ZeroCoolUSENET, the OG social network, rises again like a text-only phoenix
frezikOne of the things that contributed to the downfall of USENET was when people worked out how to post binary files, encoded as multi-part blocks of ASCII text. It still has piracy problems but you can just ignore that stuff.
Ignore all the software pirates over there. Yes, sir, the ones sitting at the free bar full of top shelf liquor with strippers on each side. Yup, better not go over there.
First and second rules exist for a reason.
VoyagerThese two rules caused Usenet to be abandoned by people who were once passionate about being part of the community, and instead taken over by spammers and bots.
Which first and second rules? Here on lemmy?
yukichigaiIn fact we'll provide you with a handy list of all of the places you should absolutely avoid.
I would hate for people to see this index of places with potentially illegal content. The temptation is just too high. I’ll gladly guard it from innocent users with you. My eyes and heart are ready to protect the realm.
Oh world, that itching in my fingers! Some FOSS client for android that you can recommend?
Oh no, we wouldn’t want that to happen.
Want to make sure you don’t accidentally download that new Mario movie? Definitely don’t visit these files in order. Should you, accidentally, encounter something that looks like the Mario movie, simply check if it matches this sha256 sum. If it doesn’t, you’re still in the clear.
Stay safe out there, you upright citizen!
Wait is there blackjack too?
it’s interesting bullshit if the article author actually things that binaries were the problem. What ended the usenet was google groups providing a gateway to the usenet for people who had no idea what the usenet was. Lots of dumb users posting low quality content, and eventually bots spamming all relevant groups.
Binaries had been around forever, in dedicated newsgroups, and they most certainly did not contribute to the downfall of usenet, if anything, the opposite.
Avenue Q - "The Internet is for..."
Flying SquidDude. You killed the Piped bot.
pascalgood riddance.
Looks like they commited a change to Piped bot two hours ago which accidentally removed the functionality to actually change the link. Whoops!
Do you have a name / user id of a piped bot developer? Because while we’re at it, I think that bot should also avoid responding to itself - which would also prevent such a scenario completely.
LOL I noticed just now - but it appears by @glassware explanation that it wasn’t actually my link, but a patch that would have affected every link posted to which piped reacts
It’s at 91 replies to itself. It was at 25 when I posted that 2 hours ago. I wonder how long it will be allowed to continue?
It had already stopped 3 hours ago.
Absolutely. I tried getting back into Usenet a few years ago and it was like Yahoo Answers.
Seems like the committee is only like 3 people, so who knows how that’ll go. It’s no different then any other open-source ecosystem out there now, it needs to compete with them and gain developers and usable applications. It’ll be an entirely new framework from scratch, so why would people pick their product over others? The only thing that remains original is the USENET brand.
It’s still alive and kicking under the old framework though. Most ISPs dropped their news servers ages ago but there are still loads of free and subscription providers out there.
I don’t know what this committee thinks it can accomplish that the fediverse hasn’t already picked up the torch on, but power to them. The less centralized and more diverse the Internet is, the better.
They still have centralization in way though, as in the Big-8 has moderation powers regardless of what server is hosting. Though a server can probably patch that out.
I still think a Usenet like service would be brilliant and it’s a shame there isn’t a Lemmy-like service that has that.
To clarify, what I mean is decentralised infrastructure (you go onto the news server you want) with shared content (ie the same was that every Usenet post ends up on every Usenet server, if that server carries that newsgroup) - it gives all the advantages of federalisation (don’t like your server, just go to another, you lose little or nothing) without the disadvantages of unintuitive discovery and fragmentation.
I’m all for getting into old school tech, I even like to browse neocities.org on occasion just for the hit of nostalgia for the old web rings. I never got into newsgroups though, and I’m wondering what reasons you might use that instead of something like Lemmy, Mastodon etc?
Apart from the piracy side, I know all about that already lol
Because all the oldheads are there and they have a wealth of arcane and also useful knowledge you can’t find anywhere else
maegul (he/they)How fitting and wonderful that we manifest something truly like a fantasy world.
Oh, I’ve read of such problems, they’re ancient but still haunt some even now after the downfall of stackoverflow.
Are there known solutions or packages I can install?
Not amongst us or on these platforms. Nay perhaps not even on this protocol. Grey beards and 90s hackers you must seek, those whose craft comes from before the .com bubble and even Keanu Reeves. Many secrets they know that have since been lost and much of our ways do they shun.
Where can I find these hackers?
If they still wield their keyboards, you may find them in Newsgroups.
What URL will guide me the way?
Oh My child, URLs will not help you. You must learn to navigate the Usenet and its Newsgroups. Come, Drægōnëḏgelôṟḏ will show you the way.
I would totally read that book
Cool, I just installed Thunderbird and am giving it a go.
