Rendered at 10:12:10 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
arjie 2 minutes ago [-]
Every time people use costs I really wonder what’s going on. My wife still uses an iPhone 13 and life for her is not particularly different from my iPhone 16. You don’t have to do any of this stuff:
> I have to service and finance a £600 phone, pay a monthly contract and subscription to Apple, I then have to install an adblocker because otherwise sites are just unusable
No one is going to connect you to a network from wherever you are for free. Sure that’s true. You have to go to a library or public service if you want that.
But also all these things are entirely optional. One of my bank accounts was locked out of online use because of something or the other and I just used it as my debit card and went in to the branch to withdraw money. I much preferred my other accounts where I could also use online stuff and when I finally got around to solving it it was only 30 min with one of those branch managers.
But I learned that it’s not really that bad to be cut off from online services. It pretty gracefully degrades to just being a banking service like the 2000s.
I haven’t lived in the UK for a decade so it would be a pain for me from here in the US to do so with my HSBC account but all local banking is fine and I could probably continue to use my debit card.
This entire genre of rant is popular on social media like HN these days and I really don’t get it. Everything is awesome. The Internet is blazing fast and has 1000x the content it used to and it’s all incredibly well indexed and available via LLMs and search. This feels very rose-tinted about the past.
roenxi 40 minutes ago [-]
> The internet was about connection, but the way I see it, it’s become a great way for bad actors to...
There seems to be a profound confusion somewhere in here that people come with an evil bit and we're going to toggle technology so that those people can't use it and everyone else can.
Y'know, racists use cars to drive to their racist conventions or whatever. On publicly funded roads. Possibly with time freed up by a strong welfare system. Just because people someone doesn't like use or made something has little relevance to the value of the thing. Horrible people make wonderful things in horrible ways all the time, history is rife with it [0].
Getting off most social media does seem like a win though.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber is a great example, this man is arguably greatly responsible for billions of people being alive today. Which is absolutely stunning in context of the rest of his Wikipedia page.
hkpack 4 minutes ago [-]
[delayed]
michael0church 31 minutes ago [-]
The “good” news is that, if LLMs really do reach AGI, and if we still live under this same economic system that ruined the Internet, there won’t be this decades-long grieving process. It will be a short one, if we’re aware of it at all.
alansaber 24 minutes ago [-]
I'm not a doomer, but when it comes to the internet, I only see things getting worse.
pembrook 20 minutes ago [-]
The lack of self awareness on this site is endlessly amusing to me.
“I’m not a KKK member, but I do enjoy wearing bedsheets while riding horses and burning crosses on my front lawn.”
the_af 16 minutes ago [-]
Are you implying the same people that are pessimistic about the internet are also AI hypers or tech entrepreneurs? Because HN isn't monolithic, it's entirely possible -- in fact, likely -- that these are two distinct sets of people who both read HN. I know I'm pessimistic about much of what the hype people like.
Edit: or if you meant the grandparent claims not to be a doomer but is pessimistic about something, I don't see the contradiction. It's more like "I don't generally like sweet things, but this cake is nice". Where's the contradiction?
grebc 50 minutes ago [-]
The internet isn’t the web/social media.
People don’t complain about roads & gutters because there’s idiots on them that drive. Idiots that drive get the deserved blame.
Words matter. The internet rocks but social media sucks, apps suck, elected representatives suck.
tomgp 36 minutes ago [-]
I see where you're coming from but I don't think the analogy really works because most peoples experience of the internet is entirely 100% mediated by facebook, google, ticktok etc. It's would be like the road network if you needed to rely on a drunk driver to deliver you to your destination.
jrimbault 47 minutes ago [-]
> People don’t complain about roads & gutters because there’s idiots on that drive.
We do complain about roads and infrastructure, and try to improve them so the inevitable idiot's impact is lessened.
utopiah 27 minutes ago [-]
I think they hate the commercialized Internet, and I do too.
59nadir 6 minutes ago [-]
It's becoming an increasingly bad time to be hosting anything on your own, having to worry about whichever 0-day the clankers are going to find and/or exploit within minutes of it being patched. I'm not sure even nginx is safe in all of this. I used to think there was software that should be basically safe but I'm not sure hosting anything (open-source) yourself anymore (i.e. directly participating in the Internet on a personal level) is a good idea.
Having to go through 3rd party services (and rely on them to stay on top of things) to participate is not fun.
gbromios 40 minutes ago [-]
well said
nephihaha 1 hours ago [-]
The term "actor" should be reserved for thespians.
> I have to service and finance a £600 phone, pay a monthly contract and subscription to Apple, I then have to install an adblocker because otherwise sites are just unusable
No one is going to connect you to a network from wherever you are for free. Sure that’s true. You have to go to a library or public service if you want that.
But also all these things are entirely optional. One of my bank accounts was locked out of online use because of something or the other and I just used it as my debit card and went in to the branch to withdraw money. I much preferred my other accounts where I could also use online stuff and when I finally got around to solving it it was only 30 min with one of those branch managers.
But I learned that it’s not really that bad to be cut off from online services. It pretty gracefully degrades to just being a banking service like the 2000s.
I haven’t lived in the UK for a decade so it would be a pain for me from here in the US to do so with my HSBC account but all local banking is fine and I could probably continue to use my debit card.
This entire genre of rant is popular on social media like HN these days and I really don’t get it. Everything is awesome. The Internet is blazing fast and has 1000x the content it used to and it’s all incredibly well indexed and available via LLMs and search. This feels very rose-tinted about the past.
There seems to be a profound confusion somewhere in here that people come with an evil bit and we're going to toggle technology so that those people can't use it and everyone else can.
Y'know, racists use cars to drive to their racist conventions or whatever. On publicly funded roads. Possibly with time freed up by a strong welfare system. Just because people someone doesn't like use or made something has little relevance to the value of the thing. Horrible people make wonderful things in horrible ways all the time, history is rife with it [0].
Getting off most social media does seem like a win though.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber is a great example, this man is arguably greatly responsible for billions of people being alive today. Which is absolutely stunning in context of the rest of his Wikipedia page.
“I’m not a KKK member, but I do enjoy wearing bedsheets while riding horses and burning crosses on my front lawn.”
Edit: or if you meant the grandparent claims not to be a doomer but is pessimistic about something, I don't see the contradiction. It's more like "I don't generally like sweet things, but this cake is nice". Where's the contradiction?
People don’t complain about roads & gutters because there’s idiots on them that drive. Idiots that drive get the deserved blame.
Words matter. The internet rocks but social media sucks, apps suck, elected representatives suck.
We do complain about roads and infrastructure, and try to improve them so the inevitable idiot's impact is lessened.
Having to go through 3rd party services (and rely on them to stay on top of things) to participate is not fun.