sodapopcan

I'm not a huge fan of the changes myself, but discussion collapse was in full effect before the change (and had started happening long before it). But ya, I think I agree that it doesn't help. The change was made in good faith in order to try and boost it, but I can't objectively say if it's good or not since I always skip and go straight to forums.elixirforum.com now. My biggest annoyance is that I now have to type `fo<enter>` instead of `e<enter>` in my address bar to get there.

> discussion has collapsed

I used to be extremely active on Elixir Forum. It was the main place I would interact with people online, and HN was a bit of a distant second. Now HN usage has spiked a bit and I now have a... ugh... reddit account. There is still some decent discussion there, but it's largely library announcements (many vibe coded), some blog posts (that are often about AI), and news posts. Questions about the language itself have, unsurprisingly, pretty much completely halted. I think around a month ago someone asked a syntax question -- it was a bit of a jump scare!

Ha, yes I wanted to keep my comment short without trying to cover every base, but figured I might get this comment. Of course such sites still exist, but still a different phenomena when that was the entire internet. There are a lot of interesting people who run YouTube channels that be so cool to see a GeoCities-type site from, for example.

For me the difference today is that most people sharing their passions are now doing for The Algorithm. It's a far cry from the scrappy days of the early web where people just posted stuff because they thought it was cool. I'm not saying their passion is any less, more just that is so much noise. People are now "creators" and are pressured to constantly create.

HA! Touché.

On the opposite side or the noteable spectrum, look up "Steve Yegge wants you to stop looking at your code." He said it in a video interview, though plenty of summaries online of exact wording and ideas. Though it's being argued that you could still be responsible for it without looking at it?

The author's name and the 1st person voice of the article's name do not match.

> Did this piece of writing with common AI smells get posted before or after 2021?

Textlog didn't exist before 2021, did it? (though you are probably making a general point)

> Did the author write this piece about someone they admire and aspire to before or after the murders became public knowledge?

This is a really good point.

> What was the expert consensus on the topic when the author wrote about it?

Also a really good point.

> What meaning did this slang have back then?

True, but many people just don't care (unless you are talking 10 years in the future).

I'm not going to bother writing every quote-reply, but in this spirit, I wrote in another comment that I think I'm pro not having timestamps but now maybe not. I'm liking the suggestions of having very low granularity. To throw in an idea: rough labels such as: fresh, day-old, recent, this year, last year, 2/3/4/5 years ago, years old. Maybe even whole threads could become "stale" after a large amount of time, like a year. Very much spitballing here.

I've had textlog open in a tab for a few weeks now. Was iffy as I've never really used anything like Twitter before. I finally made an account as I really like this change. I already embarrassingly posted my bio as a note.

I'm on the fence about timestamps but I don't think it's inherently bad, and could be good. It depends on the goals of the platform. I'm actually overwhelmed by how both freeing and extremely weird it is not to see any numbers. But I will say that I think it's great to be able to respond to a thread with zero stigma or worry if you are "necroing" it or not. I think I'm learning more toward no timestamps.

I was able to change it on every single service I use except for a well known Canadian pizza chain.

I guess that's what I was getting at, I think that (as usual) there is more nuance here past "people pretending to care" (which I think is extremely uncharitable, btw).

Back then there was a forcing factor to making your own website. Not just personal sites, but bands, artists, interest groups, etc. Now everyone just uses facebook because (or whatever) because it's easy and everyone is there. Even during the transition was better as myspace allowed you to customize the crap out of it with CSS and, as we were just discussing, DiaryLand gave you full access to do almost whatever you wanted (in the confines of static pages).

It has a LOT to do with billion dollar companies throwing their weight around and influencing politics. Tom never did that shit! (although given time, who knows... he did sell out).

Ya, sorry, I never read Slashdot back in the day (even though I'm well old enough to have had), so I'm very wrong here. I'm just generally annoyed how every forum now a days has it. But of course one of the reasons I dislike it is because I fall victim to its dopamine effects.

Naw, it's my bad, I'm 45 but never spent any time on Slashdot as I didn't really care about tech at large back then. None of the forums I spent my time on back then had voting systems and now all the ones I use do and I'm not the biggest fan.

The only thing not "old" about it is upvoting, which is one of those YMMV features.

> because people are hyper-focused on the negatives of the "current" web, or acting like the sites they used to love can't be recreated anymore..

Fair!

> There still are. on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, 5ch and other Japanese subcommunities.. the fact that they're all "silo'ed" into these less-than-benign corpoctopuses is another matter, but people are still people'ing

I know there are, but as per my comment, it's just harder to find and you used to almost not be able to avoid it. I don't think platforms like YouTube and Instagram are great examples due to the monotization... everyone is trying to "make it." But ya, I mean, I do know it's out there. But I think the whole point wasn't that this stuff doesn't still exist, just that maybe it will become the more prevalent thing again. At least that's how I read GP's comment. But who knows.

Did they? I think it was LiveJournal that enshittified. Diaryland is actually still around. I just checked it out and it now "Diaryland v2!" I actually last checked it out in the past year and it still looked exactly like it did back then!

