[HN Gopher] Every time you click this link, it will send you to ...
___________________________________________________________________
Every time you click this link, it will send you to a random Web
1.0 website
Author : thunderbong
Score : 1195 points
Date : 2023-07-15 19:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (wiby.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (wiby.me)
| tachyon5 wrote:
| I stumbled upon this one, worthy of HN: how to construct your own
| analog Pong game -
| http://searle.x10host.com/TeleTennis/PWTennis.html
| [deleted]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Ahahaha alien psychology!
|
| http://rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm
| tgv wrote:
| Damn, if we wait a little bit, the copyright on some of these
| websites will expire.
| chwa982 wrote:
| [dead]
| jareklupinski wrote:
| clicking this led me to an organization for Tall people
|
| http://www.cjtall.org/aboutus.html
|
| this random generator is better at targeting me than the biggest
| companies on the planet
| gxs wrote:
| As a kid, I found windows to be extremely intuitive - no matter
| what I was doing, if I thought something was possible, the
| feature would always be exactly where I'd expect to be.
|
| And by windows I mean windows and the desktop applications of the
| time. They worked well and adhered to the same ui principles, vs
| every saas tool now that does its own thing. Even the fabled UX
| of macs never compared to me, I always thought their design was
| overrated. (Not today, of course).
|
| Something about UI designers back then was just different - they
| really seemed to prioritize putting everything in its place vs
| trying to make everything wow you/look good. Everything was
| organized very logically.
|
| Today, a lot of websites are terrible. I'm not being overly
| dramatic, there are still a lot that are fine or even good, but
| so many are garbage. They hijack/break standard browser
| functionality (cut/paste, scroll bars/behavior, right click,
| etc.) and the UI itself can be frustrating. You might be able to
| quickly tell what's clickable vs not, what's
| expandable/collapsible vs not, bad text/contrast, etc etc.
| vaylian wrote:
| > As a kid, I found windows to be extremely intuitive - no
| matter what I was doing, if I thought something was possible,
| the feature would always be exactly where I'd expect to be.
|
| This. People had computer problems and asked me for help. I
| didn't know the answer. But I knew how to quickly find the most
| likely place where I could diagnose/fix things. And most of the
| time I was right.
|
| > And by windows I mean windows and the desktop applications of
| the time. They worked well and adhered to the same ui
| principles, vs every saas tool now that does its own thing.
|
| And even when these saas tools try to emulate the Windows
| experience, they fail miserably. What you get is a cursed
| hodgepodge of double-clicking on links and key bindings that
| don't work.
|
| The web has a simple but powerful UI. But casual users have
| trouble learning it, because a significant fraction of websites
| don't follow that UI. And then there is also the madness of
| advertisements on the web which makes everything even more
| confusing.
| gxs wrote:
| Ha, sounds like we had a similar experiences, especially with
| helping others.
|
| Interesting the impact that can have, years later I work in
| tech in large part because I was actually able to use and
| configure the computer I had back then.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Love this. Web 1.0 sites were eminently readable. Shame how bad
| sites have gotten. Here's one I landed:
| http://londonbusroutes.net/
| CharlesW wrote:
| The brutalist/undesigned style is an interesting vibe, but
| there are very simple things that could be done to radically
| improve information architecture and readability without
| sacrificing minimalism.
| furyofantares wrote:
| It's not too bad if you read it on an 800x600 monitor.
| guidedlight wrote:
| This is the one I got... I think readability is the least of
| the problems.
|
| https://yvettesbridalformal.p1r8.net
| paxys wrote:
| They had their charm, sure, but messy table-based layouts,
| fluorescent color schemes, scrolling text and flashing gifs
| aren't exactly what I would call readable. Give me Web 0.1
| instead (black text, white background, maybe 5 lines of
| styling).
| sylware wrote:
| Did, you know? Html table for layout are not harmful (screen
| reader can go thru them). HTML 2D document instead of 1D
| document.
|
| You add basic (x)html forms on top of that, you can do wonders,
| without a big tech web engine (no surprise from them pushing the
| web to work only in their engines...).
| transformi wrote:
| Are those pages are generated? (got to say the look authentic but
| it not that hard to make those...)
| 3cats-in-a-coat wrote:
| I actually love this, and I bookmarked it.
|
| Why? Not just because of nostalgia.
|
| Web 1.0 sites had a different set of UI idioms, which seem
| unintuitive to us, as we're too set in our new ways now. If you
| get past the fact they're ugly by modern standards, you'll see
| these sites accomplishing amazing results through startlingly
| simple means.
|
| It's an excellent source of inspiration, and if you combine those
| ideas with modern design, but keep it minimal, I believe there's
| a lot of potential to create something compelling.
|
| This is the same reason for which I like reviewing old OS GUIs,
| old apps and even UIs in movies sometimes (but not the modern
| take which just slaps animated circles and gradients on
| everything, I mean actual UIs showing something readable/usable).
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I still don't believe modern we design is actually preferred by
| the masses.
|
| Ofen times it isn't even a balance between aesthetics an
| clarity, because the modern pages are broken or otherwise
| unusable.
|
| It has gotten to the point where I wonder if maybe I'm not
| neurotypical. I'll take sites formatted like Craigslist 100% of
| the time.
|
| Now I'm just waiting for windows OS to fully replace file
| navigation text with iconography and I won't be able to use a
| computer
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Try Unix, bro. Ubuntu is arguably a decent start coming from
| Windows. It gives you easiness of use, intuitive visual
| interface, simple software installation process, decent
| compatibility with hardware...
|
| Then you can gradually get familiar with Linux and doing
| things on the command line. Once mature enough, you can
| explore pretty much any other distro.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The best linux distro is probably mac os.
| mike256 wrote:
| unix distro not linux
| IIsi50MHz wrote:
| BSD, not UNIX. Or do I misremember?
| Clubber wrote:
| You might be thinking GNU = GNU Not Unix. BSD is a unix
| flavor derived from AT&T unix.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribut
| ion
| antigonemerlin wrote:
| I think at the end of the day, it's because the modern way of
| designing things is just easier for developers.
|
| I remember when that started taking off; it was honestly kind
| of a godsend because one of the laziest way of doing things
| suddenly became associated with professionalism. On the other
| hand, it's getting pretty bland as a consumer now that every
| site is doing it.
|
| Compared to images as buttons of the 2000s, something
| adjacent to material design seriously cuts down on the number
| of graphical assets necessary for develop _anything_. Even
| games seem to follow that trend: compare Crusader Kings 2 vs
| Crusader Kings 3, with image buttons vs a general UI toolkit
| in the two games.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| The modern web has been taken over by what you may call
| simulacrum driven design. It's design by mimicry instead of
| design by fundamentals. I mentored a few design groups in SF
| before leaving the industry. The decision making I saw and
| were ridiculous, and were even being argued against
| usability. Oh well!
| dfxm12 wrote:
| "Modern" websites aren't designed for the masses. It's not a
| matter of preference, the masses have little input into how
| the websites they visit are designed... These sites are
| designed to track the masses to serve ads or to trick the
| masses to sign up for some service, buy something, etc.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I think a lot of modern web design suffers from the same AB
| testing failures that got Pepsi into trouble back in the
| coke/pepsi days of the 80's. I may be misremembering the
| details, but the gist was that Pepsi was a bit sweeter, and
| so in the tiny amounts that people tasted during taste tests,
| they usually prefer the sweeter drink. In normal use,
| however, that flavor of Pepsi was too sweet, and sales
| tanked.
|
| I see the same problem with user tests. People almost always
| pick the simpler of two options, because at the time they
| have no reason to pick anything else, and that looks easier.
| But then you start trying to get actual work done, and the
| Fisher Priced interface is too simplified.
|
| And I know it's not just you or me that prefer information
| dense websites. Look at how well-known McMaster's site is,
| among people who actually need to use it to get work done.
|
| Even in general public terms, things have gone too far. I set
| up a lot of iPads for elderly folks for use in assistive
| communication, and I have to go out of my way to use ones
| that have buttons. The modern ones without a home button are
| just too complicated for a whole swath of our population, and
| I am not exaggerating.
| dlkf wrote:
| That isn't how AB tests work. In a (properly-run) AB test,
| a user will only see one variant. AB tests have
| shortcomings, but the Pepsi critique isn't one of them.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The Pepsi critique can also happen with AB testing
| depending on what you're measuring. The problem that
| Pepsi had is that they measured user satisfaction after a
| small sample not a full can. This would show up even if
| you only present drinkers with one sample.
| dlkf wrote:
| By "the Pepsi critique" I specifically meant the exposure
| of both variants to a single user.
|
| I agree with you that having users take a single sip is
| also a problem for construct validity. But it's not clear
| from your post how this would this would happen in a
| properly run AB test.
|
| Are you thinking of the case in which we ship a change
| that confers short term wins in user spend or churn, but
| comes at a long term cost that isn't visible within the
| window of the test? This is a common problem, but it's
| not clear to me that it's the same problem Pepsi had.
| Here the problem is with choice of response variable,
| whereas Pepsi's problem is choice of treatment.
