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The history of Rob 'CmdrTaco' Malda [audio]
- skywal_l 3y agoNetcraft confirms it: I, for one, welcome our Hacker News overlord, CmdrTaco who sometimes dwelves in these part of the interweb. He's got a beowulf cluster of hot grits that Nathalie Portman would approve of. ;)
- kstrauser 3y agoAlso, BSD is dying.
- KineticLensman 3y agoYou missed the Cowboy Neal option
- function_seven 3y ago+5, Funny
- thadt 3y agoSounds like it’s time for another lively thread about whether FireFly is the best sci-fi show ever. Things get awkward when Wil Wheaton joins the conversation and proceeds to know more about FireFly than anyone else.
- rvbissell 3y agoYou had me until 'whether'
- squarefoot 3y agoHe must be new here
- citrusybread 3y agoor my other favourite character... the illusive Roland Piquepaille and his "articles" that pioneered blogspam based on the way ./ers would react to him.
- romanhn 3y agoI hadn't realized that Roland passed away almost 15 years ago...
- function_seven 3y ago> Roland Piquepaille Wow! I haven't heard that name in nearly 20 years, but the instant I saw it I had a negative reaction. I didn't even know why at first until I read the rest of your sentence.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoScary to think that it's been that long.
- ChainOfFools 3y agoI forget, is this the persona responsible for that "voices from the hellmouth" series? the one that, retrospectively, coincides with my /. usage starting to slope negative.
- fsckboy 3y agoomg, voices from the hellmouth was sooo cringe. Who was that? typetypetype oook, JonKatz, and it lives on (tl;dr for my post here, there was a segment of the slashdot population who really identified with the Columbine shooters, the trench-coat mafia, i guess in terms of being picked on at school by the popular kids or something? it was sort of like "of course Columbine, what did you expect from those of us living at the hell-mouth you've created for us" If I have any of that wrong it's because I couldn't stand reading any of it in the first place) https://news.slashdot.org/story/99/04/25/1438249/voices-from-the-hellmouth https://news.slashdot.org/story/99/04/25/1438249/voices-from... https://news.slashdot.org/story/00/04/20/1117204/Voices-from-the-Hellmouth-Released-in-Paperback https://news.slashdot.org/story/00/04/20/1117204/Voices-from... https://features.slashdot.org/story/00/10/23/1521250/voices-from-the-hellmouth-revisited-part-1 https://features.slashdot.org/story/00/10/23/1521250/voices-... https://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/bw-voices-from-the-hellmouth-jon-katz-book-examining-geek-culture-one-year-after-columbine/ https://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/bw-voices-from-the-hell...
- claytongulick 3y ago1. See a slashdot poll 2. Point out the missing Cowboy Neal option 3. ??? 4. Profit!
- anoncow 3y agoMy username has been consistent between ./ and HN.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agome2
- 23B1 3y agoFR1ST PR0ST
- logicallee 3y agoyou did way better than you know who: "While trying to be First Post on a Beowulf cluster article, my site got Slashdotted just as I poured hot grits down my pants. 'You must be new here,' commented CowboyNeal, who, in Soviet Russia, welcomes our new overlords. Now I'm just waiting for step '???' before I hit Profit! Surely that's worth +5, Funny?"
- jrumbut 3y agoYou insensitive clod!
- jug 3y agoWow! This took me back.
- jaredsohn 3y agoMy UID is lower than yours
- kstrauser 3y agoWhatever, n00b. (3352)
- manaskarekar 3y agofrom the don't-forget-your-yearly-physical dept.
- TylerE 3y agoNo wifi. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
- nullhole 3y agoThe above comment is owned by The Poster.
- gadders 3y agoGive me a sec - just trying to hide a link to a, er, goat-related website in a comment and pretending it's related to the story.
- gadders 3y agoAlso writing a comment about what a worthless human Jon Katz is because he can't compile Linux from source.
- weinzierl 3y agoIs this the news for nerds or hackers? Is it the stuff that stirs or matters?
- cgh 3y agoI wonder if APK could drop in and tell us about blocking ads using the mysterious magic of the hosts file.
