6 ms·

Olduse.net: a 30-year delayed Usenet feed (2013)

125 points by daveloyall 10y ago

chaosmachine 10y ago
In case you enjoy that terminal font[1] as much as I do, you can download it here: http://sensi.org/%7Esvo/glasstty/Glass_TTY_VT220.ttf http://sensi.org/%7Esvo/glasstty/Glass_TTY_VT220.ttf [1] http://blog.fosketts.net/2015/10/06/the-best-mac-os-x-terminal-font-glass-tty-vt220/ http://blog.fosketts.net/2015/10/06/the-best-mac-os-x-termin...
- JohnStrange 10y ago
  The dl link is dead. :(
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    works for me.
  - datanut 10y ago
    Here is a working link: http://aperma.link/Glass_TTY_VT220.ttf http://aperma.link/Glass_TTY_VT220.ttf
- rastapasta42 10y ago
  I was extremely bored at work, so I made this "fake hacker" demo with the font: https://forty7.org/tmp/font_test.html https://forty7.org/tmp/font_test.html For those who cannot download the link, I have a copy of the font on my website too: https://forty7.org/tmp/fonts/Glass_TTY_VT220.ttf https://forty7.org/tmp/fonts/Glass_TTY_VT220.ttf
- jlgaddis 10y ago
  This is my default font in iTerm, where I spend hours every day. Somebody else mentioned (one of the) link(s) is dead, I can post the .ttf file if anyone wants it.
- Jaruzel 10y ago
  I've found several of this 'line scan' type terminal fonts in the past (and yes, I am a veteran of DEC VTs) - but unfortunately none of them render properly on Windows at lower point sizes - has anyone else had this problem?
  - z3t4 10y ago
    It' stretched vertically.
sevensor 10y ago
Interestingly, this is from the same person (joeyh) who makes git-annex. Also (2014). Or (1986), depending on your point of view.
- daveloyall 10y ago
  Indeed! That guy is the patron saint of contemporary neck-beards.
- icebraining 10y ago
  He also built much of the Debian infrastructure, ikiwiki (a wiki/blog engine), etckeeper and a bunch of other good stuff: https://joeyh.name/code/ https://joeyh.name/code/
  - kej 10y ago
    And much of that was done on an off-grid solar-powered netbook, too: https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/ https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/
    - icebraining 10y ago
      His "notes for a caretaker" are both interesting and weirdly voyeuristic (from the oblique way parts of his life are revealed): https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/notes_for_a_caretaker/ https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/notes_for_a_caretaker/
joshmanders 10y ago
Came across this, Stallman announcing GNU. http://article.olduse.net/771@mit-eddie.UUCP http://article.olduse.net/771@mit-eddie.UUCP
- kristopolous 10y ago
  "In the near future I'm fixing to do this ambitious thing" and he actually did... Good on him. I on the other hand, personally negotiate with my alarm clock every morning.
protomyth 10y ago
So, I just have to wait 2 years to see what I wrote from a terminal on an IBM 370. I do wonder if any of it will make much sense this far out.
p4bl0 10y ago
In case you haven't read them yet. I very highly recommend those two books: — The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, by Bruce Sterling. — The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking A Spy Through The Maze Of Computer Espionage, by Cliff Stoll. Both are excellent reads, and if you like old Usenet and BBS stories, you'll be served. EDIT: By the way, the first one is freely available here: http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html. I have it in paper myself, but surely it is possible to make a good ePub from these HTML pages.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, by Bruce Sterling. This, especially, since a new generation is facing the exact same battles that Sterling wrote about. We still have computer-illiterate prosecutors going berserk on a regular basis. And thanks to devoted public servants like James Comey, we're going to spend the next couple of Congressional terms rehashing the old arguments over what math equations should constitute a Federal offense. The government doesn't learn from history, so it's important that the rest of us do.
- meatsock 10y ago
  cliff stoll made an ... interesting movie of this book. its fun to watch and would probably make a good drinking game. : https://youtu.be/EcKxaq1FTac https://youtu.be/EcKxaq1FTac
  - Rebelgecko 10y ago
    Thanks for sharing— I was hooked after that insane 30 second intro. Having people play themselves definitely gives the recreations a certain charm.
- veddox 10y ago
  "The Cuckoo's Egg" is an amazing book. I read it some months back and very much regretted not having read it earlier... It does a fantastic job of bringing 80's computing to life while at the same time boasting a plot stronger and more exciting than many thrillers (though true!). "The Hacker Crackdown" is worth reading for the historical aspect, but it only deals with crackers, so I personally did not find it particularly engaging. (BTW, an epub is available via Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101) A third book that should be mentioned here is "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" by Steven Levy, which I'm currently reading. It deals with "real hackers", starting in the 50s at MIT - a deserved classic.
sengork 10y ago
You’ll have to wait a few years for Linux to be announced...
laxd 10y ago
First thing I see is a post by a Matt Dillon about creating sub-processes. Wonder if it's Matt Dillon the DragonflyBSD guy.
- gaius 10y ago
  30 years ago he was "the Amiga guy".
joeyh 10y ago
Apologies for the overloaded terminal emulator on the website which is not letting many people run tin. Was not really expecting to be randomly on HN 5 years deep into olduse.net's run.
- joeyh 10y ago
  The architecture, for the curious, is simply shellinabox serving up a shared screen session with tin in it run on a couple of VMs. That doesn't scale super well. Since it's been 5 years since I put that together, it's probably feasible now to simply compile tin to javascript with emscripten, run the whole thing out of the user's browser, and tunnel the nntp traffic out to the news server. Would scale much better. If someone would like a fun little project.. (In 10 years, the size of the whole olduse.net archive will probably be not much larger than the size of the average web page, and I can upload a single static file implementing olduse.net to IPFS?)
joeyh 10y ago
Be sure to check back on November 11th 2018, which is when the Morris worm will hit olduse.net.
- pmarreck 10y ago
  Will you be infecting it with the worm for old times' sake? ;)
_c_ 10y ago
https://archive.org/details/utzoo-wiseman-usenet-archive https://archive.org/details/utzoo-wiseman-usenet-archive
jaxb 10y ago
Compare and contast http://oldweb.today/ http://oldweb.today/ -- which lets you browse Internet Archive'd sites with browsers of their era. (via jwz)
asjo 10y ago
I was wondering where the surge in articles requested was coming from... Cool to see it reposted. The first year or so the stream of articles was so small that it was easy to read everything posted to olduse.net every day :-)
lakkal 10y ago
<line-eater, are you there ?> And now we know that the "NSA line-eater" was maybe not so mythical, after all (though not responsible for actually eating lines).

