15 ms·
AOL pulls Nullsoft file-sharing software WASTE (2003)
- freitzkriesler2 3y ago"Nullsoft has had its conflicts with AOL in the past, such as in 2000 when Frankel developed a music file-swapping technology called Gnutella. " Huh and this was limewire was born!
- IntelMiner 3y ago>this was limewire was born! The screams of a thousand mp3.exe's being obliterated into the void
- Pannoniae 3y agoI found it a bit surprising, but Soulseek is still chugging along well too. :)
- grimgrin 3y agofor those interested, here's the good FOSS client https://nicotine-plus.org/ https://nicotine-plus.org/
- aspenmayer 3y agosource (GPL-3): https://github.com/nicotine-plus/nicotine-plus https://github.com/nicotine-plus/nicotine-plus
- mtillman 3y agoA centralized closed source file sharing network seems wildly "trust us" in 2023. Am I missing something? (yes, I see there is an OSS client)
- Pannoniae 3y agoYes.....and that's what I like about it tbh. Decentralised stuff always has an overhead, and is usually much more complicated. Here it's dead simple and way more usable than DC++
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoIt's still chugging along in that some client software is still maintained, but the userbase has dwindled. I recently fired up Soulseek for the first time in over a decade, and I was unable to find some indie stuff that was commonly shared back in 2010 or so.
- orra 3y agoYeah, Gnutella was very quickly pulled by AOL. There was no chance to see if Nullsoft would follow through and release the source (which they hinted at with the name Gnu-...). In the short term there must have been folks unofficially hosting the installer, and probably substituting different bootstrap peers. Quickly the protocol was reverse engineered and reimplemented, thanks to being text based, and maybe also due to users of IDA.
- latchkey 3y agoJustin Frankel is a pretty interesting guy. Kind of ahead of his time. He had a warehouse space down the block from my business in SF and I got to hang out with him a couple times. I think these days, he's trail running and still making music.
- selykg 3y agoHe makes Reaper https://www.reaper.fm/ https://www.reaper.fm/
- goosinmouse 3y agoHuh TIL! Reaper is considered by a lot of professionals to be the best all around DAW for those who are unaware of the audio world. It only really gets the respect it deserves though in the world of game audio design. If DAW's were compared to operating systems, logic/ableton would be macOS, Pro Tools would be Windows, and Reaper would be Linux.
- kennyloginz 3y agoI guess you got into DAWs after me, but back in the day pro tools was mac, fruity loops was windows , and csound was Linux.
- locusofself 3y agoArdour was the first full-featured DAW for Linux IIRC. The author sometimes posts here on HN.
- locusofself 3y agoI've made this same comparison between OS and DAWs and totally agree. I'm a reaper user for like 13 years now. I use it on a mac, though it's cool to see how far audio production on Linux has become, with both REAPER and now Bitwig available for Linux.
- misnome 3y ago
- jackspratts 3y agoi've been running a mesh since waste's release. yes, proper set up is a bit challenging but after that it's set and forget - as in it's never been down in all this time. flexible chat rooms, individuals or multitudes simultaneously. decentralized and encrypted of course with chaff no less and file transfers of any size can be especially fast. it's actually perfect for small groups. anything under fifty or so users and it's stable. certainly more stable than the community, which ebbs and flows. - js.
- ramgine 3y agoYou have a site where i can learn more? I'd like to implement my own.
- jackspratts 3y agotrigger alert: i'm signing, below. ;) that's a very good question ramgine. you might as well start with the wiki. i'm a bit biased because i wrote a lot of it but i just took a look after who knows how long and it still holds up. it even had a link to one of my open meshes, a project i started called Zer0share, but that's been moribund for ages or at least i'm not on it. you never know with a mesh it could still be chugging along...the thing is, meshes are private by design and by nature. waste has always been catnip for introverts, with its silent status box sitting quietly in the corner of a screen sometimes showing no activity for weeks. it's not even unusual for members to spend months, or more, pondering the admission of a new addition (once admitted one can't be expelled. the mesh itself needs to be rebuilt). but if you like, take a look at the Zer0share parent thread from Napsterites linked here. you may find it helpful. http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/showthread.php?t=19077 http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/showthread.php?t=19077 - js.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoOut if curiosity, why did you sign yourself at the end when your username is visible so we know who is writing? Is it some cultural thing?
