index.md (5374B)
1 --- 2 title: "Website update" 3 date: 2023-07-29T15:53:06-07:00 4 draft: false 5 categories: 6 - Meta 7 - Personal 8 --- 9 10 [Google is getting 11 worse](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-google-getting-worse/)[^google]. 12 Twitter is imploding[^twitter]. 13 [Reddit is at war with its volunteer 14 moderators](https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-landed-gentry-18237821.php). 15 Facebook is doing... [whatever Facebook is 16 doing](https://www.businessinsider.com/metaverse-dead-obituary-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-tech-fad-ai-chatgpt-2023-5?op=1). 17 It feels like the major hubs for "internet culture", if such a thing can be 18 said to exist, are reaching the later stages of 19 "[enshittification](https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys)" 20 at the same time. 21 22 In my corner of the internet, the reaction to this apparent trend has been a 23 call to go back to the old ways---or at least our rosiest memories of what 24 the internet was like before it was like _this_. Often at the heart of these 25 calls is the notion that people should be making our own websites again. In 26 this spirit, I've shuffled a few things around on my neglected personal 27 site, and naturally I'm blogging about it. 28 29 <!--more--> 30 31 First I put some effort into taxonomizing my posts. This has been a _de 32 facto_ data science blog for several years, and I'm not sure whether I'll 33 stick with that or branch out. Now, anybody who might want to hear what I 34 say about about data science---but not other things---can head to the [web 35 page]({{< ref "/categories/data-science" >}}) or [RSS feed]({{< ref 36 path="/categories/data-science" outputFormat="rss" 37 >}}) for that category and ignore everything else. If I start writing about 38 home improvement projects, ham radio[^radio], baseball, or whatever, I don't 39 have to feel like I'm letting anybody down. Next, I changed URIs so that 40 they don't contain date strings, and I tweaked the theme so that it would 41 display things by update-order. I like writing how-tos (I do it often for 42 work and personal projects) and I hope to share more of them here. But 43 how-tos can quickly become stale, so I want to make it obvious which ones 44 are and are not out-of-date and encourage myself to fix the former. 45 46 {{< aside >}} 47 Both of the above changes are partially inspired by the notion of a 48 [digital garden](https://github.com/MaggieAppleton/digital-gardeners). 49 I don't think this webpage counts as one, really, but it's a neat idea. 50 51 Other things that nudged me to do this: 52 53 * [Publish your drafts](https://www.maxcountryman.com/articles/publish-your-drafts) 54 * [Some blogging myths](https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/06/05/some-blogging-myths/) 55 * [You can write about anything](https://roytang.net/2023/06/write-anything/) 56 {{< / aside >}} 57 58 As web search feels less reliable, I'm using browser bookmarks more often. 59 This reminded me to take the time to set up HTTP redirects for everything I 60 moved, in the off chance that anybody does bookmark anything here. The RSS 61 feeds[^rss] also carry full posts, so folks don't have to leave their reader 62 if they don't care to. 63 64 Finally, I updated the look. I'm using a [slightly modified 65 version](https://git.eamoncaddigan.net/hugo-theme-readable/log.html) of [the 66 readable theme for Hugo](https://github.com/cjtheham/hugo-theme-readable), 67 which is itself built around the 68 [readable.css](https://readable-css.freedomtowrite.org/) CSS framework. I 69 appreciate the philosophy of the project, and I think it looks nice too. I'm 70 grateful to [CJ](https://ww0cj.radio/) and 71 [Benjamin](https://benjaminhollon.com/) for their efforts in leading these 72 projects, and all the contributors for helping improve them. 73 74 Some of the above probably makes me sound like a curmudgeon, but the thing 75 is: I still like the internet. A lot! The tradition of building personal 76 websites where people can share their interests (and obsessions) has been 77 one of the most charming and useful phenomena on the internet since its 78 inception. I realize that I'll never really be "a blogger", and that's fine. 79 I don't have to post regularly or "develop an audience" in order to 80 participate in this tradition. 81 82 [^twitter]: No citation needed. 83 84 [^google]: I'm not a Freakonomics listener, but I'm linking to them here 85 because it's validating when folks with a worldview slightly different than 86 your own acknowledge a social phenomenon you've experienced. I do think they 87 missed an important point in this episode however: Google's conflict of 88 interest not only lies with the ads they show in search results, but also in 89 the ads they display on other people's websites (according to Google, 35 90 _million_ websites comprise the "Google Display Network"). Most of the 91 spammy pages on the internet exist to show people ads (a problem likely to 92 become worse as [LLMs](https://ucsd.libguides.com/AI) produce more 93 human-like text), and down-ranking pages that are full of ads would be a 94 sensible approach to curbing this problem. But Google can't do that, because 95 they would lose money if they did. 96 97 [^radio]: I skipped the Technician and picked up my General class license 98 last year. So far I've participated in some local nets and helped provide 99 radio support for an event, but I haven't gotten on HF yet. 100 101 [^rss]: In addition to the 102 [feed for all posts]({{< ref path="/posts" outputFormat="rss" >}}), 103 there are feeds for each 104 [category]({{< ref "/categories" >}}) and [tag]({{< ref "/tags" >}})