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Reading a very interesting book Read, Write, Own by Chris Dixon (MIT Press)[^] and it got me thinking about how few sites I actually visit these days.
Remember the old days when there were multiple search engines (altavista, askjeeves, yahoo, lycos, etc.)?
Remember those days when you visited actual web sites instead of just scrolling down a feed on social media?
from Read, Write, Own intro... Starting in the mid-2000s, a small group of big companies wrenched control away. Today the top 1 percent of social networks account for 95 percent of social web traffic and 86 percent of social mobile app use. The top 1 percent of search engines account for 97 percent of search traffic, and the top 1 percent of e-commerce sites account for 57 percent of e-commerce traffic.
Outside of China, Apple and Google account for more than 95 percent of the mobile app store market. In the past decade, the five biggest tech companies grew from about 25 percent to nearly 50 percent of the market capitalization of the Nasdaq-100. Startups and creative people increasingly depend on networks run by megacorporations like Alphabet(parehnt of Google and YouTube), Amazon, Apple, Meta (parent of Facebook & Instagram), and Twitter (rebranded as X) to find customers, build audiences and connect with peers.
The internet got intermediated, in other words. The network went from pemisionless to permissioned.
Well, here's one web site that I stumbled upon yesterday and it really has some great articles: Henrik Warne's blog | Thoughts on programming…[^]
How many sites would you say you visit each day?
I'm probably at about 6-8 :
codeproject
dev.to
stackoverflow
amazon
linkedin
youtube
oreilly (books)
microsoft dev docs
instructables .com
I use duckduckgo for search
That's about it.
Even though everything is about "curated" content now and a lot of people just want "processed media blocks" to tell them what to view, the old days were more fun, I think.
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Four sites for me, CP and 3 music sites.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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CP, SO, Telegraph (UK news), BBC News, Gmail. Others, mainly technical, randomly once or twice a week.
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CP is critical because it's sometimes literally the signpost to a new gas station.
All the blogs... even the random hits to some magazine. Like I pretty much never just hit the Wired front page (or many others).
But if an article brings me there, I'll click their other content as long as it doesn't lock my computer audibly alerting me my computer is compromised, send me to a slideshow, or tell me about hot singles in my area.
In a way, this was always "the plan" by not being accounted for in the more official plan.
That more official plan being to keep users engaged and on your site and not going elsewhere so they are drinking your ad kool aid instead of someone else's.
It seems like for public health and such if you wanted to codify making it better, tax the ad dollars in such a way that encourages eclectic exploration and discourages myopic echo chambers. We don't have to become arbiters of echo, just encourage folks to "move around" a bunch more.
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My mind wonders everywhere and so does my site visitation.
Music
Carpentry
Photography
Programming
Electronics
Educational
Books
Definition of a burocrate; Delegate, Take Credit, shift blame.
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - Release Version 1.3.1 JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: EventAggregator
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"Photography" sites for me as well. 
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Wow! Lots of episodes for C++ Weekly. Been going a long time. I will check more of that out soon. 
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Probably in the 30's somewhere, if you count MS .NET method signatures, the reference source, news, XKCD, Wordle, Quordle, CP, YouTube, Prime, Netflix, and other special interests. If you add in TV streams (and all my TV now comes in via internet streaming since the beginning of the year) it likely goes to more than that.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: If you add in TV streams
Yeah, TV streams are really out of hand. Everything is a separate "service" now.
We've been on YouTubeTV for 4 or 5 years now and if you like live streaming TV it is very good.
The nice thing is you can record unlimited so the shows that end up on paramount+ and other networks can just be recorded and watched at your convenience. a pretty good catch-all.
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this goes thru my mind every once in awhile. Old sites that used to be my main stay that I just don't visit even on occasion anymore. lolcats comes to mind actually. Comics pages that I used to read. ebay just gotten burned too many times. and a host of other sites that I just cannot be bothered to go too.
Now it is
CP Obvy.
Google Maps - am a geography nerd.
Read.amazon - always have a book I am working thru or more likely 4.
wsj and a local news org.
amazon
and quite a few work only sites I would never visit again if I didn't work where I do.
interesting discussion.
To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer
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rnbergren wrote: ebay just gotten burned too many times
I banned ebay long ago when my (then) young son attempted to sell his laptop there.
Here's how it works.
1. Some scammer always wins the bid.
2. Scammer says, "hey send me the laptop and I'll send money"
3. We tell scammer, "No way, we'll send when your $$$ hits the bank."
4. Scammer cancels the purchase (yes they could do that).
5. we have to pay to repost the sale -- yes it's like 59 cents or something.