125 points by daveloyall 10y ago

In case you enjoy that terminal font[1] as much as I do, you can download it here: http://sensi.org/%7Esvo/glasstty/Glass_TTY_VT220.ttf http://sensi.org/%7Esvo/glasstty/Glass_TTY_VT220.ttf [1] http://blog.fosketts.net/2015/10/06/the-best-mac-os-x-terminal-font-glass-tty-vt220/ http://blog.fosketts.net/2015/10/06/the-best-mac-os-x-termin...

JohnStrange 10y ago
The dl link is dead. :(
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  works for me.
- datanut 10y ago
  Here is a working link: http://aperma.link/Glass_TTY_VT220.ttf http://aperma.link/Glass_TTY_VT220.ttf
rastapasta42 10y ago
I was extremely bored at work, so I made this "fake hacker" demo with the font: https://forty7.org/tmp/font_test.html https://forty7.org/tmp/font_test.html For those who cannot download the link, I have a copy of the font on my website too: https://forty7.org/tmp/fonts/Glass_TTY_VT220.ttf https://forty7.org/tmp/fonts/Glass_TTY_VT220.ttf
jlgaddis 10y ago
This is my default font in iTerm, where I spend hours every day. Somebody else mentioned (one of the) link(s) is dead, I can post the .ttf file if anyone wants it.
Jaruzel 10y ago
I've found several of this 'line scan' type terminal fonts in the past (and yes, I am a veteran of DEC VTs) - but unfortunately none of them render properly on Windows at lower point sizes - has anyone else had this problem?
- z3t4 10y ago
  It' stretched vertically.

sevensor 10y ago

Interestingly, this is from the same person (joeyh) who makes git-annex. Also (2014). Or (1986), depending on your point of view.

