4 ms·

Because they remember the past far more fondly than it was and converge the utility they get from the current day with the ideals of back then. The reality is

Because they remember the past far more fondly than it was and converge the utility they get from the current day with the ideals of back then. The reality is there is far more creative and well produced content on the web and closed platforms today than there ever was in any other point in time. And if you can't find it fast enough, AI can generate direct, customized answers.

Gud 3y ago
No, it is not us "remembering the past far more fondly". Today Google search results yield the same crap without fail. For example, a search for "how do I repair widget X" will inevitable take me to a garbage SEO site following the same patterns. The internet is less useful today than it was 10 years ago. Probably it peaked 20 years ago, before big money completely took over and ruined the place.
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  It did not peak 20 years ago. This is laughable rose tinted glasses. Also you can ask almost any LLM model for that type of answer and get it instantly and personalized.
  - Vrondi 3y ago
    ...and you will not know if the answer is accurate or where it came from.
    - tsunamifury 3y ago
      This is outdated. You can source with many modern public LLM products now. Why is hacker news full of so much outdated thinking?
      - MrVandemar 3y ago
        We just don't chug enough kool-aid.
rchaud 3y ago
I can honestly say the Internet doesn't provide any additional utility compared to what I used it for 20 years ago: email, messageboards, P2P filesharing, Wikipedia, search and online shopping. Sure we have Youtube and streaming now. But streaming today is just cable TV by another name. You could subscribe to them all and still not have the selection that a Blockbuster or torrent tracker would.
int_19h 3y ago
It is objectively worse than it used to be because it tries to be too "smart" by rewriting queries in a way that genericizes them. Instead of getting 10 search results that are actually relevant to the question being asked, you get "10,000,000" results that are only vaguely related. I suspect the reason for this is that more search results -> more pages the user will likely click through just to make sure they are looking at the best links -> more ads served. Related to this is the dumbing down of query input. Like, in many cases, even using double quotes around search terms doesn't guarantee that the page that will be shown in search results actually contains the quoted word anywhere. I've had one case where Google would helpfully find articles talking only about Linux given a query like '"freebsd" foo bar' (and where it showed the snippets for them, highlighting the phrase it treated as a match, it would say 'linux foo bar', so you could tell right away what exactly was substituted). It used to be a power tool that had well-defined knobs and buttons that you could master to find exactly what you want. Now it's a magic wand that tends to do something inscrutable every time you wave it, and you "master" it by flailing around until it kinda sorta does what you want.
- postalrat 3y ago
  Google says it finds millions of hits but only lets you scroll though a few hundred. The rest they don't want to show you.

Gud 3y ago

No, it is not us "remembering the past far more fondly". Today Google search results yield the same crap without fail. For example, a search for "how do I repair widget X" will inevitable take me to a garbage SEO site following the same patterns. The internet is less useful today than it was 10 years ago. Probably it peaked 20 years ago, before big money completely took over and ruined the place.

tsunamifury 3y ago
It did not peak 20 years ago. This is laughable rose tinted glasses. Also you can ask almost any LLM model for that type of answer and get it instantly and personalized.
- Vrondi 3y ago
  ...and you will not know if the answer is accurate or where it came from.
  - tsunamifury 3y ago
    This is outdated. You can source with many modern public LLM products now. Why is hacker news full of so much outdated thinking?
    - MrVandemar 3y ago
      We just don't chug enough kool-aid.

rchaud 3y ago

I can honestly say the Internet doesn't provide any additional utility compared to what I used it for 20 years ago: email, messageboards, P2P filesharing, Wikipedia, search and online shopping. Sure we have Youtube and streaming now. But streaming today is just cable TV by another name. You could subscribe to them all and still not have the selection that a Blockbuster or torrent tracker would.

int_19h 3y ago

It is objectively worse than it used to be because it tries to be too "smart" by rewriting queries in a way that genericizes them. Instead of getting 10 search results that are actually relevant to the question being asked, you get "10,000,000" results that are only vaguely related. I suspect the reason for this is that more search results -> more pages the user will likely click through just to make sure they are looking at the best links -> more ads served. Related to this is the dumbing down of query input. Like, in many cases, even using double quotes around search terms doesn't guarantee that the page that will be shown in search results actually contains the quoted word anywhere. I've had one case where Google would helpfully find articles talking only about Linux given a query like '"freebsd" foo bar' (and where it showed the snippets for them, highlighting the phrase it treated as a match, it would say 'linux foo bar', so you could tell right away what exactly was substituted). It used to be a power tool that had well-defined knobs and buttons that you could master to find exactly what you want. Now it's a magic wand that tends to do something inscrutable every time you wave it, and you "master" it by flailing around until it kinda sorta does what you want.

postalrat 3y ago
Google says it finds millions of hits but only lets you scroll though a few hundred. The rest they don't want to show you.