skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If your company uses Google for either Apps or Mail they are a very ignorant company.
Why would any company want to share its secrets with Google?

I was silly at one time and used their DNS services.
Why feed the beast more?
Let them read all your email to sell your personal details?
Why?
Too inept to setup a email program?
You would have to be half silly to trust these folks.
I can't support Alphabet anymore. They have lost their way.
Something pretty close to that already exists, and has been really successful: https://youtu.be/ELPKuKvo44k
The choice isn't between stealing and paying for it. Choosing something else is the principled stand.

There's plenty of good media out there to support without stealing. I'd rather grab an eBook from the library (they get paid) or buy a random indie album on Bandcamp than spend time on media published by people who don't respect their customers.
To me it's pretty obviously fan fiction from the Something Awful forums. It's written in typical fan fiction style and it references SA over and over.
I’m going to be harsh here.

I’m 43. I got on the internet in 94.

The internet now is much better in every way than it was at <insert point x>.

Most of the discussions and sharing you seem to miss is now in the very platforms you have rejected. Twitter in particular is great for communities like Babylon 5. You just need to choose who to follow.

The key thing is don’t be the guy who hates new things. New things are different but they really do work. Try them!
5G standard is ready: Rel-15 success spans 3GPP groups
> What happened?

I think it's due to the popularity contest that has taken over our communication mediums. Everything is based upon likes, stars, upvotes/downvotes, retweets, and shares. This social influence leads to herd behavior and conformity.

I too greatly miss the tight communities I used to participate in across IRC, chat rooms, and topic-specific forums where people simply voiced their opinions and had discussions. They still exist in pockets but the communities are much smaller today. If people were out of line, they were kicked out. If they continued, they were banned. Discussion manipulation was generally limited to bumping forum threads to the top. Today a malicious actor just needs a small bot network to complete control opinion on upvote-based discussion platforms.
It’s not about “scarcity”. Content costs money to make. Should developers not get paid because once they create a piece of software it can be infinitely reproduced?

How much would you be willing to pay for all the content you can get on Netflix, Hulu, etc.
That doesn't scale particularly well. It's fine if you like one or two media sources, but there are thousands of them, and many are high in terms of quality. Having people buy subscriptions for all the media they like would be financially untenable, and probably hurt many of the less popular ones even more.
> Agreed, but any writing is better than none

This is not true at all. There are many examples of writing that is worse than nothing. Just look at many examples of clickbaity material [0], that would make the world better to not exist. This is also disproven by the truly dangerous stuff by extreme examples like Hitler, etc.

This doesn’t apply to OP’s post, but I don’t think the philosophy that any content is better than none.

I do think that personal writing is always helpful. Practice is really useful for writers. But most should stay private or at least unpromoted. When garbage is promoted actively to readers and then criticisms are shrugged off with “its just version 1.0” with no future edits or updates, we have a worse discourse. And I think this means we have a worse outcome than if no initial, shitty version is put out.

I don’t think this is to Medium per se, but their format promotes clickbait, low engagement articles with their applause and payment scheme.

[0] https://www.buzzfeed.com/sydrobinson1/times-pets-completely-...
Are we absolutely sure it's the internet that has changed? I think more than anything, we have changed the most in the sense that our modern minds are encountering many times the number of ideas that previous generations did.
I'm a little older and am nostalgic about BBS's. It brought people together in a specific city. I've still got friends whom I might never have met in real life if it weren't connecting with them first on the BBS.

My experiences online also gave me a big jump over most people on understanding the potential of the Internet. Despite my sermonizing a lot of my friends didn't see any value in getting online for a good three to five years.

When I got a Palm Pilot phone in 2003(?) and showed them I had Internet access on it they were incredulous. These same people who were late to the Internet laughed and said why would you ever want the Internet on your phone?
I don't think we know if history was inevitable. How much do we attribute to specific events because they're the ones that happened, rather than simply the result of deeper, sociological, economic, and cultural causes? The best we can do is explain what we can explain, and I don't know if trying to teach people that history is essentially random is even a goal that you should strive for to begin with.
This phenomenon is well known among boro glass artists, or artists in general. Paying with 'exposure'. People frequently contact us on Instagram, asking for free merchandise, ostensibly to review. If they have 20,000 followers, that may be worth it... for 50,000, it probably is. Often, however, it someone with no significant following who therefore has little to offer. Businesses similarly ask for our time to be donated or traded when we do public demonstrations, though typically they would pay other entertainers such as musicians or comedians.

