@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

tomjennings

@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org

I make things.

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tomjennings, to random
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

Neat hack!

https://lemmy.world/post/1281168

tomjennings, to random
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

Lemmy.world got hacked tonight. One of the admins accounts compromised and a bunch of childish hacks performed. Was down for a bit but back up. Probably under control now.

Shit Happens.

simevidas, to random
@simevidas@mastodon.social avatar

Underrated Mastodon feature:

> Reverse chronological order is the only built-in way to view your feed https://maria-antoniak.github.io/2023/07/04/notes-on-mastodon.html

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@simevidas

Thanks for that!

vga256, to random
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

@tomjennings i'm writing a decentralized peer-to-peer network of discussion groups with an nntp server back-end and a reddit-like frontend, called .

a lot of the ideas and implementation came from watching bbs interviews about .

but because it's peer-to-peer (using nntp store and forward), i'm having trouble coming up with a reliable system for maintaining a master list of discussion group names (e.g. tomonet.pets.cat). i want to keep it as decentralized as possible, but i'm beginning to realize that "someone has to have a master list of groups" to prevent name collisions across the network.

i'd hate to be in the position where two distant servers NEWGROUP tomonet.pets.cat at the same time, and then have to figure out whose is canonical, and whose gets merged-in or deleted.

i can't find any info on how fido dealt with this situation in the protocol docs. was there a system in place to prevent name collisions like this?

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@vga256

1/2

Oh boy. First, caveat, my memories of this stuff are of course old, and memory being what it is, drift. Also, when I did nodelists -- up to the 100-node point -- I did them by HAND with pmate.

Nodelist creation was taken over by St Louis. tbh I have no idea how they handled names.

But fidoNet had one absolute built-in guarantee: unique phone numbers. So four thousand CAT BBS could be unique.

Can't name collision be left as a social problem? eg. just let their be (N) tomonet.pets.cat entities exist? And have their members sort it out?

The nodelist is the fido thing you probably are concerned with. Its outside the fidonet itself.

the node list appeared as one big fat long CSV-like text file. However it was assembled by fragments collected by local nets, eg. if you're in small town East Overshoe, the folks there appoint a net coordinator, who types in the junk that comprises a record (name, phone number ("address"), bit rates, hours of operation, etc. This fragment was sent weekly (or whatever) to a regional coordinator,.... here my memory is vague, and it changed.

RCs each got copies of other RCs fragments, and assembled it. Or, the RCs gathered fragments and sent them to St Louis (this at least was done early in fidonets history).

What i wanted was to use Echomail, Jeff Rush's conferencing system that uses FidoNet as it's carrier. Like usenet over email.

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@vga256

2/2

The idea (never even discussed, all out of my hands by this point) was to create a conference called NODELIST, and that conference's messages were all nodelist fragments that BBSs could build a nodelist from. If you're in the US and don't care about direct dialing EU, don't download those fragments.

This creates a bootstrap problem but DNS hints solves that. The nodelist just being a text file meant you could simply type one in.

But net search for "FidoNet nodelist compilation" and you'll stumble on makeNL. That name might be mine; but probably Ben Baker's. It was long ago.

I don't have a filename beginning with "makenl" on my computer so probably Ben's.

here's a thing: after I relinquished control, a lot of the people who took over centralized a lot of stuff. Not out of bad intent (though there were a few....) but out of lack of overarching theory.

I was pretty open with my idea, but I didn't have it together enough to know how to ... guide or induce them to continue. And it all moved so damn fast.

liztai, to internet
@liztai@hachyderm.io avatar

"It’s the end of a social era on the web. That’s probably a good thing. But I already miss the places that felt like everyone was there."

I must be an exception because I DON'T miss it lol

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/3/23782607/social-web-public-apps-end-reddit-twitter-mastodon

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@liztai

I totally agree. Through 2010, maybe, I was caught up in the idea of massively connected media; but around them the paradigm started to stink, a spectacular scam of exploitation.

Earlier, it occurred to me -- and probably millions of others -- we each have a device in our pocket with which I could direct dial a huge fraction of Earth's population! Amazing!

But I never did. There's nothing negative in there; I just didn't do that.

