4 ms·

And can you believe some people use Gmail instead of Pine?! Heck, why is Hacker News even a website? We should be posting on Usenet instead! ;-)

wahern 7y ago
I mean... it would be awesome if forums such as this supported an NNTP gateway. Web interfaces suck, and other than upvoting (which is so ubiquitous as to be an obvious candidate for protocol extension) it's a perfect semantic fit. Yes, I still use mutt and even rtin, but really appreciate that something like Mail.app is a viable alternative to Outlook or (shudder) webmail for work.
- Mandatum 7y ago
  Do you recognise that you are the outlier?
  - wahern 7y ago
    Yes, absolutely. While I still think we'd all be better off if NNTP integration were more widespread, I understand that we're stuck in a local minima, and to some degree I understand why (in as much as we can understand any social structures). It's frustrating, however, when people complain about Facebook or Twitter (or HN) when the only reason people feel powerless is because these platforms are predicated on being walled gardens. Interoperability and standards are almost by definition the only long-term solutions, whether it be control over data or (as the case in HN) simply the ability to control the UI and UX. So when people, particularly software developers, discount the value of interoperability and standards I can't really take their complaints seriously. And I don't. Their preferences lay bare. And in many cases it's clear that what they value most about platforms like Facebook or Slack is directly or indirectly a function of these platforms being walled gardens, so generally speaking I vehemently disagree with all the anti-trust and regulatory rhetoric. It's misplaced, counter-productive, and even unjust. Why did IRC lose? For one thing, it wasn't even federated, not like XMPP or (now) Matrix or even classic BSD ntalk. The bigger reason is abuse. Spammers and trolls have ruined everything. Walled gardens are castles that provide protection and consistency. If we want ecosystems to thrive outside the confines of castles society needs to crack down hard on abusers. Why is property theft punished so much more harshly than white-collar crime? White-collar criminals are like leeches, but unchecked property crimes are an existential threat. Spammers, etc have proven an existential threat, and while there are technological solutions they're generally more expensive than simply retreating to castles, even though in the aggregate we're all worse off for the centralization and walls.

wahern 7y ago

I mean... it would be awesome if forums such as this supported an NNTP gateway. Web interfaces suck, and other than upvoting (which is so ubiquitous as to be an obvious candidate for protocol extension) it's a perfect semantic fit. Yes, I still use mutt and even rtin, but really appreciate that something like Mail.app is a viable alternative to Outlook or (shudder) webmail for work.

Mandatum 7y ago
Do you recognise that you are the outlier?
- wahern 7y ago
  Yes, absolutely. While I still think we'd all be better off if NNTP integration were more widespread, I understand that we're stuck in a local minima, and to some degree I understand why (in as much as we can understand any social structures). It's frustrating, however, when people complain about Facebook or Twitter (or HN) when the only reason people feel powerless is because these platforms are predicated on being walled gardens. Interoperability and standards are almost by definition the only long-term solutions, whether it be control over data or (as the case in HN) simply the ability to control the UI and UX. So when people, particularly software developers, discount the value of interoperability and standards I can't really take their complaints seriously. And I don't. Their preferences lay bare. And in many cases it's clear that what they value most about platforms like Facebook or Slack is directly or indirectly a function of these platforms being walled gardens, so generally speaking I vehemently disagree with all the anti-trust and regulatory rhetoric. It's misplaced, counter-productive, and even unjust. Why did IRC lose? For one thing, it wasn't even federated, not like XMPP or (now) Matrix or even classic BSD ntalk. The bigger reason is abuse. Spammers and trolls have ruined everything. Walled gardens are castles that provide protection and consistency. If we want ecosystems to thrive outside the confines of castles society needs to crack down hard on abusers. Why is property theft punished so much more harshly than white-collar crime? White-collar criminals are like leeches, but unchecked property crimes are an existential threat. Spammers, etc have proven an existential threat, and while there are technological solutions they're generally more expensive than simply retreating to castles, even though in the aggregate we're all worse off for the centralization and walls.