21 replies
13h37m
Was the internet better back then or am I just old?
14 replies
13h42m
Love it. I really wonder though how people ended up doing this?
11 replies
12h53m
A notorious issue when doing Windows support (An experience I recommend to every developer!): Double clicking a folder or file in Explorer in order to open it, but slipping the mouse and therefore accidently moving the target into another folder.
6 replies
11h42m
It is an irony that Windows makes keyboard shortcut users out of even non-techies.
2 replies
4h26m
FWIW, you can configure the minimum distance for a mouse move to count as a drag. The default was adequate for 640x480, but maybe should have been increased.
1 replies
2h41m
For others: I was curious how to do this, so if you put “change windows drag drop sensitivity” into your search engine of choice you’ll find a tutorial for which registry settings to change.
The default is 4 pixels, which I’m inclined to agree is low these days.
0 replies
2h31m
To be more precise, it’s the registry settings HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\DragWidth and DragHeight. You can also use a tool like Winaero Tweaker to adjust the values.
2 replies
11h34m
Yes, single click, then Enter, that's the winning combo here.
1 replies
9h58m
If you're willing to try something a little bit different, Windows also has a single-click to open mode ('View->Options->Change folder and search options' in Win 11). To only select, you point and hover for a moment.
0 replies
2h26m
I wish it would let do single click open without hover to select. It's just too easy to mess up your selection if you are not careful where you park your cursor for even a split second.
KDE's Dolphin is much better here, can be set to single click open with drag selection box or click + icon to select.
1 replies
11h55m
This happens to me almost daily.
Almost never happens with Mac or Linux. How's that? :)
0 replies
2h25m
Do you have your Linux file browser set to click to open or double click to open?
0 replies
6h58m
Ctrl-Z to the rescue!
0 replies
3h13m
Oh, this is the bane of shared network drives.
0 replies
12h49m
Some of it was stupidity, some of it was cupidity, some of it was deliberate. The piece about people running slow IP over the text fields in the website for their frequent flyer miles homepage (accessible for free on in-flight wifi without paying for it) is an example of deliberate: I think some of this was early file sharing and warez in .. winamp skinz.
"what does this do" causes a lot of things to happen. you zip up a folder and forget the metric tonne of other files in it, which don't interfere with the prime function so just come along for the ride.
0 replies
13h5m
I have a theory that at least some of them might be taking advantage of an (un)official website/forum that allows for free sharing/hosting of wsz files, which of course are just zips
12 replies
11h45m
I had an incredible deja-vu feeling on the guys standing around the hoop, so weird.
5 replies
10h7m
It's got that early-'00s digicam look to it. My pictures from the end of high school have a similar vibe, despite having no basketball.
3 replies
9h13m
When I look at the sky and the bricks I get the impression that the photo has “grain”. I wonder if it was actually shot on film.
2 replies
5h1m
Early digital camera sensors could be quite noisy.
1 replies
2h33m
Digital camera sensors are still quite noisy, perhaps even more so as sensors have gotten smaller while resolutions have gotten higher (meaning even smaller pixels). We just process all the noise away most of the time.
0 replies
2h12m
Good point. “Visibly noisy” would have been more accurate.
0 replies
1h51m
It's not from a digicam, it's a scan of a photo. The white bar on the left is from a subpar cropping job and is slightly crooked. The resolution (1275x1167) is higher than a typical 3:4 digital image sensor of the day, which would have maxed out at 640x480 in the late '90s to early 2000's, maybe 1024x768 for a really high-spec (expensive and uncommon) camera.
As for the "look", I'm not a photographer but this was likely taken on either a low-end handheld film camera or disposable jobbie, which were absolutely ubiquitous around this time frame because they were so cheap (practically free, until you went to develop them). The picture was taken on an overcast day at dusk, later in the evening. Just dark enough to auto-trigger the insufficient flash which lights up the middle of the image and puts everything in the periphery in a dark shadow.
I do like that the kid with the beer isn't looking at the camera and seems to have missed the point that everyone was supposed to be holding the ball.
