How Digg helped invent the social internet

So many of Digg’s features, from its voting mechanism to its commenting system to its occasional teeming toxicity, are omnipresent on the internet now. But in 2004, when Kevin Rose was working on the first versions of his new news platform — back when he was best known as a host on the TechTV network — it was all brand new.

Awesome interview with Digg’s founder Kevin Rose. They recently rebooted Diggnation and he says he’d be open to buying the website back if he could get in touch with the current owner.

I spent a lot of time there back in the day 🫡 I doubt there would even be Reddit if it wasn’t for Digg paving the way.

One personal website is enough for me – disassociated.com

Not everyone wants to post content on social media though. In that case then, I can see the point of something like Micro.blog. I don’t know a whole lot about the platform, but it seems similar to the likes of Mastodon, Threads, or Bluesky: it’s basically for micro-blogging. But even with something like Micro.blog, you still come back to the problem of content ownership, and the concern such platforms, like the social media channels, could close-down just like that.

I battled with that idea at first but you can definitely export all of your data in a matter of seconds if you ever wanted to go somewhere else. And it’s based on Hugo so it’s possible to export everything and convert it to a self hosted Hugo setup if you wanted to.

It’s kinda like a hosting provider in itself, in a lot of ways. You get a website and a micro blog platform all in one.

What makes WP Engine different from Bluehost?

This might sound dumb but I don’t get the difference between something like WP Engine and other hosts that specialize in Wordpress, like Bluehost which literally refers to itself as a Wordpress Hosting Platform and Dreamhost, both of which are recommended by Automattic? I get that they have “WP” in their name; that makes sense for being easily mistakable for an official part of Wordpress, but the revision history thing just doesn’t seem like it’s as big a deal as Mullenweg is making it out to be.

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I’m pretty good at starting a post, going off on a tangent and then forgetting what I was even writing about in the first place

I was originally planning on making my root domain a static landing page/hub kinda thing but I changed it back to my Micro.blog site since I’m most active here. Instead of an about page, I added a link in my nav to the “hub” subdomain where my socials, bio and a longform blog live on omg.lol.

I really liked this video essay. The author draws parallels between simulation theory and our always connected, perpetually online world.

I still think about that time Jack Dorsey called everyone on Bluesky “Very, very common”

Bluesky saw this exodus of people from Twitter show up, and it was a very, very common crowd. … But little by little, they started asking Jay and the team for moderation tools, and to kick people off.

DOODAD.dev - a sick pattern generator for web design

screenshot of doodad.dev. There are a few various windows where you can choose different patterns and manipulate the parameters to get a custom tiled pattern

Tools for making websites fast, accessible, expressive, and green. These tools are mostly for helping web developers build small websites (sites that use fewer bytes) without sacrificing expression.

I randomly stumbled across this a few minutes ago when I was trying to find a way to generate Memphis design patterns. You can choose from a ton of different SVG patterns, manipulate the size, shape, color and angle and generate an image from it. Love this kind of thing! Feels like a desktop app on a website.

What's valuable to you?

I was just reading this Reddit thread about a blogging platform that launched a few years ago. It's grown into a successful space with a thriving community by now, but the comments were kind of cracking me up.

The #1 thing people were focused on back then was how to monetize it.

There's no built-in advertising options and it's really not even set up to run something like Google ads. SEO, maximizing engagement and clicks are not baked in. It's simply a place where indie bloggers can go to share their stories and hang out with other bloggers.

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WordPress.org’s latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin

WordPress.org has taken over a popular WP Engine plugin in order “to remove commercial upsells and fix a security problem,” WordPress cofounder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announced today.

Wow that must be pretty serious huh?

It’s not clear what security problem Mullenweg is referring to in the post.

Oh 🤨

Rumors on X Are Becoming the Right’s New Reality

A curious set of claims has recently emerged from…X: FEMA is systematically abandoning Trump-supporting Hurricane Helene victims; Democrats (and perhaps Jewish people) are manipulating the weather; Haitian immigrants are eating pet cats in Springfield, Ohio.

I remember when conspiracy theories used to be shit like subterranean lizard people and hollow moon theory. No one took it this seriously and it definitely wasn’t part of anyone’s political campaign. I think RFK’s brain worms must be contagious 🤪

SSRI Withdrawal, Brain Zaps [psychiatrist.com]

In SSRI Withdrawal, Brain Zaps Go from Overlooked Symptom to Center Stage A sensation unofficially known as “brain zaps” has caused concern in patients stepping off of their SSRIs. Until recently, physicians have widely been unaware or dismissive of the symptom.  “There was an emphasis both within the [psychiatric] profession and pharmacological companies to make these medications sound not addictive,” [Alexander Papp] told Psychiatrist.com. Therefore, when SSRIs first became popular, very few systematic studies were conducted on antidepressant discontinuation effects.

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Why even come out if you're bi or pan?

I've heard that a lot. Why would I even come out of the closet when I can pass for a straight guy? Just date girls and spank it to gay porn or something; don't do this shit in public.

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WordPress Alternatives

Due to…everything going on right now with WordPress, I thought I’d put together a list of alternative CMSs that better fit the criteria someone might have for their website … The criteria for this list are “Can it be downloaded, dropped onto a server, and you’ll have a website?”

Great post on WP alternatives! I’ve never liked it for a personal blog, it just feels too commercial for me. But I know it’s something a ton of people use. Like most bloggers and commercial websites. Worth checking out if you use WP and don’t like the direction it’s headed these days.

A deposit of marine fossils found under San Pedro High School - Los Angeles Times

Researchers uncovered two distinct sites on campus where new buildings were under construction: a bone bed dating back 8.7 million years in the Miocene era and a shell bed about 120,000 years old from the Pleistocene era.

It’s crazy that at any given place in the world you could be standing on top of millions of years of undiscovered history and not even know it.

I like the brutalist feel of omg.lol 😌

Internet Archive hacked, data breach impacts 31 million users

“Have you ever felt like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the verge of suffering a catastrophic security breach? It just happened. See 31 million of you on HIBP!,” reads a JavaScript alert shown on the compromised archive.org site.

Earlier today, the Internet Archive suffered a DDoS attack, which has now been claimed by the BlackMeta hacktivist group, who says they will be conducting additional attacks.

What a bunch of losers. It’s like throwing a molotov cocktail through a library’s window.

Elon Musk’s ‘Free’ Starlink for Hurricane Helene Victims Will Cost at Least $400

Musk made headlines with a promise that SpaceX Starlink would be free for 30 days to help in places where fiber and cellular infrastructure might have been knocked offline.

…anyone interested in taking up the offer still has to pay approximately $400 for the dish itself (including shipping and tax) and they’re getting automatically rolled into a $120 per-month contract when the free month ends.

Literal supervillain.

Seasonal euphoria

I'm wired backwards--or at least my seasonal depression is. I'm at my best when it's 20°F and everything's covered with a fluffy blanket of glimmering snow. I can sleep under a comforter without waking up soaked in sweat. I can actually enjoy a hot shower and it doesn't take me three hours to cool down. I can wear my long sleeve Oxfords to work without sweating my ass off all day.

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CTV industry’s unprecedented “surveillance” - Ars Technica

Not only does CTV operate in ways that are unfair to consumers, it is also putting them and their families at risk as it gathers and uses sensitive data about health, children, race, and political interests

…buying a smart TV set in today’s connected television marketplace is akin to bringing a digital Trojan Horse into one’s home

Not surprising honestly. Everyone’s a Neilson family now eh?