Ask HN: What defunct websites would you love to see revived? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What defunct websites would you love to see revived?

24 pointsOstrogodsky45 comments

There is this great literature site I used to love, which closed down some years ago. My only consolation was to visit the Wayback Machine and read all the pages there. I was wondering how many other great sites I am missing because they are no longer accessible. Do you have any suggestions?

In an ironic twist, I have just discovered that the site has been taken down from the Wayback Machine. It is redirecting now to a new site the authors are creating. It pains me to say it looks inferior in every single way, and most of the original content is gone. Their prerogative, I suppose.

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https://astalavista.box.sk/

Back in mid-to-late 90s I was addicted to an online trivia game called Cosmo's Conundrum. It was a Java applet that had a large core of players, chat capabilities and cash prizes. The game went through some iterations and the parent company eventually folded, but many of the players stayed in touch, attempted migrations to different trivia platforms, and are still connected via Facebook. Many friendships and marriages came out of this simple game.

I've always wanted to rebuild it, but never quite had the time for it. Was even able to snag the original domain name years later, but even that went nowhere. In a few years my own kids will be the same age I was when I played it, it is an odd thought.

Wow, you weren't kidding! I looked it up and saw this account: https://www.dawtrina.com/cosmo/index.html

"It is not hyperbole to suggest that it changed my life. Even today, writing in 2015, over a decade after this game vanished forever, it's still a huge part of my life. I met my wife through it. I made many lifelong friends there. I've been to Cosmonaut weddings and visited Cosmonaut graves. I've met a couple of hundred players in person. It still resonates as a community today."

What a cool sounding community.

What was so special about it?

Nothing that would stand out these days, but back in '97 the web felt a lot more individualistic/solitary and this game had the social aspect at the forefront. There were obviously other chat apps (IRC/ICQ), but this one did a good job of collecting like-minded people from across the world in one place in large enough numbers to keep us engaged. Right place at the right time, I suppose. We came for the money prizes, but stayed for the people.

Sounds really interesting, what was it? like how would it work?

Ten-question trivia rounds separated by ten-minute breaks. I think that the chat combined with the breaks was the secret sauce - short enough to convince yourself to stick around, long enough to have meaningful conversations with fellow players. Early on a culture of sharing answers quickly developed. Some elements of randomness were thrown in, like the scoreboard getting scrambled so you wouldn't know who's winning, etc. It wasn't much TBH, but an opportunity to meet interesting people from all walks of life.

Definitely segfault.org. It was the satirical version of slashdot and was always a joy to read. https://web.archive.org/web/20000615013530/http://segfault.o...

Wow, that was a trip down the memory lane! haha, I have totally forgot about segfault. Poor Slashdot is not the same.

I feel like the the two major ones that keep coming up are: Google Reader & NewGrounds during the golden age of Flash. Both could be revived for the TikTok era. But would probably reflect usage today: mobile native, algorithmically curated, etc.

Probably a long shot that anyone has heard of this one, but BlueMars:

http://bluemars.org/

(Still links to a landing page). Basically a stream of ambient music. Many late nights were spent coding listening to "space ambient music".

Fortunately a kind soul has made an alternative stream at:

http://echoesofbluemars.org/

The site's description reads:

> In attempts to reestablish communication with the lost Bluemars fleet, an echo of past transmissions was found. Retransmitting signals from years ago, these echoes give us a glimpse into the past.

Sulake (of Habbo fame) built something called the Electrolobby Game Jam and I remember being a kid and hearing about it on Tech TV. It was probably made in Macromedia Flash.

I never got to try it! I wish there was an archived page of it somewhere but it was an online multiplayer game environment, too, so I don’t think it would have worked without the server.

Google Reader although I'm sure we have better alternatives now.

I wish I had saved a copy of my own old websites and blog posts. I used to have a Windows Live blog as a young teen. It would be interesting to find it again.

Twoyoutubevideosandamotherfuckingcrossfader .com

I think the embedded video bit is broken

Not related to technology but there were two websites where I used to donwload lots of spanish and Basque punk rock. Comando Glaucoma (a private forum), and Yahorake.tk. I miss them a lot.

Jabiertzo (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUGfBZ3WiiqCc_UfcF_RrRA) is that you?

OmgPop was a great games website that combined multiplayer flash games with a social experience. It's the origin of drawmything I'm pretty sure. Not sure why it went offline tbh.

The founder left then they were bought by Zynga and shutdown within a year. I agree. I loved the site and check up on the founder from time to time on twitter.

https://omgmobc.com/

This is a supposed copycat

Used to be there when it was called i'minlikewithyou unfortunately they failed to turn profit.

ffffound.com - Was a great site for graphic designers.

xdude.com - flash site. Even though it was small by today's standards, it had some pretty handy info for MIDI and sound processing.

Winamp.com (from the 2.x days) was also full of useful stuff. The plugin architecture meant that you could make Winamp2 do just about anything with av files. Including DJ'ing and video playlists.

Those two and Geocities.

8chan

Does anyone remember zug.com from the 90s?

Tv-links.co.uk

(was in alexa top 10) at some point.

I remember the extradition case.

Edit. Looks like I confused this with TVShack.

What was the literature site?

Let me be petty for a minute. I was going to mention it because I really liked it but I got peeved because the owners decided to ask the IA to remove the site. I can understand the need for a refreshment and to preserve the ownership but totally removing the access of an archived site seems petty, especially because a big part of the site consisted to links to other places. Ah, what the hell, the site was called The Modern Word, but you wont find it anywhere now.

Hmm it's still on IA for me

I am getting a redirect to their new site. Can you link here where are you getting the original site?

e.g. [...]/joyce/joyce_intro.html

deoxy.org - Thé Ðëòxÿríßøñµçlëìç HÿÞêrdïmèñsîøñ

If you know, you know. It was one of the coolest website gardens on the early web. It was a personal handcrafted wiki, art project, and community focused on psychedelics, anarchism, mysticism, futurism, ecology, and rave culture.

Google

rootkit.com

I wonder what was in the forums.

underground gamer

geocities.com

https://neocities.org/

This is part of a book I am planning about the "other internet". Neocities pages, minimalist non JS sites, "notebook sites", in general, modern websites that try to be as far as possible from the "walled-gardened" internet which is sadly the norm now.

I run a search engine focused on that general neighborhood of the internet, which means I sit on a lot of data that might be useful.

Give me a holler if you need any help pulling statistics or whatever.

Hey thanks for the offer, I am checking out your site and I really like what I am seeing, we are definitely on the same wavelength. I will contact you along the way if you dont mind. Sooner rather than later.

Absolutely, do that!

suck.com

trollcats

stage6

Stage6 was ahead of its time, and budget too, I’m sure.

I remember how cool DivX was at the time, but you don’t hear much about it now since other standards have succeeded it.

I remember this well. It was an amazing experience to have high quality video at that time and they should have kept going.

The interface and website UX was sleek.

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