Any #webdevelopment folx out there:

I'm looking to develop an SSO feature compatible with retro browsers (i.e., this needs to be compatible back to at least the era of Netscape Navigator 2.02).

This is for a site/service targeted at retrocomputing enthusiasts, so the security weaknesses of using old software are already a known and accepted quantity (i.e. suggestions to only use up-to-date software don't apply here). In other words, assume the target audience understands the risks (which will be heavily disclaimed anyway).

JWT was my (brief) initial thought, but I think the encryption requirements may make it a poor fit-for-purpose.

Any suggestions?

Wow, VSI is evil AF. I miss the days when HP ran the program, so very very much.

Just another greedy, soulless corporation seeking to extract every possible penny from the product while screwing the hobbyist community over.

I encourage the community to avoid the x86-64 port of VMS like the plague. Let's show these bungholes some solidarity by telling them that if they aren't our allies, we don't want them to exist at all.

https://vmssoftware.com/about/news/2024-03-25-community-license-update/?hss_channel=fbp-675346952557869

Y'all should check out (and follow?) my Shakespearean insult generator bot at @insultbot

It involves a Perl CGI script and a MySQL database on a SPARCstation 20.

My nomination for most criminally underrated retrocomputing YouTuber:

uxwbill

And it's not even close.

Maybe if people had been kinder and more supportive, he'd still be making content.

As I understand it, Token Ring MAUs are essentially passive devices that simply use relays to connect/disconnect ports. But the passive MAUs (as opposed to later token ring "switches") all seem to use the huge bulky connectors, as opposed to 8P8C.

I wonder if a passive MAU with 8P8C ports could be built in a rather straightforward manner. That is, is the physical layer well-understood enough to facilitate such a project? Or is there an actual technical reason for all the 8P8C units being active?

I was in the Win95 Preview Program and beta tested MSN, as a young teenager.

At the time, I had written a massive pile of crappy utilities and a COMMAND.COM replacement in VBDOS.

I wanted to turn my utilities into an OS, but had no idea what that actually meant. I thought I just needed a bootloader.

I got kicked out of programming forums and chat rooms because I kept asking how I could write a bootloader in VBDOS.