I mean he's right, the old internet and the technology that underlies it still exists, and there's nothing stopping you from building and using sites that work independently of the big social media platforms/centralised services.
That said, I do wish this essay was a bit better contrast wise. Had to highlight some of the tables to read them at all, which isn't exactly ideal.
The components heavily give Claude Code vibes. I use CC to build internal tools and, given free reign over the design, this exactly what it will produce.
Won't comment on the writing other than that the punchlines do feel a bit pretentious in an AI kinda way. I've seen the author's blog posts and I much prefer their natural writing to this essay-style output, but to each their own.
I see this often in HN posts and I’m not sure whether to comment. Because it seems most people don’t care; and are only discussing the title, which the LLM post is a predictable extrapolation of, so human effort on the article would be wasted.
I wish people would discuss more interesting topics and less repeats. But probably most of the unique posts just aren’t interesting to me, and I spend too long here so I see repeats more than the average user.
LLMs seem hellbent on generating Tailwind interfaces. So much of the internet was already like this, so I’m not sure it’s a Claude thing (Google Stitch doesn’t seem to know how to make anything else).
Somewhat. If you open port 22 up on an ip, you're going to get hit by bots scanning the Internet, trying to find an open server to ssh into. If you open port 80 or 443, you're going to get bots looking for /wp-admin.php just as soon as the domain name for it hits certificate transparency logs. The Internet's not a friendly place to be. It once was, but the default now is that someone is going to try and abuse anything you put up. Makes it hard to want to set up a new platform outside of the big centralized ones.
Eh, as someone who runs a bunch of smaller sites and forums, I've not had any issues with scammers or hackers gaining access to them. Most of them are looking for obvious vulnerabilities via some sort of script, and usually assume the file names and database structure are the same for every site they target.
It's plenty possible to run an independent site with no issues if you keep things up to date and change a few things to thwart the most common attack attempts.
Those scanners are low effort. Don't run vulnerable software and you're fine (this mostly means not running any website you didn't write, but wasn't that the point anyway?) Run it in a container and you're double-fine.
If you don't have a wp-admin.php who cares if someone is trying to access it? If you have one but it correctly validates your admin credentials, again who cares?
You can turn it into a fun project of making a honeypot.
In ham radio - we have a 'Q code' (abbreviation) for man-made noise: QRM (QRN is naturally occurring: thunderstorms and such). This is used mainly to refer to electrically noisy transformers, vehicles, misconfigured transmitters etc. Always been there, gets worse and/or better over time - but gotta figure out how to deal with it as part of the hobby.
When doing stuff on the internet, I've just decided to stop worrying and treat these scans like that above mentioned QRM. You can filter it a bit if you like [1], but really, a sensibly configured and maintained SSH server is as secure as it gets as far as I can see.
If those are referenced in the linked article, I'll be honest I didn't read it. That website succeeds whole handedly in its job of being too annoying to read.
To be honest I don't know of any, I just didn't want to be outright dismissive of it. If you just use it for a header to have some kind of small animation that grabs the reader's attention I guess it's fine. Just don't use it for the main text body.
Fortunately my "defenses" worked on this one, though CSS only doesn't seem to have been enough. I don't care if they want to make the user feel like they're living in a blingee gif by default, I just desperately want pages to respect prefers-reduced-motion
even this "ascii" (i expected raw text but still got html+css) was hardly readable for me, had to reach to the reader view, finally readable, ohh... looks much like ai-generated, why did i spend so much time jumping over obstacles...
Not sure. Without commercialization and ads, there might not be the free high-quality web apps from Google. Things have two sides. But the complexity of the internet should have far surpassed the level that even large corps could influence, and therefore, the key might be culture instead of tech.
> there might not be the free high-quality web apps from Google.
I mean, which one of the "free high-quality web apps from Google" is free high quality ?
I'm forced to use Google Workspace for work and that's an incredible pain. GMail is messy. Google Meet have an horrible UI, Google Drive is messy++, Google Chat is unusable, Google Search is unusable. The only product that is still good at google is maybe Google Maps.
The ux is really bad. But the commenting, versioning, syncing functions for collaboration or cross-platform use are of high-quality. And that's actually Google vs. Apple.
A great little expression I heard somewhere was 'AI;DR'. I find it grating to get through a text once I've lost the trust that the author wrote it themselves. When that trust is gone, how could I be sure that these are your ideas or just something an LLM said that you happen to agree with?
I can't help but wonder if we've already hit the point where real people now write like that because it's what they're exposed to day in and day out.
I have zero evidence to back this up but I'm convinced that autocorrect is what led to people pluralizing word's with apostrophe's. If we keep outsourcing how we express our ideas, how long until we no longer have any left?
The Internet I grew up on was not the web. It was mail, newsgroups, IRC… maybe the article talks about that, but I don’t care as this is nothing the web can kill in any way.
I thought it was a cool essay because I've been using Gemini (the one mentioned in the article, not Google) in my terminal browser lately. And it has been a lot of fun!
But yes the whole "re-explain by negation" writing style does come across as AI-generated.
