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Welcome to the web we lost

Technology
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  • In December 1993, the New York Times published an article about the “limitless opportunity” of the early internet. It painted a picture of a digital utopia: clicking a mouse to access NASA weather footage, Clinton’s speeches, MTV’s digital music samplers, or the status of a coffee pot at Cambridge University.

    It was a simple vision—idealistic, even—and from our vantage point three decades later, almost hopelessly naive.

    We can still do all these things, of course, but the “limitless opportunity" of today's internet has devolved into conflict, hate, bots, AI-generated spam and relentless advertising. Face-swap apps allow anyone to create nonconsensual sexual imagery, disinformation propagated online hampered the COVID-19 public health response, and Google’s AI search summaries now recommend we eat glue and rocks.

    The promise of the early web—a space for connection, creativity, and community—has been overshadowed by corporate interests, algorithmic manipulation, and the commodification of our attention.

    But the heart of the internet—the people who built communities, shared knowledge, and created art—has never disappeared. If we’re to reclaim the web, to rediscover the good internet, we need to celebrate, learn from, and amplify these pockets of joy.

    30 years ago creating content was hard but also destroying it was difficult. Now it's very easy to post shit online but internet is also full of bots, scrapers, malware, scam and spam. I don't think you can separate those two. We can keep the internet private and free but full of shit or make it safe and "fun" but difficult to access.

  • Rediscover is a good word. Discovery depends on the entry point.

    We start with the entry points designed for entrapment.

    Should just avoid them. That's hard, because their creators use all the casino-style and other means possible, since their power and profits depend on them functioning.

    I've recently realized that all things I blamed on the Internet as it's designed being obsolete, they are not caused by that. It's not obsolete. It's a system that can function well into the next millennium, even.

    And even the Web as in year 2000.

    Encryption, hashing, signatures, all the cryptography are the only qualitatively new thing.

    But they can be applied to the old model, and it's simple - we use a reserved range of v6 addresses and we map identifiers to them. An identifier is derived from person's public key. Overlay networks are a thing.

    We can do other things, say, publish user contacts and public keys in DNS. That allows secure store-and-forward communication over any service, not just trusted one, with encrypted messages.

    The model itself allows bloody everything, people just don't use it to the full extent.

    This is probably a bit "I'm 14 and this is deep", but I was thinking the other day about how "pull down to refresh" is weirdly similar to pulling a slot machine handle. 😬

    I don't think that was ever part of its design (didn't the Tweetie dev invent it?), but still.

  • In December 1993, the New York Times published an article about the “limitless opportunity” of the early internet. It painted a picture of a digital utopia: clicking a mouse to access NASA weather footage, Clinton’s speeches, MTV’s digital music samplers, or the status of a coffee pot at Cambridge University.

    It was a simple vision—idealistic, even—and from our vantage point three decades later, almost hopelessly naive.

    We can still do all these things, of course, but the “limitless opportunity" of today's internet has devolved into conflict, hate, bots, AI-generated spam and relentless advertising. Face-swap apps allow anyone to create nonconsensual sexual imagery, disinformation propagated online hampered the COVID-19 public health response, and Google’s AI search summaries now recommend we eat glue and rocks.

    The promise of the early web—a space for connection, creativity, and community—has been overshadowed by corporate interests, algorithmic manipulation, and the commodification of our attention.

    But the heart of the internet—the people who built communities, shared knowledge, and created art—has never disappeared. If we’re to reclaim the web, to rediscover the good internet, we need to celebrate, learn from, and amplify these pockets of joy.

    I've been thinking a lot about webrings lately. Now that Google is basically cutting off traffic from the indie web.

    I feel like everyone's kinda having the same idea at the same time, which gives me some hope, but... it's difficult enough to find a ring to join, that I think most people will give up?

    I don't know what I think the solution is. Centralising it and having a big, user-friendly "webring platform" is just inviting more enshittification. But the handful of webring directories I've found are really lacking.

    Does anyone have any suggestions? Or, does anyone want to team up and make, like, a Gaymers Webring? (That's pretty much what I'm looking for.)

  • So... no coffee then?

    Aside: I'm still annoyed with Mark Nottingham for trying to assassinate 418.

    I am glad that he tried to assassinate 418, because the massive outcry that led to 418 being saved is something wholesome that I love.

    Link with context for anyone unfamiliar with the context: https://save418.com/

  • In December 1993, the New York Times published an article about the “limitless opportunity” of the early internet. It painted a picture of a digital utopia: clicking a mouse to access NASA weather footage, Clinton’s speeches, MTV’s digital music samplers, or the status of a coffee pot at Cambridge University.

    It was a simple vision—idealistic, even—and from our vantage point three decades later, almost hopelessly naive.

    We can still do all these things, of course, but the “limitless opportunity" of today's internet has devolved into conflict, hate, bots, AI-generated spam and relentless advertising. Face-swap apps allow anyone to create nonconsensual sexual imagery, disinformation propagated online hampered the COVID-19 public health response, and Google’s AI search summaries now recommend we eat glue and rocks.

    The promise of the early web—a space for connection, creativity, and community—has been overshadowed by corporate interests, algorithmic manipulation, and the commodification of our attention.