| bombcar wrote:
| The button gives a known "reset" feature, where if you get
| lost you can get back to someplace you know and try again.
|
| Without that, it can be disastrous.
| jleahy wrote:
| The 'how do I exit vim' problem.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That was a thought that I had when writing my post too.
| Test AB testing a focus group based on a 5 Second page view
| Bank of radically different answer than if you sat people
| down and asked them to perform a typical or moderately
| difficult task.
|
| If this is indeed the case, I'm just shocked that
| developers and companies haven't figured it out. I suppose
| a lot of the time the performance impact simply isn't
| measured in their kpis
|
| My other hypothesis is that once you move away from an
| orderly website architecture, organizations and devs are
| just as lost as the users and no one has an idea where
| information should reside. Without holistic architecture or
| vision, the best that people can do is throw a third or
| fourth hamburger on the home page, add a new page 10 links
| deep, or not linked at all and pray that a search engine
| will solve the problem.
| gsinclair wrote:
| The iPads with buttons: too complicated for a whole swath
| of our population, or just for a small specific age range?
|
| I wouldn't want the take-away point from your experience
| there to be over-generalised.
| Zircom wrote:
| What do you think "a whole swath of our population"
| means?
| alister wrote:
| > _But then you start trying to get actual work done, and
| the Fisher Priced interface is too simplified._
|
| That's exactly my thinking as well. To give another
| example:
|
| This week I tried to use an iPad and an Apple Pencil for
| day-to-day note taking. If you handwrite 100% plain English
| prose like, The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, it
| instantly converts it to text and corrects any typos. For
| simple stuff, it seems perfect.
|
| But it's insufferable once you start on real work. It
| doesn't understand a lot of punctuation, tries to correct
| foreign words (likes names and locations) I mix in with
| English, tries to spell correct serial numbers (N07 becomes
| NOT). Having to go back and correct each conversion error
| turned out to be much slower -- and frustrating. I went
| back to a keyboard.
| alex-moon wrote:
| This explains a tendency I've long had which I always
| assumed was just a look and feel thing. So back in 2021 I
| got myself a (relatively new) Blackberry. I loved it.
| Hardware buttons. Lots of them. I've had to upgrade to a
| newer Android for work reasons, and it has so many
| default settings I've had to turn off because they are
| infuriating. Pixel 7. Gestures. No standard bottom bar
| with the three buttons. Power button does something else.
| Why???? Even with all these turned off, the three button
| bar disappears if an app is full screen, and you have to
| do a gesture to get it back. Seems mad to me.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > No standard bottom bar with the three buttons.
|
| This was very jarring at first, but over time I've
| actually gotten used to the gestures and they feel more
| consistent than various makers of phones having the
| software buttons in different positions. It's almost like
| muscle memory at this point.
|
| If you don't like gestures, however, you should be able
| to go to the system settings and enable the old style
| navigation. If they had removed it entirely, then I'd
| probably be more critical (a la Windows 11 vertical
| taskbar).
| corgihamlet wrote:
| That's my experience with doing basically anything that's
| vaguely complex on mobile devices.
|
| The iPhone camera is usually excellent, but there are
| some situations (for me it's autumn forests and funnily
| enough Disneyland at night) in which the auto white
| balance fails miserably. On my DSLM it's a simple
| question of just using manual white balance, but on the
| iPhone the only way to do it with the stock camera app is
| to do in post.
|
| On that note, the Photos _Mac_ app has a neat feature
| where you can fix white balance by calibrating on a
| neutral grey area, but that feature is missing on the
| mobile apps which just have a color temperature slider
| which does not give as good results.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| The most notorious example I remember was an update to
| data entry software in the medical field. The old one ran
| on some Unix iirc, had a text mode interface, and was
| entirely controlled by keyboard. Staff could use it in
| their sleep, enter text, tab, enter more text, tab tab,
| and so on.
|
| The new version ran on Windows, had a lot more features
| for sure, but suddenly staff was entering data into a
| field, grabbed the mouse to move to the next field,
| entered data, and so on. The process became way slower.
| So I asked why they don't just ignore the mouse and keep
| using tab. They were surprised this even works, because
| it was never mentioned by the folks who trained them on
| the new software. It was all about how modern and slick
| it looks and how it has so many more features.
|
| So then staff tried to use the tab key again, but got
| frustrated very quickly since the software was smart
| enough so enable and disable controls in the entry form
| depending on selections you made in earlier fields. So
| tabbing through the form would require different number
| of key presses all the time, making it hard to build
| muscle memory. I think they raised their complaints to
| management but whether that feedback ever reached the
| software vendor I have no idea. I guess they did get
| faster again over time because any new system takes time
| to get used to, but I'd be very surprised if it ever
| matched the ancient, simple system again.
| jaclaz wrote:
| I would add to that what I call "fractioning" of data (on
| multiple screens).
|
| We used for years (decades) a DOS based tool, where in a
| "conventional" 80x25 mask there was enough space for all
| the data we had to input (navigating with TAB/Enter,
| etc.) before passing to the next (with F8).
|
| On the new software the same data (in windows, on a
| modern screen) goes inside a teeny-tiny window that has
| not enough fields, so it is spread on three tabs and this
| breaks the flow.
|
| The same happens a lot on forms on the web, fill one or
| two fields, click next, repeat.
| RuggedPineapple wrote:
| When I discovered there's a live mirror of Wikipedia on the
| Gopher protocol I discovered I prefer reading it that way.
| gxs wrote:
| Agrre 100%.
|
| The fact that the back button is completely useless now (at
| least on mobile) because every website wants to refresh every
| time you go back is probably one of the worst things to
| happen to web navigation in a long time.
|
| Horrendous experience and it leaves me fumbling with opening
| everything in new tabs which can get super messy/annoying on
| a phone.
| IIsi50MHz wrote:
| As far as easy access to tabs goes, Sleipnir browse (by
| Fenrir, a Japanese company) works. I do change some of the
| other default settings. Gestures, user-agent string, button
| layout, long-tap behaviour... It's fairly configurable.
| Uses its own extensions system, though.
|
| Also, the desktop version of Sleipnir is...not recommended:
| quirky and buggy.
| f6v wrote:
| What we've been doing in one of the companies was actively
| messing up the browser history to benefit ourselves. That's
| disgusting, to be honest.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| They don't seem unintuitive to me, maybe because I grew up with
| 1.0. these youngsters are creating buttons without outlines,
| links that are grey and not underlined, checkboxes that slide
| and sometimes have no other indication that they're on or off,
| and many other unholy idioms. Web 1.0 was glorious.
| 3cats-in-a-coat wrote:
| To clarify, by unintuitive I mean we don't think of doing
| things in a simple way today as we're used to more
| complicated interaction patterns and layouts.
|
| When we open a Web 1.0 it's intuitive to see and browse. In
| fact, often more intuitive than modern Web. It reminds us...
| that it's "OK" to keep it simple. And this is a reminder we
| need frequently in a world of excess.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Oh.. well I guess it's just me then :) I always try to use
| a simple native component before replacing it with
| something more complex if the old thing genuinely doesn't
| work for some use cases.
| exodust wrote:
| > UIs in movies
|
| And those little chirp sounds that go with the movie UIs. More
| than onKeyPress, they happen on every interface event. Text
| comes into view? _chirp-bleep_. Our real interfaces aren 't
| that noisy. I wonder who drives these UI design decisions in
| movies, the sound people, editors, writers?
| IIsi50MHz wrote:
| "Noisy" UI have been made before. Possibly a few times,
| though the only one that comes to mind right now is the
| "Audio Finder" experiment at Apple. It did things like play
| sounds for drag events or the mouse pointer crossing a window
| boundary. Reportedly, after the beta test users had to give
| it up, they missed the feedback.
| [deleted]
| mighmi wrote:
| Old OS UIs pursued fascinating directions ours didn't keep up
| with, like Plan9's Acme, a 3-button-mouse-based terminal where
| any text in a file becomes a button and you can just type
| directly into toolbars, or the amazing wholesomeness of
| smalltalk repls. Of course, they aren't quite GUIs - but they
| had fascinating power.
| anthk wrote:
| 9 front it's still alive, and if you hate the three button
| mice setup, you can use shift/ctrl-click to simulate the
| different clicks for chords. For some users using a keyboard
| might be easier.
| tlogan wrote:
| Yes - they are quite easy to navigate. All information is there
| and clearly labeled.
|
| While they may not be aesthetically pleasing, it's important to
| remember that asthetic is all about fashion.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Well, up to a certain point. Some of those flashy gifs on
| those old sites really hurt my eyes.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Once in a while you hit a really ancient site that is CSS free.
| Like the original CERN sites.
|
| They seem strange but navigation is usually absolutely clear
| and they are lightening fast.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| You can fully use amazon still with javascript disabled. The
| site even looks nearly the same but it doesn't spin your
| laptops fans rendering kindle unlimited ads on the home page.
| anthk wrote:
| Just use UBlock Origin.
| warning26 wrote:
| Another interesting aspect of these classic sites is that
| they're pretty much completely compatible with screen readers
| with zero additional effort.