This essay returns 50% on Pangram, which matches my impression of it. The human-written bits do have real insight, but it's being buried in vacuous slop that makes it.
I understand from personal experience how addictive writing with AI can be. Universally when I looked back at the result a week after composing it, I saw it was what it was - slop - and did the responsible thing - throw that out and use my own brain to express those thoughts, or decide that thought needed more time in the oven before touching the page.
If the original author is reading this, I beg you to consider this instead of becoming another contributor to the internet's cacophony of slop.
CM30 | 10 days ago
That said, I do wish this essay was a bit better contrast wise. Had to highlight some of the tables to read them at all, which isn't exactly ideal.
vanillameow | 10 days ago
Won't comment on the writing other than that the punchlines do feel a bit pretentious in an AI kinda way. I've seen the author's blog posts and I much prefer their natural writing to this essay-style output, but to each their own.
armchairhacker | 10 days ago
I see this often in HN posts and I’m not sure whether to comment. Because it seems most people don’t care; and are only discussing the title, which the LLM post is a predictable extrapolation of, so human effort on the article would be wasted.
I wish people would discuss more interesting topics and less repeats. But probably most of the unique posts just aren’t interesting to me, and I spend too long here so I see repeats more than the average user.
port11 | 9 days ago
fragmede | 10 days ago
CM30 | 10 days ago
It's plenty possible to run an independent site with no issues if you keep things up to date and change a few things to thwart the most common attack attempts.
tardedmeme | 10 days ago
If you don't have a wp-admin.php who cares if someone is trying to access it? If you have one but it correctly validates your admin credentials, again who cares?
You can turn it into a fun project of making a honeypot.
graemep | 10 days ago
This has been the case for years. I can remember this from logs for port 22, more than 20 yeas ago, I saw this.
alibarber | 10 days ago
When doing stuff on the internet, I've just decided to stop worrying and treat these scans like that above mentioned QRM. You can filter it a bit if you like [1], but really, a sensibly configured and maintained SSH server is as secure as it gets as far as I can see.
[1] https://alastairbarber.com/Building-Anycast-Network/#securit...
pamcake | 10 days ago
trelbutate | 10 days ago
https://dbushell.com/2026/01/09/death-to-scroll-fade/
RadiozRadioz | 10 days ago
If those are referenced in the linked article, I'll be honest I didn't read it. That website succeeds whole handedly in its job of being too annoying to read.
cyanydeez | 10 days ago
adrithmetiqa | 10 days ago
It really helps to focus in the content rather than the fluff.
duskdozer | 10 days ago
trelbutate | 10 days ago
chneu | 10 days ago
duskdozer | 10 days ago
Freak_NL | 10 days ago
officialchicken | 10 days ago
pratyahava | 10 days ago
cryo32 | 10 days ago
This is unfortunately the problem with the Boring Internet. It's subject to the common denominator which is shite. And LLMs generate a lot of that.
pimlottc | 10 days ago
w4yai | 10 days ago
philipwhiuk | 10 days ago
Interesting
ianhxu | 10 days ago
pjerem | 10 days ago
I mean, which one of the "free high-quality web apps from Google" is free high quality ?
I'm forced to use Google Workspace for work and that's an incredible pain. GMail is messy. Google Meet have an horrible UI, Google Drive is messy++, Google Chat is unusable, Google Search is unusable. The only product that is still good at google is maybe Google Maps.
ianhxu | 10 days ago
syhol | 10 days ago
donutlover | 10 days ago
keybored | 10 days ago
Oh sorry. I cribbed that from the article itself.
> > This is real. You are not imagining it.
ramon156 | 10 days ago
alibarber | 10 days ago
interf4ce | 10 days ago
I have zero evidence to back this up but I'm convinced that autocorrect is what led to people pluralizing word's with apostrophe's. If we keep outsourcing how we express our ideas, how long until we no longer have any left?
chneu | 10 days ago
Think of all the stuff that's happened with. How we get something new, it's kinda dumb, then within a year or two it's normalized to 60% of folks.
varun_ch | 10 days ago
https://www.terrygodier.com/the-boring-internet/ascii
> You chose the quiet version. No animations. No scroll effects. Just words.
numericOverflow | 10 days ago
Martin_Silenus | 10 days ago
hntiz | 10 days ago
But yes the whole "re-explain by negation" writing style does come across as AI-generated.
dormento | 10 days ago
> The internet you grew up on isn't dying.
> A commercial veneer glued on top of it is.
Not x. Not y. Just z.
The x is not y-ing. The z i is.
Its so tiresome. Give us the prompt instead.
cryo32 | 10 days ago
pona-a | 10 days ago
I understand from personal experience how addictive writing with AI can be. Universally when I looked back at the result a week after composing it, I saw it was what it was - slop - and did the responsible thing - throw that out and use my own brain to express those thoughts, or decide that thought needed more time in the oven before touching the page.
If the original author is reading this, I beg you to consider this instead of becoming another contributor to the internet's cacophony of slop.
TYPE_FASTER | 10 days ago
Useful in 1993 before the Unix machines in the computer labs were running Mosaic.
cosmicgadget | 9 days ago