Ooh can you use thunderbird for Usenet? I already use it for desktop email but I might have to go try Usenet too just for the hell of it
Because although there are a lot of usenet clients, there is no Sync for usenet
The fact that usenet has still hung on all this time as more than just a place for people to share pirated files is honestly impressive, and also is a pretty decent endorsement. Unfortunately it has a fair number of weaknesses, especially in terms of moderation tools and access these days, but ultimately a lot of what people want in a social media platform can be found on usenet. An effort to update it for modern sensibilities might actually create something pretty cool.
Lack of censorship tools is a strength.
Clearly you aren’t old enough to remember why Usenet faded away in the first place. It was the first platform to drown in an endless torrent of spam and low quality posts
Most clients would allow you to filter out what (or who) you personally didn’t want to see, without having to censor it. Actually not a bad system: allows both freedom of speech and some kind of “moderation”. The system could of course be improved, e.g. by having some default, mod-curated server-side filters that users could opt into, but people would still be allowed to see the whole uncensored content if desired.
Exceptions could be made for illegal content (e.g. pirated stuff), where it would be deleted server-side by the admins (illegal defined to be “in the jurisdiction where the data is stored”).
Freedom should not be taken for granted.
I started using Usenet in the early 90s and have continued to use it until today. Modern clients are very convenient and easy to search and filter out whatever you like. So no, if you aren’t too lazy to learn your tools then it is more than sufficient without some dystopian social media tier control of the protocol.
Chetzemoka"The truth is you love censorship, and so does everyone else. The only question is whether you’re ready to admit it."
https://gizmodo.com/why-censorship-is-part-of-everyday-life-section-230-1850095976
bob_wileyThose updates will probably just screw it up. It seems to be doing just fine after decades, meanwhile platforms with these “modern sensibilities” are falling apart.
IHeartBadCodeHey also. Gopher is also getting a bit of a hit, but mostly due to a new protocol someone came up with called Gemini. It's like Gopher a lot but has some (and I cannot emphasize this enough) very basic markdown.
You can find out more about it here. I recommend Lagrange for your client. Two places I like to go to are Station (gemini://station.martinrue.com/) and Antenna (gemini://warmedal.se/~antenna/). BBS (gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/) is also a new one on the scene.
And the nice thing about Lagrange is that it also supports the Finger protocol which basically is a way to read the .project or .plan file on a given user for the indicated system. Those files for those that never used them allowed a user to type a short status update into them that folks could then poll at any given time. Basically "ye olde status update".
There's a person that serves a weather reporting system via a finger interface at (finger://graph.no/) and it works really well in Lagrange.
what is funny to me is I used gopher the first time around, found it miserable and have now tried gemeni and also found it miserable.
There is just nothing interesting out there that is worth digging up that you can’t find faster and easier to read on the open web. It’s a great low bandwidth protocol but if you know how to use ad blockers, search engines and have control of your browser gemini (and gopher) is just a chore.
There may be some use i don’t know about and i am open to that but have never found either compelling. big fan of usenet/irc/html though so please don’t think i am just a hater.
the .plan file in a user’s home directory is displayed when the user is fingered
Heh.
raoulraoulThere’s a person that serves a weather reporting system via a finger interface at (finger://graph.no)…
That’s neat! Thanks!
[Gemini] has some (and I cannot emphasize this enough) very basic markdown.
"Markup" would be a better term here. Markdown is a specific markup language which Gemini doesn't use.
See this? These are the comments I live for. You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
Uh, no, Gemini is not like Gopher. Gopher wants to share files. Gemini wants to be a more simple internet.
What’s the cool thing to do there?
One cool thing is the game astrobotany, but Gemini shines in its focus on connecting through text only medium. Try midnight city for that.
(If you can’t find URLs, ping me and I’ll update the post)
Funnily enough I was toying with the idea of making a Gopher based Lemmy frontend for the lulz. Maybe Gemini then?
TheTimeKnifeWow thanks for this comment, Lagrange works incredibly well. I had a lot of fun trying out Gemini, I had been doing Gopher recently but Im definitely going to add this to my goofing around.
I wonder if Sea Wasp is still posting on rasfw…
My first ever internet contribution was a post to "alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die"
Maybe it’s time to dig out and polish my NNTP client that I’ve written 30 years ago.
Now that’s a 4 letter acronym I haven’t seen for a while.
And it still works.
Are you one of the wizards of yore? The ones who were there when the old magic was written?
In a way. Gobelin was my NNTP client, and Connector was my client for multiplayer games. I did some more work back then, like writing our companies’ SMPT gateway. Ah, those were the days…
I remember Agent and Xnews (for poor people).
I remember Agent and Xnews (for poor people).
Well, both imply that you had access to an X terminal. Gobelin and Connector were written for a text-based interface. You might have seen those things with a green on green screen and a serial connection to the host machine. Although Connector also ran as an X application, thanks to some seriously smart system libraries.
Stupid question of the day does this compete with the fediverse or it goes along it?
IchNichtenLichtenIt’s not a competitor, no.
netburnrFederation of usenet required either a peering link or scripting to pull down all new articles, it ain’t automatically like here.