
creating a manifesto of sorts themselves.
The reality of the situation to me feels like things are slipping
up in multiple areas and others.
Do you really feel that the govt. has best interests for you, the
average citizen?
Chances are no, So this is probably why liberterian philosophy is
really spreading and the idea of freedom itself.
Heck I joined linux and the journey behind it all because I played
a game and it had root level kernel access and I realized that
there really was no way to effectively prove that it wasn't gone
(it was chinese company [riot] so I wasn't sure if I wanted it)
I ended up looking at linux and then just watched enough videos
until I convinced myself to use it one day and just switched. But
Most people are really land-locked into the Microsoft ecosystem,
even tiny nuances can be enough for some.
using Linux was the reason why I switched from trying to go from
finance to computer science. I already knew CS but I loved finance
too but In the end I ended up picking CS because I felt like there
were chances of making real impact myself which were more unique to
me than say chartered accountant.
So my point is, I am not sure if I would even be here if I had even
the slightest of nuances. Heck, I am not even much of a gamer but
my first distro was nobara linux which focused on gaming because I
was worried about gaming or worried about wine or smth. So I had
switched to nobara.
Looking now, I say to others oh just use this or that and other
things and see it as the most obvious decisions sometimes but by
writing this comment, I just wanted to say that change can be scary
sometimes.
> Then there is the paradox of freedom to deal with, specifically
if everyone is free to change anything they like to be the way they
like it, other people will hate it and the entire system will be
"bad." But for everyone to use the same basic frame work, and the
dislike for the lack of freedom will be a common cause that builds
community.
I would say let the man have his freedom. I would consider having
more choices to be less of a burden than few choices in most
occasions. Of course one's mind feels that there is a sweet spot
but in longevity I feel like its the evolution of ideas and more
ideas means more the competition and we will see more innovation as
such.
snorbleck wrote 13 hours 56 min ago:
unique has gone away. everything must fit into some cookie-cutter
pre-formatted mold that everyone has to agree upon OR ELSE!
nativeit wrote 14 hours 2 min ago:
Gimme 10 minutes, notepad, and 10,000 GIFs, and I'll give you the
World [Wide Web] of my youth.
acomjean wrote 13 hours 55 min ago:
>10,000 GIFs
half of dancing hampsters.
De da dee dee doh! [1] [2]
I do miss "memepool" and snarky curation from ye olde web days
HTML [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20000301193204/http://www.hams...
HTML [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampster_Dance
HTML [3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20050225005911/http://memepool...
k12sosse wrote 14 hours 1 min ago:
I'd show you mine but it's currently.. UNDER CONSTRUCTION
reactordev wrote 14 hours 9 min ago:
Welcome to the web. Itâs this behavior that has led me to pursue
more analog endeavors. I still need it to work but when Iâm not
working, Iâm not online.
CGMthrowaway wrote 14 hours 36 min ago:
The best design is invisible
d-lisp wrote 14 hours 6 min ago:
You can only be blind for things you cannot notice.
What you cannot notice is what shapes your "noticement" ability.
The best design is the shape of your perception.
The best design is already implemented in your reception of
reality.
The quest for "good design" is a game.
On the other hand, your aesthetical culture and the shape of your
perception create a system in which elements are more or less
"understandable", "readable", "accessible".
The game of design does not have stable rules and is inconsistent
among world populations.
"No design" is impossible, the nature of reality is such that
entities are embodied. To be embodied is to be rendered in the game
of design.
Ideas are not embodied OR their apparent embodiment in the game of
design (electrical information ?) does not contain their content
for the observer.
"No design" is perceptually inintelligible.
CGMthrowaway wrote 13 hours 57 min ago:
Sure, the medium is the message. But if the medium distracts from
the message it means they are not aligned well
(side note I put your comment into LLM to make sense of what it
meant re my comment without mentioning HN, it said "this is a
classic Hacker Newsâstyle metaphysical sidestep: You made a
practical design aphorism, He responded with ontology and
epistemology.
That usually signals polite disagreement or intellectual
oneâupmanship" LOL)
d-lisp wrote 13 hours 12 min ago:
Pragmatically, you can design things to be highly readable for
yourself and people that are "like you".
Alignment between the shape and the content is done in a
circular fashion : what you see educates you to fabulate about
design, once you fabulated enough you begin to say things are
bad or well designed.
I often express myself online by writing a bit what goes
through my mind, in a joyful and not very attentive manner, and
I find it amusing to be barely understandable sometimes (I like
the fact you had to use an LLM, lol) because, well, I feel it
may bring a certain color to the otherwise often too uniform
and immediate/instantaneous world of internet -- So, what I
said previously is also mostly what occurs when you let your
mind wander;
now, if I rejoin my own person and body, I can agree with you
that my culture of good design is about the testimony of the
removal of intention, in such a way that I feel content is
highly readable, (fictionnaly) devoid of style, and somewhat
raw or pure.
But again, at the "philosophical stage" all of this is pure
fiction, and with a certain mindset, I am pretty sure I could
shift my habits to adapt to what I feel as weird design, ugly,
barely readable etc... It would be totally useless and absurd,
but I could (given I have no specific perception-related
medical conditions) !