- rvbissell 3y agoOr if The Glorious MEEPT!! could show up and smack us with some scathing satirical commentary on Linux fans.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cmdrtaco 3y agoThanks?
- krustyburger 3y agoNo video. Less running time than many podcasts. Lame.
- nohankyou 3y agoAlmost as lame as the original iPods that couldn't play video, but coined the original term "pod" cast? A podcast is audio.
- mbakke 3y agoNo sarcasm. Less snark than an average Slashdot comment. Cowboy Neal.
- slater 3y agowhoooosh
- krelian 3y agoNot sure if you missed it but it's a reference to CmdrTaco's initial take on the original iPod https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...
- slater 3y agoOh god, third comment on that post: "Ok , will it connect to a computer running and x86 family processor ?"
- nohankyou 3y agoHah amazing! I still don't get why he would have expected video when we were still struggling for bandwidth at the time, too soon!
- jrumbut 3y agoWhat he actually expected was wireless, if you check the link.
- mannycalavera42 3y agooh man, goosebumps just reading the handler
- 39 3y agoI remember when blizzard forced a character rename.
- irrational 3y agoNow that's a name I've not heard in a long time. I wonder if my account on /. still exists?
- slater 3y agoI just checked mine, still works, still has the same crappy password. The profile options also still provides for an AIM name, complete with "but don't make this AIM link public" option! :D
- incanus77 3y agoI was curious as well so I did a password reset since I was pretty sure I used an older username. Looks like my account was created early enough to have last left comments in 2000 but there are some signs of activity as late as 2010, when I got an achievement related to reading things a few days in a row.
- drivers99 3y agoChecked mine. (Your comment about bad passwords reminded me what I would have used. And it was.) It's a five-digit account. One comment from 2009 (self-referential, talking about when I last posted), two in 2008 (about John Carmack, and old computers), one in 2007 (about HP calculators / RPN), nothing in 2006, and then lots of posts (relatively speaking) in the first half of 2005 and earlier. That's right when reddit launched (mid 2005)!
- panzagl 3y agoI did the same, but I have a bad feeling I used my altavista email...
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoI check about once a year and my account (created in 1999 I think) was still up. I've temporarily lost the muscle memory to enter the password though. I should check again when it comes back.
- pixl97 3y ago
- ryandrake 3y agoI forget what exactly caused me to stop visiting Slashdot. Probably the redesign was when I started finding other sites to visit. Same with Fark. Another big crappy redesign that drove users away. Then Reddit. When will sites learn?
- bryan_w 3y agoFor me it was when they evolved into daily "Windows vs Linux" articles that they would pump for content. You could see the manipulation from a mile away.
- slater 3y agoNew tagline for /. - Enshittification pioneers since 1997
- philjohn 3y agoFor me it was Digg (pre redesign) then Reddit and hn
- vinaypai 3y agoSelection bias at work here. Most sites that have been around along time have redesigned at some point, and you always get some vocal users complaining about it.
- pixl97 3y agoEh, I have to say it's probably not just selection bias directly. Most of the time you have to ask the question, who is the redesign for, and what is it attempting to accomplish. Especially in the case of sites where you have mostly a base of technical users and the site is looking for more generalist users to join to "increase engagement for profitability reasons" then don't be surprised when all the technical users are pissed.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y agoFor me it was the copious anonymous posters who ruined the comment sections with garbage.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- colesantiago 3y agoI really prefer text based interviews rather than audio based interviews. I can parse, text more quickly than audio and I see no transcript here which is a letdown. Is it just me?
- abalashov 3y agoNot just you!
- TedDoesntTalk 3y agoNot just you. I would have read this interview if text. I won’t have to be opportunity to listen to it.
- ekanes 3y agoFor sure, though it'd be cool to have it link to relevant audio. Even better will be when AI is commonly used to summarize youtube videos, podcasts, etc. The tech is there now but not widely deployed.
