I miss blogrolls
iwantmyname.com
iwantmyname.com
Social media is "great", in the same way that the invention of alcohol was "great" - the bad part of it is that it is literally designed to drive clicks and addict us, and we have no way of turning it off (temporarily) that we can't just switch right back on (yes, I have seen all your handy scripts and tricks).
You know what was awesome about walking into a brick and mortar building and buying a piece of software? It almost certainly would not contain a virus due to the prohibitive cost of getting it on a shelf, and it was not flogged to a state of near-death by app store restrictions. Yeah we killed some trees, and we liked it that way! (shakes fist at sky).
Writing impressive code used to be a highly valued skill, limited to the few who put in the time to piecing together arcane knowledge. Now we are just surfing on the backs of giants and locked into their ecosystems. So long as you can write a laggy javascript app and google how to do something you are safe in this world. (shakes fist at sky again, why not)
...continues muttering/ranting...
Boop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
Edit: But yes, I too miss "the old ways".
Also, that was a music CD with malware, not a software application. I'm sure the DRM for many games was comparable, but they still had to mind their manners somewhat.
I miss when my money mattered.
i solved this problem by convincing myself that i don't actually want to turn it back on
What I've done to replace it is email and call people. I'm 42 so many of my friends are receptive to calls that younger people may not be so ymmv.
I'm sure you know this, but your true friends will be there offline whether you see them online or not.
Good luck!
I don't understand the desire to publicly broadcast things and none of my friends have had an issue with it. Of course, my friends are mostly technical or privacy-oriented folks.
I’m 24, deleted Facebook at 18, WhatsApp last year, and I too am all calls (and emails for longform or bit sharing). I still observe HN, Twitter [2], domain-specific newsletters for value, and occasionally share when there’s value to be added.
While I might have to manage debris, I see value.
[2] A meticulously curated, filtered stream.
Anyhow, it was more a philosophical problem that brought me back. I said, in so many words, that I wanted to be more "zen" (whatever that means) and eliminate distractions. They argued that I was not in a "zen" place if I let distractions bother me in the first place. So I took it as a challenge (which I failed). I think it easier to turn things off permanently than to master one's own willpower.
Also, different people have different sensitivities. Don’t be so quick to write sensitivities off as weaknesses. To illustrate: the nervous system (and most other things) depends on sensing, and would simply fail if it were rendered too insensitive. Your sensitivities are often strengths when managed accordingly. Practicing and challenging them has it’s benefits, but we want to be strategic with this rather than simply withstanding to no end.
That's one reason I left Reddit; too much coming down the pipe, even when my subscriptions were pared down to a few technical groups. It was easiest just to completely stop going.
Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Note that they also ask you not to use uppercase like that; it's basically yelling.
I have ideas for more "interesting" articles I'd like to write (still mostly about software development, my industry, etc), but I fear they would either cause offense (and we all know there is no greater sin) or at the very least be off-putting to potential employers. Thus, I keep thinking about adopting a 'pen' name and throwing up a second blog to serve as an outlet for some of the more insane ramblings I'd like to inflict on the world.
Most important, I think, was writing for being pleasurable and nourishing to the reader rather than egoistically trying to impress with wit, domain knowledge, and, worst of all, personal anecdotes – the boring, herpetic poison that oozes from most blogs.
Like art, you're assembling a puzzle with no preordained point of completion. It didn't come easily but seemed clear when it was done.
I one time did a rather dull blog with tiny posts describing new blogs I found. (preferably using their own words) It wasn't a serious effort but got over 3 million hits. People didn't stick around but it was seriously cross pollinating readers between similar blogs. The other [proverbial] stay at home mum into baking cakes was just that much more interesting to the one.
I had amazing amounts of fun sending the "motherload" of traffic into 2 article blogs that started days ago. (If you knew me you would laugh how stereotypical that joke is.)
The proverbial mum was like, uhhh okay, I suppose I have to bake more cakes now?
Then when the blog matured other blogs would start to publish (much better) Articles about those awesome cakes. Even interviews happened.
