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Comment by cs02rm0 | Hacker News Reader

I miss sites like this being a greater proportion of the internet.

When everything else was just fields... and javascript was to be used as little as possible.

> and javascript was to be used as little as possible.

You seem to have forgotten about "dhtml". That damned ascii-analog-clock-that-follows-your-mouse still haunts my dreams.

trigger warning: mouse clocks

http://rainbow.arch.scriptmania.com/scripts/mouse_clock.html

Avast claims there's malware on that site, fwiw.

Mouse clocks are malware, for sufficiently broad definitions.

Looks like a false positive. Virustotal sees clean: https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/e1aefef6b413b1f232d72c7b37... (except Dr.Web, but they appear to basically flag everything)

One of my favourite things to do on Slashdot during its heyday was go through the comments and open all the "Homepage" links from user profiles. It was usually a treasure trove of personal websites in this style.

I've been on a rant lately about how much I miss the wild west days of the web, 33k connections and all. I used to visit a blog (it was basically a blog, but probably 5 years before I'd heard the word blog) written by a guy who was chronicling the government controlling his mind with electricity. It was endlessly fascinating, and I can't even find it now. I miss finding the unexpected.

I don't blame javascript, I blame businesses for swallowing everything in an attempt to make money. I think I miss it because people mostly created pages out of passion or curiosity, and they hung out on IRC because they didn't care if everyone could see how poignant their comments were.

I think I remember the blog you’re talking about, and now I’m wishing I could find it too. Everyone knew about the Time Cube guy, but the guy whose brain was being controlled by government electricity, that took your links page to another level.

I distinctly remember getting sucked into it and then having the realization that a percentage of the population were paranoid schizophrenics and that they could publish now. He helped me build some armor (and compassion) for the social media age.

Man, I'm really glad to have some confirmation that I'm not crazy and that page really existed. I recall spending hours reading his reports, it always sucked me in somehow. I think he was actually a good writer.

> I miss finding the unexpected

You could try Reddit

Yes, we all use reddit. But it makes me sad that all the content is located in a handful of places. And all of that content is regulated by the reddit company. /b/ is much closer to what things used to be like, but since there was more places it was easier to avoid edgelords.

It can't have been more than five years ago or so that I was browsing Usenet (through an actual server, not a web interface) and there were definitely a collection of, shall we say, interesting characters.

Some of my other favourite low-bloat/retro websites (interesting overlap with internet legends):

* Fabrice Bellard: https://bellard.org/

* DJ Bernstein: http://cr.yp.to/

* Tim Berners-Lee: https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/

* Richard Stallman: https://stallman.org/

* Programming in the 21st century: https://prog21.dadgum.com/

* idlewords: http://www.idlewords.com/

Even a commercial website that represents hundreds of billions of $ does not need to be bloated:

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com

Another billions of $ managed on a stealth website: https://www.rentec.com/

(Those behind Cambridge Analytica, btw)

Love that they provide their financials in machine readable format.

Where? I just see a link to the Edgar filings which are mandatory for publicly traded companies in the US.

> If you have any comments about our WEB page, you can write us at the address shown above. However, due to the limited number of personnel in our corporate office, we are unable to provide a direct response.

Love it.

And the 'address above' is a physical street address!

They mean write it on paper and put it in the mail.

yup. As in they don't want to hear from you unless you have such important criticism that you are gonna sit down, write a letter and mail it.

I find the Geico ad to be an interesting addition. Seems rather out of place, regardless of the fact that they are a subsidiary of BH.

A small-caps header made only with <font>-tags. From the time when web designers cared about the craft!

I re-did my homepage recently with this thought in mind. My previous one was the usual big hero section at the top, second section with three highlight cards, etc, etc.

My goal is to show my personality and not use a CSS framework. Partially to express myself but also to learn and practice. I have some javascript but just use it for an easy to find easter egg.

http://www.patrickjustinbradley.com

I made the choice that, despite being a front-end developer, my personal site would have zero Javascript. Hasn’t stopped me putting up anything I’ve wanted to so far. Guess I should probably add a script-blocking CSP too, actually.

https://www.robinwhittleton.com ? cool

Another of a my personal programming heroes has a page that's even simpler https://bellard.org/

Are you serious? This site looks horrible. And the only reason it's not a pain to navigate is because it has very little content. I definitely don't miss those days of the Web when UI designers were not invited yet.

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