We saw the web become a repetition of the same design, and
while it IS good design in our "minimalism" addicted brains, I
am pretty sure stumbling upon weiiiiird websites makes us great
good sometimes, so much that maybe we also start to think about
the absurdity of our standards : we arrived to the point in the
"lie" where we identify this specific style as "the shape" of
our perception, and yes : it become invisible to us, and is
good design, but also it is a bit depressing.
My window manager and my emacs/vim/terminal configuration
aren't what I call good design. They are highly readable but
stratosphere-reaching levels of kitsch (yes ! I WANT to cosplay
and feel as if I was writing code for aliens or to fight the
matrix at work, and yes that's a bit cringe but at least I am
honest with myself).
I don't wish the world and internet to be "more like that" and
am ok with the actual state of design. Nevertheless I find
that's a bit arbitrary and somewhat boring.
Imustaskforhelp wrote 13 hours 12 min ago:
> (side note I put your comment into LLM to make sense of what
it meant re my comment without mentioning HN, it said "this is
a classic Hacker Newsâstyle metaphysical sidestep: You made a
practical design aphorism, He responded with ontology and
epistemology. That usually signals polite disagreement or
intellectual oneâupmanship" LOL)
Woah homie, watch out for the model which is trained on reddit
comments dataset to talk about intellectual one-upmanship xD
Also another thing but holy shit, LLM's are sycophantic man, it
tries uses big words itself to show how the person has
intellectual one-upmanship while cozying you up by saying
practical design aphorism.
Like I agree with both of you guys and there's nuance but I am
pretty sure that nobody's tryna sound intellectual hopefully.
Sorry for turning this into a rant about LLM's being
sycophantic but man I tried today watching big bang and asked
it if sheldon and raj were better duo in more common about
physics (theorist and astrophysicist) since I was watching a
episode where they both have dark matter in common and chatgpt
agreed
Then I just felt the sycophancy in my heart so I opened up a
new thread and I think I used the same prompt and changed it to
sheldon and leonard and it ended up saying yes again.
The problem felt so annoying to me that I ended up looking at a
sycophancy index being frustrated of sorts and wrote a lengthy
ddg prompt lol to find this [1] We really don't need more yes
man's in our lives and honestly I will take up a less
intelligent model than a sycophantic one. So I am curious what
your guys opinion are on it too as sometimes I use LLM's as a
search engines to familiarize myself with things I don't know
and I am lately feeling it will just say yes to anything even
silly ideas so I would never know what's the truth matter of
the reality ykwim?
HTML [1]: https://www.glazebench.com/
CGMthrowaway wrote 12 hours 49 min ago:
LLMs say yes to a lot. I often find myself priming it first
with "absolute mode" type prompts before dealing with it. And
also keeping my own opinions close to my chest
d-lisp wrote 12 hours 32 min ago:
Seriously for my part, LLMs incarns exactly the only type
of person that can break my nerves. Far too often I spot an
hallucination, some bullshit rambling, sycophancy, or
----hughhhhh----- rethorical elements of language that
makes me go mad :(.
examples for ---hughhhhh--- inducing stuff :
"I'll be blunt !"
"Here's the ground truth, no bullshit"
"Bottom line : "
"No fluff, technical, precise, no bullshit, devoid of
unnecessary rethorical shapes, "
" : the hard truth"
I am becoming snob ?
FarmerPotato wrote 8 hours 47 min ago:
No, you are human.
We can hope that "Elements of Style", or similar, comes
back into fashion.
nine_k wrote 14 hours 42 min ago:
The site indeed is trying to be an artistic treatise, as opposed to
being a clear, easy-to-read manifesto. It touches many themes I have
read about many times, so I skimmed most of the content. It came to
the expected indie-web conclusions and recommendations.
Indie Web, while nice and fascinating, lacks the large audience. You
write things down, and nobody cares. Well, maybe a few friends who
keep an eye, and a hiring manager when your candidacy is considered
for another job.
Some people are fine with that, and just enjoy the process of
producing content, and seeing it published. They are a minority. Most
people come to consume more than to produce, and to get quick
feedback.
The most efficient way for an indie website to gain an audience is to
be briefly featured on one of these bad, terrifying behemoths of the
current Web, like Reddit, or Xitter, or, well, HN. A few dozen people
will bookmark it, or subscribe to the RSS feed. Sites that are true
works of art and craft, like [1] , will get remembered more widely,
but true works of art are rare.
It is, definitely, very possible to build a rhizome of small indie
sites, along the lines of Web 1.0. But they would also benefit from a
thoughtful symbiosis with the "big bad" giants of the modern Web.
HTML [1]: https://ciechanow.ski/
baubino wrote 10 hours 4 min ago:
> It is, definitely, very possible to build a rhizome of small
indie sites, along the lines of Web 1.0. But they would also
benefit from a thoughtful symbiosis with the "big bad" giants of
the modern Web.