- adefa 3y agohttps://pastebin.com/pq2xXEnB https://pastebin.com/pq2xXEnB
- bloopernova 3y agoUsed to play D&D with that crew. I wonder if I can still make Rob mad by mentioning Spike Stones? (My druid threw some down at entirely the wrong time and lost us the battle) Slashdot at the time of the Netscape open source announcement was a fantastic place, it felt like the future was going to be great in 1998. I still miss the metamoderation and I'd like to see it implemented in more places.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoI have been curious of one could add /. 's meta-moderation and/or reason-for-vote scheme to HN, without losing the things that make HN unusually good.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoSlashdot’s own code was open-sourced for other websites to build on top of. When HN was founded, it could have even used Slashdot’s own system of moderation directly. However, HN is part of Y Combinator, and the latter undoubtedly wants to protect its brand. Discussion on such corporate-owned websites naturally always entails more severe moderation than on hobbyist communities or ones run by a small business.
- dfxm12 3y agoI'd prefer a vote or post scheme, maybe at the thread level. I like that at least you can't downvote people who respond to you.
- ip_addr 3y agoOne of my favorite documentaries covers this moment inside Netscape. Code Rush https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y
- nullhole 3y agoThanks for the reference, I've never seen it but it's quite good. I haven't seen anything quite like it, at least for the time-and-place. It makes me see the downside of wfh..
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoI miss the troll culture that Slashdot had, people put a lot of work into crafting elaborate jokes. Many Slashdot regulars intentionally browsed at -1 so that, on slow news days, they could read some of the inventive troll posts: Netcraft is Dying, Penisbird Enterprises, Batman Touched my Junk, etc. HN does have good discussion, but the culture here is not welcoming of jokes, and when those jokes get modded down, dead, or flagged, the controls for people to view them regardless are less convenient than Slashdot’s were.
- mrbuttons454 3y agofrost pist
- bloopernova 3y agoI miss the old school trolls where entertainment was as much a goal as annoyance. Elaborate castles in the clouds of unbelievable yarns, like an episode of Would I Lie To You?
- ChainOfFools 3y agoYeah. unfortunately the word trolling sometime over the past 15 years started to merge with what was customarily referred to as griefing or flame bait or flaming itself. The crucial quality that a troll is best executed with as much subtlety as possible so as not to be detected by the intended target (but amusingly obvious to everyone else) was completely lost in the mainstreaming of the word. Now it's used mainly as something like "being a dick online" or even without the online part, as if English (and every other language) didn't have enough slang for this behavior already. I submit that what has happened to the word trolling should be exhibit A in the counter argument against the claim that language evolves over time, or at least challenge the idea that evolves is analogous to "improves" or "becomes better suited to its purpose."
- rendall 3y ago> The crucial quality that a troll is best executed with as much subtlety as possible so as not to be detected by the intended target Yeah.. noo. Who told you this? This is wrong on so many levels it is hard to know where to begin.
- Wildgoose 3y agoI remember on 9/11 that Slashdot was one of the few sites that stayed up available to deliver commentary and speculation. That was impressive for the time.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoBy 9/11 "being slashdotted" was a well-known phenomenon (that is, websites going down because they drew so much traffic from Slashdot’s large readership at the time). That meant that the site’s own servers had likely been hardened in various ways to deal with heavy traffic.
- bell-cot 3y agoIf I recall - CmdrTaco talked in considerable detail (at the time, on SlashDot) about the rather extreme technical changes that he and his crew performed, on the fly, on 9/11, to keep their site up.
- spookthesunset 3y agoI remember that as well. All the major new sites were unusable because they were so slow and crashy. Slashdot had pictures and everything. What a wild time.
- cmdrtaco 3y agoI was never prouder of my team.
- cmiller1 3y agoNow that's a name I've not heard in a long time. Slashdot was the first webpage I ever went to daily. I used the web a lot before that but it was the first page that felt like I wanted to check in every day.
- jedberg 3y ago> but it was the first page that felt like I wanted to check in every day. Daily? That's amateur numbers! Their cron job regenerated the front page every 10 minutes, so you might miss something if you didn't reload it every 10 minutes!
- helpfulContrib 3y agoIn since it was Chips 'n Dips. Still got my 3-number slashdot ID. Were definitely some crazy great days, refreshing slashdot back in the day ..
