manuelmoreale

> The reality is that "we" as an open-source community suck at taking money and I believe this is partially on us.

More broadly people suck at giving money for things they can get for free. That’s just the reality of how most people out there behave.

The only “solution” is to educate people but that is completely unfeasible.

I suspect this has something to do with it: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/vet-privat...

Makes sense then, considering timers I set them on my watch and I don’t watch tv.

My exact reaction every time I hear people discuss Siri. I don’t think I used it once in my life and it’s one of the first thing I turn off every time I have a new device. So interesting to see how different people use the same devices in completely different ways.

Somewhat related to this topic: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Zo62S0ulqhA

> deserves to be replaced

Replaced by what exactly? Also, when was the last time a foundational piece of tech powering of the web got replaced by something entirely different?

Also who has decided that CSS is a "terrible foundational standard"?

I’m sorry for what’s happening to Tailwind, it clearly sucks, but a library like that is definitely not a key piece of foundational web tech the same way bootstrap and jquery weren’t.

The best way to subscribe to creators on YouTube is via rss. This way one doesn’t have to deal with YT at all.

> My personal preference would be a network recommendation system.

Random question: do you have a personal site where you write about things you recommend? Because that's the solution IMO. And that's the network you're talking about: it's the web. You find enough people you trust and you see what they recommend. The issue is that in modern society 99% of the people consume and 1% are fucking influencers getting paid to promote crap.

Some people in 2026 are still updating sites the old school way: https://brisray.com

Ray's a great example, he even has a lovely page about webrings: https://brisray.com/utils/webrings.htm

Was very happy to have him as a guest on my series if you want to know more about the story of his site: https://manuelmoreale.com/interview/ray-thomas

That said, I don't entirely agree with the point of the article you linked.

What made the web suck was money imo. If the incentive is to keep posting to get views and those views are translated into money, then yeah, there's no incentive to keep things static. But on today's web, blogs aren't the only option. Plenty of people prefer to have digital gardens, which I think are a lot more close to old school sites.

My pleasure. Will throw a few more links your way, just in case you want to keep surfing:

[0] https://wildwild.directory [1] https://cloudhiker.net [2] https://theuselessweb.com

> It gives me the impression that this 'let's get the web back' movement is mostly nostalgia. Culture happens where it happens, not where it should happen. Today, that place is unfortunately a walled garden controlled by corporations. I hope that changes, but judging by these websites, that change isn't happening yet.

So I think the overall situation is a bit more nuanced than that. I am someone who's very much in the "let's bring the old-school web back" camp but I mean that in a conceptual sense. I strongly believe that the web would be, overall, a much better place if people were all tending to their own websites, interacting with each other via email or forums. It's a slower, more deliberate way to exist in this digital space.

But all that doesn't imply we also need to ditch modern tech and go back making sites with FrontPage and table layouts. And it also doesn't mean we can't have "modern looking" websites. The two things can coexist.

At the same time, there are people who like the 90s web aesthetics, but they also spend their time posting shit on Instagram. That's just nostalgia and personally I don't care about that part.

I do know for a fact that it's possible to get the good parts of the old web back. I know it because I experience it daily. I have a blog that's powered by a modern CMS. Yet it has no JS, no tracking, no fancy features. People can get my content via RSS (and a lot of people do), they can leave a message in my guestbook, they can poke around my blogroll and they can click around and be redirected to other blogs run by people who, like me, believe a better web is possible. I also get emailed daily by people who simply want to connect in a way that feels more authentic.

That's the part of the old school web I want back. But it's also a part that never went entirely away.

> Culture happens where it happens, not where it should happen. Today, that place is unfortunately a walled garden controlled by corporations.

You're right which is why I genuinely believe that in the context of the web, not having a presence on social media and having a personal site instead is today's counterculture. And we need more people to embrace that.

You want to check this one out then https://a.singlediv.com/

You are clearly not browsing enough of these “weird web” sites if that’s your take. Or the only ones you’re clicking on are the ones that are posted here on HN.

Try search something on https://wiby.me for example and then tell me if all you get are people writing about the web.

