<story><title>I Miss the Old Internet (2019)</title><url>http://misc-stuff.terraaeon.com/articles/miss-old-internet.html/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>aimor</author><text>I miss organization too. Every time I use Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc I feel at the mercy of the website as it shows me rocks one by one and I shake my virtual head &amp;quot;no.. no.. no..&amp;quot; until by chance something looks interesting. They have the metadata, why can&amp;#x27;t I browse by year or filter by director or actors, or any arbitrary combination of the available data?&lt;p&gt;And this is the same for news sites, where there should be a 20+ year history of articles but I can&amp;#x27;t browse it. And obviously social media where information is ephemeral and you only need to see what&amp;#x27;s happening right now. Shopping is ok on smaller sites, where inventory is static and items are either in stock or not. But earlier this year I could have snapped my keyboard in half trying to find a specific piece of hardware on the Lowes&amp;#x2F;Home Depot&amp;#x2F;Amazon website. There&amp;#x27;s no clear answer like &amp;quot;we don&amp;#x27;t carry that item&amp;quot; instead the search box vomits back all kinds of misinformation. Web Search itself might be the worst, only giving the most shallow corporate results, I&amp;#x27;m not surprised it feels like there are few personal website when our index to the internet is so polluted.</text></item><item><author>Causality1</author><text>I just miss organization. Everything feels like a mess now. Content is either in an endless scroll or it&amp;#x27;s only accessible through a search box and you have absolutely no idea whether the site doesn&amp;#x27;t have the content you wanted or if you just failed to use the correct terms. Increased reliance on CDNs and cross-site content has simultaneously made web pages expire faster than ever and made them harder to archive.&lt;p&gt;Multimedia is also a shadow of what it once was. Twenty years ago it was common for material to be presented in a way that integrated text, sound, pictures, and video together in an easily navigable way. A page on, say, Lewis and Clark would offer you an audio introduction, an interactive map that brought up text journal entries for clickable points of interest, and relevant pictures. Now your only option is a web page with embedded pictures which may as well be a paper encyclopedia entry, or a video that may or may not offer you any useful way to navigate it aside from jumping around at random and most certainly doesn&amp;#x27;t give you rich annotations throughout.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bbarnett</author><text>Amazon seems to get worse and worse by the day.&lt;p&gt;All their idiotic sponsored results make finding things impossible.&lt;p&gt;For example, if I try to search for x, maybe I want to only see x from brand y.&lt;p&gt;They have an option for only brand y, yet sponsored results are immune to this.&lt;p&gt;Worse, lately, they now show different options as individual search results.&lt;p&gt;So, looking for a shirt I want, from brand x, has 1&amp;#x2F;2 the page filled with sponsored garbage, and often the rest with 7 colours of the exact same shirt, individually show.&lt;p&gt;Add to this, that search terms seem to be mild suggestions?&lt;p&gt;Well, if I am in the shirt category, search as above, but with a unique thing like turtleneck, I get a boatload of responses without any turtlenecks.&lt;p&gt;Obviously, some sellers are motivated to lie with their tags, but this isn&amp;#x27;t the only reason this isn&amp;#x27;t happening.&lt;p&gt;Add to this that most listings have no size chart, no fabric info, no origin location, or even conflicting info, and holy pita.&lt;p&gt;EG, I am not polyester friendly, yet some listings say things like 100% polyester, then the very next line, 95% cotton, 5% spandex.&lt;p&gt;Just 100% crap amazon!&lt;p&gt;All of this could be improved with more standardized listings controls and forms for sellers, and amazon has the cash and has had years to do it, too.&lt;p&gt;And lately, 20% of the stuff I order comes opened, used, even dirty.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not paying new pricing for dirty clothes, amazon!&lt;p&gt;Especally shoes, socks, underwear (wtf?!).&lt;p&gt;I swear, walmart must have amazon moles, or is getting paid off &amp;#x2F; bribed by amazon, because a clown could do better against them.</text></comment>
<story><title>I Miss the Old Internet (2019)</title><url>http://misc-stuff.terraaeon.com/articles/miss-old-internet.html/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>aimor</author><text>I miss organization too. Every time I use Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc I feel at the mercy of the website as it shows me rocks one by one and I shake my virtual head &amp;quot;no.. no.. no..&amp;quot; until by chance something looks interesting. They have the metadata, why can&amp;#x27;t I browse by year or filter by director or actors, or any arbitrary combination of the available data?&lt;p&gt;And this is the same for news sites, where there should be a 20+ year history of articles but I can&amp;#x27;t browse it. And obviously social media where information is ephemeral and you only need to see what&amp;#x27;s happening right now. Shopping is ok on smaller sites, where inventory is static and items are either in stock or not. But earlier this year I could have snapped my keyboard in half trying to find a specific piece of hardware on the Lowes&amp;#x2F;Home Depot&amp;#x2F;Amazon website. There&amp;#x27;s no clear answer like &amp;quot;we don&amp;#x27;t carry that item&amp;quot; instead the search box vomits back all kinds of misinformation. Web Search itself might be the worst, only giving the most shallow corporate results, I&amp;#x27;m not surprised it feels like there are few personal website when our index to the internet is so polluted.</text></item><item><author>Causality1</author><text>I just miss organization. Everything feels like a mess now. Content is either in an endless scroll or it&amp;#x27;s only accessible through a search box and you have absolutely no idea whether the site doesn&amp;#x27;t have the content you wanted or if you just failed to use the correct terms. Increased reliance on CDNs and cross-site content has simultaneously made web pages expire faster than ever and made them harder to archive.&lt;p&gt;Multimedia is also a shadow of what it once was. Twenty years ago it was common for material to be presented in a way that integrated text, sound, pictures, and video together in an easily navigable way. A page on, say, Lewis and Clark would offer you an audio introduction, an interactive map that brought up text journal entries for clickable points of interest, and relevant pictures. Now your only option is a web page with embedded pictures which may as well be a paper encyclopedia entry, or a video that may or may not offer you any useful way to navigate it aside from jumping around at random and most certainly doesn&amp;#x27;t give you rich annotations throughout.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>FpUser</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;quot;Every time I use Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc &amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Netflix GUI drives me up the wall</text></comment>