daveloyall 10y ago
Indeed! That guy is the patron saint of contemporary neck-beards.
icebraining 10y ago
He also built much of the Debian infrastructure, ikiwiki (a wiki/blog engine), etckeeper and a bunch of other good stuff: https://joeyh.name/code/ https://joeyh.name/code/
- kej 10y ago
  And much of that was done on an off-grid solar-powered netbook, too: https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/ https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/
  - icebraining 10y ago
    His "notes for a caretaker" are both interesting and weirdly voyeuristic (from the oblique way parts of his life are revealed): https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/notes_for_a_caretaker/ https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/notes_for_a_caretaker/

joshmanders 10y ago

Came across this, Stallman announcing GNU. http://article.olduse.net/771@mit-eddie.UUCP http://article.olduse.net/771@mit-eddie.UUCP

kristopolous 10y ago
"In the near future I'm fixing to do this ambitious thing" and he actually did... Good on him. I on the other hand, personally negotiate with my alarm clock every morning.

protomyth 10y ago

So, I just have to wait 2 years to see what I wrote from a terminal on an IBM 370. I do wonder if any of it will make much sense this far out.

p4bl0 10y ago

In case you haven't read them yet. I very highly recommend those two books: — The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, by Bruce Sterling. — The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking A Spy Through The Maze Of Computer Espionage, by Cliff Stoll. Both are excellent reads, and if you like old Usenet and BBS stories, you'll be served. EDIT: By the way, the first one is freely available here: http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html. I have it in paper myself, but surely it is possible to make a good ePub from these HTML pages.

CamperBob2 10y ago
The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, by Bruce Sterling. This, especially, since a new generation is facing the exact same battles that Sterling wrote about. We still have computer-illiterate prosecutors going berserk on a regular basis. And thanks to devoted public servants like James Comey, we're going to spend the next couple of Congressional terms rehashing the old arguments over what math equations should constitute a Federal offense. The government doesn't learn from history, so it's important that the rest of us do.
meatsock 10y ago
cliff stoll made an ... interesting movie of this book. its fun to watch and would probably make a good drinking game. : https://youtu.be/EcKxaq1FTac https://youtu.be/EcKxaq1FTac
- Rebelgecko 10y ago
  Thanks for sharing— I was hooked after that insane 30 second intro. Having people play themselves definitely gives the recreations a certain charm.
veddox 10y ago
"The Cuckoo's Egg" is an amazing book. I read it some months back and very much regretted not having read it earlier... It does a fantastic job of bringing 80's computing to life while at the same time boasting a plot stronger and more exciting than many thrillers (though true!). "The Hacker Crackdown" is worth reading for the historical aspect, but it only deals with crackers, so I personally did not find it particularly engaging. (BTW, an epub is available via Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101) A third book that should be mentioned here is "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" by Steven Levy, which I'm currently reading. It deals with "real hackers", starting in the 50s at MIT - a deserved classic.

sengork 10y ago

You’ll have to wait a few years for Linux to be announced...

laxd 10y ago

First thing I see is a post by a Matt Dillon about creating sub-processes. Wonder if it's Matt Dillon the DragonflyBSD guy.

gaius 10y ago
30 years ago he was "the Amiga guy".

joeyh 10y ago

Apologies for the overloaded terminal emulator on the website which is not letting many people run tin. Was not really expecting to be randomly on HN 5 years deep into olduse.net's run.

joeyh 10y ago
The architecture, for the curious, is simply shellinabox serving up a shared screen session with tin in it run on a couple of VMs. That doesn't scale super well. Since it's been 5 years since I put that together, it's probably feasible now to simply compile tin to javascript with emscripten, run the whole thing out of the user's browser, and tunnel the nntp traffic out to the news server. Would scale much better. If someone would like a fun little project.. (In 10 years, the size of the whole olduse.net archive will probably be not much larger than the size of the average web page, and I can upload a single static file implementing olduse.net to IPFS?)

joeyh 10y ago

Be sure to check back on November 11th 2018, which is when the Morris worm will hit olduse.net.

pmarreck 10y ago
Will you be infecting it with the worm for old times' sake? ;)

_c_ 10y ago

https://archive.org/details/utzoo-wiseman-usenet-archive https://archive.org/details/utzoo-wiseman-usenet-archive

jaxb 10y ago

Compare and contast http://oldweb.today/ http://oldweb.today/ -- which lets you browse Internet Archive'd sites with browsers of their era. (via jwz)

asjo 10y ago

I was wondering where the surge in articles requested was coming from... Cool to see it reposted. The first year or so the stream of articles was so small that it was easy to read everything posted to olduse.net every day :-)

lakkal 10y ago

<line-eater, are you there ?> And now we know that the "NSA line-eater" was maybe not so mythical, after all (though not responsible for actually eating lines).