Thatâs exactly what the article says. Seems like you made
assumptions about the argument based on the design instead of
actually reading it.
nine_k wrote 9 hours 13 min ago:
I sort of missed this idea in the article, reading it more like
"we can still thrive in the shade of the skyscrapers" than a call
to a symbiotic existence.
ceroxylon wrote 10 hours 32 min ago:
> The most efficient way for an indie website to gain an audience
is to be briefly featured on one of these bad, terrifying behemoths
of the current Web
This is what the article / indieweb mean with POSSE
HTML [1]: https://indieweb.org/POSSE
nine_k wrote 9 hours 8 min ago:
POSSE is a great principle, but I'm talking about a different
phenomenon: being voted onto the front page of HN, /., or
featured on a huge subreddit, a tweet by some influencer with
100k subscribers, etc. The 15 minutes of fame, which hopefully
leave a bit of a lasting audience, connections to sister sites
mentioned in the resulting threads, etc.
The biggest problem of any indie publishing is obscurity; not
that nobody cares, but rather nobody has an idea, and has no way
to have an idea.
nativeit wrote 13 hours 58 min ago:
> Sites that are true works of art and craft, like [1] , will get
remembered more widely, but true works of art are rare.
This is a really nifty website.
HTML [1]: https://ciechanow.ski/
nine_k wrote 9 hours 7 min ago:
I'd say that "nifty" is an understatement; "a masterpiece" would
be more proper.
lazzlazzlazz wrote 14 hours 48 min ago:
Hacker News, probably noticeably since 2016 or so, has been a
negative, curmudgeonly place. It has become political (toward the
left), sclerotic, and bitterly nostalgic. It's bad and no longer
represents the future. I notice it every time I visit. It's sad.
scrollop wrote 1 hour 55 min ago:
There's a social media platform that seems right up your alley.
It's something to do with "Truth"...
venturecruelty wrote 10 hours 14 min ago:
Lmao sure. Every comment I make about unions gets downvoted, and
every comment about "maybe it's okay to destroy the planet for one
more solid quarter" shoots into the stratosphere.
More projection here than a drive-in movie theatre... This website
sucks, but not because of any (incorrectly) perceived leftwing
bias.
D-Coder wrote 10 hours 59 min ago:
You should definitely demand your money back.
ErroneousBosh wrote 12 hours 26 min ago:
> It has become political (toward the left)
Clever people tend to be on the political left. Computery people
tend to be on the left because they have a higher level of
literacy.
That's also why there are no particularly successful right-wing
comedians.
skeeter2020 wrote 12 hours 28 min ago:
comment from account created ~4 years before the supposed
noticeable decline: Here's a content-free opinion post designed to
trigger more of the negative comments I really hate, but I'll keep
coming back.
madeofpalk wrote 12 hours 55 min ago:
I promise you Hacker News was exactly like this back in 2011.
> It has become political (toward the left)
I wonder what you're talking about - your definition of 'political'
or 'left'.
Tech and politics are so deeply intrenched. More than just "is DEI
evil and there's no such thing as algorithmic bias". Should Apple
be restricted from collecting its Apple Tax and locking down its
devices?? Should the EU be able to regulate American companies?
Should governments demand encryption back doors in devices? Should
Australia ban teens from social network? Should there be a Right to
Repair for our devices?
Honestly one of my biggest gripes with HN is that it does seem to
be a place where pretty regressive social viewpoints seem to
flourish.
ryandrake wrote 10 hours 13 min ago:
It would be informative if, when someone complains that XYZ is
"to the left" they define exactly what they mean. Is the person
they are complaining about really advocating for the proletariat
to seize the means of production?
Uehreka wrote 9 hours 32 min ago:
It is not in the interest of âpeople who complain about
things being too far leftâ to get specific. To do so can only
increase the number of people who realize they disagree with
them. The vagueness is purposeful.
cauefcr wrote 9 hours 34 min ago:
Most times i read political things on HN it looks like visiting
a comment straight from ayn rand's delusions, but that's to be
expected of the country with two right wing parties pretending
to compete.
wsatb wrote 13 hours 15 min ago:
> It has become political (toward the left)
I donât feel this way at all. Maybe itâs one of the only places
youâre actually consuming mixed opinions.
yunnpp wrote 12 hours 1 min ago:
I will even go as far as stating that it is one of the only few
places left on the Internet where you can see differing opinions
interleave in a not-completely destructive manner. Really no idea
what OP is talking about because it has not been at all my
experience.
Hammershaft wrote 13 hours 31 min ago:
The bitter politics can also be right wing and you can spot it when
migration topics pop up.
What distinguishes so much of the right wing and left wing politics
is that so much of it is angry and zero sum.
I've also been looking for greener pastures. Lobsters has better
technical signal/noise but is much more bitter, zero sum, and
political.
evantbyrne wrote 13 hours 48 min ago:
> Hacker News, probably noticeably since 2016 or so, has been a
negative, curmudgeonly place. It has become political (toward the
left), sclerotic, and bitterly nostalgic. It's bad and no longer
represents the future. I notice it every time I visit. It's sad.
An easy way to help with the negativity is to stop leaving bait
comments
bbor wrote 13 hours 19 min ago:
Reminds me of on interaction a few months ago where I mentioned
the left-right spectrum in passing and someone accused me of
making HN a worse place, only to call me a "snowflake" in their
very next response! As usual, "things shouldn't be so political"
is often uttered from a highly-political sense of discomfort. The
quintessential example for me was its usage in US
anti-desegregation rhetoric in the 1960s, alongside its
resurgence in the anti-DEI movement today -- demanding that no
one discuss our shared institutions is too often an endorsement
of them, rather than an honest effort to focus on something else.