    But the heart of the internet—the people who built communities, shared knowledge, and created art—has never disappeared. If we’re to reclaim the web, to rediscover the good internet, we need to celebrate, learn from, and amplify these pockets of joy.

    I think the thing you are missing is probably the community sense you had though. In your youth you went online to talk about x-files instead of going to the mall; people on IRC probably recognized your username, probably knew your opinions on scully and moulder. You can derive some self-worth from feeling like people know you, or feeling like people are interested in what you have to say. Now you have to scream at the top of your lungs while masturbating on camera to have a chance of being heard. Discord exists for now, you can find some small fandom to engage with there. You can accept the fact that your ego is not adapted to measuring yourself against all of humanity at once and find a smaller pond to swim around in; or start screaming and masturbating.

  • For the first time strangers were meeting other than face to face, and without any of the social context clues that would have previously guided us in person.

    The suggest this was the 90's? More like the 80's. BBS were doing this for quite a while.

    My blazing fast 26k baud modem had my friends and I connecting ....(mom, I'm on the computer!)....connecting... (BeepBongBoobBeeereREEEEEEEEEEEE Pingping ding eoooohhhhh bding) connecting to the greatest BBS with color ascii to play the newest text based space trade war adventure games !!!

    As a 10 year old, though, it was never about meeting people. It was just cool and fun.

  • In December 1993, the New York Times published an article about the “limitless opportunity” of the early internet. It painted a picture of a digital utopia: clicking a mouse to access NASA weather footage, Clinton’s speeches, MTV’s digital music samplers, or the status of a coffee pot at Cambridge University.

    It was a simple vision—idealistic, even—and from our vantage point three decades later, almost hopelessly naive.

    We can still do all these things, of course, but the “limitless opportunity" of today's internet has devolved into conflict, hate, bots, AI-generated spam and relentless advertising. Face-swap apps allow anyone to create nonconsensual sexual imagery, disinformation propagated online hampered the COVID-19 public health response, and Google’s AI search summaries now recommend we eat glue and rocks.

    The promise of the early web—a space for connection, creativity, and community—has been overshadowed by corporate interests, algorithmic manipulation, and the commodification of our attention.

    But the heart of the internet—the people who built communities, shared knowledge, and created art—has never disappeared. If we’re to reclaim the web, to rediscover the good internet, we need to celebrate, learn from, and amplify these pockets of joy.

    My first real 'community' online was mp3.com. When I joined I was like the 132nd person on that site. It was such an incredible thing back then. People could post their own music, get feedback, promote, find a label, and get paid for streams/downloads.

    I actually earned money from my music while chatting with future mega stars like Darude and Dido.

    I got some real world tracks out there, had my stuff played from Australia to Canada, and there was a time I could walk into a club and hear my music being played.

    Surreal thinking about it now.

    I've never had that kind of connection or sense of belonging online since.

  • In December 1993, the New York Times published an article about the “limitless opportunity” of the early internet. It painted a picture of a digital utopia: clicking a mouse to access NASA weather footage, Clinton’s speeches, MTV’s digital music samplers, or the status of a coffee pot at Cambridge University.

    It was a simple vision—idealistic, even—and from our vantage point three decades later, almost hopelessly naive.

    We can still do all these things, of course, but the “limitless opportunity" of today's internet has devolved into conflict, hate, bots, AI-generated spam and relentless advertising. Face-swap apps allow anyone to create nonconsensual sexual imagery, disinformation propagated online hampered the COVID-19 public health response, and Google’s AI search summaries now recommend we eat glue and rocks.

    The promise of the early web—a space for connection, creativity, and community—has been overshadowed by corporate interests, algorithmic manipulation, and the commodification of our attention.

    But the heart of the internet—the people who built communities, shared knowledge, and created art—has never disappeared. If we’re to reclaim the web, to rediscover the good internet, we need to celebrate, learn from, and amplify these pockets of joy.

    Very well written piece. I like his perceptions about the speed of how we access the internet being shaped by content being constantly pushed at us by feeds. I think it's having a profound effect on people's whole thought process. He mentions exploring a new website and an hour goes by - but that hour ends and he's done, at least for now. You never get done with a feed, it's an endless, self-refilling "in" basket. I think we perceive and handle feeds the same as a stack of work items we're supposed to get through. We want that sense of completion, so we try to process each item as fast as possible - taking in minimal information, making a superficial value judgement, and swiping left or right on it ASAP so we can scroll to the next item. Then we apply this same false sense of urgency to how we process the real world, which lowers the quality of our decisions and even our enjoyment of life.

  • I've been thinking a lot about webrings lately. Now that Google is basically cutting off traffic from the indie web.

    I feel like everyone's kinda having the same idea at the same time, which gives me some hope, but... it's difficult enough to find a ring to join, that I think most people will give up?

    I don't know what I think the solution is. Centralising it and having a big, user-friendly "webring platform" is just inviting more enshittification. But the handful of webring directories I've found are really lacking.