We know so much more now, 10+ years later, and the corporate exploiters revealed for what they are.

Who I did call in that time were people I knew. And what we need is connection, not numbers. Smaller scale isn't necessarily small.

My, and presumably our collective, image of the connectable world has changed. AP, fedi stuff seems much better suited to our now more sophisticated needs. And we're hopefully steeled against the scumbag exploiters out there.

kentbrew, to webdev
@kentbrew@xoxo.zone avatar

Speaking as someone who used to hand-whittle SVGs with a text editor: this is brilliant. https://www.nan.fyi/svg-paths

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@kentbrew
Wow I had no idea. Lovely.

tomjennings, to random
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

I'm really liking Lemmy.world. It has the chaos and energy I want. Focus is slowly appearing in particular communities.

And the flood! IDC about reddit, and I'm not cheerleading, not gonna estimate the scale of, its demise. But very many reddit folk are showing up. That's the chaos.

Poor young folk. They seem to worry how anyone will make money, or become big enough, all the noise gleaned from Industry News for the last 20 years. But slowly at least some are cluing in.

The good thing about the cluelessness (largely excusable unless it persists) is that it works in spite of it. And clued in to the workings, it will work better.

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@liaizon nahh, my list of online interests is pretty small. Arduino (mostly to help out), cars, fuckcars (those two are the same thing to me), dogs.. most of my interests seem to be a group consisting of me.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

The power of positive thinking!
Manifest it, sister-girl!

I never miss "Religion for Breakfast" and the newest episode is about "Manifesting" and "The Secret" -- it's a great historical run-down of where this all came from. But, one of the historical notes put a question in my mind.

1/

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@futurebird

Yes yes thank you! The mind/body concept is so deeply embedded in the culture attending to it approaches futile. The whole AI industry seems to accept it as a given. It's all so maddening.

tomjennings, to random
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

Doesn't look like much (because it isn't), today completed (sic) my ebike conversion. BBSHD, 17 AH battery on an old Trek 930.

Unintentionally (I just snapped this before I hurried out on it's first ride) both of my cars are visible in the background. 1960 Rambler American station wagon left, 1961 Rambler American roadster on the right. AMC didn't make a roadster so I did.

I hadn't ridden a bike any distance in years, never rode an ebike before, and never in LA. The larger roads are frankly terrifying (Riverside, Glendale Blvd). Luckily I'm a half mile from the LA river bike path and a lot of smaller roads.

But I felt fairly vulnerable in the bits of traffic I had to deal with. Immediately recalled ancient knowledge of fork rake (stupid mountain bike) and the mechanics of bikes on the road. I may end up modifying that.

Whatever, time to regain lost biking skills and practice a new form of situational awareness.

And explore all the weird neighborhood shit I've driven over for the last 20 years.....

tomjennings, to random
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

I guess I picked a bad time to vacation in Moscow.

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

I had a remarkable experience last week in London, viewing an 1805 plaster mold used to make printing plates that I had no idea existed until just two weeks before that trip. Here’s my write-up of a visit to the St Bride Printing Library and the Stationers’ Company that included viewing plaster molds and metal plates created for Charles, third Earl of Stanhope, using a production process he perfected. https://www.patreon.com/posts/touching-past-on-84976657?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Plaster mold made in the Stanhope process, likely from 1805, of a page of “On Printing,” an unpublished work by Charles, third Earl of Stanhope. (courtesy Stationers’ Company)
A stereotype (metal printing plate) of a page of Charles, third Earl of Stanhope’s “The Principles of the Science of Tuning” (a system of tuning being one of his many inventions) held at the St Bride Foundation (shelf number 1647A, “2x Stanhope Stereo Plates).

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@glennf

Neato, thanks, I'd not heard of this. Here's wikipedia on it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanhope_Demonstrator

tomjennings, to random
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

Lol, I think this (ex-)redditor's comment on a lemmy.world 'reddit' community is a good an assessment as any about the state of things.

I don't think the writer's take is unique: I suspect a lot of folks are waking up to How This All Works.

I personally would be very happy if this becomes widespread.