RSS still contains full articles on a lot of personal sites. As you said, it’s about monetisation and control and when you’re writing with no plan to monetize there’s no point in not serving full content.

It’s also a lot less wasteful and more respectful in my opinion. Scattering content everywhere in the hope others will see it doesn’t feel right to me.

If the system promotes being an asshole, and you decide to play along, you’ll have to accept the fact that you are, in fact, an asshole. It’s not a matter of moralizing anyone. It’s just a matter of accepting consequences.

I know this doesn’t answer your question specifically but it might help: https://manuelmoreale.com/blog-platforms

> In other words, I see this not a special greed of this particular company, but a logical conclusion of the economic system it operates in. (I'm not saying it is good either. Only that raging against the symptom is a bit misplaced, and instead you should focus attention at the causes).

I think this is conceptually sound take but at the same time it's way too kind towards the people who are on the field making these decisions. Accepting to behave like a despicable human being and justify it with "well this is the system I operate in" is not acceptable for me from a moral standpoint.

The economic system is awful, sure. But deciding to go along and play the same awful game and drag everybody else down with it is a personal choice.

There is no such thing as "corporations". It's people. From top to bottom. And people are responsible for their own actions.

> I mean, I get that it's frustrating to pour effort into writing something that effectively nobody reads

And if that was the issue this clearly doesn’t solve it since nobody is reading this.

I might be the wrong audience for this considering I have a public blog but this to me sounds like an insane product.

But hey, if someone finds it useful, good for them.

How about caring for both? How about that as an idea? It’s impossible for you to accept that you can arrest and jail all those people to protect the lives of regular citizens but also not torture them while they are in jail?

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 5:

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

I know it’s not the point you’re making but I’ll never not be surprised by how much electricity some people consume. The highest month I have recorded over the past 3 years is ~9kWh/day.

Last month it was 7. And we’re in the winter. Over the summer is more like 5.

Income tax paid by public internet tech companies is not the same as “revenues from the entire tech industry”

This report is indicating around 800B in value for the sector (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...)

While other reports have significant higher numbers https://en.ilsole24ore.com/art/tech-europe-is-worth-4000-bil...

The Indie Blog Crusader

A digital preservationist who wages a one-man war against the AI-slop apocalypse by manually indexing every human-written blog post in existence while playing Unreal Tournament 99 on a secondary monitor.

——-

I have to say, if that’s my future I’m kinda cool with it.

That’s a fun math. I just checked mine: 96000 minutes. 2 minutes per song is way too generous as an assumption, for me everything seems to be > 3 minutes so ~20000 streams.

I’m paying for a family account (that’s around 250/year) and there are 5 people on it so my usage is 1/5th of that (50/year)

So that’s 0.0025€ per stream. I don’t think your assumption is unreasonable.

> It's kind of the point of the computers.

It kind of isn't? If I read your comment and rather than taking the time to think about what you said and respond to you I simply prompted one of the many tools to "write a comment that disagrees with TeMPOraL" something would be lost.

And the point of the computer is not to replace me everywhere it can. Also, automating something is one thing. It requires deliberate actions. Outsourcing is another thing.

Or think critically. Or write proper emails. Or a multitude of other things. Why bother when you can outsource everything to the computer. If this trend continues is gonna be interesting to see how people will evolve in 10 or 15 years.

Years ago I wrote [0] about the lessons I learned by reaching the front page of both HN and Product Hunt and honestly, all these years later, the only thing I can confidently say is that I don't know shit. Sometimes people posts here things I wrote and for one reason or another they gain traction.

I personally have no clue why and I kinda like it. Like probably many others I come here to find interesting content and have interesting conversation because there are a lot of genuinely interesting people on this site.

But if you're trying to minmaxing your presence on HN, well good luck.

[0] : https://manuelmoreale.com/thoughts/what-i-learned-by-being-1...

Not sure if blogging, collecting blogs, and interviewing people about blogging is considered a side project but ever now and again, depending on how generous the people on the other side are, I hit 500/month in donations.

Everything I do is free for everyone but for the past few years I’ve been running an entirely optional membership program that starts at $1/month.

I’m (probably naively) a big believer in kindness and I keep refusing to monetize what I do in any other way.