In this AI hype we are living I think things like #Usenet, #Irc, etc will see a resurgence. I mean, everybody is trying to sell your data to AI, it's on you to find an avenue that's safe and private...
Time to kill off one of my oldest subscriptions. Have been using a paid #Usenet provider for nearly 20 years. About 5-6 years ago I could upgrade to a yearly subscription for a big discount (compared to the prices they would introduce shortly after). But I haven't really used Usenet for anything at all in the last years.
Somehow cancelling the subscription gives me FOMO for some reason. Can never get it back for that price again. But then again, why would I want Usenet access again...
@amoroso To be totally honest I only used Usenet to download stuff (which I haven't done for years now, mind you :-)). Have never seen it being used as a discussion forum or sharing of info. But looks like Eternal September is a traditional Usenet server in that regard.
"Today, many folks look back with fondness on the early days of computer-based messaging. Depending on age, they may wax nostalgic for #bbses#Usenet, or #webforums. All these technologies still exist, although either barely used or are full of spam. It’s hard not to think that something may have been lost.
Perhaps the future isn’t one of endless growth for all-powerful corporations but a return to smaller, more personal “third spaces” where we can feel comfortable." https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/first-post-a-history-of-online-public-messaging/
3D illustration for a 2006 issue of the Dutch ComputerTotaal magazine, about the SABNZBD tool, which was (is?) much-used for concatenating multi-part downloads from Usenet newsgroups.
"#USENET, or NetNews, is a text-only social discussions forum, or rather a set of a great many forums, called "newsgroups," carried by multiple servers around the world. Although the original developers closed down their instance in 2010, that was just one server out of hundreds, and many are still running just fine. It never went away – it's still alive, you can get on it for free, and there is a choice of client apps for most OSes to help you navigate."
There was nothing wrong with the underlying technology and methodology of Usenet groups. The issue was unmoderated discussions leading to complete chaos. Arguably Reddit built on this model and attempted to address its shortcomings. Unfortunately the original designers of Reddit fell down the money hole and sold their soul to get rich. Time to bring back Usenet.
@HopelessDemigod I would say the federated model of usenet actually offers more resilience. I was always a bit wary of reddit's stranglehold on it's own space.
But that also is the issue with usenet. When Google hooked up Google Groups and flooded the whole system with both users and bot spam it became difficult to deal with. Cut out both users and spam, or try to handle spam one by one?
(A situation not dissimilar to the fediverse/threads situation)
@Methylcobalamin #GoogleGroups should still(*) have the messages up to the cut-off date, but it might be hard to browse the archive of affected groups because of all the spam.
(*) At least until it gets flagged for having spam and Google blocks it because it has spam — yes, Google blocks groups for having spam that was injected via Google, it has happened before, there are still groups affected by it, and probably will happen again until somebody finally fixes some internal process...
What platforms were used in the 80s up to about 1993 or 1994 for Internet servers? It can be #FTP, #Gopher, #telnet, #USENET, the #OldWeb, or anything else that was on the Internet in that era.
My research indicates Solaris was very popular for web servers until Linux took over, and so I suspect it (and SunOS before it) was very popular for the Internet in general, but I'd like to hear from anyone with this sort of experience.
@CodingItWrong haha i have a similar world wide web dating system - for me, it was Ultima VIII: Pagan in 1994. the first thing i did was use lynx to find a text walkthrough for the game, which progressed to searching for Ultima IX screenshots in Mosaic and Netscape a few months later.
@sinza During the 80s, likely VAXes running some BSD variety, also some Sun kit. Moving into the 90s, some sort of TCP/IP was available for more systems, but still BSDs or derivatives mostly. Linux only really started catching on later. And notably ft.cdrom.com, the download site back then, was one (rather beefy for its time) FreeBSD box.
Stop Electron, stop using a browser as if it was an Operating System!!! Go #terminal#cli#TUI use your OS, not the browser for everything! And be liter, more ethical, your computer will love you! Use #Gemini#gopher#usenet#matrix#fediverse on TUI apps #vim#neovim as your text/IDE #mpv for videos and more... !!!
