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Cult of the Dead Cow – Veilid (2023)
- 31337Logic 2y agoWow. Today I learned CdC and ACiD are still a thing. ;-) Thanks for posting this. Even though slightly old, still timely and relevant.
- hypercube33 2y agoSimilar to the cDc but instead of hacking it goes after culture and religion is the Church of MOO which I think came out of the same bbs/usenet and irc era of the Internet if you could even call it that http://www.textfiles.com/occult/MOOISM/ http://www.textfiles.com/occult/MOOISM/
- HDPDV 2y agoCULT OF THE DEAD COW. TODAY. TOMORROW. FOREVER.
- broost3r 2y agowhat a great username to go with this comment
- HocusLocus 2y ago31337 and 1337 are prime. Doesn't get any more 1337 than that!
- gryfft 2y agoThe web needs more sites hosting raw .html pages formatted as plain text decorated with ASCII art with zero regard for mobile. I say this with complete sincerity.
- nulbyte 2y agoIt's not even that much of a problem for me on mobile after zooming out just a tad. The green on black is really what makes this page for me.
- oytis 2y agoNo cookies, no frameworks (no JS at all really), plain unobfuscated html. Amazing!
- flipdot 2y agoWhat about accessibility?
- the_real_cher 2y agoWouldn't raw html be better for accessibility than a JS framework? Saying this as a non-front end dev.
- ivan_gammel 2y agoIf done correctly it doesn’t matter. SSR can yield an accessible HTML page and you won’t notice the difference. Client-side JS can adapt the web site to your needs -a personalization that is hard to achieve in static.
- marcosdumay 2y agoWhen was the last time... Or rather, when have you ever seen a framework-based page with accessibility done correctly?
- ivan_gammel 2y agoI have seen many sites scoring well on various accessibility metrics. There’s no inherent technical limitation of frameworks that would make accessibility impossible, even when dealing with text to speech. We will see many more next year with EAA coming into effect (and many European companies do care about compliance).
- jilijeanlouis 2y agoDespite regulation I don’t Believe it will actually get implemented even governments have regulations around audio accessibility for education in particular, for years now, and still nothing moves.
- Conlectus 2y agoRaw HTML: potentially. Big blocks of undifferentiated ASCII art: no.
- deadbabe 2y agoUse HTMX.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ganzuul 2y agoStill waiting for an LLM to communicate exclusively in this format.
- gwern 2y agoYou can support mobile with ASCII art if you render at different widths and use a HTML+CSS wrapper for media-queries! I have a whole proposal about this: https://gwern.net/utext https://gwern.net/utext
- pyinstallwoes 2y agoLove the thinking here. Thanks for the research and suggestions.
- tetris11 2y agoIs this in reference to tucows?
- rmi_ 2y agoNo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Dead_Cow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Dead_Cow
- riffic 2y agoTUCOWS for those that don't know was an acronym for "The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software" (fun fact; let's please have a bit more fun on orange site the debby downer thing here is something sometimes).
- debo_ 2y agoThis feels like it would have been edgy and cool 30 years ago.
- CuriousCosmic 2y agoFYI: Cult of the Dead Cow is a hacker group that has been around since the 80s. Hell a number of members actually have testified in congress before (i.e. the CdC members that were also part of L0pht).
- parpfish 2y agoone of them went beyond testifying in congress and just became a politician [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beto_O%27Rourke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beto_O%27Rourke
- CuriousCosmic 2y agoOh damn I didn't even connect that O'Rourke was Psychedelic Warlord.
- Terr_ 2y agoHoly crap, that is a surprising connection between two names I individually knew in a social graph.
- Terr_ 2y ago> L0pht Oh man, that reminds me of NTLM passwords: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L0phtCrack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L0phtCrack
- jrochkind1 2y agoI don't know if you're talking about the design or content. But on design... So Cult of the Dead Cow has literally been around for 40 years. And this is what their "pages" looked like before the web, when ascii on TTY was all you had. Ironically, however, the first actual web page of theirs IA has, in 1998, does _not_ look like this, they didn't actually think at that point it would be edgy and cool to make the brand new web look like an ASCII tty. https://web.archive.org/web/19980209125729/http://cultdeadcow.com:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/19980209125729/http://cultdeadco... It actually wasn't until 2019 they decided it would be maybe edgy and cool to make their webpage look like an ascii tty from 1990. https://web.archive.org/web/20190530041326/https://cultdeadcow.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190530041326/https://cultdeadc...