This definitely is not limited to my niche of glass artists. There's a twitter account about the wider world of people who think artists have vast advertising budgets and lots of free time: https://mobile.twitter.com/forexposure_txt

I think these hotels are in a similar spot - it may be worthwhile advertising, or it may be a worthless request.
Bus Driver Tells Passengers Only U.S. Citizens Can Ride as Border Agent Looks On
Exactly. Excepting Cloudflare which is free, CDNs are expensive (or at least more expensive than I think people realize).

Netflix says it uses about 3GB of bandwidth per hour for streaming HD-quality video. CloudFront for one will charge you $0.26 for that 3GB-hour. It's pretty easy to see how binge watchers will rack up pretty high CDN/bandwidth bills.
Usenet still exists!
I'm a little older and it was quite normal to have your real name in usenet
The summer that never ended.

In relation to the internet, summer never ending was never a thing.

Eternal September¹ is a thing.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
I'd like to point out that I'm about a month shy of 40 next month, so none of this represents a phase or age. When I was a child, I actually refused to wake up for Santa's presents on christmas morning, choosing instead to go to grandmother's house and open Santa gifts when we got home later in the day.

When I follow a natural sleep/wake cycle, I sleep around 3 or 4 and wake around 11 or 12. I can get good quality sleep waking at 9 (going to be earlier, of course), but can't consistently wake naturally this way and must use an alarm. Usually this coincides with hormonal changes once a month. I'm obviously female.

If I wake at 6 or 7 am, things get tricky. Even with good sleep habits (no screens in the bedroom, quiet dark, cool environment, no sleeping in on weekends), my sleep suffers. I'll get a good night or two in, then can't fall asleep until midnight the next night. I always run the risk of not hearing the alarm clock. I'm working against my body clock. I've had to adjust the "good sleep habits" so that I can get more sleep on the weekends lest I wind up with depression due to lack of sleep.

I do what I can to work later shifts, but I can't always avoid mornings.

edited for clarity
We should be moving more towards standardized tests, not moving away.

They are one of the most background-blind ways of establishing student intelligence and creativity, as they have been shown in studies to measure the ephemeral 'g' value representing general intelligence very well.

Now, critics say that impoverished students do worse on the SAT than students from wealthy families, but the fact is that study resources for the SAT exist for free on the internet as well as for low cost in the form of study manuals. Poor students from certain communities probably don't have the same encouragement to study for the SAT as other groups, especially wealthy families. Fortunately, cultivating a culture which encourages study for standardized tests in theory costs nothing.

This puts poor students on a much more level playing field than if we base elite college admissions on things like high school quality, which is already a huge determinant of admissions at top colleges. Unfortunately students can't use free online resources to get into top private high schools. Doing so requires their parents to be well off enough to afford the high cost.

Judging students based on grades is also very difficult because of grade inflation, which obscures things.

We will never be able to fully eliminate the influence of wealth on college admissions, but standardized tests offer the best conceivable way to fairly judge students of all backgrounds.
What's the point of this condescending snarky remark? You're not helping.
The fact that something is already bad isn't a great argument for making it worse, though!
That would be a good model, but in my experience, luxury hotels don't have cheap rooms.
This is cool and answered a recent itch. I have a pocket operator (po-32) which you can update to play new sounds by using a data over audio protocol. It's really neat. Thanks for sharing.
It was in the news a while back, so I'm not sure why the skepticism. It's not super-widespread - I don't think you can just do it with any car. Maybe the rort was set up to involve a company car.
But the balls (baseball, footballs, etc) and players are not wearing sensors. This is done using cameras, not data directly sourced from the players and balls.
I’m 33 and share a similar experience, except that I’ve found Instagram in particular to be an even better social experience than the old days of IM.

I regularly meet people I follow in person if they come through my town, or if I come through theres. And, when I make a new acquaintance, we stay in touch and learn more about eachother in preparation for our next chance encounter. My group of friends is lager than ever, though we don’t meet in person as often as a traditional local relationship.
I agree, I have found myself speaking to more people than ever whilst using Discord.
When I got on the internet in 1992, every person you met there actually had a valid and very good reason to be there. Nowadays, not so much. In fact most people shouldn't be there at all.
I don't mind it, people will always be nostalgic in some sense.

It's not just nostalgia. There's simply more control and oppression, and less spirit of free inquiry nowadays.

Individuals are pushing back (a little not consciously) by opting for groups/smaller circles of friends and interests.

People familiar with North Korea have noted a similar withdrawal there to one's family and friends. While big tech and social media companies are far from murderous, they are getting more authoritarian.
I never got to experience the legitimately old times, but still managed to see some of it around 2010.