"toward the left" aside, it's always a little frustrating to read
the ubiquitous "this place sucks" comments on here and Reddit. I
have tons of problems with HN--both petty (markdown when??) and
fundamental (SV/PE has metastasized in a discomforting
way...)--but I'm still here because I love it, and think it's one
of the best communities the internet has to offer.
Specific critiques of specific people or ideas are always
welcome, but comments like "everyone here is curmudgeonly" just
makes me wonder why they bother to log on in the first place...
ErroneousBosh wrote 12 hours 25 min ago:
> "things shouldn't be so political"
Skunk Anansi would likely disagree with that.
lisbbb wrote 13 hours 57 min ago:
I see the same thing. I don't know why I even bother to post here,
habit mainly. I know I'm not changing any minds.
Imustaskforhelp wrote 13 hours 38 min ago:
I am not sure, I would say I just joined hackernews for a year so
I don't know the whole situation.
but the way I see it, If I assume you are correct, hackernews is
in a bit of rough spot because there was this one comment which
did some analysis and it feels like hackernews is definitely
saturating a bit/(peaked?)
From my personal experience, I feel like we all just use reddit
(as the article says) and so we just deal with the annoyances
with it and not look for anything else. Or perhaps we join some
discord communities.
If people who are within Hackernews are resonating this
statement, its in a tough spot because people say such things.
Perhaps, its that Hackernews grew too big for some people and its
too small for others. Perhaps one side's currently on reddit not
even knowing about it and the other's complaining it on
hackernews
And perhaps there's also a middle sweet spot where people aren't
complaining but nobody hears them either because they got nothing
to complain.
But from the outside what people see are other people complaining
about hackernews on hackernews. Same goes for redditors too I
guess.
I checked your comment and it says 5 months, I had been assuming
you were here for years from the tone but perhaps I was wrong.
I don't know but to me hackernews felt like an information
arbitrage of sorts which had these tid-bits of info which made me
feel better if I ever were to do somethings like this or gave me
confidence in myself in finding the right tool for the right job
If you are tired of hackernews, I would suggest you to open up a
fediverse lemmy instance about anything related to hackernews
because of the masses perhaps, then you would have less people
but more signal since clearly someone would be interested if you
create a lemmy instance about similar topics to hackernews but
the problem then becomes is if that thing stays idle.
I see your concerns but do you have any suggestions, I see dang
and others around here, I am sure if they could do something
about it, they probably would?
fouc wrote 14 hours 1 min ago:
I disagree it's "toward the left" but I would also disagree if you
said "toward the right". By that I mean I've observed BOTH extremes
happening.
jimbokun wrote 12 hours 30 min ago:
We've seen the same kinds of discourse arrive here as is common
on other social media sites, where too much political discourse
is just signaling what tribe you belong to and vilifying anyone
outside it.
FergusArgyll wrote 14 hours 28 min ago:
Once you understand this, you realize maybe it's not that something
is wrong with LLMs, crypto, Google, Apple, Windows, Amazon, the US,
Rust, not-rust, JavaScript, Israel, copyright & VCs. It's just a
negative place.
tkiolp4 wrote 14 hours 30 min ago:
HN is so depressing, but at the same time so Im addicted to it.
Itâs 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 itâs about 40-50%, and the rest is
crap (including comments). I have been trying to leave HN, letâs
see if I can do it in 2026.
venturecruelty wrote 10 hours 13 min ago:
1. Delete your account.
2. Block the website.
3. Critically evaluate your goals, and whether or not your
actions align with those goals.
trinsic2 wrote 11 hours 58 min ago:
Its alright, were not all like that. I found the site cute, at
least there are people standing up to the bullshit. I have been
blogging about it on my site to
HTML [1]: https://www.scottrlarson.com/publications/
Imustaskforhelp wrote 13 hours 47 min ago:
I do feel like 40-50% signal ratio is still good compared to 90%
HN did give me some leads in the start of just cool things to
follow and I have been able to make an understanding of what
things interest me and what don't due to it. And this has also
been the reason I read a lot of comments etc. and content here,
maybe more than I should.
I don't know to me, building my own website and forum etc. are
possible but they feel complicated and I still can't seem to get
eye balls. On Hackernews Comments its easier personally to write
something, get feedback on it, (improve?/learn?)
Of course if one wants to optimize for eyeballs, they can
probably go for reddit or twitter maxxing or similar because cmon
this is exactly the stuff the article is talking about from what
I see.
Hackernews does indeed sit on the perfect spot. I feel like if
you want more informationally dense topics, perhaps lobsters can
be good for ya.
HTML [1]: https://lobste.rs/
BlackjackCF wrote 13 hours 15 min ago:
I always forget about lobste.rs because I never comment since I
donât have an account and donât know anyway of getting an
invite.
lisbbb wrote 13 hours 56 min ago:
The site that is really, insufferably toxic is LinkedIn.
alex1138 wrote 4 hours 53 min ago:
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
LPisGood wrote 14 hours 1 min ago:
Havenât people been saying that since the late 2000âs?
