random tool I' think might be really interesting (if also a bit complicated to build) - this is assuming it is all run largely locally and everything here is for your own use (and only shared after you review it and its purged of anything personal)
- take my history from my browsers (possibly excluding activity on sites where I have to first login - i.e. my bank but potentially also Mastodon / FB /Amazon etc)
- report over time which sites change from when you first visited them and how
sparked by going to an old tab I had open for a clothing company I had seen an ad for somewhere, had opened, browsed a sale but didn't buy anything.
now I'm very happy I didn't buy anything because not only is the specific sales page I had open in a tab no longer loading - the entire domain itself appears to be gone from the Internet.
Which got me to wondering how many other sites I have visited in recent months/years no longer exist (or have changed completely)?
not unrelated might be if such a tool also looked up some information about sites I had been browsing over time and generated a report about stuff like:
- when the sites were first registered
- how the site when I first visited it compares to any copies of the site in global archives (like the Internet Archive)
- what cookies / trackers etc the site loaded when I first visited
- what it now tries to load when I return (i.e. have they added a bunch of new trackers)
most people (myself included) wouldn't study such a tool all that often - but I'm really curious how many sites I go to from say random Google searches on a topic I haven't searched on much previously are going to sites that are likely generated in recent years (with AI slop) vs ones that are actually older and established and have continuously been authoritative about whatever obscure topic that is.
(or in the case of e-commerce if that site has a history of selling that category of good)
restaurants and physical retail businesses present yet another challenge - how to tell if the "website" linked to for that business on a given map app (especially #google ) is, in fact, the actual website that the owners of that business have set up for the business and not some 3rd party or complete scam site.
I see suspicious links all the time - sites that appear to be the restaurant but which actually are some sketchy 3rd party.
@Rycaut Call.
And then ask about the physical queue inside.
Lots (!) of listed phone numbers are fakes too - intermediaries who parked domains to hijack traffic and skim a cut (legally, mind you, because when a restaurant signs up with doordash etc they sign away the rights to do this!).
So that's why to ask about the queue inside.
And then order away.
Restaurants here love getting calls directly. They don't lose a 10-20% cut to an intermediary! And you don't pay a 5-20% "service and delivery fee" either!
Anyways that's the situation in BC.
Shannon Clark
datum (n=1)