27 votes

A site to randomly stumble on to new and unique webpages - stumblingon

21 comments

  1. [4]
    lmn
    Link
    Recently I tried searching for the old StumbleUpon. I was surprised and disappointed to see that it seems to have shut down. So - I tried to recreate the basic idea as I remember it. Click a...

    Recently I tried searching for the old StumbleUpon. I was surprised and disappointed to see that it seems to have shut down. So - I tried to recreate the basic idea as I remember it. Click a button, get a random site.

    If you're interested, please check it out. Stumble a few times. Let me know if there's any problems with it or things that would make it better.

    16 votes
    1. [3]
      xstresedg
      Link Parent
      My first stumble attempt got me an about:blank window lol but otherwise it seems to be working fine! :)

      My first stumble attempt got me an about:blank window lol but otherwise it seems to be working fine! :)

      7 votes
      1. [2]
        lmn
        Link Parent
        Hmm. Uh oh. I must've inadvertantly put something invalid in the index of sites to stumble on. I'll check my list of sites and try to find it. Thanks for the heads up!

        Hmm. Uh oh. I must've inadvertantly put something invalid in the index of sites to stumble on. I'll check my list of sites and try to find it.

        Thanks for the heads up!

        5 votes
  2. [6]
    TheRtRevKaiser
    Link
    I got some some good old-fashioned conspiracy theory rambling right off the bat!

    I got some some good old-fashioned conspiracy theory rambling right off the bat!

    9 votes
    1. [3]
      lmn
      Link Parent
      I come down on the "pro" side of weird conspiracy sites. If, for no other reason than getting familiar with extreme examples of conspiracy thinking helps you spot more mild forms.

      I come down on the "pro" side of weird conspiracy sites. If, for no other reason than getting familiar with extreme examples of conspiracy thinking helps you spot more mild forms.

      6 votes
      1. [2]
        the_walrus
        Link Parent
        And it's good to get a sense of other people's perspectives on the world. Even if someone's perspective is based in nonsense, I believe it's important to at least get a sense of that person's...

        And it's good to get a sense of other people's perspectives on the world. Even if someone's perspective is based in nonsense, I believe it's important to at least get a sense of that person's train of thought. We can't understand someone's perspective until we learn about it. The key getting along with one another is understanding each other's perspectives, whether we individually agree with them or not.

        Also, there's no denying it can be fun to entertain your superiority complex when you read about something that is so obviously untrue.

        6 votes
        1. TheRtRevKaiser
          Link Parent
          They can also be pretty damn entertaining, although I always start to feel a little uneasy with that I a probably rubbernecking at the symptoms of someone's untreated mental illness. Still, I had...

          They can also be pretty damn entertaining, although I always start to feel a little uneasy with that I a probably rubbernecking at the symptoms of someone's untreated mental illness.

          Still, I had a lot of fun with Time Cube back in the day. And more recently but occasionally just as crazy, r/infowarriorrides.

          3 votes
    2. nothis
      Link Parent
      Jesus, that's super sad.

      Jesus, that's super sad.

      1 vote
    3. sublime_aenima
      Link Parent
      I got that same one fairly quickly as well. Of the 10 or so times I clicked, half seemed to be someone’s random blog.

      I got that same one fairly quickly as well. Of the 10 or so times I clicked, half seemed to be someone’s random blog.

      1 vote
  3. [2]
    Soptik
    (edited )
    Link
    The websites requires me to allow XHR to daily-yak.com in order for the buttons to work (user ID is sent to server and URL is retrieved). And daily-yak.com requires me to allow XHR to...

    The websites requires me to allow XHR to daily-yak.com in order for the buttons to work (user ID is sent to server and URL is retrieved). And daily-yak.com requires me to allow XHR to 18.222.220.55 in order to even display anything. Man, what do you have with all the cross-domain XHR?

    Anyway, I really like the idea, it's quite interesting. The first website I got was comparsion of rubber duck prices on Amazon :-) Works perfectly for me.

    Out of curiosity, how many websites do you have in DB?

    Edit: don's site is amazing as well. I really like this, lmn.

    5 votes
    1. lmn
      Link Parent
      Glad you're enjoying it! Regarding the cross domain requests, I happen to have ssl certificates for the daily-yak domain. I needed to make an ssl request to keep the site https. I have an item on...

      Glad you're enjoying it!

      Regarding the cross domain requests, I happen to have ssl certificates for the daily-yak domain. I needed to make an ssl request to keep the site https. I have an item on my to do list for untangling the system. I expect to get to it in a week or two. Hopefully it'll be a bit more coherent then.

      Regarding the size of the index, I can't check exactly right now from my phone (though I plan to add this to a "metrics" page). The size is fairly small, though growing. Approximately 100 sites I'd say. People are submitting more fairly regularly though, so I expect this to grow.