100721 wrote 10 hours 10 min ago:
It's still really early 2000's! We have over 900 years left :)
---
On topic: discussions like these are as old as human discussion
forums and communities. I think that the participants each grow
and change on an individual level just as much as the community
and platform does. I think humans have a hard time identifying
how much of their feelings of nostalgia are based in reality.
Maybe the platform has not actually changed in the ways people
fear, and instead, peoples' opinions on what is interesting,
important, or valuable has changed?
Since this thread has been discussing politics-adjacent things,
let's consider Senator John Fetterman from the United States.
Mr. Fetterman is notably different today from when he first
started his campaign, regarding what he believes is important
and valuable. (Mr. Fetterman suffered a stroke, which is
suspected to have brought about personality changes and shifts
in political ideology.)
---
I think we, as individuals, should always be focusing our first
line of questioning on how _we're_ changing, rather than trying
to figure out how the world, or the zeitgeist, or Hacker News,
etc. is changing.
Sometimes we outgrow things that we hold dear, and instead of
accepting that it's not really the place for us anymore and
moving on to a different environment, we try to shape our
current environment around our new personality by instituting
new rules or adding new features.
bakugo wrote 12 hours 56 min ago:
Yes, but why can't both be true?
I don't get people who use "you say [thing] is getting worse
but someone X years ago said the same!" as an argument that
somehow proves [thing] isn't getting worse. Things can become
progressively worse over long periods of time, it's not an
instant change that can only happen once.
Another context where I often see this "argument" is major
Windows versions. People rightfully say they want to stay on
Windows 10 because 11 is objectively worse in many ways, and
someone jumps in to say "you said the same about 7 to 10" as if
it's some sort of gotcha. Both complaints can be right, each
new version can be worse than the last.
Right now, we have at least one aspect in which HN has become
objectively worse in the past years: AI-generated content. It
didn't exist a decade ago, so good luck using that "argument"
there. Thankfully, its prevalence is still nowhere near as bad
as on Reddit (it's impossible to browse that site for 10
minutes without noticing bots posting blatant ChatGPT responses
everywhere and getting hundreds of upvotes), but still.
steveklabnik wrote 13 hours 11 min ago:
[1] > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning
into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
The actual quote has links, the first of which is to a comment
from 2009.
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dingnuts wrote 12 hours 47 min ago:
particularly ironic comment from an HN/lobsters celebrity
account lol
this website isn't turning into Reddit, this website has been
a pretentious orange subreddit for well over a decade if not
right from the get go and a link to this site's Reddiquette
page (just as ignored as on any subreddit!) is evidence TO
that effect, and not against it!
the fact that the link petuously denies reality
notwithstanding!
zenlot wrote 14 hours 2 min ago:
Whereabout you plan to move?
OGEnthusiast wrote 14 hours 33 min ago:
That's true of the US population in general too. Their quality of
life has been decreasing due to accelerated globalization (sans the
top ~10% of asset holders).
Y_Y wrote 14 hours 43 min ago:
Is it "negative" to identify shitty things as being shitty? I
wouldn't necessarily blame the commenters for that.
jimbokun wrote 12 hours 26 min ago:
It's useless without describing concrete, practical solutions to
those problems.
What do the voters want? Zero taxes, no crime, world peace and
infinite benefits.
It's easy to identify things as shitty because the above doesn't
describe the world yet and thus it's a banal observation.
Implementing real, practical improvements is really hard and
requires much more thought and consideration and introduces the
possibility of failure. Which is why that part isn't discussed
as much.
venturecruelty wrote 10 hours 12 min ago:
Not every complaint needs to have a goddamn essay attached
describing some utopia. Sometimes you just need to kvetch, and
I'm sick of getting tone policed otherwise about it.
shimman wrote 12 hours 19 min ago:
Why don't people that perpetuate the current system defend its
existence? Why is the onus on us to develop a new realm of
government when the current system never had to do this?
Your comment is "but you live in society too!"
Society acknowledging the shitty things is the first action in
rectifying them.
AnimalMuppet wrote 10 hours 11 min ago:
God did not create the current system of government on the
seventh day of creation. The current system had to defend
its existence (or rather, creation) at the time of its
origin.
The thing about criticism is, we're a long way from "the
worst possible outcome". That is, there is a lot that the
current system gets right.
That's why the burden of proof gets put on the one proposing
changes. The wrong change could make things worse rather
than better, and we really don't want that.
So it's not enough to note that society is broken in some
ways. Yes, it is. Yes, we notice too. Now, what are you
proposing? Let's take a hard look at your concrete proposal,
and see whether it's an improvement or not.
Oh, you don't have one? Yes, it's still valid to point out
that there are problems. It's valid to demand that we not
become complacent with the current problems. That's not
wrong.
shimman wrote 9 hours 43 min ago:
No, neoliberalism is only 50ish years old and all it did
was usher in nascent fascism and income inequality.
krapp wrote 14 hours 12 min ago:
Constantly? As if it were a psychological compulsion? So often
that dang had to make a guideline about it, which no one even
attempts to follow?
Two actually - the guideline against being "curmudgeonly" is
separate from the guideline against going on a tilt because you
get triggered by any website that doesn't look and act as much
like plaintext as possible.
And yet if someone so much as cracks a joke they get rapped
across the knuckles and lectured about a rule that doesn't
actually exist (no humor allowed)?