I added 1-5 (usually 3) blog posts per day for a few years. Today there is ONLY ONE out of all of those blogs left that I know of. My blog died naturally, I just got bored with gazing over stale blogs and deleting postings referring to dead ones then deleted the entire thing.
Proctalgia fugax is apparently pretty common.
This is how geocities used to be.
Now, I'm at the - I really don't care if I cause some offense level. I don't want to blow anything too out of the water I guess. However, doing an actually analysis about how violence isn't caused or even made worse by guns isn't going to be too bad in my own name.
You're welcome to guest blog on some of my other blogs (if it's a related topic lol):
Have one for my company related to NLP, Sentiment, etc:
https://blog.projectpiglet.com/
Finance (haven't used in a while):
http://topfinancialadvisor.org/
And some others I guess, DM me if interested.
But I noticed it doesn't have a license. Are you okay with people adopting the backend for their own blog?
Hi, Simon. :-)
1. Don't use wordpress, you'll catch a virus.
2. Don't use scroll-jackers, your OS/Browser combination should provide the best scrolling experience for your user, if you hate your own scroll experience, get a better browser/OS, don't FK with the one I have it's perfect.
3. Don't use pop-ups that cover content to sign up - EVERYONE I know immediately closes the page and never returns when that happens... it's kinda the opposite of what you want right?
The famous 5-minute install is still by far the simplest I've seen.
It has by far the widest use of translating.
If you love your tech then sure install something else, but if you just want to blog then WordPress is your friend.
But similar to using Windows you do indeed have to be careful because of it's popularity so it's a target.
Almost entirely it's the plugins that are the problem. Just be careful with those.
EDIT: damn, I just noticed the date on the most recent post. I should give the blog some more love...
But yes, you should really write something new!
?!? First, you're talking about a self installed wordpress, not wordpress.com. Second: just keep it updated.
Not that I don't see the trade-offs. They chose flexibility and ease-of-implementation early on, and are somewhat stuck with the security issue because of the huge theme ecosystem.
For security I would much rather use WordPress than any other open-source CMS. There are hundreds of people around the world trying to find security holes in the core CMS every single day and any ones that are found are quickly patched. There is a reason it's used by many enterprise users.
From https://wordpress.org/about/security/ :
> The WordPress Security Team is made up of approximately 50 experts including lead developers and security researchers — about half are employees of Automattic (makers of WordPress.com, the earliest and largest WordPress hosting platform on the web), and a number work in the web security field. The team consults with well-known and trusted security researchers and hosting companies.
(Disclaimer: I work for Automattic on WooCommerce)
I certainly wouldn't recommend this for your average non-technical person who just wants to write a blog (hosted WP is a fine solution there), but for most of the people who post on HN, it seems silly to go for a CMS.
(Yes, I know that a static site generator will not give you a lot of the dynamic features and whatnot that a CMS will give you, but I'd expect that a very small percentage of the "I want to write articles and publish them" set of people really needs any of them.)
What causes some people to have security problems on the other hand is usually either:
A: They've not updated for years/not at all, hence security vulnerability stick around right under their nose.
B: Their theme is poorly built and from some shady site trying to insert backdoors or what not for whatever reason.
C: They're using poorly made plugins (this questionable third party product quality issue is always the trade off for using open software/anything that lets you run your own code, and can be migitated by not downloading anything from dodgy looking websites).
D: Or perhaps that they've annoyed someone/some organisation with way more technical ability than you can practically guard against. Which again, is an issue with almost any script or program. A site based around 'hacking' could be run on the digital equivalent of Fort Knox, and it'd still probably be hacked every few weeks or so.
If you're reasonable about the software and don't do anything too silly, it's about as safe as any of its alternatives.
Can't disagree with the latter two points though. The latter's why reading Medium is basically a chore nowadays.
I just write locally in markdown and a script picks up the changes and re-publishes. I preview it on a locally running web server. When I'm happy I just run a small rsync script and boom.
Statically served sites are super fast.
Try GatsbyJS, Jekyll, Mynt; take your pick.
It's funny... when I first started writing online I wrote some perl scripts that hacked together text files into an HTML template. Then when people started calling it blogging and sticking a database behind everything became the norm I eventually ceded to wordpress... but after a bunch of years doing that it's back to scripts hacking text files into HTML.