    Does anyone have any suggestions? Or, does anyone want to team up and make, like, a Gaymers Webring? (That's pretty much what I'm looking for.)

    domain cliques, webrings, forums, and guestbooks were wonderful and they should come back

  • Humans do indeed contain multitudes, but I think this gives too much credit to the influence of corporate (and their political interference) interests. Enshittification is an active choice made in board rooms. Disinformation is an agenda. They're not inevitable grassroots outgrowths.

    Lemmy, curated to avoid AI, curtail corporate news, and where the admins and community are fighting bots and trolls is an example of the reclamation attempt.

    And you know what? It's kinda nice here.

    Enshittification is an inevitable consequence of the economic system we're living in

  • There are people who work late into the night creating something for the benefit of humanity or just for their own pleasure in creation. There are other people that take those things and bleed them dry to make profit to the point of ruination. There are yet others who use them to spew out hatreds that eat away everything good inside themselves and those that will seek out depravity. What we are getting in this is not the loss of any promise of the internet or the coming of AI but an uncomfortably clear reflection of what, in the mass we actually are.

    Is it though? Its always far easier to be loud and obnoxious than do something constructive, even with the internet and LLMs, in fact those things are amplifiers which if anything make the attention imbalance even more drastic and unrepresentative of actual human behaviour. In the time it takes me to write this comment some troll can write a dozen hateful ones, or a bot can write a thousand. Doesn't mean humans are shitty in a 1000/1 ratio, just means shitty people can now be a thousand times louder.

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    Try using a free online YouTube ripper. You rip the video you need while still denying the kiddos junk tube.
  • How the US is turning into a mass techno-surveillance state

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    Seems like a personal attack. Not a xenophobic comment when I’ve observed on social media that yankee is rarely used by a native English speaker. I stand by my opinion and all the downvotes tell me I’m onto something true.
  • autofocus glasses

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    Hm. Checking my glasses I think there is something on the top too. I can see distance ever so slightly clearer looking out the top. If I remember right, I have a minus .25 in one eye. Always been told it didn't need correction, but maybe it is in this pair. I should go get some off the shelf progressive readers and try those.
  • Why doesn't Nvidia have more competition?

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    It’s funny how the article asks the question, but completely fails to answer it. About 15 years ago, Nvidia discovered there was a demand for compute in datacenters that could be met with powerful GPU’s, and they were quick to respond to it, and they had the resources to focus on it strongly, because of their huge success and high profitability in the GPU market. AMD also saw the market, and wanted to pursue it, but just over a decade ago where it began to clearly show the high potential for profitability, AMD was near bankrupt, and was very hard pressed to finance developments on GPU and compute in datacenters. AMD really tried the best they could, and was moderately successful from a technology perspective, but Nvidia already had a head start, and the proprietary development system CUDA was already an established standard that was very hard to penetrate. Intel simply fumbled the ball from start to finish. After a decade of trying to push ARM down from having the mobile crown by far, investing billions or actually the equivalent of ARM’s total revenue. They never managed to catch up to ARM despite they had the better production process at the time. This was the main focus of Intel, and Intel believed that GPU would never be more than a niche product. So when intel tried to compete on compute for datacenters, they tried to do it with X86 chips, One of their most bold efforts was to build a monstrosity of a cluster of Celeron chips, which of course performed laughably bad compared to Nvidia! Because as it turns out, the way forward at least for now, is indeed the massively parralel compute capability of a GPU, which Nvidia has refined for decades, only with (inferior) competition from AMD. But despite the lack of competition, Nvidia did not slow down, in fact with increased profits, they only grew bolder in their efforts. Making it even harder to catch up. Now AMD has had more money to compete for a while, and they do have some decent compute units, but Nvidia remains ahead and the CUDA problem is still there, so for AMD to really compete with Nvidia, they have to be better to attract customers. That’s a very tall order against Nvidia that simply seems to never stop progressing. So the only other option for AMD is to sell a bit cheaper. Which I suppose they have to. AMD and Intel were the obvious competitors, everybody else is coming from even further behind. But if I had to make a bet, it would be on Huawei. Huawei has some crazy good developers, and Trump is basically forcing them to figure it out themselves, because he is blocking Huawei and China in general from using both AMD and Nvidia AI chips. And the chips will probably be made by Chinese SMIC, because they are also prevented from using advanced production in the west, most notably TSMC. China will prevail, because it’s become a national project, of both prestige and necessity, and they have a massive talent mass and resources, so nothing can stop it now. IMO USA would clearly have been better off allowing China to use American chips. Now China will soon compete directly on both production and design too.
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    Business Insider was founded in 2007.
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    enable the absolute worst of what humanity has to offer. can we call it a reality check? we think of humans as so great and important and unique for quite a while now while the world is spiraling downwards. maybe humans arent so great after all. like what is art? ppl vibe with slob music but birds cant vote. how does that make sense? if one can watch AI slob (and we all will with the constant improvements in ai) and like it, well maybe our taste of art is not any better than what a bird can do and like. i hope LLM will lead to a breakthrough in understanding what type of animal we really are.
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    Found it in my settings, not sure how I’ve missed it. Been a Bitwarden user since the first LastPass hack.
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    It's an actively hostile act, regardless of what your beliefs are on the copyright system.