| aerio wrote:
| I see you haven't run into one heavily utilizing tables for
| layout yet.
| oefrha wrote:
| Fun fact: you're commenting on a site that uses tables
| for layout. It's not an unholy mess though, as it doesn't
| have sidebars or other really complicated stuff.
| aerio wrote:
| Hence the inclusion of "heavily".
| efreak wrote:
| "heavy use of tables". I ran into a script once that took
| a picture as input and output a massive HTML table with a
| cell for each pixel and a background color. "Pure html"
| images without CSS or base64.
| susanthenerd wrote:
| I really like this website. In a way it is relaxing to browse the
| old web.
| Agoreddah wrote:
| Amazing camera. Pre-AI tool to generate a picture of you :)
|
| http://www.amazingcamera.com/
| jonplackett wrote:
| This is really quite addictive
| stOneskull wrote:
| best link ever
| clsec wrote:
| Love it, this _did not_ trigger _any_ of my security add-ons!
| graftak wrote:
| Except that most of these appear to be served over http, sans
| s.
| lkramer wrote:
| Is that an issue if nothing confidential is being served?
| graftak wrote:
| It's prone to MITM attacks and it allows snooping for what
| pages are visited. Some US ISPs use(d) this vulnerability
| to inject ads into pages. On a public/shared network you
| might be vulnerable to automated attacks.
| user32489318 wrote:
| How long would US ISPs need to stop doing this, now that
| most stuff is HTTPS delivered anyways?
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| It's not a legit Web 1.0 website unless it has:
|
| - Marquee tag
|
| - Blink tag
|
| - Iframes
|
| - "Under construction"
|
| - Visit counter
|
| - Guestbook
|
| - Tiled background
|
| - webmaster e-mail
|
| - Animated gifs
|
| - Best viewed on Internet Explorer and/or Netscape Navigator
| badge
|
| - Built using MS Frontpage, Dreamweaver or similar.
|
| - Logo with drop shadow and lens flare effects
|
| - Custom cursor
|
| - MIDI background music (e.g.: Gangsta's paradise)
|
| - Hosted in Geocities
| hammeringnails wrote:
| I landed on this _very_ strange, albeit lovingly crafted, site:
| http://www.cmkosemen.com/snaiad_web/snduterus.html
|
| I felt compelled to share the strange experience with everyone
| else.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| If you jump up a level, you'll find a rhyme to it. He's a
| relatively well known artist and has a moderate internet
| following.
| mighmi wrote:
| Conworlding is a big thing, although people mostly work out the
| politics and history of invented nations, or their languages,
| fauna is a very honorable pursuit too!
| rndmwlk wrote:
| Strange stuff, some old internet art.
|
| http://www.teleportacia.org/war/
| tonmoy wrote:
| This is awesome! I found air raid sirens:
| https://www.airraidsirens.net/
| rustoo wrote:
| Games! https://dan-ball.jp/en/
| doublerabbit wrote:
| https://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/panda/
|
| So fun.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Thought I'd share this gem: https://www.omfgdogs.com/#
|
| (Bright lights seizure warning)
| deelowe wrote:
| Oh man. The cutting room floor! What a blast from the past. There
| sure was something special about this era of the internet.
| somedude895 wrote:
| I think I found my new religion: https://timecube.2enp.com/
| mkl wrote:
| That's a mirror. It was originally timecube.com (which is now
| spam): https://web.archive.org/web/*/timecube.com
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube
| RinTohsaka wrote:
| https://danluu.com/input-lag/
|
| Computer latency: 1977-2017
|
| Funny this came up, I have seen this posted on hn before!
| init0 wrote:
| It was https://geouniversal.neocities.org/ for me :D
| axpy906 wrote:
| https://webhamster.com/
|
| I am just going to leave my hit here.
| stOneskull wrote:
| far out, did you view source?
| getwiththeprog wrote:
| oh no they're everywhere!
| colanderman wrote:
| Originally known as "Hampster Dance":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampster_Dance It was the Nyan
| Cat of the late 90s.
| [deleted]
| pinkcan wrote:
| I guess I got lucky as it sent me to:
| https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/
| [deleted]
| bilekas wrote:
| I kind of miss the old web. Not for it's design asthetic but for
| it's purpose. Every site seems solely focused on the info.
|
| Contrasting today, it feels like everyone wants to look and feel
| that same.
| MrVandemar wrote:
| Interesting comment about the focus on the "info".
|
| I wonder if, in some subtle way, Wikipedia is somewhat
| responsible for the decline of these kinds of sites. If you
| want to quickly get some (probable) facts and information on a
| given topic, wikipedia is where you go.
| mighmi wrote:
| The first time I found and read wikipedia was after
| discovering warhammer 40k. There was a single page with fluff
| about everything up to that point. It took me a few days to
| read through after school. The effort in that article could
| have made 10+ sites.
| ttoinou wrote:
| Loved that website http://blackpeopleloveus.com/
|
| > We are well-liked by Black people so we're psyched (since lots
| of Black people don't like lots of White people)!! We thought
| it'd be cool to honor our exceptional status with a ROCKIN'
| domain name and a killer website!!
| [deleted]
| tech-historian wrote:
| Apparently that site was created by (now-famous)
| comedian/actress Chelsea Peretti.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=125566&page=1
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| The testimonial section is absolutely hilarious:
|
| > Sally always says things that make me feel special, like:
| "You're so cool, you're different, you're not like other Black
| people!"
| error_500 wrote:
| The testimonials section is pure gold
| rhplus wrote:
| I was curious who would pay to keep a joke domain name and
| website up for 20+ years, and it turns out it's Chelsea Peretti
| (Brooklyn 99) and her brother Jonah Peretti (Buzzfeed and
| HuffPo).
|
| https://www.avclub.com/read-this-in-2002-black-people-love-u...
| furyofantares wrote:
| I thought that was her at the bottom!
| imiric wrote:
| This is reminiscent of StumbleUpon, which I used to spend hours
| on finding interesting sites in the aughts. Reddit later filled
| that void, but it was always a good time stumbling upon some
| obscure gem of a site.
|
| Now it's some app abomination, but I still think there's a place
| for such a service.
| notlisted wrote:
| Thanks. I loved that site. Modern-day generative art tools like
| MJ inspire the same sense of exploration, anticipation &
| inspiration.
|
| On-topic: I'm starting to see a trend. Digg was big before
| Reddit. VC-imposed 2010 "upgrades" ruined Digg's simple
| interface and 60% fled to Reddit (as did I). StumbleUpon had
| it's own redesign disaster in 2011. Both replace a simple,
| fast, efficient interface, ideal for content consumption, with
| "design" and room for advertising.
|
| Reddit made the same mistake in 2018, but was smart enough to
| retain old.reddit.com Third party reddit apps saved it from a
| swift demise, but the API charges and associated forced closure
| of "competitors" must have had a detrimental effect on their
| traffic as well.
|
| What's next?
| mighmi wrote:
| Stumbleupon literally built me as a person. All of my hobbies
| besides programming (came from Runescape, that classmates
| showed me) come from forums etc. Stumbleupon showed me, like
| conlangs via Tolkien's languages.
| brandrick wrote:
| I loved StumbleUpon.
| petetnt wrote:
| It's awesome how you can stumble upon sites that are so funny or
| interesting (in multiple ways) that you just want to share them
| immediately forward. Everyone says it but it's true: something
| just got lost in translation when social media pages ate the
| whole internet.
| Youden wrote:
| My theory is that it's that on many of these sites there's no
| easy way to comment, like or otherwise publicly interact. Sure
| you could try and email the person but that takes effort and
| you have to talk directly to them, not to a crowd.
|
| When you don't have to worry about a mob of negativity, you can
| write far more freely.
| prox wrote:
| Yup, social media is a one-to-many relationship, and
| sometimes the messy many-to-many relationship. Web 1.0 sites
| have more have a one-to-one posture (unless they become
| exceedingly popular at least)
| thallium205 wrote:
| I just signed a guestbook I don't know what you're talking
| about!
| stOneskull wrote:
| some really interesting text too.
| mulmen wrote:
| They didn't eat the entire Internet. They didn't even eat the
| web. They set up parallel walled gardens. The web is still
| there. Personal websites just don't scale to the masses. This
| is fine and probably for the best.
| varjag wrote:
| It's a nice theory if not for the fact that one never seem to
| run into things like these off Web searches.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This doesn't make Google money.
| Kamq wrote:
| That's kind of the point of wiby (the site that's doing the
| randomization in this post). They only index web 1.0 stuff.
|
| Not quite sure what their definition of that is, since I've
| seen recently updated things. Without CSS? Without JS?
| Maybe just websites that never make a JS fetch request once
| they're loaded.
| lolinder wrote:
| marginalia.nu will turn up a lot of these.
|
| https://search.marginalia.nu/
| duncan-donuts wrote:
| You used to be able to find them deep in search results but
| now it's all blogspam. It'd be nice if this stuff was
| easier to find.