2 replies
10h17m
> TinEye searched over 69.1 billion images but didn't find any matches for your search image. That's probably because we have yet to crawl any pages where this image appears.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
1 replies
10h13m
Google's reverse image search (images.google.com, click the little camera) can perform better in many cases, though here it only finds the linked page
0 replies
2h30m
Yandex reverse image search can also be useful often, although in this case it just gives you other images of people with basketballs. Curse whoever decided to introduce AI to reverse image search.
0 replies
11h36m
I did too, I wonder if this image was included in some other package somewhere?
0 replies
10h57m
Reminded me of pointerpointer.com and for some reason new kids on the block.
0 replies
5h19m
Me also. Immediately. And I see a lot of other people. I think it’s the baggy formal shirt and hair styles.
8 replies
12h25m
Bob's car is from Greenock, Scotland (via geospy.ai)
6 replies
12h8m
Looks like a match: https://shorturl.at/SBYHT
Edit: shorter url
5 replies
10h20m
There is no reason to shorten the url here, and I much prefer to be able to see where I'm going before I click.
4 replies
9h58m
Here is the original:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/?link=https://www.google.com/maps/pl...
3 replies
7h17m
Why does Google do this. There isn't any need for so much data just to link a resource
2 replies
4h3m
They do offer a link for sharing as an alternative: https://maps.app.goo.gl/HZMATsSJJhpcejoJ8
1 replies
2h19m
That's just another shortlink though.
0 replies
1h21m
You can try the original then:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/?link=https://www.google.com/maps/pl...
0 replies
4h11m
There's always a chance that Bob _is_ the car. Twenty-five years ago, in Winamp days, I remember several peers naming their cars.
It doesn't seem to happen now we're older :(
7 replies
11h34m
I've always love WinAmp due to the simple reason that it is keyboard friendly. For example, the 5 buttons for Previous, Play, Pause, Stop, Next map to zxcvb. Simple and fun. Operations like searching for and queuing up files to play are lightning fast compared to Spotify, YT Music, et al. Also, I absolutely detest how YT Music keeps A/B testing ALL THE TIME, changing the location of things around. Ultimately, a website is never in your control.
5 replies
9h8m
As a home grown hacker from before the time of internet, I increasingly understand why people despise computers. I was always telling people, that you can make computers do your bidding, make them part of your life, frictionless. But I never needed IT help, I knew that whatever frustrations I might have are because of something I can work and fix with some digging around. But having things like Windows auto updates, websites ever changing makes even me feel the frustration and friction. It's no longer a wrench, it's a wireless corporate-run ad-powered e-wrench which needs printer ink for bolt-screwning.
2 replies
6h16m
Windows auto update could always be disabled. A person must be extremely tech incompetent if they couldn't do the simplest of windows tasks.
0 replies
5h39m
I just love how I am in a constant funnel trying to move me to a Microsoft account, and get to find new ad-funnel content on my task bar and get to figure out how to turn it off and hope it sticks more than a couple of days over and over again. And preventing playing this game requires disabling security updates and getting pwned.
Decades of experience and deep knowledge doesn’t keep me out of wrestling with the machine like this. What is it like for someone who devotes a lot less of their attention span and learning to computers?
0 replies
5h47m
Tell me you haven't used Windows 10 without telling me you haven't used Windows 10.
0 replies
7h54m
Windows auto updates
if I remember correctly, Windows Updates were a pain in Windows 98 or even Windows XP. Maybe it was just a pain because I was on slow as molasses dial up but just the fact that active x(?) only worked on Microsoft Internet Explorer and it was required(?) for Windows Update, made me wonder why updating Windows requires a web browser.
I think Windows auto updates are a good thing. I just think people should have to opt IN to auto updates for different stuff differently and then opt IN to automatic reboots. An operating system should never auto reboot without at least a one time user consent. Any corporate computer I've ever used disables this automatic reboot when a user is logged in. I think this is proof that the setting should be like this.
Of course, over the long term, what we really need is to make more of updates not require a reboot, but that is a different conversation.
0 replies
5h42m
It's no longer a wrench, it's a wireless corporate-run ad-powered e-wrench which needs printer ink for bolt-screwning.
Perfect.
