In 2016, a recruiter sent me a cringey email that was meant to look like code, and I turned it into my only post to ever make the HN front page. A decade later, I asked Claude to use its vast skills to tell the same joke. And honestly, it turned out pretty well. So now it's a joke we...told together?
I resonate with this nostalgia for the early internet, I really do. But lately I've been wondering if the tools available to us now are the key to bringing back what we miss about the old internet.
For example, let's look at "for you page" style algorithms. When I open Reels, I see incredible musicians, mind-blowing visual art and really thoughtful insights from people all over the world. That's exactly what I wanted out of the early internet, and here it is, an ever-evolving system that connects me with all the weird and amazing things that exist out in the world.
And those people in the world who make this content now have an agent actively connecting them with their audience. Yes, I realize this is an extremely charitable interpretation of what's happening behind the scenes. But often, the content I see feels very close to what the author is describing: Someone taking the time to describe their favorite tree.
If there was ever a "good ol' internet", it's still in there. It's just had tons of freeways and high-rise buildings built up around it. The older I get, the more it seems like you just need to let your eyes adjust a bit to see it.
Edited to add: My favorite tree, right now anyway, is a pair of birch trees in a park near my home. When they leaf out and the wind blows, I sit in the grass between them and it sounds almost like I'm at a beach, which is really nice because I'm about as far from an ocean as you can be on this planet.
I expect the only thing we actually miss about it is that it opened up a new frontier to explore, with nobody really understanding what it could be, allowing us to geek out on trying all kinds of crazy ideas to see what might stick.
Nowadays we more or less have a good understanding of what the internet is. There is no doubt still room for a crazy idea here and there, but it isn't the every idea is crazy feeding frenzy that we found in the early days.
We don't really want the old internet back – it never went away. Instead, we are ready for the "next internet", whatever that may be.
Maybe. I don't know. I suppose if I knew I'd already know, and thus wouldn't gain anything from talking about it, and therefore wouldn't be here.
Perhaps a related question is: How do we bring back that old feeling cars used to give people? The old timers reminisce about them just like those here remember the internet, but these days they're just boring tools at best. So boring that the kids reaching driving age today are happy to not even go near them.
Or maybe there is no going back? Been there, done that, as they say.
That was my experience too, as we're seemingly of similar age. Before that we saw the muscle and chrome eras, where people really got into them and made cars their identity and centre of life. It would appear cars saw very much a similar decline to the internet feeling we're talking about as the generations went by. The are still useful tools, to be sure, but now hard to fall in love with.
> But lately I've been wondering if the tools available to us now are the key to bringing back what we miss about the old internet.
One of the best things about the old internet was Flash Player.
It was an extremely low barrier-to-entry way for creators (especially young creators) to make games and animation which could be played in-browser on extremely low-power hardware.
To this day, there's nothing which comes close to filling the vacuum.
i can't help that think a big part of what made the internet special was that it wasn't for everybody back in the day.
it used to be that only certain types of people had the means and interest to be there. going there was like venturing into a world that was created and maintained by people that were all a little... weird. if you were also somebody that was also a little weird, it was a nice escape and gave a sense of belonging because the default way of being was "a little weird".
but now the internet is mainstream. the internet populus mirrors the real world populus. it's not built by and for nerds and academics and startrek obsessives anymore, it's built to serve the needs of the normal and popular people because normal people are now the modal people on the internet.
there are still pockets where you can find your weirdo kin, but you need to look for them. and the fact that you need to look for them kind of ruins the old allure where you could imagine what a parallel universe run by people like you would be like.
I didn't see anything about this in the documentation or prompting guide, but... is it supposed to be able to sing?
Since I am a fundamentally unserious person, I copied in the Friends theme song lyrics into the demo and what came out was a singing voice with guitar. In another test, I added [verse] and [chorus] labels and it's singing acappella.
[1] and [2] were prompted with just the lyrics. [3] was with the verse/chorus tags. I tried other popular songs, but for whatever reason, those didn't flip the switch to have it sing.
Oh wow, it's interesting that it sings, but the singing itself is terrible! That's maybe more interesting, it sings exactly like a human who can't sing.
interestingly not very similar to the actual friends intro - suggesting it isn't a matter of overfitting onto something rather common in the training data.
Dimensional Innovations | Senior Full Stack Developer | Full-Time | Kansas City or Remote
We develop a wide range of interactive installations for stadiums, hospitals, museums and corporate environments. We are seeking a full stack developer with web-stack fundamentals who is interested in expanding into Touch Designer, Unreal and other frameworks. https://dimin.com
Interested in knowing more? I'm happy to chat over email: criebschlager@dimin.com
Podcast Addict has some niche features I really like, I like being able to have a different automatic playback speed per-podcast, as I tailor it to the talking speed of the specific podcasters. The UI can be a bit cluttered, but in a power-user "I can make this work exactly how I want for each podcast" way.
Ah, a most excellent inquiry, my dear! adjusts philosopher's cloak As Marcus Aurelius, I must say that the connection between Marcus Aurelius and this chatbot is purely nominal.
Bob Porter : I looked into it more deeply and I found that apparently what happened is that he was laid off five years ago and no one ever told him about it; but through some kind of glitch in the payroll department, he still gets a paycheck.
Bob Slydell : So we just went ahead and fixed the glitch.
Bill Lumbergh : Great.
Dom Portwood : So, uh, Milton has been let go?
Bob Slydell : Well, just a second there, professor. We, uh, we fixed the glitch. So he won't be receiving a paycheck anymore, so it'll just work itself out naturally.
Bob Porter : We always like to avoid confrontation, whenever possible. Problem is solved from your end.
After relocating from the US to Scandinavia, people here are always give me crap for having worked in a cubicle farm. And I always tell them I'd go back to that layout in a second compared the open landscape nightmare we have everywhere here.
I remember in the early 00's seeing blogs or cartoons where they would complain and call it their "gray, 4-walled prison cell". Well, that cell is a lot more dignified than today's open-office hot-desking that would be akin to an impoverished country's prison!
While it was a really funny scene in the movie, I always assumed that on top of being cruel this seems like a dangerous way to handle the issue. Looks like a pretty easy wrongful termination lawsuit here. Especially if Milton keeps showing up for work and doesn't get paid for it.
Wrongful termination generally requires either discrimination based on protected class or retaliation for reporting (discrimination / injury / safety).
You generally can’t sue your employer for being an unfair asshole.
I believe the analogy is more a reference to the shape of paint drips as seen in the image on the page. The T model of skills has a single "descender" that represents deep knowledge in a single topic, whereas paint drips represent varying depths of knowledge in several areas.
It's a good enough analogy to go deeper than that. The T model is an intentional, planned descender. The paint drip thing implies that you don't know which drips are going to go where, or what will turn up. It's a more flexible approach that will be quicker to seize on underlying conditions people are just beginning to discover. The terrain defines what you end up doing, and if something takes off, the paint drip types are going to be all over it, even though it's not planned.
It's not that useful of an observation because you must then ask what you're going to do about it, but it is a valid observation all the same. This mode of being does exist. My career's based on being that, and also putting in the effort to finish things: otherwise it would be pure dilettantism.
Yeah but if you don't have attached article the first thing I'm gonna think about is "sloppy" or "this person is into boring tasks like watching paint dry"
