Exactly--which means that we should, as this blog is doing, be calling out this behavior

We should be calling our politicians and demanding that companies be held responsible for committing crimes that--if committed by a person--would have resulted in huge fines, significant jail time, etc

As the article points out: it's absurdist to say that these failures couldn't have been anticipated. Discussions of "AI swarms" and other nonsense are a distraction from the fact that the people at those companies just let their software run, unattended, and it violated federal laws about computer access.

I was there in the early days (90's, early 2000's)

It was categorically, undeniably better--that's where the nostalgia is coming from.

There are lots of reasons why this happened (and those are interesting questions.) But simply denying that it was better doesn't seem particularly reasonable to me.

I miss the early days. I made my first "telnet" connection in either 1990 or 1991. I remember exploring gopher, FTP, early web sites, the transition from BBSes to early ISPs. It was all so exciting and new.

The Internet of today is barely recognizable. The very thing that made it sustainable (commercialization) is also what led to its demise.

There are still sites (like HN!) that give me a taste of the old world. But they are few and far between.

It was better because it was, well, less.

Constraints tend to make you enjoy something more. I agree that a lot of the things that annoy me today weren't present back then. But a lot of other things that I take for granted these days also weren't present back then.

Was it better? No, I don't think so.