- 3y ago
- mattl 3y agoTo this day I remember “Justin can’t code” in one of the Nullsoft release notes. It’s not true of course, he can. Understatement.
- rblatz 3y agoYou saying this shook loose a long forgotten memory. I also saw that. And I frequently have used that phrasing when I submit a bug fix PR now I know why.
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoDoes anyone else like going to archive.org and just browsing old websites from the early 2000s? I kind of miss it the ascetic and web 1.0 feel.
- RajT88 3y agoIt reminds me that a utopia was possible. Not that we live in a capital-D dystopia, but maybe you get what I am saying.
- indigochill 3y agoI have mixed feelings, as someone who grew up in that utopia. On one hand, looking at the mass internet culture, the prevailing utopian culture was only possible in the way that jumping into the air is flying: true for a moment, but ultimately gravity (or in the internet's case, the Powers That Be) inevitably exerted itself as mass culture came to embrace the internet. Tangentially, I suspect the fate of cryptocurrency is similar: to be embraced by the old guard only to have much of what made it special (especially, easy transfer of value across borders) undone, because it turns out banks and governments take KYC/AML law seriously. But back to the internet, that utopia still exists. It's just not the prevailing internet culture any more. It's pushed into the corners under labels like "small tech" and "tildeverse". I sometimes use the term "Digital Amish" because the emphasis this community shares with the Amish is to understand the side effects of the technology you use and choose what to use and avoid in order to avoid undesirable side effects (e.g. feeding your life to an algorithm). In practice most of them are not quite that hardcore, but I use it more aspirationally since I think it'd be cool to get completely to that point.
- mat_epice 3y agoUsing ascetic instead of aesthetic could be a very clever pun.
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoCaught me and my bad typo but sure it was a pun :P
- kripy 3y ago“By default, WASTE listens to incoming connections on port 1337. This was probably chosen because of 1337's leet connotations.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE
- laurentlbm 3y agoI use 24h clocks and every time it's 13:37, I think "leet". I hate it. It's been decades and it still won't leave my brain.
- biugbkifcjk 3y agoI'm with you here, I say "its leet time" in my head. Pretty sure no one says leet anymore
- stevemk14ebr 3y agoswitch to 12 hr time :)
- laurentlbm 3y agoNever.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoMight as well switch to measuring in imperial units. Savage.
- stuaxo 3y agoSwatch internet time.
- vertis 3y agoThose were the days. For reference: http://www.swatchclock.com/ http://www.swatchclock.com/ and https://www.swatch.com/en-us/internet-time.html https://www.swatch.com/en-us/internet-time.html (video is worth watching)
- meltyness 3y agoCrypto is probably the closest echoes of this era. Unfortunately the youth isn't going to follow most of this, and their fondest memories are themselves mostly going to be considered missteps, like the problems with building recommendation systems in the past decade.
- DonHopkins 3y agoThe file sharing era was anything but a get rich quick pyramid scheme hyped by greedy unethical shills who want to make a quick buck by pulling the rug out from under the next gullible sucker to come along who's as dishonest and fraudulent as they are. It all boils down to the difference between the words "sharing" and "scamming". Not to mention the fact that file sharing also has many practical applications, and doesn't pollute the atmosphere and cause cancer and lung disease by burning megatons of coal, unlike crypto.
- meltyness 3y agoHmm, yes, let's all work together to fight climate change, but uh... not peer-to-peer, having a middleman is always more efficient, even with a global decentralized ubiquitous network of personally controlled, energy efficient devices, best to continue to delegate to a bank that's delegating to a bank. Oh, and yes, you can be the middleman -- you seem trustworthy, I nominate you for de novo utopia money dude, enjoy your new, absolute power.
