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Comment by LocalH | Hacker News Reader

The main fuel is the "need" to have browsers that can execute code, coupled with the ability to transfer money via the internet. JavaScript was a mistake, e-commerce was a mistake, and so is everything else that came after.

Let's ask Vint Cerf whether the web was meant to run logic, or just be a document format. I bet no matter what he answers, the world would be like the GIF pronunciation "I don't care if the original creator said it's pronounced like giraffe, I'm gonna say it like gift because I KnOw BeTtEr"

Internet 3 when (because I know that academia does already have an "Internet 2", although I bet due to Internet 1 security issues, Internet 2 is already compromised too)

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> JavaScript was a mistake, e-commerce was a mistake, and so is everything else that came after.

That’s a really extreme take that lacks any nuance.

Might as well blame the OS as well for allowing any custom code to be executed.

Douglas Adams put the source of the rot a bit further back:

> This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy. And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans.

> browsers that can execute code, coupled with the ability to transfer money via the internet

But those are completely unrelated topics. You don't need a hint of JavaScript to do online banking.

And you don't need online banking to send someone your credit card details or banking information. Any kind of communication can turn into a scam. You can steal money over the phone or by mail.

Itym Tim Berners-Lee, not Vint Cerf.

Tim invented the web: HTML, HTTP, URLs.

Vint did a lot of things, but most of it had to do with lower-level internet infrastructure, not the web per se.

The first Nigerian Prince scams started over email.

Mayhaps. But Spanish prisoner letters were known much before that. Which is basically the same advance fee scam but with a different cover story.

Here is a story which describes one such letter from 1913: https://web.archive.org/web/20020815055745/http://www.samizd...

Snail mail scams like that were common for decades prior. My mates dad nearly fell for one once.

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