| frogulis wrote:
| If you've missed all the HN love for it over the past
| while, there's a search engine here:
| https://search.marginalia.nu/ which is trying to achieve
| just that
| varjag wrote:
| Yes you used to be able maybe in mid/late-aughties. This
| is not something recent.
| stOneskull wrote:
| how about a search engine that ranks higher the less ads
| there are
| phatskat wrote:
| I get this metric but at what point is the cutoff? If a
| small home run website has good info and gets popular,
| and has to add more advertisements, do they then get
| deranked on the search engine that led people there?
| stOneskull wrote:
| only if there is something with the same info with less
| ads
| [deleted]
| Dalewyn wrote:
| That speaks more to the gentrification of search engines
| and their results rather than the loss of small,
| independent websites.
|
| Once upon a time, I could search for something on Yahoo or
| Google and get nothing but those kinds of websites in
| search results, even when some central repository sites
| like Wikipedia were starting to take root.
|
| Everything changed when the SEO nation attacked, and nobody
| expected the social media inquisition.
| varjag wrote:
| It's both. Loss of discoverability leads to ecological
| collapse of personal website. There's little point when
| the only reader is destined to be its own author.
|
| Period true search methods (webrings, curated indexes,
| portals and early search engines) are gone and so is the
| fighting chance for this kind of projects.
| mulmen wrote:
| The blog linked elsewhere in this thread is the #2 Google
| result for "how to nail jelly to a wall". The web is very
| much searchable.
| judge2020 wrote:
| These sites only get shared via some sort of centralized (or
| not) type of social media. AIM and MSN was the craze back then,
| you either saw web 1.0 stuff from your friends there, or
| coworkers via email.
| kortilla wrote:
| That's a huge stretch of the definition. Back then discovery
| was often via people's personal "directory" web pages.
|
| Sharing links with MSN and AIM came much later when you could
| be online significantly more.
| duncan-donuts wrote:
| Another aspect is that you could actually find these sites in
| the past. I have vague recollections of spending hours going
| through a bunch of garbage to find some goldmine Web 1.0
| site. I don't remember the last time I found an old site like
| these
| RGamma wrote:
| What I've found consistently scarier this past decade+ is the
| casualness and seeming inevitability with which vast swathes of
| the population can be captured by unfavorable technology and
| social spaces or narratives.
|
| And yeah, what you and others here often enough describe(d) are
| the shadows on the wall. Keeping civilization and culture on
| track really is a constant struggle.
| mulmen wrote:
| Vast swaths of the population are uninteresting rubes.
| Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter are all doing us a favor by
| keeping those people occupied and their drivel contained.
| devjab wrote:
| Isn't hacker news doing the same thing for the most parts?
| This is a little rude but I went through your history and
| maybe you should be more careful who you call
| "uninteresting rubes" and "drivel".
|
| Don't get me wrong, I don't think you're in the category. I
| don't think anyone is. I'm just poking a little at your
| self awareness and your lack of respect toward your fellow
| people. I do think there is an issue with the walled
| gardens, but I don't think it's the people who use them.
| It's the psychological effect of having affirmation systems
| tied to everything you post. I'm sure most people would
| post waaaaaaaay less "uninteresting" content if it wasn't
| because of the dopamine chase. I'm guilty of it myself. I
| try to ask myself if I'm really trying to contribute or if
| I'm just posting to get likes, and sometimes it prevents me
| from posting things to social media sites. There are a lot
| of time where it doesn't though. You may not put much value
| in Reddits karma system, but what value do you put into
| your hacker news account? I know from my own experience
| that it's been fairly healthy for me to create a new
| account every time I reach a 1000 points. I hope that I'll
| eventually get to the point where I don't have to do that,
| but I'm not sure I'm there yet.
|
| It's obviously up to you, but I'd encourage you to not so
| blatantly disregard other people for what they post on
| social media. Because social media is a game for our
| attention, and most of us chase that sweet dopamine rush,
| even though everything we post on social media sort of
| disappears after a day and is frankly invisible in the sea
| of sameness posted by our peers.
| antigonemerlin wrote:
| Speaking as someone else, I go on reddit because there
| are occasional domain experts. It's 99% repetitive drivel
| (I myself am guilty of the same) and 1% person who
| actually knows what they're talking about.
|
| That number is proportional to %experts/%non-experts, and
| is inversely correlated with the size of a subreddit
| (though the AskHistorians subreddit remains an excellent
| exception), and is the reason why the NonCredibleDefense
| is usually more credible than the CredibleDefense.
|
| I personally drifted to hackernews from reddit as a
| general "reddit", but I find it's probably wise to take
| with a grain of salt the
| legal/maths/physics/economics/"anything not related to
| computer science" opinions of the people here. It's
| probably a good general rule of thumb to only take advice
| from experts in their domains.
| phatskat wrote:
| I'm a Reddit expat, the only app that made it usable is
| dead now so here I am. I know I won't find talk on Dead
| Cells tips or Rocket League coaching, but at least
| there's lots of good tech discussion and occasional
| political shitposting that feeds that part of my soul
| ThatOldBastard wrote:
| [flagged]
| RGamma wrote:
| The _MSM /MEM as population control vehicle/idiot honeypot_
| is a salient angle though you quickly get into self-
| fulfilling prophecy stuff there. Perhaps it's me being
| overly pessimistic, but I too might have been captured by
| the mind-rot matrix if I had grown up with that shit, never
| knowing what was or could be.
| mulmen wrote:
| The web isn't going to help there. Crackpots made
| websites too.
|
| You aren't responsible for what other people do. Just
| live your own life.
| RGamma wrote:
| I'm not and yet the fate of a population is not
| arbitrary. MSM is society-level technology and it's
| clearly doing something to it that would not have
| happened in its absence.
|
| I'm seeing it in personal acquaintances, who get lost in
| the information garbage sphere and struggle to
| contextualize the places that unfavorably shape their
| belief system (not talking about niche crackpot sites,
| but trash media here).
|
| This is the polar opposite of what I had hoped would
| happen with this technology before it got captured by
| economic incentives. And it's also not what would have
| happened, had this mold not proliferated, and slower but
| curated systems prevailed.
|
| It's not all terrible, there's resilience and adaptation.
| And yet I cannot stop feeling we're dealing with a quite
| unwelcome phenomenon that weakens a sizable part of us
| who would profit from a more controlled information
| environment the most (the dumb get dumber, the smart get
| smarter, and everyone gets more distracted and fickle).
| mulmen wrote:
| What do you mean by MSM? To me that is "mainstream
| media". I don't understand how that is applicable here.
| RGamma wrote:
| Mainstream social (or entertainment) media, by which I
| mean all the content consumption apps your typical non-
| tech parents or acquaintances in that age group know
| about (in my case Instagram, Facebook and ragebait meme
| groups but luckily not yet TikTok; the wider web outside
| news sites is pretty much unknown).
|
| Reddit or Mastodon for instance I would not call
| mainstream from my standpoint, but I left the former site
| many years ago and have no idea about its current
| popularity (my only contemporary use is when it pops up
| in my searches as a sort of wildcard forum).
|
| Sorry, if that's not the usual usage of MSM.
| mulmen wrote:
| MSM usually means "Main Stream Media". So like broadcast
| and cable news and conventional newspapers. Overloading
| it to refer to social media is really confusing because
| social media is pretty much the opposite thing.
|
| "Entertainment news" is a sub-genre of MSM, typically you
| see this on the cable news channels or the "opinion"
| section of a newspaper.
|
| If you get your news from Facebook you aren't getting it
| from "the MSM" as that term is generally understood. I
| guess you could coin MSSM for "Main Stream Social Media"
| to differentiate Twitter from Mastodon (or Reddit from
| HN?) but honestly I think you can just type out "social
| media" and not die of fatigue.
| Finnucane wrote:
| http://www.crank.net/
| stOneskull wrote:
| who _wasn't_ talking about skull and bones in 2003
| phatskat wrote:
| I'm relistening to the behind the bastards on the
| Illuminati so...still talking about it to this day lmao
| phatskat wrote:
| That's incredibly reductive and shows you maybe don't spend
| time in these spaces based on your perceptions? Many of my
| friends are talented makers who use social media to
| communicate about what they do with friends and fans. I've
| learned a lot about knitting and crochet through finding
| people with those skills on social media. I've made strong
| personal connections with strangers far far from me. I've
| found groups to share and debate and discuss topics
| important to me.
|
| And acting like "quarantining" people to keep them out of
| your other online spaces is a good thing? Gross. More
| access and spread of information helps everyone become more
| interesting, it spurs innovation, it fosters creativity.
|
| I came to HN after the Reddit API stuff killed Apollo, and
| though I've been here before from search engines, I'm now
| really getting into the community. It's been great to see
| different things and feel inspired to look at how I do
| thinks in my profession. I wish I had really spent more
| time here sooner, but fortunately for you I was relegated
| to my drivel on Reddit until now.
