Comment by latedog
Comment by latedog 4 days ago
IDK why, but this reminds me of earlier days of internet, when it was full of random, non-usable but funny content like this. Best things often don't make that much sense.
Comment by latedog 4 days ago
IDK why, but this reminds me of earlier days of internet, when it was full of random, non-usable but funny content like this. Best things often don't make that much sense.
What do you mean non-usable? You could totally spam the work slack channel with these.
I don't think you are meaning quite the same "early internet" if you are referring to Slack channels xD
Pretty sure they were addressing the "non-usuable" part and not the "early " part.
As sibling comments have correctly guessed, I was only responding to the "non-usable" part of the parent comment. But yeah, replace slack with IRC, email, or whatever you were using at work back in the day.
I noticed that after the fact as well. You could always manually take a screenshot to turn it into a jpg. Or just send the link.
stumble was the algo sweet spot. an endless feed of things that are slightly better than being alone with my thoughts, but no parasocial "community" with concomitant toxicity.
Yeah I think what killed the web was Google and Facebook.
The former brought massive amounts of spam and the latter brought real identies which broke the freedom of the internet.
Or in other words, both brought the Internet and made it real and connected with the real world. And I think that's not a good thing. The Internet was supposed to be a virtual space for exploration, learning, fun, and it should have had no bearing on our actual day-to-day living experience.
But now here we are where Google is a spam filled search engine which hardly returns any products and Facebook is a dystopian wasteland and its founder is walking around like a teenage pimp.
>The Internet ... should have had no bearing on our actual day-to-day living experience.
Replace "The Internet" with previous communications technology and maybe that will demonstrate how completely unrealistic that sounds. Television should have had no bearing on our day-to-day existence? Phones? Radio?
I guess you can arbitrarily draw the line at the Internet, sort of like the Amish did with electricity. But it seems arbitrary to me.
The moral of every sci-fi story is that technology is morally neutral and it's how you use it that matters. Why would The Internet be different?
BBSes had absolutely no bearing on my day to day existence. No one had a job working at Big BBS and there was not a constant drumbeat of hustle culture strugglebussing surrounding the idea of using a modem to post messages.
This was the ideal final form of the internet and we lost it forever. Now, we have sludge.
I consider sites like facebook to be akin to diverting water from the Colorado river. At one point it looked like the nile delta from antiquity and today barely a trickle if that at some times reaches the sea with so much water diverted. The ecosystem diversity falls apart.
Kagi Small Web has been fun to explore and reminds me a bit of the StumbleUpon of yore: https://kagi.com/smallweb
If you'd like to read more: https://blog.kagi.com/small-web
I've noticed https://clicktheredbutton.com quite a lot in my referrer analytics. I don't know if it's as featureful as StumbleUpon was (I never used it) but it seems to have some fun sites
Wait, StumbleUpon shut down? I had no idea.
That's sad, that site was great.
There’s this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42938061
(no affiliation)
And this: https://cloudhiker.net/
(also no affiliation)
You are telling me that my cosmic clock is not usable?
https://cosmic-clock.vercel.app
PS. I made it for myself just for fun. Haven't checked issues such as time for other countries. Just checked, time still stays local (Indian) for me even if I use VPN to change my location. I am using p5 and JS for the two times.
> non-usable
https://tintin.dlazaro.ca/day would be easy to make into a very much usable clock. I'm actually a little disappointed it didn't already update as a minute passed ;-)
More clicking, please. OP mentions different versions, but you can’t get to them from one another (at least on mobile). The hyperlink is the aesthetic of www. If you don’t have them, then it should be evident why not. Leaves me scratching me head.
I did that intentionally because the only thing I wanted on the page was the comic panel. I may reconsider and add a small info button in the corner of the page with links to other timescales and the source code.
But I'm also trying not to overthink this too much... It's just a silly little website I made in an evening.
Why not just make the comic panel itself a link? Click to cycle through the different messages…? I’m asking. Do you feel this changes the aesthetic significantly?
if you are going for a "classic" internet aesthetic, remember we loved wonky, quirky (and annoying) UX! If it's not grey background with blue and purple links (and a server timestamp in italics!) it's got to be completely custom & non-standard. My request is image maps please!
"Single-serving site" is the term you're looking for. The best part of the early, mass-appeal internet IMO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-serving_site