Probably not totally relevant, but a several years ago I was out for one of my best friend's very low-key bachelor party (just a few friends/family members bar-hopping, no strip clubs). We went to a bar that was recommended by one of us and the dude who greeted us was so insanely charismatic that I assumed he was someone my buddy knew and was this later joiner to the party or something. I asked my friend, "Do you know this guy?" and, you kinda have to know his humour, but he replied, "No, he's an NPC." He was not insulting the guy (in fact I think he may have even said "non-playable character" in full) just saying, "Nope, not with us," and ya... I laughed... like, really hard. Needed recovery time.

I don't know the point I'm trying to make.

Was not aware of these. Thanks!

> Time to start some human-only darknets.

I know very little about darknets. How could you ensure that they are human-only?

But ya, was a fun place. I loved reading it, I love helping on it and the more general chats. I even made some friends and found a job through it!

Ha, I missed this! I rarely click on any topics anymore, but I have noticed a trend of similar-sounding libraries being posted. Other than one person whose blog I already read a bit, I don't click on any of the blog posts anymore. It's not a conscious decision, I just open scan the topics, usually nothing looks interesting and a close the tab.

Anyway, thanks, and back at you, and hi, and nice article :)

I used to be extremely active on Elixir Forum. It was the main place I would interact with people online, and HN was a bit of a distant second. Now HN usage has spiked a bit and I now have a... ugh... reddit account. There is still some decent discussion there, but it's largely library announcements (many vibe coded), some blog posts (that are often about AI), and news posts. Questions about the language itself have, unsurprisingly, pretty much completely halted. I think around a month ago someone asked a syntax question -- it was a bit of a jump scare!

Textlog didn't exist before 2021, did it? (though you are probably making a general point)

> Did the author write this piece about someone they admire and aspire to before or after the murders became public knowledge?

This is a really good point.

> What was the expert consensus on the topic when the author wrote about it?

Also a really good point.

> What meaning did this slang have back then?

True, but many people just don't care (unless you are talking 10 years in the future).

I'm not going to bother writing every quote-reply, but in this spirit, I wrote in another comment that I think I'm pro not having timestamps but now maybe not. I'm liking the suggestions of having very low granularity. To throw in an idea: rough labels such as: fresh, day-old, recent, this year, last year, 2/3/4/5 years ago, years old. Maybe even whole threads could become "stale" after a large amount of time, like a year. Very much spitballing here.

I'm on the fence about timestamps but I don't think it's inherently bad, and could be good. It depends on the goals of the platform. I'm actually overwhelmed by how both freeing and extremely weird it is not to see any numbers. But I will say that I think it's great to be able to respond to a thread with zero stigma or worry if you are "necroing" it or not. I think I'm learning more toward no timestamps.

Back then there was a forcing factor to making your own website. Not just personal sites, but bands, artists, interest groups, etc. Now everyone just uses facebook because (or whatever) because it's easy and everyone is there. Even during the transition was better as myspace allowed you to customize the crap out of it with CSS and, as we were just discussing, DiaryLand gave you full access to do almost whatever you wanted (in the confines of static pages).

It has a LOT to do with billion dollar companies throwing their weight around and influencing politics. Tom never did that shit! (although given time, who knows... he did sell out).