- ajcoll5 3y agoThe GPL licensed WASTE source code if anyone wants to take a peek. https://archive.org/details/waste-source https://archive.org/details/waste-source
- SethTro 3y agoWe used WASTE in college. At the time I looked through the code and I'm 99% sure there was an Edgar Allan Poe easter egg related to "quote the raven" in there.
- zoky 3y ago> "quote the raven" Are you sure you're not thinking of “whip the llama”? Specifically, on its ass?
- SethTro 3y agoIt was 10 years ago but I'm very sure it was "quote the raven", "whip the llama" is too funmy for me to not remember if that has been it. I searched the source and didn't see it but can't find a source control system copy to search over all the history.
- Solvency 3y agoWow, totally forgot about this. Loved everything Nullsoft did back in the day. What are those devs up to now?
- joecool1029 3y agoThis https://www.cockos.com/team.php https://www.cockos.com/team.php
- eclipxe 3y agoReaper DAW
- mtillman 3y agoEarlier coverage of Ninjam: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31018600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31018600
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago"The real play is when you've got small networks of co-workers or friends who can share whatever they want securely," Rogers said in an interview. "It could be a group of government officials sharing secure documents or it could be Justin sharing video files with AOL Dulles." IMHO (yours may differ) much of what we use the internet for, namely person-to-person or person-to-small-group communication, could be accomplished using such software, as an alternative but not a replacement for doing these tasks over someone else's website. Those websites have grown to such ridiculous size, backed by entire datacenters, that people refer to them as "services" and "platforms". But for the task of communicating over the internet, as the programmer saying goes, "There's more than one way to do it." With the gigantic websites run by other people, there's an incentive for advertising. Large audiences and easy access to them, not to mention the ability to eavesdrop and track behaviour. With small networks managed only by the participants using software they choose, that incentive does not exist because advertising is relatively infeasible. For example, the top commenter in this thread states he has been running a WASTE network for years. How does one inject advertising and track consumer behaviour on his network. The answer is they don't. And IMHO that's one reason why this category of software is so useful.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoThe replies here strangely ignore the issue of the third party intermediary, the commercial motives, the single point of failure. Who is the third party when using software like WASTE. There is none. There is no "monetisation". A commenter thread has been running WASTE running since 2003.^1 There is no Bay Area-based "WASTE, LLC" or "WASTE, Inc."^2 that must, among other things, pay thousands of tech bros, remain "free", be allowed to operate in all countries and stay in business, let alone for 20 years. WASTE predates "cloud computing". 1. Went from being top comment to being critiqued by tech bros. 2. Google, LLC or Dropbox, Inc. for example.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoMagic-Wormhole, ToffeeShare, Wetranser, etc. are all "services" run by third parties. It's possible for its users to run their own Magic-Wormhole rendezvous servers but the author(s) hardcodes someone else's into the code! In contrast, WASTE asked users to register with a dynamic DNS provider.
- yownie 3y agowhy exactly did F2F networks like WASTE die? I'd love to begin using them again.
- h0p3 3y agoRetroshare is still being updated and used (there's at least a few hundred on right now). It's relatively feature complete, and you can route it over i2p or tor as well (which is uncommon for this kind of tooling, in my experience).
- washadjeffmad 3y agoChilling effects of the "nothing to hide" era. People were being allowed to be sued based on IP, so a lot of people just stopped using the net for normal human things. The revelations of domestic spying made it obvious how much collusion and voluntary cooperation was going on between the military, federal and local governments, law enforcement, and corporations, and how much people feared the state of unequal information dominance. Remember, sharing mp3s helps the terrorists win.
- toyg 3y agoBeyond the legal issues mentioned on a sibling post, the main thing in my opinion is that anything requiring installers was killed by Apple transforming the mobile market. People came to expect that most services would be web-based, or uncontroversial enough to be in the Apple AppStore. That expectation destroyed entire categories of software: sure, you could still eke out a living on the desktop, kinda; but any chance at real popularity was wiped out. This is particularly true for non-professional software, because households became mobile-first.
