r/InternetIsBeautiful

hey,

i'm b0zy, computer engineer, online since 1998. dial-up at home, 14.4k modem then 33.6k then the magical 56k. ttnet billed by the minute back then so i remember planning every download.

last week i made https://rip.so - a memorial site for the dead corners of the internet. each grave is a 800-1200 word obit for something i either used (icq, msn, mp3.com, kazaa) or remember from the era (geocities, friendster, sodaplay). 100+ entries plus a small companion list called "things that survived against odds" (vlc, irc, wikipedia, slashdot).

the writing is in my own voice. when i never used something i say so directly: "i never used path. it was a US-focused product, by 2010 the social network audience in turkey had settled on facebook." honesty about distance matters more than pretending to know things i did not.

it went viral on hacker news on 29 april (~30k pageviews in a day). the early version shipped with AI-generated placeholder content that i rewrote by hand after HN ripped it apart. that critique was the right call. the rewrite was the part that made it real.

other small things:

- you can leave a rose on any grave (anonymous ASCII tribute, IRC-color)
- atom feed of recent burials
- weekly digest newsletter (opt-in)
- suggestion box if you remember something missing

a few things people brought back via the suggestion box that surprised me:

- sodaplay (the flash physics toy with the spring creatures)
- nabaztag (the french wifi rabbit)
- swatch beat-time (the 1998 attempt to replace timezones with ubeats)
- the palace (the 1995 graphical chat)
- origami flowers (a niche android flower-growing MMO that died in 2017)

comments and rose tributes welcome.

https://rip.so

been using this for the last week. drop a file in the browser, share the link, the recipient downloads it directly from your machine. nothing uploads anywhere.

the part i actually like is it doesnt care what device anyone is on. iphone to windows works. android to mac works. no app to install on either side, just a browser tab.

encrypted, no size cap, no account needed.

When I put my first server up on the internet, I was shocked by the number of bots that immediately tried to break in. I showed the logs to my kids, and they asked "where are all these bots coming from?" To answer this question visually, I built https://knock-knock.net . My goal was to build a visually appealing, educational, and fun site that shows the origins of the bots, the most commonly attempted usernames and passwords in credential attacks, as well as the worst offending ISPs. My newest version here reveals attacks across multiple internet protocols, and across multiple servers, aggregated into a single display.

Click the speaker icon to hear a virtual geiger counter detect what has been called "the background radiation of the internet." If the info is being presented too quickly, hit the pause button or space bar.

Technical info: I built a set of python-based honeypots feeding into a SQL database, with a Uvicorn front-end receiving knock information via websockets.

Have fun. Source code is available at https://github.com/djkurlander/knock-knock

What it is: Opinion Outpost Tech. You post or react to opinions (anything — politics, books, your job, a movie). AI extracts the underlying beliefs into a "Cognitive DNA" profile. Over time it shows you how your views drift, where you contradict yourself, and what you've quietly abandoned.

Why I built it: I wanted a longitudinal record of me, not photos, not journals, but the actual structure of how I think. There's no product for this.

Tech: React + R3F (3D neural field viz), Supabase, edge functions, Gemini 3 Flash for extraction, MCP server so external AI can read your DNA.

Live features:

• Daily reflection prompt (streak-based)
• Opinion of the Week
• 3D "Mind" view that reconstructs your belief network
• Chrome extension for highlighting + passive attention tracking
• AI chat that knows your beliefs
• "Therapist mode" that's been weirdly useful

What I'm stuck on:

• Onboarding feels heavy — too much before the "aha"
• Not sure if "social discovery" (seeing other people's DNAs) helps or distracts
• Retention beyond week 1 is the real test

Honest feedback wanted. Especially from people who'd never use this – tell me why.

https://opinionoutpost.tech/