"I was on Reddit for 7 years and until this Huffman guy pulled this shit, I hadn’t even thought about Reddit as a money making entity really. He made it clear they’re after money, but they don’t actually create anything. We create the content, we moderate it, and Huffman wants to make money off our free work. I had never ever thought of it that way until this API thing and that’s a huge fuck up on Huffman’s part, he made a regular user like me stop to think and realize that Reddit was all along, just out to get my content and data so they can make money off it."

aral, to random
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

That’s funny, the words “Elon Musk” are considered a slur on this platform.

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@aral
What I don't understand is how musk got his arm up out of the toilet bowl far enough to pull the handle one more time?

tomjennings, to random
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

I'm just not really convinced that "social media" is a worthwhile pursuit.

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@evan

That is of course important.

augieray, to random
@augieray@mastodon.social avatar

We live in the dumbest timeline.

The people who won't get a vaccine because they think it contains digital trackers are cheering Elon Musk's brain implant.

The people who think we need government out of people's lives want government telling us what to read.

The folks who think every life is sacred before birth refuse to do anything about an epidemic of school shootings.

People who hate anything anti-American want pardons for the Jan6 insurrectionists who attacked the US Capitol.

🙄

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@augieray

It's maddening only if you insist on words meaning specific things.

tomjennings, to random
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

Chickens recursively chickening. Not convinced they understand that but I don't think they care.

Chickens happily eating the remains of a baked chicken carcass (from Zankou Chicken).

mattblaze, to random
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

For some reason, I got a ton (or at least several ounces) of people asking me about Faraday bags for phones the last couple days.

While I’m not in the Faraday bag testing business, you might find this writeup I did a couple years ago helpful, mainly to explore how you can think about what Faraday bags do and don’t do and how to measure them. Go science!

https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday/

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@mattblaze

Only tangentially related, I read an oblique reference -- source forgotten -- that a microwave oven [is, ought to be] a decent faraday cage. Not exactly portable, but ubiquitous.

Preferably not turned on I suppose.

dgar, to random
@dgar@aus.social avatar

For all you non-native English speakers out there, “read” is pronounced like “lead”, and “read” is pronounced like “lead”.

#EnglishIsHard

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@dgar

English isn't a language; it's the world's most developed pidgin. I think I'm serious.

tomjennings, to random
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

Has google deprecated "Google account backup codes" with this latest passkey business?

The notoriously terrible google help pages have step by step how-to, but it seems out of date, none of the selections exist as stated.

I've got backup codes for an account I'm trying to delete (probably can't, I have to close out Adwords, but I have an 85 dollar balance (they owe me), but the threshold for payout is $100, round and round we go... I'll just abandon it.).

I've been using FIDO keys as well, but the printed codes were a useful-seeming backup.

If I had any doubt it's time to GTFO from under google's ongoing shitshow they're dispelled at this point.

niconiconi, to random

Q: What would you say when it was proved that a machine with a single paper tape can perform arbitrary computation?

A: It was the Turing point in the history of computing.

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@niconiconi @PeterCxy

The point of Turing's 36 paper was about decidability, not about computing per se. His proposed thought machine was the metaphorical mechanism to show that a process (algorithm) can't be proven to terminate.

The machine was a side effect! Pretty nifty side effect, in that it hinted that in principle the kind of things that might be done "mechanically" is pretty damn broad, if not provably correct.

fugueish, to random

Do you ever think about how the C standard library lacks

bool streq(const char* a, const char* b);<br></br>

and that therefore we all have to burn our precious eyebulbs and twitch our neurons on code like

if (!strcmp(a, b))<br></br>

"Ahh, yes," you say to yourself, nodding sagely, "if the strings don't compare, then they do match. Yes,,"

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@Pwnallthethings @fugueish

Because newer isn't often better. It's just a kink; there are many; we adapt. And write macros.

JamesGleick, to random
@JamesGleick@zirk.us avatar

If you become a Supreme Court Justice and your spouse embarks on a new line of work collecting more than $1,000,000 a year from law firms doing business before the Court—that’s corruption.

https://www.businessinsider.com/jane-roberts-chief-justice-wife-10-million-commissions-2023-4

tomjennings,
@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@JamesGleick

Not in the US it's not. Our corruption is usually legal.

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