Yes, that's negative. That's a culture of performative
misanthropy.
gmd63 wrote 12 hours 46 min ago:
You've convinced me, I'm going to stop complaining about
corporate slop and the connection between big tech / VCs and
the awful political situation in the most advanced country in
the world. I will try to glaze Liquid Glass from here on out,
say some nice things about the richest man on earth who kept
quiet about the fact that he pays people to grind video games
for him, and make sure to give David Sacks and Jason Calacanis
the benefit of the doubt next time they are whining like babies
online for a Silicon Valley Bank bailout.
I think the OP website is pretty cool by the way.
krapp wrote 11 hours 52 min ago:
The compulsion to interpret people's comments in bad faith
then retort with condescending snark is a problem too.
But hey, at least it isn't memes, right?
gmd63 wrote 11 hours 31 min ago:
I don't think I misinterpreted the condescension you dished
out by blanket labeling a trend of mostly valid critique as
psychological compulsion and performative misanthropy.
krapp wrote 11 hours 21 min ago:
You certainly did, because I wasn't referring to valid
critique.
gmd63 wrote 11 hours 13 min ago:
Mainly I wanted to suggest that the folks you're
diagnosing might have valid reason to complain. I could
have done it more tactfully, but that's what came out.
Your post reads to me as a complaint that people who
complain too much have a problem.
rightbyte wrote 12 hours 37 min ago:
> he pays people to grind video games for him
The POE shilling might be what pisses me most off about him.
rescripting wrote 8 hours 59 min ago:
I know youâre being glib, but for me itâs probably
working to shutter USAID at lightning speed leading to tens
of thousands of unnecessary deaths.
Though he also sucks at video games.
onion2k wrote 14 hours 45 min ago:
Hacker News, probably noticeably since 2016 or so, has been a
negative, curmudgeonly place.
No it hasn't.
tux3 wrote 14 hours 14 min ago:
>No it hasn't.
I'm sorry, is it a 5 minute argument, or the full half-hour?
mattsears wrote 15 hours 3 min ago:
This is one of the most difficult articles my eyes could read. The font
is so small and my eyes jumped all over the place. The web I want: One
that's easy to read.
nofunsir wrote 9 hours 59 min ago:
Let me guess, you want a site that is just a singular column of text,
plenty of space for ad breaks, and 3/4 of your monitor is just
whitespace on the left and right?
Aardwolf wrote 14 hours 54 min ago:
Firefox's reader mode works on this one!
johnfn wrote 15 hours 6 min ago:
I hear clamoring to go back to "the old web" frequently, I never really
understood the perspective. The old web still exists. I use it every
day. I'm a member of a number of tiny community websites with old web
charm, and there are certainly millions more out there, for any random
niche or interest. In fact, I almost consider Hacker News to be in that
category (though it might be a tad too large these days; you can't
really get to know everyone's name).
> But thatâs not what we use the Internet for anymore. These days,
instead of using it to make ourselves, most of us are using it to waste
ourselves: weâre doom-scrolling brain-rot on the attention-farm,
weâre getting slop from the feed.
No one is making you do any of these things. If you don't like it...
stop? And go use the sites that you do like instead?
> Now, Learning On The Internet often means fighting ads and endless
assaults on oneâs attention â it means watching
part-1-part-2-part-3 short-form video clips, taped together by action
movie psychology hacks, narrated gracelessly by TTS AI voices. Weâre
down from a thousand and one websites to three, and each of those
remaining monolith websites is just a soullessly-regurgitated,
compression-down-scaled, AI-up-scaled version of the next.
Not really? There is an absurd amount of high quality content on the
Internet to learn from - now more than ever. Yes, there is also poor
quality AI slop garbage. But, again, if you don't like it... stop? And
go watch the good stuff instead?
jfengel wrote 13 hours 52 min ago:
I don't get it either. It's all still there. There's just also a lot
more.
It always sounds to me like "life was great when it was just me and a
few dozen people exactly like me". Now it's got stuff for other
people, too, and people seem to resent that.
krapp wrote 14 hours 6 min ago:
The "old web" people want to go back to is a web that wasn't
mainstream and wasn't complex.
This is why people created alternatives like the gemini protocol -
explicitly designed to never grow and never become mainstream.
markus_zhang wrote 15 hours 6 min ago:
I'll counter propose a website to destroy all websites: [1] That's all
we need. Maybe throw in a few images:
HTML [1]: https://bellard.org/
HTML [2]: http://www.candlekeep.com/
jimbokun wrote 12 hours 22 min ago:
Seeing bellard.org for the first time just warmed my heart.
FeteCommuniste wrote 13 hours 32 min ago:
Back when I first got on the net I remember spending a lot more time
on sites like Bellard's, where "like" means "no style (or would it be
transparent style? brutalist style?) but tons of substance."
markus_zhang wrote 13 hours 17 min ago:
Yeah really love the density of information, and also love the
discussion boards and irc. Back then we gathered together on those
boards or in the channels to wait for the new year.
kristianc wrote 15 hours 12 min ago:
Lovely design - but also shows the inherent problem. Not everyone can
create a design like this. Medium and Substack mean that not everyone
needs to. When everyone is able to publish, you invariably end up with
a lot more crap, and it has to hosted by someone else.
nicbou wrote 3 hours 52 min ago:
Unfortunately, most of these platforms end up enshittifying and using
your content for it. A platform that you control can be a beautiful
thing.
apublicfrog wrote 12 hours 58 min ago:
People who were not technical then and are not now made it work with
Myspace, Neopets and Geocities. There are a number of free microhosts
out there. And the big social media sites also allow you to post a
lot more crap.
