6 ms·

Can someone explain the significance of this to HN noobs (apparently I'm one)?

by ssl232 5y ago

jfim 5y ago
It was a webcomic that was popular when slashdot and kuro5hin were more popular. You can read more about it on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly
- deltarholamda 5y ago
  I just wandered over to Slashdot earlier today. It's sad to see what it has become. It's also sad to see UF burn out as well. I miss Ye Olde Internets.
  - folkrav 5y ago
    I've never really frequented Slashdot, I've taken a short look at it right now. What's going on with it that's so sad to look at? I feel like I'm missing context...
    - morelisp 5y ago
      Sustained shortage of ASCII Penis Birds over the past decade.
    - kstrauser 5y ago
      Among other things, almost all stories used to have at least a couple hundred comments. Today there are stories on the front page with less than 10. The last nail in the coffin for me was their utter refusal to remove absolutely abhorrent comments. Not stuff like "I voted for someone different than you did", but bullshit like https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11756830&cid=56138950 https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11756830&cid=561389... (CW: extreme antisemitism). I spent a lot of time on Slashdot over the years, and had a 4-digit UID that I'd bust on the inevitable "who's been here longer?" comment chains. But while they have the right to allow the comments section to fill with horrid stuff, I don't want anything to do with that.
      - oliyoung 5y ago
        > at least a couple hundred comments. for context, that's when a "a couple hundred comments" was as big as "a couple of thousand/tens of thousands" of comments is now. Slashdot was the centre of the (tech) internet for a long time.
        kstrauser 5y ago
        Definitely. Given how much smaller the Internet was at the time, a lot of the people actually making the Internet -- Linux developers, webmasters, hardware designers, network protocol authors, etc. -- were packed into that one amazing forum and debating what to do next. It was amazing in its heyday.
      - eadmund 5y ago
        That filth you linked to is scored 0, which I think means it is not visible by default. I think it is preferable to leave stuff like that available-but-hidden rather than to delete it altogether. Free speech is a virtue.
        kstrauser 5y ago
        Hard disagree. That comment isn't contributing to dialog, even of the heated variety. It's hatred for the sake of hatred, and I don't think there's a place for it. I'm happy to debate with earnest people I disagree with. That's interesting, and done well, we can both learn from it. There's no value in repulsiveness for the sake of repulsiveness. I don't expect a forum mod to be on top of every single comment ever made, but when things like what I linked are reported but stay up, the moderators are saying, yeah, we're fine with spending server resources to host that.
        erik_seaberg 5y ago
        Slashdot has always had firm political leanings that include opposition to censorship. And stupid conspiracy theories always claim they’re being suppressed, which thrives when they can point to it actually happening.
    - deltarholamda 5y ago
      The comment count is sad; the reposting of links from HN instead of breaking new stuff is sad; the lack of the unique editorial voice of the Slashdot OG crew is sad. There is literally no reason to visit Slashdot anymore other than inertia. You will not find anything new or interesting. There will be no insightful commentary beneath an article. There will never be a new meme that originates from the comment section. It's somewhat similar to finding out that DeLorean was making his living by selling DeLorean-branded watches or whatever.
    - helpfulclippy 5y ago