      4 votes
  4. [7]
    Brock_Knifemann
    (edited )
    Link
    Nice idea! I used to be a StumbleUpon acheiver (like over 1m followers, for some reason), and really miss that site. I had forgotten about it for a while and went back to find that it had died....

    Nice idea!

    I used to be a StumbleUpon acheiver (like over 1m followers, for some reason), and really miss that site. I had forgotten about it for a while and went back to find that it had died.

    I'll give this one a go :-)

    Update @Imn , this is so cool! I've already come across stuff that I had no idea existed. Thanks for making this tool.

    2 votes
    1. [6]
      lmn
      Link Parent
      Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it. What is a StumbleUpon achiever? Do you have any thoughts as to what StumbleUpon did well or poorly?

      Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it. What is a StumbleUpon achiever? Do you have any thoughts as to what StumbleUpon did well or poorly?

      3 votes
      1. [5]
        Brock_Knifemann
        Link Parent
        By "achiever", I meant that I used it a lot (had over 100,000 stumbles) and had a lot of followers. Which, I thought was odd because I never used it's social function or ever followed anyone. So...

        By "achiever", I meant that I used it a lot (had over 100,000 stumbles) and had a lot of followers. Which, I thought was odd because I never used it's social function or ever followed anyone.

        So in terms of what it did well, I thought it was pretty seamless as a Firefox extension. I generally enjoyed most of what I found, since it was narrowed down to handful of topics that I was interested in.

        As for the bad, I never liked the social aspect, so I never used that. It just seemed pointless, but I recognize that I dislike most social media, which doesn't mean that others share my views. I also disliked the advertising (sponsored stumbles) and spam that would sneak in. I reported that stuff all the time, but it never seemed to make any difference.

        2 votes
        1. [4]
          lmn
          Link Parent
          I don't think I ever noticed, or I've since forgotten, the social aspect. What did following someone mean on Stumble Upon? My own intuition is that StumbleUpon kept adding features and things...

          I don't think I ever noticed, or I've since forgotten, the social aspect. What did following someone mean on Stumble Upon?

          My own intuition is that StumbleUpon kept adding features and things until their site eventually evolved away from a neat toy to use when bored to an unusable thing.

          My own hopes for stumblingon are to add a history, so you can find pages you've stumbled on previously, and a like button. The like button would let you mark sites you liked so you could revisit them in the history section and also enable a recommendation system, so your stumbling might become 2/3 random sites and 1/3 sites the system predicts you may like.

          Other than that I mainly just want to grow the index and make the service more performant. At the moment my tests show it'll handle ~20 simultaneous getSite calls, but it's currently written in a fairly naive way.

          I'd definitely like to reach a stopping point and avoid evolving into something bad though.

          3 votes
          1. [3]
            Brock_Knifemann
            Link Parent
            I am pretty sure (but not certain) that people you followed influenced what stumbles you got. If I followed you, for example, things you liked would show up in my stumbles. I think. It's been a...

            I am pretty sure (but not certain) that people you followed influenced what stumbles you got. If I followed you, for example, things you liked would show up in my stumbles.

            I think. It's been a while :-\

            2 votes
            1. lmn
              Link Parent
              It sounds a bit like a "me too" feature for StumbleUpon wanting to be a social media company. I can see how it would be gratifying if a lot of people followed you though. Thanks for sharing the...

              It sounds a bit like a "me too" feature for StumbleUpon wanting to be a social media company. I can see how it would be gratifying if a lot of people followed you though.

              Thanks for sharing the perspective of a Stumble Upon champion though.

              2 votes
            2. Brock_Knifemann
              Link Parent
              Also, holy shit this is great. I've come across all kinds of interesting political philosophy. Which, ironically, is keeping me from my political philosophy homework.

              Also, holy shit this is great. I've come across all kinds of interesting political philosophy.

              Which, ironically, is keeping me from my political philosophy homework.

              1 vote
  5. [2]
    envy
    Link
    Works great. But... no iFrame with a stumblingon button at the top?

    Works great.

    But... no iFrame with a stumblingon button at the top?

    1 vote
    1. lmn
      Link Parent
      Thanks! At the moment, my feeling is that such a setup would make stumbling faster and more frequent. In a way, I think that would distract from the websites you're visiting. It would be too easy...

      Thanks!

      At the moment, my feeling is that such a setup would make stumbling faster and more frequent. In a way, I think that would distract from the websites you're visiting. It would be too easy to leave them and stumble on to something else and you wouldn't give a website a minute or two that might be required to understand it.

      Also: my current index of sites is fairly small at the moment, so fast stumbles may lead to people quickly running out of choices.

      Ultimately, I could see it becoming a button in a browser extension in the future.

      5 votes