I think bringing back websites like hawkee etc and providing an easy
way to host is the right way forward, but it needs a catalyst (like
most things) to become a trend.
rchaud wrote 11 hours 6 min ago:
There's a line from a 2009 episode of The Office that sums it up:
Jim: "Pam texted back saying we could give them all iPods".
Phyllis: Oh, if they don't have an iPod by now they really don't
want one."
Website creation has reached its equilibrium rate of growth. Those
who want a website will make one, and the rest won't. Personal
websites are one of many media for public self-expression today; in
2004, the options were far more limited. Those who are on Neocities
or mmmm.page or Bearblog etc., are the spiritual successors of that
MySpace HTML template generation. They are a trickle relative to
the number of people who'll start a Tiktok, Bluesky or Youtube
account. It's not going to grow any faster than what it is,
regardless of whichever points of friction in creating one can be
eliminated.
debesyla wrote 2 hours 32 min ago:
I see it similar to writing books. Everyone can write it
(dictating to someone else is also writing), it can be good for
person (putting ideas in understandable way, sharing inner
ideas). Buuuut not everyone wants to do it.
I guess fetishising books and personal blogs has a limit.
kristianc wrote 1 hour 9 min ago:
âEverybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's
where it should stay.â - Christopher Hitchens
youngtaff wrote 15 hours 9 min ago:
Text is way too small for me⦠canât read it without reader mode
being on
doug_durham wrote 15 hours 19 min ago:
The open web needs to be preserved. And bespoke web pages are great.
However it isnât 1998 anymore. The second you expose anything to the
public internet it is going to be flooded by malicious bots looking for
things to exploit. Unless you are putting up static HTML the learning
curve to have a website that runs will continue to run immediately
slopes to the point where it is not worth it. Despite OP saying they
arenât invoking nostalgia, they are.
ghusto wrote 14 hours 55 min ago:
There's no reason _not_ to use static sites for types of sites he's
talking about (learning sites for hobbies, blogs, general sharing of
information), created with things like Hugo, or even a simple script
to generate pages with your own templating. There's nothing to
exploit, because it's just HTML.
If you don't feel like keeping a server secure, there are free and
easy hosting solutions (Cloudflare pages publishes at a press of a
button, for example).
kortilla wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
There are a myriad of ways to host small websites without dynamic
code that are easy to secure.
Youâre also the one that is being a little nostalgic for the past.
Even 15 years ago bots would immediately hit sites looking for
vulnerabilities in things like phpmyadmin, Wordpress, etc
petermcneeley wrote 15 hours 13 min ago:
I mean didnt Geocities solve this and many other problems?
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities
nativeit wrote 13 hours 43 min ago:
I always thought MySpace was the natural evolution of this. Flame
GIFs and all.
nativeit wrote 13 hours 44 min ago:
Where are my hypermart.net peeps at? Iconoclastic, even in 1995,
represent.
dinobones wrote 15 hours 23 min ago:
I used the early web. I miss forums, I miss the small webmaster, I miss
making fun, small websites to share with friends.
And while you could make the argument that these forms of media were
superior to TikTok, Iâd also argue that this is mostly just taste.
While we have closed ecosystems now, theyâre much easier to make and
share content to than the web of the past. Itâs much easier to get
distribution and go viral. Thereâs also a well trodden path to
monetization so that if you craft great content people love, you can
make a living from it.
Yeah quirky designs, guestbooks, affiliate badges, page counters, all
that stuff. I miss it. But only ever a very small fraction of society
was going to be able to make and consume that stuff.
This new internet is much more accessible and it occasionally produces
diamonds of culture, you just have to know where to look.
So no, I donât think any amount of decentralized protocols or tooling
or any technology really can change this. I think this trend is set and
will continue, and Iâve had to learn to be more open minded to how I
perceive internet content.
No one is going to make personal websites or change their behavior in a
major way.
Look, you can still sign up for free web hosting and make an HTML page
and tell your friends. There are still people that do this. But itâs
naturally eclipsed by these other methods of much easier content
sharing.
The point is the content itself, not the packaging. Just get over the
shape of the packaging and enjoy.
PaulDavisThe1st wrote 11 hours 20 min ago:
> I used the early web. I miss forums, I miss the small webmaster, I
miss making fun, small websites to share with friends.
None of these things are gone. They're just not new anymore for a lot
more people, and they probably have significantly less social impact
and cachet. But that's all.
basscomm wrote 15 hours 20 min ago:
> I miss making fun, small websites to share with friends.