- Angostura 3y agoFrist Post. ... Or not
- wolverine876 3y agoRemember when people believed that some kids in a garage could do something big and special? Now they think only FAANG and VCs can do it. Now kids drive for Uber and post for Instagram / TikTok / etc. It's a big big loss, a critical loss. It's hard to imagine how it won't impact innovation.
- marcinzm 3y agoI'm not sure why you put VCs into that group since it makes it easier for a bunch of kids to make a business. I mean kids who don't have rich parents to cover all their costs. edit: Another big difference is that kids now would be focused on crypto and, now, AI which are the hot growing trends just like the internet used to be.
- wolverine876 3y agoI'm thinking of VCs as gatekeepers. In some senses, VCs are no different than FAANG, who could acquire and fund the kids.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dakna 3y agoStill waiting for the year of the Linux desktop. We did get Duke Nukem Forever eventually, so I'm optimistic. Next year for sure... It would be more in reach if we would just accept that Android is that desktop for billions of people worldwide.
- ta1243 3y ago23rd year of the linux desktop for me.
- el_don_almighty 3y agoNo matter how much hot porridge went into my pants... Natalie Portman never stopped in for a visit My only /. regret c'est dommage Natalie, the loss was yours I am sure
- zem 3y agoyou probably used the wrong sort of porridge. it has to be grits specifically!
- jccalhoun 3y agoLike many I used to visit /. regularly. I looked at my history and my last comment was in 2013. I think I stopped when they revamped their comment system. I really liked how customizable it was where you could put a penalty on "funny" posts if you wanted and a +1 on off topic or something but they removed that customization and it made it harder for me to enjoy the comments.
- more_corn 3y agoAnd then he sold out and it sucked.
- dmd 3y agoMy user number on /. is "404" ( https://slashdot.org/~dmd https://slashdot.org/~dmd ).
- worldinmyeyes 3y agoThe more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that Slashdot saved my life. In the late 90s I had developed some very unhealthy habits, and while lurking on Slashdot all day wasn't the best use of my lifetime, it was certainly the best I was able to do and one of the few activities I enjoyed. Visiting my people. Yes, it was just another dopamine hit, but at least you could read about open web standards and peak oil and how we will all have portable computers in our pocket, and did you hear about the WAP protocol? It will be huge. I learned so much just tapping into the knowledge and opinions of other people. It was much better than FIDO and Usenet, and I was hooked. Bill Gates got it wrong. It was not about the information superhighway, it was about the information high. Sugar and news run this world. I'm still somewhat excessively consuming information. Now mostly on HN. But I believe Slashdot was what kept me from spiralling out of control, when I didn't know why I would even want to have control. Thanks, CmdrTaco and Hemos. For everything.
- cmdrtaco 3y agoYer welcome, I think?
- knewter 3y agoThanks for everything. You shaped my youth :)
- worldinmyeyes 3y agoLife is good. Years later, I moved to the US and decided to make Michigan my new home. I didn't know much about the area, so I checked Wikipedia, found the entry for Hope College, clicked on alumni and was surprised to see your name. I had no idea Slashdot started in Holland, MI, even though I visited your site every day for over 10 years. I guess I should have mined bitcoins instead. But in Soviet Russia, bitcoins mine you.
- compiler-guy 3y agoImagine a Beowolf cluster of those!
- zeruch 3y agoI've been an acquaintance of Rob since the VA/Andover acquisition, and he's seriously one of the most affable people I've ever met in the industry. Him and Hemos were a great pair of folks to rub elbows with. I still have a business card of mine that he vandalized after he stole a pen off my desk for its sheer comedic perfection. Guys like him make this kind of work worth it.
- aldousd666 3y agoMan everything he said about his audience: it's me. I'm his audience.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ta1243 3y agoI always remember the "Kathleen Fent Read This Story" post [0] [0] https://slashdot.org/story/02/02/14/143254/kathleen-fent-read-this-story https://slashdot.org/story/02/02/14/143254/kathleen-fent-rea...