6. happened 3 times in 3 days and then I quit ebay forever!
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I do not use ebay for ages.
I just use the now independant classifieds that were part of ebay before. Sporadic sells for private people are allowed and there is no bid system.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Mine was mostly the same. Except. I sold an older "working" electronic collectable. I explained what was wrong in clear english on the posting. Buyer took exception that they didn't read the posting all the way thru. It was very clear. Asked for a return. Ebay forced me to accept the return. Returned item was damaged beyond all ability to relist it. Buyer was overprotected. Seller (me) was not. It wasn't the money so much just how much it hurt that the buyer would take the electronic completely apart and damage it before returning it.
Still leaves a very bad memory for me.
To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer
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Maybe less than a dozen regularly.
Google/GoogleMap, GeoGuessr, CodeProject, StackOverflow, Reddit, Youtube, The Guardian, Radio-Canada.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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In a regular base without counting the email... only CP and in second place reddit to lurk a bit when I have the mood of it.
Beyond that... only sporadic links that call my attention.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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raddevus wrote: Remember the old days when there were multiple search engines (altavista, askjeeves, yahoo, lycos, etc.)?
It's the natural "progression" of anything though. When something is new, it's a bit raw and more like the wild west. That's where crypto is right now, the wild west. We humans tend to want to structure things (good or bad) so we have some predictability. People can deal with bad as long as it's predictable bad. But, we'll always attempt to organize, quantify, regulate, control, etc. anything raw to make it into something tangible for the masses.
And with society's current agreed upon structure that lends itself to a few rising to the "top" mixed with the fact that the vast majority of people are mentally lazy and would rather die than think, there will always be a few rising to the "top" as we put the reigns on something new. Some of it's good; some of it's bad. But humans don't care as long as it's predictable.
raddevus wrote: Remember those days when you visited actual web sites instead of just scrolling down a feed on social media?
Yeah.  And I'm not so sure the caliber of conversation on FB is any better than the IRC/BBS days.
raddevus wrote: the old days were more fun, I think.
That's the circle of life though. The only way to break it is to re-introduce more novelty, as in find something new and raw.
Three examples:
1) If you grow up in a smaller town. You get to know everyone. You get way more freedom and there's less laws and rigid structure. It's more like the wild west though. But you get that freedom (within reason). I remember growing up and a buddy of mine and me would go ramping cars over ditches in a field... because yeehaw. Good luck getting away with that in a big city without a permit or special race track, etc.
2) A lot of CEOs miss the startup days. Yes there was more uncertainty, but this was also more freedom, less rules, easier to pivot, etc. Once you get large, you get lawsuits galore, you can't talk as freely because someone is ready to sue hoping for that payday. Not to mention, if you're the CEO you get the people afraid of you, the fake arse kissers, etc. that you don't know if you're people are real or just milking you. You've created a job not much different than the 9-5 an entrepreneur was trying to escape in the first place.
3) The linux kernel. You know what Linus does these days? He don't code. He's a glorified PR reviewer of PR reviewers, by his own admittance. If you asked him, I bet he misses the old days too when it was new, raw, and exciting and less of a job.
The point, humans crave novelty and excitement but we always build towards the norm despite how sucky it may be in reality due to fear, not having to think, comfort, etc. Then you die and the next generation comes in and repeats the process all over again with the idea being we incrementally improve with every generational "reset".
Liken it to a video game that you already beat 10 times. At some point, you want to play a new game. And it's only going to get worse without a sense of novelty, especially if you're creative. I know for me, I've been so jaded with humans for a long time it put me into a serious state of depression. There are no new thoughts 99.99% of people will think.
But, the point is, there's no future in the past. Rather than perpetually reminisce on ye old days of glory of the wild west, replace it with something new and raw. Or ya know, accept the middle-aged crisis and go by a corvette before going bald. 
Jeremy Falcon
modified 3 mins ago.
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Been dabbling in Rust lately and now thinking about seriously learning.
I wonder what resources would people here recommend.
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I haven't taken the plunge yet, but if you're about to start something brand new then go buy a Udemy course or two on it. They're cheap and usually guide you through the learning process when starting at zero.
The point is, always, always, always pay a few bucks when brand new to something for a tutor/mentor. Whether that's in the form of an actual human teacher, book, Udemy, pluralsight, etc. Most people don't and at best they delay their education or at worst suck what they know.
Jeremy Falcon
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