I find a lot of joy in a restricted, slow network with people who actually care to be there (have no money to gain, have to go through some effort).

I find this in the deep web. I think it resembles the early internet a lot.
It worked out fine for 16 bit systems and the like, just as it did on the Mac. As machines became more powerful, the need for this technique disappeared.
mornings for me is akin to most folks trying to work a late shift. I'm fine if I have an adequately late waking time: 11 is pretty natural. I can do 9 with good sleep. 6am? My actual quality of sleep suffers.

And I think you misunderstand: I don't fall back asleep. I fail to hear the alarm at all. Or the phone. While we were dating, my now spouse called me to wake me up since he realized he didn't see me online. I did wake... on the 17th phone call. This simply happens with early wakings, regardless of sleep hygiene.
Yep that's what I meant from memory, thank you for providing the correct reference :-)
Wow, so well documented trips! I really like how you could turn your life around and show others how this can be achieved. Definitely the most inspiring thing I started reading this year, kudos!
How about a coin for pedophiles? I know it’s extreme but it’s the only group in society that’s vilified even by health professionals so they’re really hidden.
Yeah but free usenet servers with binaries are rare.
In many places in the World, we're not removed from it. Slavery is still an issue almost everywhere, even in the United States[1], it's just that it now takes the form mostly of domestic slavery and sex trafficking. Other parts of the World still openly practice forced marriage and bonded labour.

1: http://www.endslaverynow.org/learn/slavery-today/domestic-se...
Weren't there a previous Tell HN about this very same topic ?

I'm older than you. I spend half my time trying to explain what is this feeling. It's so ironic that every golden age is killed by itself in a way. We're all pushing for 'better' until we realize that it was just as neat as it should before.

Maybe it's just relativism from psychology, call this general roots. At periods of your time you imprint signals. Minute details that will always make you feel at home. Whenever I run win95, winxp, linux 2.4 I feel so chill. Even though on paper, linux 4 / systemd have 320 extremely valuable features... still there's a 'better' effect. The other day I registered on a phpbb website .. felt cool. No php7 generators or DI based modules .. but I couldn't care less.

It's probably not all nostalgia, you can really tell how internet became a social business from a fun on the side, everyside is monetized, full of warnings, hyper complex. And very rarely so for the benefits of the user, mostly to avoid harm from stupid businesses.

Thank god IRC (and others) are still the same.
No design in economy? Are you serious? Do you really think that US (or any other developed country) does not plan or regulate its economy and just lets things happen?

Also, it's funny you mention communism, because no "design" was planned there originally, and the economy was supposed to just "emerge" from fundamental principles and real life conditions.

My understanding of biological evolution is that seemingly random mutations take place. This is like having a bunch of monkeys with typewriters, and hoping they produce a Shakespeare's sonnet. Yes, it's possible, but highly unlikely.

I see several explanations of why biological evolution is successful:

1. trillions of trillions of planets launched evolutionary processes during the last 14B years, and ours just happened to be extremely lucky one, where intelligent life has appeared (through random mutations) against all odds.

2. intelligent life has emerged through random mutations on some other lucky planet, and those intelligent beings planted some kinds of seeds capable of developing into intelligent life eventually on other planets.

3. life on Earth was not planted like in the second scenario, but the random mutations are not really random, and are guided by something we don't understand (yet). Living in a simulation, all-mighty God, or some not yet developed branch of complexity theory, would belong here.

Note that the second scenario is extremely more likely than the first one, and the third one imo is more likely than the second one. In any case, it's not just "controversy". It's a serious lack of understanding of biological evolution (either on my part, or in general), similar to how there's a serious lack of understanding of how a brain works.
Probably the heavier that one is the easier. Just use resonance to move it and use minimal force. Just need to time it well.
I’m not, but neither is that the point. Obviously no one needs any of this, it’s always a matter of want. The question is how much it costs to get it, today, yesterday, and tomorrow. People crowing about the downfall of cable packages while ignoring splintering subscriptions for the same content are missing that point, don’t you think?

The point is that it seems media companies, in their greed, have forgotten that streaming only works when it offers something better than piracy. A dozen subscriptions that cost more than a cable package did is offering less, with more impediments to use than a Kodi box. The model will, as a previous poster said, fail. The attempt turn everything from software to hardware into a subscription service, because it’s the easiest way to milk money isn’t some god-given right of corporations either.

Now you can yell about entitlement and whatever else, and I’m not wading into that mess, just explaining how it is based on past precedent.
In the last few months I've been spending a lot of my life in tech discords. I'd like to invite anyone interested to join the reddit /r/webdev discord and hang out with me

https://discord.gg/H9Jkc7p
I think that what you're experiencing is pretty common. Internet itself has changed but perhaps more crucially people with whom you've interacted with changed their habits or simply lack the time they used to have (their age groups are different so there's insufficient critical mass to maintain the old community).