You can still do that right now. I highly recommend it.
rchaud wrote 10 hours 48 min ago:
Precisely. I have made my own e-cards to send to friends to
commemorate holidays and outings. All HTML + CSS, responsive and
looks fine on all devices.
abetusk wrote 15 hours 25 min ago:
From what I can tell, their solution is to personalize the web by
creating personal websites. Here are the 5 steps at the end that they
list to construct a personal website:
1. Start small
2. Reduce friction to publishing
3. Don't worry about design
4. Use the IndieWeb
5. Join us in sharing what you've made
strokirk wrote 14 hours 53 min ago:
Yet no mention of the real friction: buying a domain and getting
hosting set up. There are a number of free alternatives out there but
they are not well known by the public.
rchaud wrote 10 hours 53 min ago:
There's certain level of friction to everything; that acts as a
filter to separate those who choose to proceed anyway and those who
don't. If you want to start painting, you have to buy a canvas, an
easel, brushes, paint and set aside time to actually do it. Some
people will abandon it because they like the concept of being
someone who paints more than actually doing it. Some will proceed
because they want to paint.
The same goes for website creation. You can post text, pictures and
images on any social media site. The independent web is never going
to be able to match that level of usability, and IMO it shouldn't
try to. Part of the reason the indie web is interesting is because
it's full of people who found their way towards wanting to build
their own site.
trinix912 wrote 13 hours 20 min ago:
Neocities is fairly well known and often listed in present-day
personal website tutorials. Wordpress.com is also still there. Even
if you get your own domain & hosting you usually have a nice web
interface to drop the htmls into unlike in the old days when you
had to FTP into the server and all that.
Manually writing html is more of a barrier than this. Back then
there was a multitude of wysiwyg html editors like FrontPage, or
Composer which was bundled with Netscape Navigator.
jrecyclebin wrote 15 hours 0 min ago:
The weakest part is the last one - and it's a big one. Personalsit.es
is just a flat single-page directory (of thumbnails, even, not
content - so the emphasis is design.) To be part of the conversation,
you'd list there and hope someone comes along. Compare with Reddit
where you start commenting and you're close-to-an-equal with every
other comment.
Webmentions do get you there - because it's a commenting system. But
for finding the center of a community, it seems like you're still
reliant on Bluesky or Mastodon or something. (Which doesn't "destroy
all websites.") Love the sentiment ofc.
GaryBluto wrote 15 hours 32 min ago:
> it wasnât always like this.
I agree. I remember when you could read pages without requiring
JavaScript enabled, and when enabled it was enabled it wouldn't cause
things to constantly float about as you scroll.
One of the biggest reasons you'll never get the "old web" back, is
because the culture of the "independent" world wide web morphed into
something entirely different from what it was (or more aptly was
outright replaced with general "weirdos" rather than model train
hobbyists and the like[1]). Ironically all of the people complaining
about "capitalism and corporations killing the internet" as they scroll
their federated social media feeds and start their "indie"
initiatives[2] don't realize that they are part of the problem. [1]
HTML [1]: https://www.girr.org/girr/
HTML [2]: https://indieweb.org/
sandeepkd wrote 15 hours 34 min ago:
Not sure if its by design/intent, the font is too small to skim through
it
pvtmert wrote 15 hours 4 min ago:
I haven't tried on a laptop but on iOS (iPhone 13 Pro) and iPadOS
(iPad Air)
It is quite nice on iPhone, while I agree font is smaller in iPad for
readability.
Although, they didn't block zooming/pinching (I hate when they do)
therefore I was satisfied with the overall design.
lucid-dev wrote 15 hours 19 min ago:
Pretty successful in terms of the content representing the intent.
Which is in part, don't skim, don't scroll, read something if you
want to actually read something, or go elsewhere for doom-scrolling
and skimming.
I also found half-skimming it worked pretty well, using the images as
markers to find what I really wanted.
Also it looks like it works pretty good on mobile, I thought it was
small on my laptop too, but hey, thanks the heavens for
built-in-browser zoom...
keepamovin wrote 15 hours 31 min ago:
Do you feel destroyed tho?
killa_kyle wrote 15 hours 35 min ago:
I'm inspired to write more in 2026 and publish more of the things I
just make for myself.
ggillas wrote 15 hours 42 min ago:
Bookmarked. Called me to get back to reading and writing again.
A joy to read and loved the artwork on mobile.
pwg wrote 16 hours 22 min ago:
And it fails to render anything with Javascript disabled.
zzo38computer wrote 14 hours 47 min ago:
If you disable CSS as well then it works. (This is true of some web
pages that allegedly require JavaScripts, while others will not work
with JavaScripts disabled whether or not you disable CSS as well.)
thih9 wrote 15 hours 29 min ago:
It gets a pass from me. The JS content didnât annoy me, e.g. it
didnât show me any off topic popups, so I didnât feel the need to
disable JS.
renegat0x0 wrote 15 hours 42 min ago:
I disagree with a notion that a page needs to work without
javascript. It is only design choice of author.
basscomm wrote 15 hours 14 min ago:
> I disagree with a notion that a page needs to work without
javascript. It is only design choice of author.
Sure, I guess, but if a site that's primarily text doesn't work
without Javascript then that's a design failure. I sometimes use a
browser like links2 because eliminating everything but text can
sometimes help me focus. If the site displays nothing, I'm probably
not going to bother reloading it in a different browser just so I
can render the text.
(It's a nonissue for this site, which appears to render fine in
links2.)
DIR <- back to front page