0 replies
1h3m
My favorite Winamp shortcut is Ctrl+Shift+R to randomize the playlist. I wish every application with a playlist could do this.
3 replies
3h23m
I miss skinning so much. I was hugely into the scene of making/releasing skins for any/every program that included the ability (and a bunch that didn’t, thanks to unsigned applications).
To this day I’m the type to customise everything I own and I despise staring at generic looking programs all day. It’s even worse when it’s stuff like Discord that has a very opinionated style that won’t even respect the small amount of customisation my Linux theming gives me.
I feel like a huge reason the indie web died off was OSes and programs limiting user customisation which was a gateway drug for many. MySpace themes would get people learning html/css. Winamp skins got people learning photoshop/graphics. mIRC scripting taught people basic coding. OS customising had all of it. Now you just shut up and use it as they dictate.
1 replies
3h16m
There's another benefit to opening this kind of functionality to apps - it's very friendly towards developing interfaces that are more friendly to the disabled. I have certain disabilities where specific types of UI designs are basically unusable to me, and without the ability to customize them, I kinda just cannot use them (unless they provide an API as an alternative).
0 replies
2h1m
Until they rug-pull the API access that countless third parties built those accessibility features around....
0 replies
2h51m
I completely agree. I, in no small part, owe my career as a software dev to falling in love with Linux because of the ability to theme everything, apps, desktops, ui toolkits.
Of course, this was back in the kde3 and gnome(2?) days. It’s different now, it seems like theming has become actively discouraged, especially in Gnome.
It makes me sad wondering how many young creative people the community is missing an opportunity to captivate.
2 replies
7h10m
I’m mostly using Windows, so even today, it remains my main audio player. I use Winamp for FLACs and DI.fm streams
0 replies
3h58m
If you're in Windows you should check out Tray Player https://www.trayplayer.com/
0 replies
2h46m
One of the first things I did on my Steam Deck was to get Winamp running via Bottles :) it lives on the inbuilt screen when I’ve got it docked in desktop mode on my 2 desktop monitors.
1 replies
12h8m
I loved reading this. I was transported back to being 13 (27 years ago).
0 replies
1h57m
I, too, was 13 some 27 years ago. Coincidentally so were many of my friends!
Happy 4th decade!
0 replies
7h58m
Jordan Eldredge, the author, has done some amazing WinAmp-related projects over the years, including WebAmp (a web-based, from-scratch reimplementation of much of WinAmp) and a WASM engine for WinAmp-style music visualisation.
His project page: https://jordaneldredge.com/projects/
0 replies
7h11m
I remember “Sovereign Sect” as having something to do with skateboard(apparel)[1]. Not totally sure what or how.
[1]https://www.thrashermagazine.com/articles/magazine/the-regro...
0 replies
5h17m
Love this stuff - so weird and obscure. The Acura skin is cracking me up. I'm listening to OP's playlist now
0 replies
13h10m
It really does whip the llama's ass.
0 replies
28m
This site make want to install winamp again. And try skins. Even if I dont listen music from local files anymore.
0 replies
12h12m
It's great seeing all the skins
0 replies
9h45m
I bet the worm game was written in Turing and one of the guys in the photo did it in high-school.
It was what I did in a class in high-school and it instantly reminded me of that.
0 replies
9h20m
fun easter egg, software became too serious nowadays
0 replies
13h15m
What a fabulous find.
It's really neat to find something that I grew up with like Winamp skins become a subject of anthropological/historical study.
It's gonna be neat/kinda creepy to see how much of this sort of application of investigative techniques can turn up stuff from my younger years that I ever could have thought would still exist.
You were young and not working. The world was full of new frontiers and possibilities.
Young people today are on Minecraft, Roblox, VRchat, Discord, and YouTube. That's their frontier internet, and they probably feel the same way about it as you do.
A Geocities website, phpBB or EZBoard, webring, Xanga, and AIM/IRC has a similar analogues today. The pieces just have different names and shapes.
I get this argument from a lot of people but it is not true. There was a much higher spirit of sharing and just cool shit back in the day. Now everyone is trying to make a buck, and shit is slow, like Slack.
There still is amongst the users on Discord, e.g. in some gamedev Discords, etc. - it's even easier to do things together ad-hoc with screen sharing built-in.