      In its heyday, Slashdot was often (but not always) really timely with tech news, and was reasonably well-curated. The comments were generally numerous, and had a lot of genuine insight since the site tended to be frequented by actual IT/development professionals. Even the political discussion was fairly sincere. It also had an early user-driven moderation system, which while flawed, was enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. It anticipated Web 2.0 in a lot of ways. I used to click on big posts, set the filter for Score: 3 or higher, and read through EVERYTHING. It'd take hours sometimes, and I'd learn a ton about all kinds of stuff. These were discussions, not just comments, and I think people took more pride in the quality of their contribution. Like everything from back then, Slashdot got whittled down. It went through multiple acquisitions, and eventually became disconnected from all the original people behind it. Subsequent owners seemed to have no vision or connection with the community. There were some attempted changes that never seemed to go anywhere, but I think the most important thing about the acquisitions is just how bland the site became. And of course, even if Slashdot had all those same people, everything else changed too... the industry, the people, the culture, the Internet, the whole world. HN is the closest thing I know today to /. -- I'd say imagine an HN where editors curated the content, and with a lot more whimsy in its culture, and a lot more optimism. I don't expect to find any of that today on Slashdot, and when I do click through to the comments I find them to be very one-dimensional and tired.
faeyanpiraat 5y ago
.
- techsupporter 5y ago
  I think you mean UF--- (Does anyone remember Geek Code? Does anyone else still have their Geek Code .sig file?)
  - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
    I've got some old e-mails in my Yahoo mailbox with Geek Code in it.
  - menjaprunes 5y ago
    -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCS d--- s-:- a-- C+++ UL++++$ P+> L+++$ !E W+ !N-- o? K- w--- O!? M-- V-- PS+++ PE-- Y+ PGP+ t- X+ R+ tv+ b++ DI D+ G e h! r++ y? ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
  - Jaruzel 5y ago
    I have a mirror of the original pages about The Geek Code: http://www.jaruzel.com/apps/geekcode/ http://www.jaruzel.com/apps/geekcode/
laumars 5y ago
It was a series of comics aimed at people who work in IT. You might have come across some of their sketches without realising it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly
MandieD 5y ago
It was often hilarious if you happened to work at a local ISP in the era the comic was started (late 90s), back when $20-30/mo for dialup was a good deal, and customers could drop their computers off to have their modems and Netscape installed and Windows configured to dial in. Or for $40 extra, have some high school kid working there drop by :)
- ianai 5y ago
  I was one of those HS kids!
- rob74 5y ago
  Let's just say it was hilarious if you had anything to do with computers - I could totally relate to the story of an intelligent being emerging from the "primordial soup" of dust collected over the years in an old PC. Or that running gag about the guy who always managed to kill himself by falling into lava in any multiplayer FPS game (even those that didn't have lava).
vikingerik 5y ago
User Friendly was the first big web-comic, the first to establish the idea of a web-comic as a primary medium, as opposed to being adapted from another source (newspapers) or intellectual property. It started in 1997 which was really early in Internet time, around the peak of the dial-up era (and the setting is a workplace of a dial-up ISP.) It may not have quite been the first web-comic, but it was the one that first reached a critical mass of general notability in geek culture.
- Terr_ 5y ago
  > User Friendly was the first big web-comic, the first to establish the idea of a web-comic as a primary medium [...] in 1997 "The first" might be overselling it. For example, Kevin and Kell started in 1995. This TvTropes listing [1] has some more, but oddly enough UF isn't on there so perhaps others are missing also. [1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WebcomicsLongRunners https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WebcomicsLongRun...
  - bhaak 5y ago
    There are two lists on that page. Ongoing and discontinued. UF is on the discontinued list under "13 years"
    - Terr_ 5y ago
      Ah, you're right. As someone who got dial-up in the mid-90s, I remember regularly reading so many of the comics on these lists and it makes me feel old... Some of them are still in my bookmarks...

