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Thanks for sharing your experience. A little off-topic but I'd like to start hosting some personal content, guides/tutorials, etc. Do you still see authentic h

Thanks for sharing your experience. A little off-topic but I'd like to start hosting some personal content, guides/tutorials, etc. Do you still see authentic human traffic on your domains, is it easy to discern? I feel like I missed the bus on running a blog pre-AI.

kldg 1y ago
if you do analytics, it is not so hard, but then you need to store user data (if not directly, then worse, with a third party), which should be viewed as a liability. I see ~2/3 human traffic, ~1/3 bot traffic (I just parse user agent strings and count whitelisted browsers as human), but my main landing page is all dynamic-populated webgl. I just asked Gemini what it sees on website, and it states "The page appears to be loading, with the text "Loading room data...".[1] There are also labels for "BG", "FG", and "CURSOR", and a background weather animation." -so I can be feel reasonably confident I don't need to worry about AI, for now; it needs a machine-friendly frontend. you could go proper insanomode, too. remaking The Internet is trivial if you don't care about existing web standards -- replacing HTTP with your own TCP implementation, getting off html/js/css, etc. being greenfield, you can control the protocol, server, and client implementation, and put it in whatever language you want. I made a stateful Internet implementation in Python earlier for proof-of-concept, but I want to port it and expand on it in rust soon (just for fun; I don't do serious biznos). you'll very likely have 100% human traffic then, even if you're the only person curious and trusting enough to run your client.
- 71bw 1y ago
  > I made a stateful Internet implementation in Python earlier for proof-of-concept Is there a repo or some other form of public access? I'd like to see this.
  - kldg 1y ago
    it's not in a shareable state; is unsafe as-is. can share general idea and sample "webpage" files, though. the server ("lodge") passes JSON to the client from what are called .branch files. the client receives JSON, parses it, then builds the UI and state representation from the JSON, then stored in that client's memory (self.current_doc and self.page_state in python client). branches can invoke waterwheel (.ww) files hosted on the lodge. waterwheel files on the lodge contain scripts which define how patches (as JSON) are to be sent to the client. the client updates its state based on the JSON patch it receives. sample .branch and .ww from python implementation (in pastebin so to not make everyone have to scroll through this): https://pastebin.com/A0DEZDmR https://pastebin.com/A0DEZDmR
    - 71bw 1y ago
      I was right to ask, this seems extremely cool. Hit me up via mail [in bio] if you ever end up polishing it enough to share.
bayindirh 1y ago
I intentionally doesn't keep detailed analytics on my homepage server and my digital garden, because I respect my users and don't want to push unnecessary Javascript on them. The blog platform I use (Mataroa) keeps rudimentary analytics (essentially page hit counters, nothing more) on index, RSS and per post. Both my blog homepage and posts see mostly human traffic. Sometimes bots crawl the site and they appear as spikes in the analytics. Looks like my homepage which doesn't have anything but links is pretty popular with crawlers. My digital garden doesn't get much interest from them. All in all, human traffic on my sites are pretty much alive. I don't believe in missing the bus in anything actually, because I don't write these for others, first. Both my blog (more meta) and digital garden (more technical) are written for myself primarily, and left open. I post links to both when it's appropriate, but they are not made to be popular. If people read it and learn something or solve one of their problems, that's enough for me. This is why my software is GPLv3, Digital Garden is GFDL and blog is CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. This is why everything is running with absolutely minimum analytics and without any ads whatsoever. Lastly, this is why I don't want AI crawlers in my site and my data in the models. This thing is made by a human for humans, absolutely for free. It's not OK somebody to sell something designed to be free and make money over it.
- accrual 1y ago
  > I intentionally doesn't keep detailed analytics on my homepage server and my digital garden, because I respect my users and don't want to push unnecessary Javascript on them. Absolutely, I'm in agreement here. I want to run a JS-free blog, just plain old static HTML. I plan to use GoAccess to parse the access logs but that's it. I think I would find it encouraging to see real human traffic. > I don't write these for others, first. Both my blog (more meta) and digital garden (more technical) are written for myself primarily, and left open. That is a great way to view it, thank you.
  - bayindirh 1y ago
    > That is a great way to view it, thank you. You're welcome. I'm glad it helped. > I want to run a JS-free blog, just plain old static HTML. If you want to start fast until you find a template you want to work with, I can recommend Mataroa [0]. The blog have almost no JS (it binds a couple of keys for navigation, that's it), and it's $10/year. When you feel right in your self-hosted solution, you can move there. It's all Markdown at the end of the day. > I plan to use GoAccess to parse the access logs but that's it. That's the only thing I use, too. Nothing else. If you want to look at what I do, how I do, and reach out to me, the rabbit hole starts from my profile, here. Wish you all the best, and you may find bliss and joy you never dreamed of! [0]: https://www.mataroa.blog https://www.mataroa.blog

