We've had discussions around here before about where we get our news, and one of mine has been The BBC. I've used them as an occasional source for several years now. It seems that today (Nov 15th) marks a shift in their policy regarding access to their online site. BBC.com is no longer readable for free. I can look at their headlines, but as soon as I try to read an article, a subscribe pop-up appears, and there is no way around it. Archive sites will still have the articles, yes, but that is a different subject entirely.

As far as I'm concerned, that drops them from my list of news sources. I have tentatively replaced them with Reuters, which is visually clunky, but still free. The AP site, PBS and National Public Radio are other sites I frequent. For a British viewpoint, I'm also trying out The Guardian, which bombards me with SUBSCRIBE notices, but those can still be zapped out of sight.

Are there any other obvious sites I haven't mentioned? Not interested in right-wing propaganda by the way and I find most of the major American networks intolerable.

Its 2am and I should be asleep so I'm sorry if this is maybe just a weird midnight rant.

Today I saw a news article on the other site about aggressive monkeys with covid and herpes escaping a crashed semi truck.

My first reaction was "is this headline a joke" and I couldn't tell. Then I looked at the source (action news 5 or channel 5 action news, or... something) and even opened the page to have a look for clues of it being fake and without digging deeper I just couldn't tell if it was a legitimate news site or not. So I read the (short) article and looked for clues and it sounded probably legitimate. There was a photo of the scene with a monkey at the rear of a trailer but af this point I can't instantly spot AI images and who knows if it isn't just an old photo. Then I go to the reddit comment and they're parroting additional "facts" but nothing that felt substantial.

I felt very struck by the feeling that I don't know if I can trust any information online unless it's REALLY from a trusted source, and I'm not really sure what sources I can trust anymore.

Is this just me? Have you felt a significant change in the last few months? AI is playing a big part in my distrust, but Im also seeing echo chambers somehow get even worse.

Also, it found out later that the monkeys weren't knfected with a bunch of viruses, it was some sort of miss-communication.

I have decent internet at home.

I have great internet at work.

Despite the speeds of those though, seemingly every website out there feels laggy and heavy. You click, you wait, you get a skeleton of the page, with different elements that rapidly pop in until you're staring at the full site. You see the little loading animation on the tab for one, two, three seconds. It isn't exactly "slow" by any means, but it's far from instantaneous either.

Clicking around the web these days feels like I'm playing a game with unignorable input lag.

And I get it. The modern web is complex. It's genuinely a miracle that this is possible in the first place, so I really shouldn't be complaining that the bits traveling through the internet from dozens of servers thousands of miles away aren't getting here immediately.

I get that high resolution screens require large images, and the ubiquity of video these days adds even more weight. I get that many websites are closer to applications than they are static pages.

I'm not trying to take away from the awesome magic that is our modern miracle of connectivity in the slightest, and I'm appreciative to all the people here who spend their livelihoods working on it. Y'all are awesome.

I'm just trying to say that, well, sometimes moving around on the web can drag. And when you've been using it for a long time, the dragging can get under your skin a little bit.

However, my real point lies not in the rest of the internet, but here. I'm talking about this "heavy web" baseline as a contrast for one of the things I love about Tildes:

it. is. so. snappy.

I click, and BAM, the page is there. Immediately.

It's sharp. It's crisp. It's no-nonsense. No waiting for elements to pop in. No subconsciously watching for the loading animation to stop so that I know I can start to interact with site.

For general design reasons, I've always loved that Tildes is text-only, but more and more I appreciate that aspect simply because Tildes feels good to use because it is so quick and responsive. I don't know how much of that is due to the text-only part of things and how much of it is Deimos being a genius code wizard who made an amazing platform, but I'm happy about it regardless.

This site has got zero input lag.

And that feels great.

I'm streaming Firefox to watch Riverdale, so I opened up Chrome to browse while I wait for them to join. Youtube has ads on it, and I realized I can't grab uBlock or anything (meaningfully) privacy focused. So, I wanna try out one of the cool new browsers, what do people use and recommend?

I'm on Windows and a proper techie, so give me anything that's a bit strange and off the wall as well! The only one I tried out recently was Comet, but it needs more time to bake, total waste of time IME. I remember using IceWeasel for some reason lol

Can you pivot to other tasks, or are you dead in the water? What about others? Your team/department? Tell us what its like for those minutes/hours.

How often does the internet drop for you (if at all)?

If you don't ever lose internet at work (lucky you!), answer hypothetically about what would happen.

Imgur appears to have geoblocked the UK. This is likely in response to the stupid Online Safety Act (brought in by the previous Conservative government) which requires age verification for "adult" content - not just porn, it's a bunch of other poorly defined other stuff too.

My guess, based on very little information because imgur don't appear to have said anything much officially at this point, is they've had a letter from Ofcom (UK telecoms standards agency) and decided an IP ban is easier than compliance and I totally understand their decision. But urgh.

I didn't have much stuff on there and it's all backed up but still. Annoying.

Inspired by some conversations I had over Discord where I realized that a lot of memes and videos from the early days of the Internet which were common knowledge are now just totally unknown. So, let's have a proper Throwback Thursday and reminisce over purer times.

Hello I hope you all have a good [insert time of Day] !!!

Maybe a bit of background about me:
(25 Age idk if that is relevant, but it could be interesting how other age groups see that)
I really like unique stuff. If it's design or clothes or web design or whatever you might think of. I have been working privately on my own website, and I built it almost from scratch. I really like unique-looking websites, and I also like the 2000s era style of design (not only limited to web-design).

I have been noticing a lot of websites that they look more and more the same. The same structure, design, similar colors, similar pictures etc, etc...

And I think this is just very boring and it just feels like more and more the web isn't made for us humans. It feels everything is being more and more optimized either for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or for AI scrapping. And I feel like being alienated from using the internet (Yes, also sadly that's the case in many other areas).

And I asked some people and what they basically told me is that they like that everything looks the same and everything feels the same. Since they can go on every website and understand the layout and know how to navigate every website.

So I wanted to ask what is your opinion about this topic?
Do you care what the Internet looks like? Do you mind that everything looks same~ier?