| ThatOldBastard wrote:
| [flagged]
| elashri wrote:
| It gave me this antique website [1] about decades long collection
| of chemistry lab equipments. I really enjoyed that
|
| [1] http://www.antique-microscopes.com/chemistry/
| jerryzh wrote:
| It is really fascinating that the first website I went to is
| exactly named "Why bkuhn's Website Looks Like Crap", where
| someone explains why he is sticking to Web 1.0.
|
| http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/why-crap.html
|
| These are the times that make me consider to believe in fortune.
| criswell wrote:
| "it's trivial to edit and add stuff, and requires basically no
| maintenance whatsoever."
|
| What an absolute dream.
| Aeolun wrote:
| It's sad that all the links on that page seem broken.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Is this the first webcam?
| https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/coffee.html
| cratermoon wrote:
| Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Room_coffee_pot
| sethbannon wrote:
| There's something indescribably magical about visiting a site
| that's only been visited by ~8k people max and hasn't been
| updated since 1998. Like landing on a secret world.
|
| http://warriorguyver.com/gfa/oldsite2/INDEX1.HTML
| jmspring wrote:
| The link you share mentions web rings. Those were one of the
| early ways to discover sites! Forgot about those.
| sethammons wrote:
| I was thinking that they may be due for a comeback
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I much prefer the era of thoughtful (or at least deliberate)
| updates to static websites in the earlier Web rather than the
| firehose stream of hot takes (90% BS) we have today with social
| media
| hk__2 wrote:
| > I much prefer the era of thoughtful (or at least deliberate)
| updates to static websites in the earlier Web rather than the
| firehose stream of hot takes (90% BS) we have today with social
| media
|
| There are probably a lot more thoughtful updates to static
| websites today than in the earlier Web; I doubt that the people
| who had static websites in the earlier Web are the same who
| post hot takes on social media.
| schoen wrote:
| It sent me to
|
| https://www.coinsofmalta.com/romancoins.htm
|
| which is really what I'd call a "half-ased" web site.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_(Roman_coin)
| drooopy wrote:
| First attempt and I get this wonderfully 90s Star Trek TNG fan
| site http://stng.36el.com/
| gus_massa wrote:
| @thunderbong : Are you the author? People like to make some
| technical questions if the author is here.
|
| What is the tech stack? How do you identify the Web 1.0 sites? Is
| it automatic or a manual list? Are you filtering NSFW sites?
| thunderbong wrote:
| Nope, I'm not. Just found it interesting and posted here!
| gus_massa wrote:
| Following the links posted by dang, it looks like the author
| is https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ehonda
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I'm not the author, but here is the tech stack, and it is if I
| understand correctly manually curated.
|
| https://wiby.me/about/guide.html
| eshack94 wrote:
| Ant farm website that it took me to: https://zimage.com/~ant/
|
| Thought this was pretty neat!
| hnick wrote:
| I landed at http://www.lunarsight.com/ and scrolled to the end,
| where I saw a flashing advertisement. That felt a bit out of
| place, so I checked the URL was safe and clicked it. It was a
| joke.
|
| Those little touches of personality just seem almost entirely
| absent from the new platform-based web.
| mynameishere wrote:
| Here's something to strive for: The "Aloha Award":
| https://www.lavasurfer.com/awardpages/award-aloha-guidelines...
|
| Oh, wait, dammit:
|
| _You cannot apply directly for our Aloha Award. It is only
| granted to the top websites which win our Pau Hana Award. (Only
| about 5% of Pau Hana Award-winning sites go on to win the coveted
| "Aloha Award")._
|
| Pretty rigorous for a website that specializes in the history of
| breakfast food spokestoons.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Just missed the Pau Hana deadline by 24 years :-/
| willhackett wrote:
| I had a great IPT teacher in high school who open sourced his
| class plan on http://wonko.info.
|
| Hit site was inspired by old mud games. It's meant to be fun and
| educational.
|
| There's also some micro sites on there where he tried to win
| worst website awards.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I am sure there was a site called randomurl back in 90s that did
| this. Of course it needed no filter as everything was web1
| rwky wrote:
| It took me here https://greem.co.uk/otherbits/jelly.html Nailing
| jelly to a wall: is it possible? Which I think is HN worthy in
| its own right. Also the author of that page and I have the same
| toaster.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I feel like I need a more comprehensive explanation of
| jelly/jam. So jam is the same in both countries? What is jelly
| in America then?
| ficklepickle wrote:
| Wikipedia to the rescue!
|
| > jelly (from the French gelee)[29] is a clear or translucent
| fruit spread made by a process similar to that used for
| making jam, with the additional step of filtering out the
| fruit pulp after the initial cooking.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_preserves#Jelly
| Aeolun wrote:
| That seems entirely counterproductive. Why remove the fruit
| from jam?
| rrobukef wrote:
| Berries with seeds are strained to remove the seeds. It
| tastes nice so we do it with everything else too.
| juvvel wrote:
| Jelly is thickened juice, jam contains the pulp. Why?
| Different textures.
| hnick wrote:
| And does agar based jelly count, or just gelatine?
| petepete wrote:
| When making them we (UK) tend to use pectin as the thickening
| agent for jams/marmalades and gelatin for jelly. You can buy
| sugar with pectin added marketed as 'jam sugar'.
|
| Jam should be nowhere near as firm as jelly.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _I conducted this experiment as a little diversion in the
| lazy few weeks between finishing my final year exams at
| university and graduating, back in June 2005._
|
| Everything about that page screamed "I'm bored in a dorm." Nice
| to know my college-dar is still accurate.
|
| Also, it would have been nice to test with flat masonry nails.
| I.e. not round shank.
| eshack94 wrote:
| Focus DIY, one of the stores that the author states his
| materials were sourced from, has been defunct since July 2011.
| Just to add some context to when this experiment might have
| taken place.
|
| Edit: I see the page's copyright date is 2005, so it's probably
| safe to assume that's when the original experiment took place.
| effingwewt wrote:
| Once the question was posed I _had_ to know!
|
| This whole thread ia brilliant, I do miss the old web.
| mulmen wrote:
| The "old web" is still there, as evidenced by this page and
| the submission. We didn't lose anything. New things just came
| and made more noise. You can still set up a static HTML site
| in an afternoon.
| itsmartapuntocm wrote:
| Looks like they noticed:
|
| > 15th July 2023: Fix link rot
|
| > The fact that this page is now old enough to vote hasn't
| stopped the internet rediscovering it. Much as I would like
| keep everything preserved exactly as it was as an example of
| the older, simpler web, some of the links above had become dead
| or worse, so they've been removed.
|
| > For those asking about the toaster: as I recall, it was
| better at toasting the middle and bottom of the bread than the
| top.
| remkop22 wrote:
| Lovely.
|
| > _This page is copyright 2005 by Graeme Cole. What are you
| allowed to do with it? Pfft. Anything within the realms of
| common sense, really. I don 't want to prescribe rigidly what
| people can and can't do with it, so I've decided on a
| benchmark. It's this: you're allowed to do with this page
| anything you wouldn't mind me doing with your cat. So yes, you
| can photoshop it for comedy effect, you can copy bits of it for
| illustrative purposes and so on, but you can't steal it and
| pass it off as your own._
| drhagen wrote:
| I was going to say the man invented CC-BY before there was
| CC-BY, but apparently, the first CC licenses came out in
| 2002.
| catach wrote:
| Pretty sure the value of the CC licenses isn't that they
| invented any particular set of restrictions and freedoms,
| but that they applied enough lawyer energy so that the
| wording of those sets would be compatible with law systems.
| DakotaR wrote:
| As opposed to 'crayon' licenses that make up their own
| terms and cause legal uncertainty
| swader999 wrote:
| CATPL license.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| _> Further research into the area might involve the nailing to
| the wall of a stronger jelly mix. Alternatively, the "wall"
| could be placed, nails first, into the jelly while it's
| setting, to allow the jelly to set around the nails. Then in
| the morning the bowl can be removed, leaving the jelly nailed
| to the wall._
|
| Ahaha, but also, hmmm... _thinking_ would it actually work if
| you allowed the jelly to set around the nails?
| data-ottawa wrote:
| If you read further some commenters tried that and failed,
| along with setting straws into the jelly and nailing them and
| mixing solids into the jelly to improve the structural
| integrity. The results are only noted as mixed, so I assume
| they didn't work out reliably.
|
| I definitely have a few ideas: try smoother and surfaces to
| adhere to (does jelly suction to the surface?), set the jelly
| vertically in a box against the wall, try mixing cool whip
| into the jelly to thicken it...
