TFNA

9 ms·

121.
by TFNA 2mo ago
I, too, look back fondly on the early web. Lately, though, I have been thinking that one reason for its decline wasn't just corporate interests like we often talk about here. A significant number of early bloggers were middle-aged and
122.
by TFNA 2mo ago
Talk to younger people (and not only) today about the way they use the internet. Many of them no longer visit third-party websites at all. They only use walled gardens through dedicated phone apps. Sure, you can get a website and put whatev
123.
by TFNA 2mo ago
MySpace was notorious for people with social problems who weren't getting out much. Bedroom musicians were able to share tunes and get buzz that they wouldn't have been able to achieve before, since they couldn't manage the i
124.
by TFNA 2mo ago
Disagree. I think with modern tech China has built a surveillance panopticon that will continue to ensure social harmony through any economic downturn, and this is precisely the model that is appealing to so many other countries now.
125.
by TFNA 2mo ago
Almost every discussion here on HN about those "deaths and disappearances of scientists linked to secret military research" has been about how, when you actually dig into the data, they have been very statistically likely.
126.
by TFNA 2mo ago
I meant more generally: many countries are recognizing, just like China has, that the fundamental challenge of our modern era is ensuring social harmony. The OP's belief in individual civil liberties as a good in themselves is anachron
127.
by TFNA 2mo ago
"I think we will one day come to see access to open weight models as an inalienable right to defense against tyranny." I don't think this kind of rhetoric about individual civil liberties is realistic any more when the next c
128.
by TFNA 2mo ago
Claiming that Sahrawis benefit from a great welfare state, when their businesses have so often been confiscated and handed over to Moroccan settlers, is appalling.
129.
by TFNA 2mo ago
In spite of the craziness of the Berm, the funny thing is that the vast majority of foreign travelers passing through have never heard of it. It is out of sight of the Moroccan highway, and obviously something locals won't be talking a
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by TFNA 2mo ago
Dakhla and environs is also known for hundreds of elderly French, Italians, and Germans who spend winters down there in their camping cars. This was already a very developed scene when I first visited Western Sahara in 2007.
131.
by TFNA 2mo ago
Though I stay home for 4-6 months a year (I love cinema from my projector and physical books too much), I've spent the rest of my adult life traveling the world by bike, and I'm nearing middle age now. I know the community of othe
132.
by TFNA 2mo ago
Universities in certain countries have strict ethical standards that require consent and crediting informants. These standards were often inspired by working with indigenous informants, who were viewed as having been historically exploited
133.
by TFNA 2mo ago
The language-learning publishing industry is something that I happen to know well: the number of bookstores in the world that one can walk into and find a Mongolian textbook, is absolutely tiny. One is pretty much going to have to special-o
134.
by TFNA 2mo ago
In the early millennium, I read a wide variety of blogs on art, humanities, and the religious denomination I was part of. This audience trended non-techie and rather elderly, and yet in blog comments readers would often reveal in passsing t
135.
by TFNA 2mo ago
This is Ceuta, an exclave. They didn't arrive on any shore. And often migrants who arrived by sea already paid all their money to smugglers and don't have lots of money to confiscate.
136.
by TFNA 2mo ago
In 2026, the way that friends who don't see each other at work/school arrange to meet and maintain that friendship, is via WhatsApp or the local equivalent.
137.
by TFNA 2mo ago
Reddit hasn't really facilitated friendships (let alone the kind leading to real-life meetups) since the 2018 redesign at least; even before that the site was remarkably impersonal compared to any old-school forum.
138.
by TFNA 2mo ago
Real-life friends are ditching each other commonly these days, because the Block function on Whatsapp (or whatever app they use to communicate) seems so convenient and consequence-free.
139.
by TFNA 3mo ago
On the other hand, why care what the American founding fathers thought? There have been two centuries since then of developments in democratic countries that some Americans could choose as a model they like more. And now it's the Chine
140.
by TFNA 3mo ago
Me, I've embraced occupational pubgoing as a childless person in my forties because unlike other social activities, it is a way to avoid boring people with children. At least in my country, those men get forced to stay at home, the mis
141.
by TFNA 3mo ago
French filmmakers have been criticized within France for white-only casting going back to at least the 1980s. By the time that sub-Saharan African, Arab and Southeast Asian faces were a normal feature of French city streets, white-only cast
142.
by TFNA 3mo ago
"Which books are in copyright, not being published, and contain unique valuable knowledge?" Most works in a large number of academic domains from the twentieth century. In my own field (at the intersection of linguistics, history
143.
by TFNA 3mo ago
Articles like this one, talking about how the original web is still around, miss a key point IMO: that indie web that exists today is socially irrelevant. In the early millennium it was common for people meeting IRL to feel a sense of commu
144.
by TFNA 3mo ago
The early web that many people are nostalgic for stretches to the early millennium, by which time it was pretty straightforward for ordinary people to set up a blog on a number of platforms. That era of the web was still characterized by lo
145.
by TFNA 3mo ago
I used Old Reddit for a long time, but I could tell the vast majority of users were on the app now, just because the comment culture had changed completely. For example, posts now draw most of their comments within 30-60 minutes of posting,
146.
by TFNA 3mo ago
Today the vast majority of people I know rarely use the browser on their phones. They interact with the internet through apps from various walled gardens, and even for news on the open web they are likely to install someone's app. Wind
147.
by TFNA 3mo ago
Art is perennial and omnipresent in human societies, but the sort of art that operates through a language foreign to the aficionado’s own, and learning that language would be beneficial to appreciation of it, is obviously going to be a nich
148.
by TFNA 3mo ago
Did you not notice that I specified “developed-country Gen Z above” and also China? That was to leave a carve-out for the still very vibrant everyday multilingualism of the Indian Subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa, etc. But for East Asia, Eu
149.
by TFNA 3mo ago
Learning a foreign language in order to get more out of art, literature, or poetry is already a very niche hobby and one risks being accused of snobbism or privilege for suggesting it. Art, literature (of the kind where learning the origina
150.
by TFNA 3mo ago
We’re on a nerd forum, so of course some of us love OSMAnd. But the general public finds that app too confusing. I know this firsthand because I’m in a travel subculture where OSMAnd provides a very useful tool that Maps.me/Organic Map

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