There's an added problem of general noise on the Internet which limits the 90s early 00s type of 'signal'. Another aspect is that services used to be quite often hosted by or aimed at the technical/enthusiastic audience, nowadays it is predominantly aimed towards commercial general public.

The internet suffers from centralisation which for the early(ish) adopters creates overall noise.

I'd also like to add that abundance of bandwidth and endless content easily take the aim and focus on doing the cherry picked and well curated things that you used to do. Bandwith has also contributed to ease of bloat, for example today I can't imagine surfing the net without an adblocker, back then ads were fine and served their purpose without impacting the client side.

More generally I believe that larger populations, whether they be large cities or large online communities, will paradoxically make it harder to find others with very specific non-majority interests.
It's common, to the point of being an age-old popular culture trope, for people turning 30 to be very nostalgic about their late teens/early 20s.

You changed. So did I. The world did too, for sure, but the 17 year olds of today will miss the pure and uncorrupted world of 2018 when they turn 30.
Lakoff Trump Tower Lawsuit
You are somehow missing the part about "you can get around it". France could block everything I do and I could circumvent it but it takes time, and would increase cost or limit some of my actions. There is zero difference between a non superpower country blocking you and a megacorps blocking you in terms of the affects on your business

Edit: Additionally, how many of your points are from the viewpoint of "I"? Do you really think as a software engineer, or really just a person in general, that your experiences map to the majority of everyone else?
Welcome to the internet. Sounds like you don’t remember the old one either!
> The summer that never ended

1993 was the September that never ended, when AOL invaded usenet and the world fell apart. At least if you talk to those who were on the internet before then.

People have always longed for the good old days. Those days weren't much different to now, it's often just your perspective that's changed, and you don't miss the good old days, you miss being a carefree teenager
You're certainly not alone, and there are some of us who miss when technology wasn't so biased towards harming you in some way, such as forcing you into a 'filter bubble', and more towards discovery.

Most social media seems actively geared towards making it harder for me to make friends like I used to, and the old IRC servers, though some are still active, are now either dead or filled with people who see all the changes as a 'good thing'.

I have noticed it, and my friends and I are slowly stumbling along in our own pursuit. Our own feeble exploration, if you will.

Our first step, has been the blog you can find in my profile. It is a blog... But it's powered by old .plan files that can sent through pandoc at regular intervals. Every user of the server I've set up has it happen. Or we can just use the ol' finger program to view them.

The shell, our shared shell, is becoming a place we can sit and experiment.

Other pieces of the puzzle are coming slowly too, I'm in the midst of writing two different messaging applications, and others have their ideas as well.

There are no bots... Because we all have our SSH keys, and know to invite each other. Hopefully it'll become more public, more inviting, but first we need to work out what exactly it is that we want.
Thanks, I'll work on the points you've mentioned before talking to the CEO.

Should I tell the CEO that I _might_ be leaving when I'm not completely sure (maybe he agrees to the above and things can be worked out), or wait until I've made a decision to give them a notice?
... I would rather face huge pay cuts (which is exactly what is happening) or even worse rather than ever go back to forced wake-up, which I would now consider a direct violent attack on my person. Exceptions are fine, but no way I would let that be imposed on me as "normal part of life" ever again.

I do understand this! I do what I can to avoid jobs with an early start. :)
Patent groups are not the same as Patent Troll insurance imo. Latter would be much better (even if you would need to give up all patent right).
I'm red green color blind and scored a zero (perfect score) on my Macbook pro
I grew up with phpBB forums. They sucked in many ways, but you could easily find niche communities and be a part of them.

I think Twitter is an inadequate replacement, because on Twitter you don't just sign up and post a thread for everyone to see. You have to convince people to follow you first. Once you have done that you get exposed to many parts of Twitter beyond just your niche -- politics and memes tend to spread like wildfire. Twitter has other strengths but it's targeted to a wider group of people, not just young men with narrow interests.

Reddit is a great place for talking about hobbies, but it is fairly anonymous. Maybe it would be different if you could have animated GIF avatars and massive signatures! I'm mostly a lurker there but I'm sure you can make great friends on Reddit, especially if you reach out.

These days a lot of nice communities seem to be forming on Discord, for things related to games, programming and similar nerdy interests.

There are more people than ever on the internet, and not everyone hangs out on Twitter. I'm sure you can find your channels if you just look.