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| This is the best thing I have seen in a long time.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Tell me more about this toaster. How well does it make bread go
| brown?
| rwky wrote:
| You had to ask and apparently I have nothing to better to do
| on a Saturday night. It's a Russell Hobbs Model 5569, it says
| it has a "microchip" inside. If I was to hazard a guess it's
| at least 25 years old (the post is 18 so sounds reasonable).
| It actually fits a piece of toast, even thick pieces or
| crumpets which a lot of modern toasters don't. It does
| require the toast flipping since it does one side more than
| the other but that's not a hardship. A single flip on about
| "2" does a nice golden brown.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Toasters that cannot fit crumpets should be a violation of
| some aspect of the UN Charter on Human Rights.
|
| I used to also have that toaster with the "microchip." It
| sounded impressive at the time. Now I want to tear one open
| and see what sort of "microchip" it uses. A 555?
| rruark wrote:
| A cheap toaster these days will use a toaster ASIC rather
| than a general purpose microcontroller or timer. PT8A2514
| [1] is one example. Another surprising type of ASICs I've
| come across are vape ASICS [2].
|
| [1]:
| https://www.diodes.com/assets/Datasheets/PT8A2514A.pdf
| [2]: http://robruark.com/other/Teardowns/Vape_ASIC/vape_a
| sic.html
| bragr wrote:
| Browsing these has made me realize the main benefits of modern
| web design is probably responsive layout. Some of these site hold
| up, but some really don't depending on how you browse them (ultra
| wide desktop vs smaller window vs mobile). Certainly you could
| fix some of the worst issues with classic html tricks but you'd
| have to made tradeoffs.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I really hate it when web sites deliberately constrain their
| content to a tiny vertical column down the middle of the
| browser window. I have a 27 inch wide screen display. I paid
| for the whole 27 inches of the thing. When I stretch my browser
| window across it, I expect the web site content to fill it. I
| don't expect the site to fill 2/3 of it with white space.
|
| Yea, I have heard the whole "research shows, people can't read
| long horizontal lines of text" excuse. Blah blah blah. Don't
| care. If I find myself having trouble reading a long horizontal
| line of text, I can easily... [brace yourself for this one]
| resize my browser window! Let the user decide.
|
| If you (the web developer) really feel like you just have to do
| something different when the browser window is too wide for
| your sensibilities... maybe divide the content into columns or
| something. Anything but useless white space.
| omgmajk wrote:
| Some things were better in the past, not a lot of things, but
| some things.
| cglong wrote:
| I ended up at this site [1]. The TLD makes it obvious this is a
| new site, and this person is choosing to keep the aesthetic alive
| today :)
|
| [1]: https://upallnight.wtf/screens/screens
| kunalgupta wrote:
| wow these are nice
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Here's my favorite web 1.0 site (still seems to be updated).
|
| https://philohome.com/
|
| I have no relation to this site, but as a kid it helped get me
| into custom electronics to scratch itches I had when building
| Lego Mindstorms robots - namely when you wanted to sense
| something Lego didn't have a sensor for.
| darepublic wrote:
| Found this great tale which led me down further down rabbit holes
| in the aftermath of reading it. It also dawned on me how long ago
| 2001 is: the dates on these events were prior to Sept 11 2001.
| https://www.angelfire.com/trek/caver/
| varjag wrote:
| A piece of technology that I had no idea existed:
| http://www.officemuseum.com/stapler_gallery_stapleless.htm
| jareklupinski wrote:
| i remember seeing these as a kid and thinking "oh man regular
| stapler companies are in trouble!"
|
| had no idea the first one was patented in _1910_
| 0xpgm wrote:
| What are the odds that I'm getting into chicken farming and this
| leads me to a chicken farm article?
|
| https://mcdim.xyz/essays/hens.html
| CapTinKneeMow wrote:
| [flagged]
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I love this. Does anyone know how the list was compiled? I would
| suspect a custom web crawler that only indexes sites using
| certain tags. Which makes me wonder if there are any sites that
| would qualify with the exception of a modern js advertisement
| someone slapped on. I
| thunderbong wrote:
| As @marginalia_nu replied to another comment [0], here's the
| info [1]
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36740261
|
| [1]: https://wiby.me/about/guide.html
| mighmi wrote:
| Someone guy this site: https://upallnight.wtf/screens/screens
| whose tds shows that it's modern, but follows the right
| aesthetic.
| GenerWork wrote:
| What a wonderful site! I ended up being directed to a site about
| someones now deceased white buffalo.
|
| http://whitebuffalomiracle.homestead.com/
| technics256 wrote:
| This gave me very happy proustian moments
| costanzaDynasty wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| I miss stumble upon more than any other site that has died in 30
| years.
| ysxoz wrote:
| [flagged]
| Daub wrote:
| Found this rather poignant page: https://www.bell-
| labs.com/usr/dmr/www/
|
| Cross-referenced to this (death of Dennis Ritchie):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3105526
| ysxoz wrote:
| [flagged]
| cargocultcoding wrote:
| Thanks for that. I like it very much. Great retrospective in
| times, when even a daily newspaper HTML page queries dozens of
| Websites via JS in the background - unnoticed by most. Actually,
| my last system kept me thinking that HTML5+CSS plus GET/POST and
| a reasonable Template-"Engine" (think velocity) should be enough.
| No script, no SPA. Enough for content-oriented stuff, even for
| simple web apps.
| vGPU wrote:
| http://sasquatchgenomeproject.org/
|
| By Dr. Ketchum. Hmm...
|
| Regardless, I love this! I just finished reading a site on fixing
| the flaws in the Atari ET game.
| kofesmolotkom wrote:
| This is incredible and such a nostalgia. I landed here, haha:
| http://juliestudio.com/rangers/romance.html
| susam wrote:
| What is really fascinating about these old websites is that
| they are still up and running. The content in the link you
| posted is over two decades old. But they are still paying the
| money for the domain name and keeping the website alive!
| inquirerGeneral wrote:
| [dead]
| netsharc wrote:
| Ouch, first hit is a lady's homepage which top update is a
| message from her son (in 2014) that she's passed away:
| annieshomepage.com
|
| Cute design, yeah, we don't see much of that nowadays.
| joshu wrote:
| Yay, StumbleUpon!
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Reminds me of my90stv.com, where you can browse television from
| the 90s:
|
| https://my90stv.com
| silisili wrote:
| I got https://www.iqtestforfree.com/
|
| and must say, that's the most accurate online IQ test I've taken.
| zhte415 wrote:
| It didn't even ask for an email address!
| superkuh wrote:
| Another way to find web 1.0 websites is to browse with Javascript
| on temporary whitelist only. Any JS dependent modern site will
| fail to display and you can safely close the tab knowing it was
| commercial crap anyway.
| RuggedPineapple wrote:
| I got a link celebrating Uncle Tom's Cabin. Although to be fair
| to the page, it does feature an 'African-American Responses'
| section, right next to the 'Pro-Slavery Responses'.
| dbalatero wrote:
| http://burger.com
| matricaria wrote:
| What exactly marks the difference between Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and
| Web 3.0? I read these terms all the time, is there a good
| explanation?
| varjag wrote:
| xmlHttpRequest
| adra wrote:
| 1.0 was mostly static web pages with content changes largely
| driven by manual page updates to static web resources. This was
| the era where most sites were powered by an httpd host.
|
| 2.0 was when databases and ajax (JavaScript async) started to
| take over as a web content delivery form. Often content
| delivery moved from semantic page navigation flows to "single
| page applications" where the client state was often held client
| side and pushed to the server when asking for new content.
|
| 3.0 is the marketing term for crypto based projects that are
| trying to sell "a brand new web" where there are no longer
| centralized services providing content, and somewhere it all
| gets glued together with crypto forgetting that most of the
| modern web users are running on cell phones with limited cpu
| and more importantly battery constraints. It's also part of a
| proud group of technologies that garnered a catchy marketing
| term to describe the movement before the practical
| implementations emerged (much unlike web 1.0, 2.0 before it).
| [deleted]
| glenstein wrote:
| I fully agree that 3.0 is the marketing term for
| decentralized cryptobro stuff, but isn't it also a term that
| tentatively belonged to a more generic idea of a regular web
| that iterates beyond web 2.0?
| msla wrote:
| No. Web 3.0 is only defined in terms of marketing buzz tied
| to crypto. It has zero use outside of that.
| pests wrote:
| Not true. The semantic web people were using it to
| describe their ambitions.
| tunesmith wrote:
| I don't think there is, because even here there is disagreement
| about whether a web server that returns html and css without
| using NodeJS is 1.0 or 2.0.
| cratermoon wrote:
| The boundary is fuzzy, as others have pointed out. If there's
| one specific technology that serves as a definite boundary it's
| the use of XMLHttpRequest in javascript running on the browser,
| later dubbed "AJAX", which is short for Asynchronous JavaScript
| and XML.
|
| It was first implemented (non-standard) around 2001 in Windows
| 2000, Outlook and IE 5. Subsequently other browsers (Mozilla in
| particular) adopted it and it became a _def facto_ standard.
|
| Not every site the uses/used Ajax is fully Web 2.0, but they
| are definitely not 1.0. The affect on web development was
| transformative, resulting in "DHTML", or Dynamic HTML. Webmail,
| for example, in the gmail, first released in 2004, you see a
| fully Web 2.0 site. You might say it's the beginning of what's
| called the Single Page Application. At a time when the average
| home internet connection was still pretty slow over dial-up,
| eliminating most round-trips was a game-changer.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Not sure, but table-based layouts, no css, and being made with
| no concern for monetization are hallmarks of a 1.0 site.