Also fiddling with my #hamster configuration. Originally I just wanted it as a replacement for the leafnode #usenet proxy server on my windows machine, but #thunderbird and #Gmail are making enough problems lately that I wonder if using it as a proxy mail server wouldn't also be reasonable.
I mean, the program is like 5 mb in size, which 20 years ago might have been sizeable, but right now is a drop in the bucket.
Whoops, using #hamster as a tag for the #mail/ #usenet program of the same name might have been a mistake.
I mean, people who are talking about hamsters are generally not talking about proxy servers.
In fact even searching on Google for help has been a chore because the joke about server hamsters being tired has become so widespread it has replaced any discussion about the software.
In July 1999, someone stole a trailer jammed with Sonic Youth gear out of a Ramada Inn parking lot. Lee Ranaldo immediately sent an email that was reposted to alt.music.sonic-youth:
> Please no pranks, all, this is really serious--
> all the gear we've used to write our last few LPs
> worth of stuff, instruments used for songs old
> and new which if truly lost will mean those songs
> will be lost forever.
ok, pet idea: anyone interesting in an alt.comp.infosystems.fediverse #usenet group for off-fedi discussions of the #fediverse and #mastodon that leans itself more towards longer discussions?
I saw on #usenet under the #gemini protocol newsgroup (REAL GEMINI NOT SHIT GOOGLE CRAP) that someone created a guestbook like we used to have back in the day under #gemini very cool indeed! <3
@rss feeds on #usenet <3 with #slrn on the #hispagatos usenet server, part of the new usenet with no binaries, only plain text, no spam, no google only hobbiest, hackers, tinkers and awesome people.
Installed Hamster as a local #usenet server on my windows laptop. It works, is pretty simple to set up, and has a very late-90s aesthetic for the whole program that I thought we left behind in that decade with Pogs and a vague sense of optimism towards the future.
It is rather dense in its particulars though. My current issue: how exactly do I pull news automatically?
I assume it's possible, but I might have to write a script to do it.
The app is written for dial-up internet.
@SimonHain I never used hamster before. But I did use leafnode and remember learning the use of crontab for that, so it's not like it's so our of the ordinary
Wenn ich an den Föderationsgedanken denke, fühle ich mich an zwei Ansätze erinnert: #Gravatar als plattformübergreifender "Avatar", und im Blick auf Mastodon an die alten BBS/Mailbox Zeiten... Da gab es die lokale Box, und darüber hinaus konnte man ggf. ins #Usenet gehen... #Fidonet sage ich an dieser Stelle.
@Printdevil@projectmoon they change stuff around. I was wondering why stuff wasn't threading properly. Turns out I was in "Cards" view, which I didn't even know was a thing.
I keep thinking how much more logical #usenet would be if someone actually had created local hierarchies like they exist for a few places. there's a france. hierarchy which has groups for all kinds of places in the country.
instead some places, esp. in Germany have hierarchies for themselves (like nbg. or bln.) while Austria has at. and oesterreich., UK has both uk. and england. etc.
but barely anyone is using these by now anyway, so it's a moot point.
it's of course a problem with a network that has grown organically like usenet has. It's not like technically anything but the Big Eight newsgroups are even part of proper #usenet. Even the incredibly popular alt. hierarchy technically is just an offshoot (and is mostly so popular because that's where the pirated stuff can be found on servers that allow it)
@kyonshi MELVYL was a computerized mainframe based digital card catalog, to my understanding one of the first (and one of the last around).
It was amazing, and it had every single book in the entire UC system in it, so you could effectively find so many details about books, order them for loan, etc. Over 30 million records.
@SnoozyRests well, it depends what you want. leafnode is a small local server for example that will just periodically connect with newsservers to pull down new articles.
I have been looking at INN for running an actual news server and my god is that complicated