Don't forget to check out the indieweb movement and start building links.
I used to use a pretty heavyweight system, and was forever installing updates, monitoring logs, fighting spam comments, etc.
I now have a static site, and it's mostly just fire and forget. In fact that's exactly the case for the IPFS mirror (since it's immutable)!
Personally, I like to have to control of my own comment system, as well as a user login setup and a bunch of other things that can't be done in plain HTML and CSS.
A static site is good too (and for many people it'll work fine), but a CMS built site is also the way to go for many other people. It's all about what they want from a site or blog really.
It’s difficult to have a good discussion in the comments. And if you do, it’s quickly lost to time.
For example, I can’t have a discussion about why I think the Amazon Alexa is “Making a Dent in the Universe” without being drowned out by the privacy debate,
So, I started a blog where I can [attempt to] write my thoughts in a short piece.
http://h4labs.org/the-amazon-echo-made-a-dent-in-the-univers...
My musings can go in place that I can revisit:
http://h4labs.org/category/musings/
I actually started a few years ago but I wanted off the ugly WordPress ads:
https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/in-the-future-everyo...
[UPDATE]
I just got downvoted because someone didn’t like what I said. Happens all the time. I’ve gone several levels deep explaining why I disagree with the common opinion.
This brings up one of the other benefits of writing out your thoughts and opinions in a blog, you don’t have to waste FU karma trying to explain yourself.
So i reduced the number of post, stopped posting on HN. Suddenly i have more traffic then ever. Though google is mostly responsible for it.
What i started doing more often is link to people i find interesting in my articles, that's the new blog roll replacement, and somehow it has pushed those to link back to me.
Ps: don't give up because no one likes your content, the majority will not like it anyway.
These days, I post about whatever I feel like. With greatly varied degrees of quality. All knowing that a small handful of posts on some oddball niche will continue to garner tons of Google traffic while the vast majority of pages lay fallow.
EDIT especially after looking at the source: it's a CSS blanking to show signup for newsletters. Once the CSS is disabled, the text is there.
Then they turned the public accounts on and the blog roll off and I can't even find the people I used to read when I try let alone have them in a handy list.
And RSS feeds. Also, get off my lawn!
That's in no way excusing the state of affairs. As I mentioned, I fully agree that _something_ has been lost since those halcyon days. The blogs that existed (there was definitely a higher barrier to entry than opening a social media account) each went their own individually quirky ways (at least, until the staggering conformity of everyone using blog engines like Wordpress (<3 ya WP, but you made the world bland)). It was great when a contributor had their own little corner, and would actively customize it (in much more interesting ways than the MySpace pages of yore).
I don't know if Americans are this much different than Canadians, but I have 200+ FB "friends" and outside of the occasional complaining about various social injustices, no one ever posts anything of substance, I have a strong feeling that most people would consider it weird.
It's not a bad thing that social media brings down the barriers to sharing your thoughts ... what's bad is how those same platforms have, over time, gone above and beyond in measures to keep you on their site and stop you from actually clicking on the link and visiting the other site
The only thing I can think of that I want and isn't included are:
Auto sampling based on pages I visit (like old Google Desktop Search)
and auto following (not sure exactly how) of issues etc that I interact with on github etc.
I've recently thought that maybe a blog should really be a timeline (or similar) where you can tweet and posts simply exist as pages and show up on category/tag pages. You'd "tweet" your posts to a timeline and this would be what would normally appear on the home page and rss feed. You could re-promote an old post with a small blurb why it's relevant again. You could link to other sites with a blurb why. All the while you're not clogging up twitter and others since they can go to the website and see the information there (pull vs push).
I've been thinking about moving from Pinboard and setting something up myself and compiling it into my site's static html instead of syndicating from a third-party.
Fact is, I'm fairly confident with the greater and greater pull of social media and walled gardens, indie writers are simply fading away.
I know I stopped writing because it's hard as hell to both rank and share content.
I started writing about random experiences and thoughts at my blog: https://www.pixelsbetween.com but since I decided to self-host instead of going with a specific platform, it feels like I'm on my own tiny island.
