📢 New Essay: The Boring Internet
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@ska I've done some general reading on how they write. you can't do reversals (not this, that!) and you can't use triads (this, other, thing). And we all know you can't use em-dashes even though my natural style is to use all of those because I think they're effective. sigh
@tg Yeah. Fast-paced enumerations, too. Word. Word. Word. Word.
I really hate that they took good patterns and apply them everywhere without discrimination, which now make them sus when humans apply it where they belong.
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@ska I've done some general reading on how they write. you can't do reversals (not this, that!) and you can't use triads (this, other, thing). And we all know you can't use em-dashes even though my natural style is to use all of those because I think they're effective. sigh
fwiw, I had the exact same sense while reading that fantastic post. Not to an excessive degree - I just thought there was a tasteful amount of it used to tidy up what had been hand written.
I'm glad no Ai was used, yet perhaps even more disappointed that some manners of writing are now forever tainted
I just subscribed to your rss feeds, via feedly which I've recently revived and am cleaning up. Sad that Current is apple-only. A PWA would be ideal, and aligned with your ethos...
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New Essay: The Boring InternetThe internet you grew up on isn’t dying.
A commercial veneer glued on top of it is.
@tg Brilliant, thank you: You once again manage to crystallize distinctions (here: services vs. protocols) and draw hopeful observations from them; Reading this makes me cry.
One comment: Using the boring internet sometimes depends on privilege at the moment. Learning how to set up servers and interact with less-explored protocols often requires a huge time + energy investment. I find that easy to forget.
(I don't think that privilege dependency is fundamental: Software improvements can reduce failure modes and increase compatibility; I've also been thinking about self-updating small server boxes to physically hand out to friends who want their own file storage and fediverse instances. Though those would be instances of social privilege. Hm.) -
fwiw, I had the exact same sense while reading that fantastic post. Not to an excessive degree - I just thought there was a tasteful amount of it used to tidy up what had been hand written.
I'm glad no Ai was used, yet perhaps even more disappointed that some manners of writing are now forever tainted
I just subscribed to your rss feeds, via feedly which I've recently revived and am cleaning up. Sad that Current is apple-only. A PWA would be ideal, and aligned with your ethos...
On a related note, I've found myself wanting to double down on my preferred writing style in response to LLM style taking over.
I tend to be very long-winded, and surely flirt with the line of run-on sentences/comma splices. But, to me, that's better than all of the 3-6 word "punchy" sentences that llms prefer. I'm allergic to it now
Likewise, Ive always used hyphens in place of em dashes. Cant be bothered to figure out how to insert one of those, and certainly won't going forward
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On a related note, I've found myself wanting to double down on my preferred writing style in response to LLM style taking over.
I tend to be very long-winded, and surely flirt with the line of run-on sentences/comma splices. But, to me, that's better than all of the 3-6 word "punchy" sentences that llms prefer. I'm allergic to it now
Likewise, Ive always used hyphens in place of em dashes. Cant be bothered to figure out how to insert one of those, and certainly won't going forward
@nickchomey @ska for a while if i reached for an em dash i'd replace it with a comma or a colon
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@nickchomey @ska for a while if i reached for an em dash i'd replace it with a comma or a colon
I don't think a colon fits at all. Comma perhaps. My hyphen-as-em dash seems to be the appropriate way to handle it - at least that's what I'll continue doing.
An example (picked at random) of how my style differs (and not saying that you should change anything)
> This is the old machinery. Not pure. Not beautiful. Not easy to use.
This is the old machinery: not pure, beautiful or easy to use.
No idea which is more correct or effective. But yours just reeks of LLM, even if it isn't
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I don't think a colon fits at all. Comma perhaps. My hyphen-as-em dash seems to be the appropriate way to handle it - at least that's what I'll continue doing.
An example (picked at random) of how my style differs (and not saying that you should change anything)
> This is the old machinery. Not pure. Not beautiful. Not easy to use.
This is the old machinery: not pure, beautiful or easy to use.
No idea which is more correct or effective. But yours just reeks of LLM, even if it isn't
Here's chatgpt's take on it! Hah!
https://chatgpt.com/share/69fb516a-33c4-83e8-8746-f40b0557375c
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New Essay: The Boring Internet
The internet you grew up on isn’t dying.
A commercial veneer glued on top of it is.