kldg 1y ago

if you do analytics, it is not so hard, but then you need to store user data (if not directly, then worse, with a third party), which should be viewed as a liability. I see ~2/3 human traffic, ~1/3 bot traffic (I just parse user agent strings and count whitelisted browsers as human), but my main landing page is all dynamic-populated webgl. I just asked Gemini what it sees on website, and it states "The page appears to be loading, with the text "Loading room data...".[1] There are also labels for "BG", "FG", and "CURSOR", and a background weather animation." -so I can be feel reasonably confident I don't need to worry about AI, for now; it needs a machine-friendly frontend. you could go proper insanomode, too. remaking The Internet is trivial if you don't care about existing web standards -- replacing HTTP with your own TCP implementation, getting off html/js/css, etc. being greenfield, you can control the protocol, server, and client implementation, and put it in whatever language you want. I made a stateful Internet implementation in Python earlier for proof-of-concept, but I want to port it and expand on it in rust soon (just for fun; I don't do serious biznos). you'll very likely have 100% human traffic then, even if you're the only person curious and trusting enough to run your client.

71bw 1y ago
> I made a stateful Internet implementation in Python earlier for proof-of-concept Is there a repo or some other form of public access? I'd like to see this.
- kldg 1y ago
  it's not in a shareable state; is unsafe as-is. can share general idea and sample "webpage" files, though. the server ("lodge") passes JSON to the client from what are called .branch files. the client receives JSON, parses it, then builds the UI and state representation from the JSON, then stored in that client's memory (self.current_doc and self.page_state in python client). branches can invoke waterwheel (.ww) files hosted on the lodge. waterwheel files on the lodge contain scripts which define how patches (as JSON) are to be sent to the client. the client updates its state based on the JSON patch it receives. sample .branch and .ww from python implementation (in pastebin so to not make everyone have to scroll through this): https://pastebin.com/A0DEZDmR https://pastebin.com/A0DEZDmR
  - 71bw 1y ago
    I was right to ask, this seems extremely cool. Hit me up via mail [in bio] if you ever end up polishing it enough to share.

bayindirh 1y ago

I intentionally doesn't keep detailed analytics on my homepage server and my digital garden, because I respect my users and don't want to push unnecessary Javascript on them. The blog platform I use (Mataroa) keeps rudimentary analytics (essentially page hit counters, nothing more) on index, RSS and per post. Both my blog homepage and posts see mostly human traffic. Sometimes bots crawl the site and they appear as spikes in the analytics. Looks like my homepage which doesn't have anything but links is pretty popular with crawlers. My digital garden doesn't get much interest from them. All in all, human traffic on my sites are pretty much alive. I don't believe in missing the bus in anything actually, because I don't write these for others, first. Both my blog (more meta) and digital garden (more technical) are written for myself primarily, and left open. I post links to both when it's appropriate, but they are not made to be popular. If people read it and learn something or solve one of their problems, that's enough for me. This is why my software is GPLv3, Digital Garden is GFDL and blog is CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. This is why everything is running with absolutely minimum analytics and without any ads whatsoever. Lastly, this is why I don't want AI crawlers in my site and my data in the models. This thing is made by a human for humans, absolutely for free. It's not OK somebody to sell something designed to be free and make money over it.

accrual 1y ago
> I intentionally doesn't keep detailed analytics on my homepage server and my digital garden, because I respect my users and don't want to push unnecessary Javascript on them. Absolutely, I'm in agreement here. I want to run a JS-free blog, just plain old static HTML. I plan to use GoAccess to parse the access logs but that's it. I think I would find it encouraging to see real human traffic. > I don't write these for others, first. Both my blog (more meta) and digital garden (more technical) are written for myself primarily, and left open. That is a great way to view it, thank you.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  > That is a great way to view it, thank you. You're welcome. I'm glad it helped. > I want to run a JS-free blog, just plain old static HTML. If you want to start fast until you find a template you want to work with, I can recommend Mataroa [0]. The blog have almost no JS (it binds a couple of keys for navigation, that's it), and it's $10/year. When you feel right in your self-hosted solution, you can move there. It's all Markdown at the end of the day. > I plan to use GoAccess to parse the access logs but that's it. That's the only thing I use, too. Nothing else. If you want to look at what I do, how I do, and reach out to me, the rabbit hole starts from my profile, here. Wish you all the best, and you may find bliss and joy you never dreamed of! [0]: https://www.mataroa.blog https://www.mataroa.blog