I would love for a better way to share and find independent content like my own.
I've been a customer for at least a year or more now and I can highly recommend them. They're a nice bunch and always happy to help out.
I've even weirdly been enjoying and fully reading their newsletters which just started recently. I guess because they're written in such a conversational tone!
That said, they're certainly less common than they used to be, and that's something that's definitely annoyed me about the internet in recent years. Feels the culture of helping people out and working together to provide great content has been replaced with a 'me me me' type self centredness, where everyone only thinks about backlinks and personal social media popularity and anyone not in the 'in group' should be discarded whenever it gets convenient to do so.
edit: I've added three... https://ianchanning.wordpress.com/
The simplest point was if you've written a long email to someone explaining a tech topic - write it up as a blog post.
But there were a couple of other equally valid reasons for writing a blog post, but I can't remember them now.
> This stemmed from listening to a podcast on The Changelog about ‘Open Source at Microsoft, Inclusion, Diversity, and OSCON’ with Scott Hansleman. In the interview, Scott mentions how he receives questions via email fairly regularly. Interestingly, instead of replying to the email directly he instead writes a blog post and then replies to the email with a link to the post. Scott goes on to describe how he is constantly aware of the number of keypresses he has left in his life and therefore has taken the approach to not want to waste a single one of them.
Extract from an article I wrote on the subject, under the term Blogumentation https://jvt.me/posts/2017/06/25/blogumentation/
It sounds almost exactly like it though and I have read quite a bit of Hanselman's stuff. Bloody good find. Thank you :)
This curation problem isn't only about blog content - it also contributes to the proliferation of fake news and conspiracy theories. Comment curated by many people's networks has become limited to their tribal connections, and some tribes exclude information sources that value scientific or journalistic standards.
What we already know about and read daily is what we trust, and helps define our tribe. Our tribe uses HN. Other tribes (which may intersect with ours) use Reddit, Digg, 4Chan, forums, newspapers, blogrolls, and many other systems. When we get content from our tribe - the concept of 'social media' - someone else is sharing their trust in content with us, in ways we can categorize.
Each content system on the internet is rooted in a point source, the owner, who shares their trust with varying levels of directness: Newspapers don't have a pattern of trust sharing, though some experiment. Blogrolls' owners share trust directly - 'direct owner trust sharing'. Small forums (where content is only ranked by time, not votes) use 'direct user trust sharing' because users are treated equally; Reddit posts use 'indirect user trust sharing' through voting. Facebook and Twitter use both 'direct user trust sharing' (what your friends post) and 'indirect owner trust sharing', (the owner algorithms).
It seems clear that there are serious manipulation problems with indirect trust sharing systems open across tribes - Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter all struggle with this. Innovation in social media seems to focus on curating direct user trust sharing to guide indirect user trust sharing. To fix trust sharing, we'll have to curate new direct relationships. I believe this will be much along the lines of blogrolls - direct trust sharing from identified tribal members, rather than only from your direct network.
Work has been done to map the internet through linking. Some of this, such as Jonathan Albright's coverage of the 2016 US Presidential election, has begun to identify tribes in those maps. I believe the next major algorithmic innovation will triangulate your tribe, using content you've already trusted yourself (by sharing with others), and curate discovery of new tribal members based on the nodes in and near that tribe. A network-wide blogroll, across content types, which links you to new direct trust sharing relationships. This would help democratize curation, and could result in a clearer understanding of tribal boundaries and how disinformation spreads.
Back in 1989, when Byte Magazine was warning us of "infoglut", I decided that the most valuable job was the editor. I've seen no reason to change my mind since.
I ran the hub of a BBS network, moderated numerous forums, have run a few user / study groups, published a few zines / newsletters, was a (terrible) radio DJ, etc. I even work on recommenders for my day job.
I remain unimpressed. I've tried to be open minded about automated curation. But I've decided recommenders, as we know them, have topped out.
Machine learning-based recommenders are just feedback loops, automated groupthink.
---
Aha. It's worse than that. Today's recommenders are merely accelerated preferential attachment. aka Fads.
Thanks, articulating myself has been a useful exercise.