Can someone explain the significance of this to HN noobs (apparently I'm one)?

by ssl232 5y ago

Can someone explain the significance of this to HN noobs (apparently I'm one)?

jfim 5y ago

It was a webcomic that was popular when slashdot and kuro5hin were more popular. You can read more about it on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly

deltarholamda 5y ago
I just wandered over to Slashdot earlier today. It's sad to see what it has become. It's also sad to see UF burn out as well. I miss Ye Olde Internets.
- folkrav 5y ago
  I've never really frequented Slashdot, I've taken a short look at it right now. What's going on with it that's so sad to look at? I feel like I'm missing context...
  - morelisp 5y ago
    Sustained shortage of ASCII Penis Birds over the past decade.
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    Among other things, almost all stories used to have at least a couple hundred comments. Today there are stories on the front page with less than 10. The last nail in the coffin for me was their utter refusal to remove absolutely abhorrent comments. Not stuff like "I voted for someone different than you did", but bullshit like https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11756830&cid=56138950 https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11756830&cid=561389... (CW: extreme antisemitism). I spent a lot of time on Slashdot over the years, and had a 4-digit UID that I'd bust on the inevitable "who's been here longer?" comment chains. But while they have the right to allow the comments section to fill with horrid stuff, I don't want anything to do with that.
    - oliyoung 5y ago
      > at least a couple hundred comments. for context, that's when a "a couple hundred comments" was as big as "a couple of thousand/tens of thousands" of comments is now. Slashdot was the centre of the (tech) internet for a long time.
      - kstrauser 5y ago
        Definitely. Given how much smaller the Internet was at the time, a lot of the people actually making the Internet -- Linux developers, webmasters, hardware designers, network protocol authors, etc. -- were packed into that one amazing forum and debating what to do next. It was amazing in its heyday.
    - eadmund 5y ago
      That filth you linked to is scored 0, which I think means it is not visible by default. I think it is preferable to leave stuff like that available-but-hidden rather than to delete it altogether. Free speech is a virtue.
      - kstrauser 5y ago
        Hard disagree. That comment isn't contributing to dialog, even of the heated variety. It's hatred for the sake of hatred, and I don't think there's a place for it. I'm happy to debate with earnest people I disagree with. That's interesting, and done well, we can both learn from it. There's no value in repulsiveness for the sake of repulsiveness. I don't expect a forum mod to be on top of every single comment ever made, but when things like what I linked are reported but stay up, the moderators are saying, yeah, we're fine with spending server resources to host that.
        erik_seaberg 5y ago
        Slashdot has always had firm political leanings that include opposition to censorship. And stupid conspiracy theories always claim they’re being suppressed, which thrives when they can point to it actually happening.
  - deltarholamda 5y ago
    The comment count is sad; the reposting of links from HN instead of breaking new stuff is sad; the lack of the unique editorial voice of the Slashdot OG crew is sad. There is literally no reason to visit Slashdot anymore other than inertia. You will not find anything new or interesting. There will be no insightful commentary beneath an article. There will never be a new meme that originates from the comment section. It's somewhat similar to finding out that DeLorean was making his living by selling DeLorean-branded watches or whatever.
  - helpfulclippy 5y ago
    In its heyday, Slashdot was often (but not always) really timely with tech news, and was reasonably well-curated. The comments were generally numerous, and had a lot of genuine insight since the site tended to be frequented by actual IT/development professionals. Even the political discussion was fairly sincere. It also had an early user-driven moderation system, which while flawed, was enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. It anticipated Web 2.0 in a lot of ways. I used to click on big posts, set the filter for Score: 3 or higher, and read through EVERYTHING. It'd take hours sometimes, and I'd learn a ton about all kinds of stuff. These were discussions, not just comments, and I think people took more pride in the quality of their contribution. Like everything from back then, Slashdot got whittled down. It went through multiple acquisitions, and eventually became disconnected from all the original people behind it. Subsequent owners seemed to have no vision or connection with the community. There were some attempted changes that never seemed to go anywhere, but I think the most important thing about the acquisitions is just how bland the site became. And of course, even if Slashdot had all those same people, everything else changed too... the industry, the people, the culture, the Internet, the whole world. HN is the closest thing I know today to /. -- I'd say imagine an HN where editors curated the content, and with a lot more whimsy in its culture, and a lot more optimism. I don't expect to find any of that today on Slashdot, and when I do click through to the comments I find them to be very one-dimensional and tired.

faeyanpiraat 5y ago

techsupporter 5y ago
I think you mean UF--- (Does anyone remember Geek Code? Does anyone else still have their Geek Code .sig file?)
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
  I've got some old e-mails in my Yahoo mailbox with Geek Code in it.
- menjaprunes 5y ago
  -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCS d--- s-:- a-- C+++ UL++++$ P+> L+++$ !E W+ !N-- o? K- w--- O!? M-- V-- PS+++ PE-- Y+ PGP+ t- X+ R+ tv+ b++ DI D+ G e h! r++ y? ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
- Jaruzel 5y ago
  I have a mirror of the original pages about The Geek Code: http://www.jaruzel.com/apps/geekcode/ http://www.jaruzel.com/apps/geekcode/

laumars 5y ago

It was a series of comics aimed at people who work in IT. You might have come across some of their sketches without realising it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly

MandieD 5y ago

It was often hilarious if you happened to work at a local ISP in the era the comic was started (late 90s), back when $20-30/mo for dialup was a good deal, and customers could drop their computers off to have their modems and Netscape installed and Windows configured to dial in. Or for $40 extra, have some high school kid working there drop by :)

ianai 5y ago
I was one of those HS kids!
rob74 5y ago
Let's just say it was hilarious if you had anything to do with computers - I could totally relate to the story of an intelligent being emerging from the "primordial soup" of dust collected over the years in an old PC. Or that running gag about the guy who always managed to kill himself by falling into lava in any multiplayer FPS game (even those that didn't have lava).

vikingerik 5y ago

User Friendly was the first big web-comic, the first to establish the idea of a web-comic as a primary medium, as opposed to being adapted from another source (newspapers) or intellectual property. It started in 1997 which was really early in Internet time, around the peak of the dial-up era (and the setting is a workplace of a dial-up ISP.) It may not have quite been the first web-comic, but it was the one that first reached a critical mass of general notability in geek culture.

Terr_ 5y ago
> User Friendly was the first big web-comic, the first to establish the idea of a web-comic as a primary medium [...] in 1997 "The first" might be overselling it. For example, Kevin and Kell started in 1995. This TvTropes listing [1] has some more, but oddly enough UF isn't on there so perhaps others are missing also. [1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WebcomicsLongRunners https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WebcomicsLongRun...
- bhaak 5y ago
  There are two lists on that page. Ongoing and discontinued. UF is on the discontinued list under "13 years"
  - Terr_ 5y ago
    Ah, you're right. As someone who got dial-up in the mid-90s, I remember regularly reading so many of the comics on these lists and it makes me feel old... Some of them are still in my bookmarks...