I loved Diaryland since it was fully customizable. It was my intro into templating! It was very crude, but it worked.

> What exactly WAS the "old web" anyway?

Pre-Google, specifically, pre-PageRank, and even more specifically, pre-SEO.

Your post is oddly hyper-focused on pointing out the negatives, probably due to the asshole hat you put on. There were lots of good sites with tons of good, free information, and because the main way people searched was using directories, we weren't inundated with 1,000s of results on the same topic, vying for a top-placement. The writing itself was much more laid back because SEO-optimization didn't exist. Also, those "half-baked GeoCities sites" were awesome! Of course there were a lot of junk ones, but again, it was just a bunch of people writing about themselves, their interests, and generally being creative. And again, NO ONE WAS TRYING TO MAKE MONEY, they were just doing it. No "like and subscribe." No gaming an algorithm. I used to love finding guitar tabs on those sites and I had a couple of sites with lots of tabs I did on my own for two different bands.

> There's so much crap on the "old" and "middle age" internet: ads, scams, anal mods, trolls, low-effort content, that could be bypassed by just asking AI about something and make better use of your limited mortal lifetime.

I feel like this was GP's point, no? Because people are just using AI for search now (this is the main reason I use it) that there will be no point in making these spamming sites anymore, which "opens up" the internet a bit for those of us who enjoyed the old way. Yes, it's all still out there, but it's kind of hard to find, and it would be kinda neat if more people discovered making their websites outside of walled gardens.

Ha, ya I'm just calling it that for eases sake. It's a "cleaning tool" sponge replacement. It did not work. The blanket was actually good quality but it turns out I did not even want a really massively huge blanket.

Good question but I honestly can't remember, even though it wasn't even that long ago. I've given up services slowly over the past few years, but since I used all the big stuff: Google search/email, instagram, and facebook, and am (still) addicted to YouTube that the ads were already soooooo specific to me that I doubt they got any more specific. I would assume that after I bought that stupid sponge that didn't work I probably got more cooking ads, but I honestly can't remember.

I've mostly ditched everything but YouTube now. Honestly, just not using Google seach and gmail makes a HUGE difference in how targeted ads get. I still have an instagram account that a very rarely check, but since I'm not a big cookie blocker, I'll see ads for stuff I was recently searching for. Oh! And I feel like one of those "I don't have a TV" people from the 90s, but I no longer carry a smartphone either. I haven't bought anything from an ad in a few years at this point. It likely still counts but the closest is buying something a YouTuber has recommended from a video I sought out for an interest I already had.

lol, no, it's mostly embarrassing :P Well, they included a silicone sponge and a massive blanket.

Ah, well I guess I'll be seeing those soon then? I don't use Marketplace too much (and just got burned recently so I've soured on it).

I got a facebook account because I wanted to use marketplace. I just use one of those CSS browser plugins to hide the newsfeed which is where all the ads pop up. The following does the trick for me:

    [role=main] {
      display: none;
    }

I also don't have any friends on it.

I don't like ads and don't want to buy random stuff, but they totally work me sometimes, and I'm sure there has got to be many like me. It's one of the big reasons I don't go on social media really anymore. I mostly have willpower, but in moments of weakness I'll see a perfectly targeted ad, it'll be for something affordable, and I'll but it. It was never a big problem for me as it's only happened a handful of times, but everything I've bought this way has been useless and I've gotten rid of it all.

I'm speaking generally here, not specifically about German or any law. I also know there are probably situations I'm not thinking about. But it seems generally pretty cut and dry as to what the focus of a recording is. If you are filming your friend in public and there are people in the background, I don't see that as a big deal. If you film strangers, get audio of their conversation, you should not be allowed to post this online. If they are interacting or harassing you, this should also be a pretty cut and dry case where posting them is ok. I do realize this probably opens up a bunch of loop holes but ya. I dunno. Honestly, I'd rather have the German laws than what we have in North America right now.

I'm with you, here. People just think very differently, though. For example, I really enjoy sci-fi, but I've always viewed as a neat fantasy. Sometimes I think "It would be cool if this were real," but mostly I lean toward, "I'm so glad none of this is actually real."

Different stokes, though.

> I don't think any changes should be about public recording but about distribution instead.

I think this is pretty reasonable and something I hadn't thought of. I've been thinking about this generally a bunch as I agree that the blanket "No right to privacy in public" is really just lazy. Of course we've been filmed in public for decades now, but it wasn't being shown to people on the internet this whole time (or even to anyone in many cases). Concessions could be made for filming police/public figures and people committing crimes. It's probably harder than I think, but just being able to post anyone online is pretty terrible whether it's your "right" or not. Think of all the godawful nuisance "content" that would have just never existed.

Not to American companies, he said this after the recent Chinese release (I can't keep up with model names... Kimi K...3?)

Similar to Altman saying "we should slow down."

Also agree, but unfortunately the powers that be--in their infinite wisdom--say that without unpredictability, we don't have artificial intelligence. This would really hurt their wallets, er, I mean, their chances of benefiting humanity as a whole.