It really is just that we're old now so we don't interact with them.
Although I agree the grindset culture has harmed Internet culture.
I'm in my 30s and I am interact a lot with discord. I agree gamedev is one last large scale space where interesting things happen.
But overall people are just trying to optimize total compensation and bend over backwards to get into FAANG. Imagine telling us to get into IBM back in the day.
So things have definitely changed. The punk spirit has also been lost. Normies have arrived. It's good for the normies, but we won't get a Napster again.
That’s not the point. Modern crap doesn’t hold a candle to what we had back then.
And no, this is not the rambling of getting-older-man.
Rampant corporate control, completely sanitized internet by default, “social” networks that literally give kids https://cwi.pressbooks.pub/urj/chapter/2022-first-place-inst... mental disorders, political agenda pushed from every hole, disinformation campaigns, bots to the point where you don’t even know if you’re talking to a real person. Internet became a weapon.
Back then we an intranet within local ISP (additionally to internet access) that had a sense of community, local services, file sharing, chats, meetups which generally self moderated themselves and everyone knew each other. What do you have now? Proprietary discord chat rooms filled with degeneracy? Good luck going through that.
Say what you want, but https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September is real.
I think there is great stuff on Discord and people do the same things they did then and enjoy similar tomfoolery.. they just don’t own it and are monetized, and don’t have viable alternatives (none of which was true back then).
I think the big reason why social media is toxic is because going online is no longer a choice and it follows you around. Some decisions by social media providers aren’t helping, but mobile is more guilty than social itself.
And different monetization strategies.
When a new island is formed, usually it is first inhabited by algae and moss. As the ecosystem matures, plants, birds, insects, and all sorts of organisms populate it. You can still usually find the early algae and moss. They are just harder to spot due to the thriving and abundant ecosystem.
I think the Internet is a lot like that.
This is a beautiful way to see it, thank you for leading me to it.
Guess I'll have to consider myself a bryophite of the information age from now on.
I think that this analogy is really fitting. The old internet was way less organized, which means that it was less useful, but it also gave this fantastic sense of exploring something new. It was highly personal, the lack of common standards meant that everyone had to reinvent the wheel in their own way. Its dangers were more direct and "in your face". Yes, you could stumble upon a pedofile on an open forum and ordering a taxi online was wrong on so many levels, but there was no systematic explotation of human weaknesses like we have nowadays. The phrase "global village" captures the experience really well, as opposed to the megacity we have now.
I think it's a curse of progress. Once you get the taste of a highly developed, efficiently functioning society you can't go back and live in a cave again. At the same time you can't deny that living in a cave has its charm.
There is also the effect of sharply concentrated power in a few hands. Antitrust shouldn’t let individual tech powers get too strong.
To keep the analogy going, mankind introduced a few invasive species to the island.
Unfortunately, most of the island has now been buried under fast food joints, car parks and factories.
And one platform has, arguably, been infested with rats!
It's still like that. There's a lot of weird things you're gonna find on the tail end of Github repositories, or Pastebin uploads, Imgur, or YouTube... it's just hard to find unless you crawl the whole thing or otherwise come into the possession of the underlying database (as this person did).
The difference is that nowadays you have to shift through orders of magnitude more monetised manure in order to find the sprouting gems.
Sift
It was certainly more decentralized, less corporate, and a lot messier.
Yes.
The old internet is harder to find, which means its harder to ruin by normies. You just have to know where to look. ;)
It might be somewhere between the two. The internet was messier back in the day. It didn’t feel as corporate and there was a strong spirit of sharing cool things because cool things are fun. Nowadays, it seems like everyone is just trying to get paid. And that’s fine because getting paid is fun too, but the spirit has changed.
On the other hand, my eight year old is a big fan of a YouTube channel called Pilot Debrief. We just watched a documentary on the Gimli Glider and when we talked about it after, it was apparent that she has learned a tremendous amount about flying from that channel.
So for my kid, that spirit of sharing cool things because cool things are fun is still going strong. And when I experience her experiencing things like that, I’m reminded that that spirit is still out there but I’m just old.
It was better and you're old