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Comment by e3bc54b2 | Hacker News Reader

Some time ago this discussion happened, someone suggested a search engine. It was not much of a search engine but random site finder, but the database only comprised of user submitted sites that were expressly approved.

I found random posts from people's garages and amazing projects, one of them being a dad's nanosecond counting clocks to prove time dilation to his kids over the weekend.

I was pretty sure I bookmarked it, but I don't find it anywhere now.

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Random site finder sounds like stumbleupon, which was my go to source for wasting time 15 years ago. You could visit random pages for hours on end and every single one would be fascinating. You could set up an account and choose categories if you wanted or you could just do it without an account and see what it gave you.

Web rings are another thing that comes to mind. They were super popular in the 90s and often very niche. A site joined a ring and placed a widget on their page and you could click it to jump from site to random site in the same ring.

I think about these things and wonder why there seems to be fewer tools these days for that kind of random discovery. Then again, maybe I'm just nostalgic for a time in my life in which I could spend more time wasting time at a computer.

There are tools for discovery and they are better than ever. Think wilby.me and awesome-* lists.

But there is so much noise, so very very much noise and utter crap out there that it is terribly hard to find what we are looking for.

I sympathise with you, I used to be proud in my Google-fu, saying if I came across something on the internet, I can find it again, but that's just not true anymore. It's not finding needle in a haystack anymore, now its finding needle in Mount Craperest.

There was recently this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26506126 (in particular https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26507503 and comments)

Another recent one that came up is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26618000

Is the one you look for listed in one of the threads?

Thank you! Found it within first link you shared!

It was wilby.me

This was the time dilation post : http://www.leapsecond.com/great2005/tour/

I'm glad it helped.

https://gossipsweb.net/ ?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26446516

Found it in discussion linked in sibling comment:

Search engine : https://wiby.me/

Time dilation post : http://www.leapsecond.com/great2005/tour/