| distantsounds wrote:
| web1.0 - read only (consumption only, very few self
| creation/publishing tools) web2.0 - read/write (forums,
| communities, cheap/free hosting) web3.0 - read/write/own
| (blockchain)
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| 1.0 - just normal web stuff 2.0 - better 3.0 - betterer
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Web 1.0 is any website with the doctag <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC
| "-//SoftQuad Software//DTD HoTMetaL PRO
| 6.0::19990601::extensions to HTML 4.0//EN">; it's frames based
| designs, table based layouts, blink tags and under construction
| gifs.
|
| Web 2.0 is the transition from _homepages_ and _webmasters_ to
| _content_ and _platforms_ , users are producing the content and
| platform owners get rich off ads. It also coincides with the
| shift to AJAX and web applications that had logic in the front-
| end, but this isn't really part of the actual definition.
|
| Web 3.0 was briefly the semantic web. It didn't really take off
| and was largely forgotten when the cryptobros relaunched the
| term. New Web 3 is all about using decentralization,
| blockchains and cryptocurrencies and NFTs to somehow solve the
| problems with Web 2.0.
| ohxh wrote:
| As far as I understand, web 1.0 is browser makes a request ->
| backend delivers some html, with subsequent requests just for
| css/images/iframes. This also had a characteristic style with
| layouts made from tables and simple but busy designs. Web 2.0
| is many of the web apps you see today, where you don't need to
| load a page to fetch new content, but instead asynchronous
| JavaScript grabs it and edits the html -- think gmail or Google
| maps. Web 3.0 is unclear to me, but it seems like most people
| who use it refer to decentralized or peer to peer applications
| and crypto.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| pavlov wrote:
| Today it's primarily a load of nonsense that cryptocurrency
| promoters use to make people want to buy tokens related to some
| useless website which has no users except the other token
| holders.
|
| Back in 2005, "web 2.0" was a marketing term meant to indicate
| optimism that dynamic web applications could transcend the
| economic disappointments of the dot-com boom and bust. It was
| always nebulous and poorly defined, and the only reason we're
| talking about "web 2.0" almost two decades later is the
| aforementioned crypto promoters.
| [deleted]
| Waterluvian wrote:
| There's no concrete delineator. You kinda know it when you see
| it. Some common things for Web 1.0 though:
|
| - usually no or minimal javascript
|
| - minimal CSS, leaning on default styles
|
| - feels like a passion project by one person or a small group
|
| - design is usually minimal and completely lacking in any
| "techniques" used to manipulate you
|
| - usually isn't trying to sell you anything
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Thanks for this, wiby and many of the results work great on 2G
| GSM with my Sony Ericsson W810i. It's getting tough to find sites
| that support old SSL or non-SSL. It can't handle the newer
| standards as it was made in 2005.
| AltruisticGapHN wrote:
| Wow this will be so much fun to browse on my iPad. BOOKMARKED!!
| BlackRockEyes wrote:
| [dead]
| 0xedd wrote:
| I love how well the absolute majority of these sites render on a
| phone. What did front end modernize? Wasted resources?
| takoid wrote:
| If you enjoy this, you will probably enjoy Marginalia as well:
| https://search.marginalia.nu/
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I do think Wiby is the superior weird shit finder. It's smaller
| but far more consistently good.
| swader999 wrote:
| It took a lot of tries but I finally found blinking text!
| CafeRacer wrote:
| It's awesome! Thank you!
|
| Just the other day I was thinking that 99% of things is in
| echochaimer; same dozen of companies pushing same dozen of
| narratives over then same dozen of apps and the internet is
| boring and hopeless and everything is the same now.
|
| There was a site before, that would randomly show you different
| websites based on the category of interest. But it got purchased
| by another company and turned into shit.
|
| I was missing something like that. Thank you.
| mighmi wrote:
| Stumbleupon?
| CafeRacer wrote:
| Yes, that one.
| Kosirich wrote:
| What the actual f... http://gunsandsand.com/
| Dwedit wrote:
| When you say "Web 1.0", what exactly do you mean? Just "Any
| website that's not major social media"?
| bromuro wrote:
| To me, websites 1.0 are those before the widespread use of
| XMLHttpRequest.
| pests wrote:
| Agreed. Back before "AJAX" was a concept and people still
| talked about DHTML.
| Popeyes wrote:
| http://nicejewishmom.com/
|
| OK, was not expecting that.
| susam wrote:
| There was Web 1.0. Then there was Web 2.0. Now we find ourselves
| in the era of Web Pi (3.14159). This humorous term comes from one
| of my favourite comments that I once found on HN. Quoting the
| comment from <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30139081>
| below:
|
| > _Nice read. Firm supporter of Web Pi (3.1415). When it comes to
| building for the web today, I 'm always amazed that "so much can
| be done with so little" and yet the default is the opposite - "so
| much is needed to deliver so little" - so irrational! Where did
| we go wrong? I wonder what Web Euler (2.71828) would have looked
| like?_
|
| In that same thread, I made a comment that my favourite phase of
| the web was Web Golden (1.61803). That was my attempt at
| extending their humour. Web Golden refers to the very short-lived
| sweet spot between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. If you're looking for a
| moderate dose of nostalgia, I have elaborated that golden phase a
| little more in my blog post here: <https://susam.net/maze/web-
| golden.html>.
|
| By the way, the Wiby link on this HN story took me to this
| website: <https://www.evanmiller.org/>. Really neat website with
| an interesting collection of articles.
| tingletech wrote:
| I used to work with someone who always held that Pi was the
| ideal group size for a committee that would get any work done.
| tobr wrote:
| Three fully-committed members, and one who's about 14%
| engaged?
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| A good university project group. Even though it is usually
| closer to e.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Web 3.0 used to be the term we used for the semantic web.
|
| Under that perspective it's not Web 3.0 yet.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| I've never encountered a site with so much construction underway,
| may become something big one day:
| http://textfiles.com/underconstruction/
| TA_34545677 wrote:
| LOL
|
| good one :)
| phatskat wrote:
| Thank you for that amazing trip back in time
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| the first link it opened for me is
| https://www.landoverbaptist.org/...
|
| which is banned in my country, I expect because of the word
| "baptist"
|
| :|
|
| Anyhoo a second retry got me
| http://www.bloodgod.org/2006_Christian_Goth_Gathering.htm
|
| which um...
|
| Anyhoo this is fun, thanks for sharing this, OP. I miss the old
| days sometimes.
|
| I didn't have access to BBS or MUD or whatever in my country, so
| web 1.0 is what remember most from browsing the windows 95
| machine in my dad's office. I think the first website I ever
| opened was yahoo, I think.
|
| my father is deceased now, the world has changed so much since
| then.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| The first link is a satire Christian website. It looks
| promising from the homepage. "Armed Churchgoers Slaughter
| Thousands of Endangered Species in Rousing Show of Support for
| President Trump!" "Kristian Kids Korner" "Why Did Jesus Have
| Long Hair Like a Homo?...
| hk__2 wrote:
| *A random website from a _curated list_ of what one thinks
| represents "Web 1.0". A lot of these go beyond plain HTML /CSS
| websites; for example I got one with a Flash game (emulated using
| Ruffle [1]).
|
| [1]: https://ruffle.rs/#what-is-ruffle
| tantalor wrote:
| Web 1.0 was Flash. Web 2.0 killed it.
| anthk wrote:
| No, that was web 1.0 + plugins. Flash was good for media such
| games, but it sucked for blind people.
| atothayu wrote:
| omg amazing https://www.taquitos.net/snacks.php?page_code=14
| dehue wrote:
| Wow, I was not expecting to be taken to such an interesting
| website on my first click: http://www.goodearthgraphics.com/ This
| site has an underground cave directory by state, cave virtual
| tours with photos, cave type descriptions, cave photography tips
| and much more. I may just use this website to plan my next road
| trip and explore some caves.
| scriptkiddy wrote:
| Highly recommend Lake Shasta Caverns if you're ever in the
| area. Also, Mitchell Caverns in Mojave NP.
| reaperducer wrote:
| And half of the entries have phone numbers ending in -CAVE.
|
| Reminds me of the days when it was ordinary to memorize dozens
| and dozens of phone numbers, so one-offs had to be at least
| temporarily memorable.
| rhymeswithjazz wrote:
| There are three links at the bottom of that page that all still
| work. I'm a little surprised that link rot hasn't caught up to
| them.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| This is a great replacement for most of the drool on HN lately.
| SCAQTony wrote:
| I got this gem: What planes can you fly without a pilot's
| license. https://pilotinstitute.com/flying-without-a-license/
| redbell wrote:
| Hit a few clicks and start getting some random, nostalgic, fast,
| and straight-to-the-point sites.
|
| All of the sites are quite calm; subconsciously, my brain was
| waiting for the _Accept Cookies_ banner and /or the _Hi, How can
| I help you_ robot popup, but nothing appeared to distract you.
| What a lost era! I miss those old days :(
| ykonstant wrote:
| I clicked once to humor the submission and already got a better
| experience than 99% of modern websites:
| http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/index.html
|
| This was with one click. Never used this before.