@tg thank you for writing this, i tried to express the same ideas in my own way in a post on here and just got lectured about how the internet is better now, actually, just because more people from more countries are using it...
i didn't mean i didn't want to communicate with those from foreign places, i just want those damn corporate entities to stop shoving ads and other nonsense down my throat and let me use the internet connection i'm paying for for my own purposes.
i don't mind CDNs, those are important for those in other countries, but i sure do mind things born entirely out of "number go up". i'm not going to pretend like corporations have building a real, proper, thriving community in mind across multiple continents, when they're flooding the communities with bots and other spam. -
New Essay: The Boring Internet
The internet you grew up on isn’t dying.
A commercial veneer glued on top of it is.
@tg recently I've been thinking about writing about how many of the "boring" parts of the internet (ip addresses, domain names, DNS, the cables under the ocean, the network routers, TLS certificates) have various kinds of corporate and/or national and/or nonprofit owners who interact with each other in complicated ways
it opened up a lot of complicated questions about governance (for ICANN etc) that I didn't feel super well-equipped to answer but I think it would be cool to explore
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@tg recently I've been thinking about writing about how many of the "boring" parts of the internet (ip addresses, domain names, DNS, the cables under the ocean, the network routers, TLS certificates) have various kinds of corporate and/or national and/or nonprofit owners who interact with each other in complicated ways
it opened up a lot of complicated questions about governance (for ICANN etc) that I didn't feel super well-equipped to answer but I think it would be cool to explore
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@tg recently I've been thinking about writing about how many of the "boring" parts of the internet (ip addresses, domain names, DNS, the cables under the ocean, the network routers, TLS certificates) have various kinds of corporate and/or national and/or nonprofit owners who interact with each other in complicated ways
it opened up a lot of complicated questions about governance (for ICANN etc) that I didn't feel super well-equipped to answer but I think it would be cool to explore
@b0rk very interesting indeed. definitely over my head and ability to fire these neurons to put a few thoughts together
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New Essay: The Boring Internet
The internet you grew up on isn’t dying.
A commercial veneer glued on top of it is.
@tg
Quote:Every property that made these protocols feel old and uncool to you in 2014
is part of what’s keeping them alive in 2026.
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New Essay: The Boring Internet
The internet you grew up on isn’t dying.
A commercial veneer glued on top of it is.
@tg The Internet detects damage and routes around it.
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New Essay: The Boring Internet
The internet you grew up on isn’t dying.
A commercial veneer glued on top of it is.
@tg one thing that's a little different between 2006 and 2026 is if you try to host something yourself a lot more people and god knows what else are constantly attempting to break in and knock your site over. i tried running a phpbb forum a while back and eventually it got hacked and overrun with spam and it was so bad my hosting provider called me on the telephone to work out what to do about it. i've been afraid to host anything more complicated than a static serve site ever since
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@tg one thing that's a little different between 2006 and 2026 is if you try to host something yourself a lot more people and god knows what else are constantly attempting to break in and knock your site over. i tried running a phpbb forum a while back and eventually it got hacked and overrun with spam and it was so bad my hosting provider called me on the telephone to work out what to do about it. i've been afraid to host anything more complicated than a static serve site ever since
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@tg one thing that's a little different between 2006 and 2026 is if you try to host something yourself a lot more people and god knows what else are constantly attempting to break in and knock your site over. i tried running a phpbb forum a while back and eventually it got hacked and overrun with spam and it was so bad my hosting provider called me on the telephone to work out what to do about it. i've been afraid to host anything more complicated than a static serve site ever since
@tg i've been wanting to host my own icecast server or peer tube, but idk how to be sure that won't just happen again
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New Essay: The Boring Internet
The internet you grew up on isn’t dying.
A commercial veneer glued on top of it is.
@tg Now I feel old because the Internet I grew up on is the old rusty bits.
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New Essay: The Boring Internet
The internet you grew up on isn’t dying.
A commercial veneer glued on top of it is.
@tg this is so true. love your view.
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@tg i've been wanting to host my own icecast server or peer tube, but idk how to be sure that won't just happen again
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@tg one thing that's a little different between 2006 and 2026 is if you try to host something yourself a lot more people and god knows what else are constantly attempting to break in and knock your site over. i tried running a phpbb forum a while back and eventually it got hacked and overrun with spam and it was so bad my hosting provider called me on the telephone to work out what to do about it. i've been afraid to host anything more complicated than a static serve site ever since
@aeva @tg it is true. But that was the result of server applications written to be managed by large groups.
there is a lack of web infrastructure written to be secure as a priority. In your case something like OpenBSD for forum systems.
This plus tight security rules and new sandboxed and controlled installations could be what we need
