Author here.

The differences are explained in the post. The dark web is a vast groups of services that cannot be accessed without using special software / proxy.

The hidden services are service running on the TOR network and accessed using a browser that use the TOR proxy.

They are a type of dark web services, but not the entirety

It's now just "Tor" and when accessing hidden services it isnt really a proxy. The Onion Router acronym went away back with the vidalia proxy. But i do miss the oldschool torbutton. It was fun.

the proxy which I refer is the local SOCKS proxy used by tor browser / your applications to be routed through the network.

> The dark web is a vast groups of services that cannot be accessed without using special software

This takes me to the 1990's.... "groups of services that cannot be accessed without using special software" definitely matches NNTP, FTP, SMTP, SSH, HTTP, etc.

hell I still have servers that won't do anything for me without https://

gopher://

Thank you.

> The dark web is a vast groups of services that cannot be accessed without using special software / proxy.

Can you name a few for examples?