- exabrial 3y agoThere was a time my computer barely had enough CPU to play an mp3. Then WinAmp and it’s decoding engine came came along.
- amlib 3y agoThere was also a time when my computer playing mp3 in winamp while trying to browse the web would glitch the music due to buffer underun. Then I guess faster computers came along...
- prmoustache 3y agoThat is actually the original reason I switched to Linux in the late 90's. I couldn't multitask while listening to music in winamp while I could still browse and use staroffice while playing music on mpg123 on that old, already considered obsolete, computer I was using at the time.
- hoppla 3y agoI am not sure how it was possible, but I was able to play mp3s on my 386sx 16mhz (with turbo button) using the mpg123 player. OS was Slackware Linux.
- mhd 3y agoSure that was a regular bitrate stereo mp3? I remember struggling a lot with my 486DX/100, waiting for better assembly optimization to happen on Linux (to keep up with a DOS mp3 player that handled it better).
- hoppla 3y agoI no longer have the details, but the music was just some mp3 files I copied from friends. Buffering may have played a role as I had at some point, I had maxed out the specs memory-wise.
- koofdoof 3y agoIs the name WASTE a reference to Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49?
- digitalboss 3y ago"The name WASTE is a reference to Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49. In the novel, W.A.S.T.E. is (among other things) an underground postal service." - Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoI'm pretty sure reading about the inspiration for the WASTE name was my gateway to Pynchon. For which I'm ever grateful.
- thristian 3y agoWhat's the modern version of WASTE? It seems to me that the progression from Twitter & Facebook to Discord probably ends in something similar to WASTE, especially if it includes voice chat and video streaming.
- sergiotapia 3y agoPerhaps Soulseek? Still up and functional. The only downside is some people do "share for a share" BS instead of just sharing their entire library with the swarm. It's a lot of the worst parts of What.cd back in the day. https://www.slsknet.org/news/ https://www.slsknet.org/news/
- glenneroo 3y agoMaybe DC++? https://dcplusplus.sourceforge.io/ https://dcplusplus.sourceforge.io/
- RunSet 3y agohttps://retroshare.cc/ https://retroshare.cc/
- Lorin 3y agoWait until you read about Wuala. It was incredible p2p file storage but then Lacie murdered it in cold blood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuala
- jonhohle 3y agoA startup called Space Monkey did something similar and is also gone. This seemed like a winning combination for users and backup providers, but in practice, it’s probably not practical to rely on users for redundant backup and file access.
- Lorin 3y agothe magic of wuala wasn't 'backup' but you were able to make communities quite easily about certain subjects with pretty good media sharing. I created one for collections of optical illusions and witty advertising campaigns.
- swiftgoose 3y agoI was at Seagate when they took over Lacie, ended up spending some time in Zurich with the team at Wuala. Very talented group of programmers, but had issues trying to keep out uploads from sanctioned country...and eventually killed off by Lacie
- mikae1 3y agoI often think about WASTE I reflect on why filesharing never decentralized. Bittorrent needed trackers and we're still in the slsk era and still sharing on the mercy of the four letter organizations.
- floppydisc 3y agoIt has, with services such as Apples Air Drop and sharedrop.io which are p2p, the ultimate decentralization.
- toyg 3y agoRequiring physical proximity is a big no-no.
- treyd 3y agoModern BitTorrent can function entirely via DHT and peer exchange. Trackers are supplementary and an optimization. Most torrents you find specify several trackers, and it's fine if some are down. I have a hard time imagining improvements on the current architecture, even under a better copyright regime, which is why BitTorrent has largely stood the test of time.
- toyg 3y agoBut it still needs some sort of index to search for stuff, and torrents cannot change. It's a jungle of ever-changing forums and search engines. This makes it harder to pin down by authorities, but significantly reduces casual usability.
- treyd 3y agoThere are some tools to index the DHT, although it's limited. But that's more of a result of the regulatory environment and that it's hard to have decentralized search that works well. There is a spec for updatable torrents, I believe it embeds a pubkey and the creator can announce an update by broadcasting a signed message. But it's not widely used.