| causality0 wrote:
| It's easy to forget just how personal and earnest the internet
| used to be. Nobody could take your internet presence away from
| you.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I was about to comment how bad Web 1.0 design works on mobile and
| then I remembered that Safari was originally designed with
| affordances to deal with the pre-responsive web.
|
| The link took me to this site
|
| http://www.niagarafrontier.com/
|
| I just started double tapping on elements and it made just the
| sections I was trying to read full screen and it was immediately
| readable.
| RGBCube wrote:
| > I just started double tapping on elements and it made just
| the sections I was trying to read full screen and it was
| immediately readable.
|
| I never knew this was what double tap did, I always thought it
| zoomed a fixed %.
|
| Also works on Firefox mobile, BTW.
| Swalden123 wrote:
| This was a blast from the past
|
| A daggerfall fan site.
|
| http://www.jceason.dircon.co.uk/dagger/dfindex.htm
| mrnonchalant wrote:
| https://blazeti.me/
|
| I don't know what it means, but it's provocative.
| ram_rattle wrote:
| so cool!
| xioxox wrote:
| An interesting technique to draw holograms by hand:
| http://amasci.com/amateur/holo1.html
| firecall wrote:
| Struck Kitten Gold!
|
| http://www.svanelunden.dk/
| StockHuman wrote:
| My second result: http://www.driveintheater.com/
|
| Phenomenal, exactly as expected.
| keninorlando wrote:
| I miss Web 1.0
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| I learned a lot about drugs today, thanks to this site. I'm not
| quite sure that all the info was correct (a statement that
| crystal meth doesn't create physical addiction was quite
| surprising), but still, I learned a lot of new drug names today.
| devinjon wrote:
| One of my favourites so far.
|
| https://ashidakim.com/
|
| The art of ninja as expounded upon by a master ninja. I mean, my
| brain says it's a joke, but it's so extensive and has books for
| sale.
|
| The site is filled with gems, like this piece of advice on
| tailoring your training: "If I were in the Ring ... I'd have to
| regulate my diet and do a lot of running for stamina. When I'm a
| bouncer, I practice drinking and smoking."
|
| Sound.
| tooker wrote:
| Reminds me of http://www.realultimatepower.net/
| devinjon wrote:
| Oh, that's good. "Facts: 1. Ninjas are mammals."
| scriptkiddy wrote:
| Ashida Kim is a rabbit hole. He was very serious about being a
| Ninja. He also wrote a terrible book about all of his supposed
| sexual exploits. Real narcissist.
| ainiriand wrote:
| I've been sent to nationstates.net and I think I'm lost forever.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >A Collector's Guide to Soviet Military and Civilian Uniform
| Visor Caps of the Cold War Period: 1946-1991
|
| That's it. That's the website. God bless it. What have we lost.
| shevis wrote:
| Did not disappoint
| http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/walltapings/
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Wiby.me: curated search engine for content-first suckless
| sites_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33373619 - Oct 2022
| (65 comments)
|
| _Show HN: Wiby is now free software_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32027177 - July 2022 (35
| comments)
|
| _Wiby: A search engine for the classic web_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25153524 - Nov 2020 (4
| comments)
|
| _Show HN: Wiby - A Minimalist's Search Engine_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23926964 - July 2020 (23
| comments)
|
| _Wiby - The Search Engine for Classic Websites_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22321743 - Feb 2020 (1
| comment)
|
| _Wiby - A Search Engine for Classic Websites_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20128680 - June 2019 (1
| comment)
|
| _Wiby - a search engine for classic web pages_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19015356 - Jan 2019 (1
| comment)
|
| _Show HN: Wiby - Search engine for lightweight, unbloated, old
| school websites_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17355218
| - June 2018 (2 comments)
|
| _Wiby - the search engine for old school websites_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16521862 - March 2018 (1
| comment)
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| Wow, sometimes all it takes is just... 9 reposts.
|
| Probably a lesson about startups in here somewhere
| dang wrote:
| ...and a baitier title.
|
| We went easy on that one because the content was better than
| usual.
| philmcc wrote:
| Fair point... and maybe more a 'marketing' lesson than a
| 'persistence' one. None of the previous posts are
| particularly appealing to me.
| upmostly wrote:
| I got http://www.staggeringbeauty.com/
|
| The best possible result.
| jpcfl wrote:
| Epilepsy warning.
| RinTohsaka wrote:
| https://earmark.net/gesr/
| techiereads wrote:
| Interesting, is code public?
| pinkcan wrote:
| import flask import random app=flask.Flask()
| @app.route('/') def random_redir(): with
| open('urls.txt') as of: return
| flask.redirect(random.choice(of.readlines()))
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Prolly don't want to read the file on every request though
| inamberclad wrote:
| Wow, these sites are fast! Amazing how much bloat there is on
| nearly every modern site
| Forge36 wrote:
| I hit a handful of interesting sites.
|
| This one was interesting https://rosemaryjacobs.com/
|
| Slightly crazier: the problem is making rounds again on TikTok
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/150x6g8/collo...
| bitsinthesky wrote:
| Uh oh. I watched the TikTok video first, and thought "haha,
| that's stupid, pretty funny", but then clicked on the rosemary
| link. The woman, from prescribed medicine containing silver,
| considers her life permanently ruined/diminished such that she
| wrote a book warning others.
| tryauuum wrote:
| https://logological.org/girlfriend
|
| Some guy from 1998 explains why he will never have girlfriend
| jonplackett wrote:
| Anyone fancy sleuthing to find an update?
| netsharc wrote:
| His homepage has a link to his mastodon, and it's mostly
| about work, but there's a picture of a broken egg on a
| kitchen floor, and 2 ferrets around it. The text says "Our
| little kitchen assistants are always happy to help clean up
| after accidents.". So... maybe yes? In theory he could also
| be living in a flatshare.
|
| https://mastodon.social/@Logological/107988795967786131
| 26fingies wrote:
| Weirdly "Writing articles about why I don't have a girlfriend"
| doesn't appear in the math
| yawnxyz wrote:
| That page / design looks oddly modern and relevant, despite it
| being 20+ years old...
| data-ottawa wrote:
| I think the design has been updated, the LaTeX equations
| aren't transparent gifs like the days of old.
| axpy906 wrote:
| Yes, if you look at the bottom it's got updated citations
| from the 2010's.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| 2019
|
| "This essay is discussed in Chapter 7 of Joseph M.
| Reagle, Jr.'s book Hacking Life (MIT Press, 2019)."
| syntaxing wrote:
| Now I'm curious if this person ever found a significant other.
| This blog has been updated fairly recently.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| He has also a Twitter presence. All in all it seems, he was
| determened to stick with his self fullfilling prophecy.
|
| The only update on this site on this is:
|
| "Update (2000-04-01): My sarcastic pleas for some e-mail have
| finally been answered. Take a look at this letter from a
| hysterical female reader, which I think perfectly
| demonstrates the point of this entire essay. "
|
| All in all quite sad I think.
| Herodotus38 wrote:
| That's interesting, I got roped into this man's website which
| is similar. I felt very sad about him and tried to find out if
| he ever found love. He was very conflicted about it and on his
| website he states he was 50 when it was written.
|
| https://www.gregdonner.org/about.html
| remram wrote:
| It's really annoying that the bitnami image (and chart) doesn't
| do this.
| akiselev wrote:
| I landed on the ultimate trilobite site:
| https://www.trilobites.info
|
| There are so many different forms of trilobites! A bunch of them
| actually look like prehistoric headcrabs
| guerrilla wrote:
| I really can't comprehend how web 1.0 and 2.0 are two completely
| different Earths. The new web makes me hate people to the point
| of misanthropy while the old web makes me love people and see the
| potential in the world all over again. We've got to do something
| about this. Well, I guess OP already is.
| oyoman wrote:
| I concur with your statement. Going through random sites for an
| hour, it gave me thinking back 25 years ago, when going from
| rings to rings of websites, look at them, reading the
| interesting ones and finally bookmarking them to be able to
| come back to them.
|
| A complete different way to present a personal topic and/or
| interest than the current one. Right now, it is blogs that
| trying to gather an audience for whatever purposes, commercial
| websites, social medias etc. This compared to websites that
| gathered personal interests, or one specific topic that tries
| to be self-contained.
|
| I don't know maybe it is the nostalgia, or how I have first
| interacted with the web, that brings back those contrasts.
| sebmellen wrote:
| What a delightful surprise to see Mustachio Pete!
| https://olegvolk.net/olegv/pete/
| whyenot wrote:
| Thanks to this I found Otterchat,
|
| "... a forum for otter lovers dedicated to the enjoyment of
| otters."
|
| Then there was a site about "goats doing work"
|
| It's so wholesome and endearing. <3
| password54321 wrote:
| Well I just took a trip through Hell http://www.fmh-
| child.org/Hellandwho.html quite fun.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I do miss coming across stuff like this:
| https://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet/freedom.html
| user32489318 wrote:
| Remember stumbling into amateur written sci-fi stories with
| layouts like that. Downloading them to read on CRT monitor till
| late in the night, and losing them forever the next time
| windows would destroy itself.
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