- josephd79 2y agoyer mom. haha
- dgellow 2y agoThe project website has more information https://veilid.com/ https://veilid.com/
- solardev 2y agoWeren't these the guys who released BackOrifice back in the day? It was a simple to use remote control trojan with a nice GUI... had a blast with it :P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_Orifice?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_Orifice?wprov=sfla1 As a kid, I attached it to some shareware game and sent it to a friend, letting it lurk. I called him up a few days later. And then once we started playing the game, I waited for a suspenseful moment to suddenly play back a loud scream .WAV that I uploaded previously. My friend jumped out of his chair and screamed himself and ran out of the room. He eventually came back, hyperventilating, and sat down to try to tell me what happened, only for his CD tray to start opening and closing at random. He ran away again, swearing about his haunted PC... Eventually he told the school principal, who sat us down and made us explain what modems and trojans and ports were. Then he asked us if we knew what an orifice was, and how that was connected to ports... sigh, the kind of discussion you never wanted to have with a grown-up. We were young. The internet was young. Things were wild and free and not so hypercommercialized and buttoned down yet. Google wasn't around and Apple was for homework and Hypercard. Microsoft still had flight simulators in Excel. Good times...
- nsxwolf 2y agoMy friend pulled a similar prank on me a few years earlier than that. Involved different tech like BBS software, ZMODEM file transfer, and Sound Blaster command line utilities but same effect. I nearly died.
- solardev 2y agoHe was a pioneer :D The granddaddy of us script kiddies. The BBS door game Legend of the Red Dragon (https://legendreddragon.net/ https://legendreddragon.net/) was how I learned about everything from protocols to sex to RPGs. Such an innocent time. The media was afraid of Doom corrupting the youth.
- MikeTheGreat 2y agoI was curious about how you'd learn about sex in an RPG and followed your link (it's a slow day :) ). This is hilarious, and reasonable tasteful, all things considered: https://nuklearlord.fandom.com/wiki/Lay https://nuklearlord.fandom.com/wiki/Lay https://nuklearlord.fandom.com/wiki/Pregnancy https://nuklearlord.fandom.com/wiki/Pregnancy https://nuklearlord.fandom.com/wiki/Venereal_Disease https://nuklearlord.fandom.com/wiki/Venereal_Disease https://nuklearlord.fandom.com/wiki/Children https://nuklearlord.fandom.com/wiki/Children
- not_a_dane 2y ago[dead]
- kstrauser 2y agoDon’t make it weird.
- freedomben 2y agoThis was actually announced/released last year. It is absolutley fascinating and deserving of HN (IMHO). > Veilid is an open-source, peer-to-peer, mobile-first, networked application framework. Website: https://veilid.com/ https://veilid.com/ Overview: https://veilid.com/docs/overview/ https://veilid.com/docs/overview/ Slides from the Defcon presentatino: https://veilid.com/Launch-Slides-Veilid.pdf https://veilid.com/Launch-Slides-Veilid.pdf Code: https://gitlab.com/veilid/veilid https://gitlab.com/veilid/veilid
- ganoushoreilly 2y agoDefcon Launch party was fun too!
- smusamashah 2y agoI have seen other similar tools/tech on hn https://briarproject.org/ https://briarproject.org/ https://github.com/berty/berty https://github.com/berty/berty There were 1 or 2 more like these but don't remember there names.
- khimaros 2y agoveilid is meant to be a bit more general purpose than briar or berty, which are primarily chat apps. veilid is more similar to freenet in some sense. note: veilid does not currently support bluetooth transport.
- jszymborski 2y agoI know MaidSAFE started out this way in 2006, but I think the I had a crypto digression https://maidsafe.net/ https://maidsafe.net/
- programmernews3 2y agoIts a crypto grift
- jszymborski 2y ago
- egypturnash 2y agoHas VeilidChat (or anything else running on top of Veilid) been released? The page for that (https://veilid.com/chat/ https://veilid.com/chat/) says its code will be released “in the coming weeks”; the whole Veilid site looks unchanged since its initial publication back in 2023. Edit: ah, some bouncing around through their FAQs found a repo for it that has commits within the last week/month: https://gitlab.com/veilid/veilidchat https://gitlab.com/veilid/veilidchat - looks like “hand this to your non-technical friends” is still a very long way away.
- khimaros 2y agounfortunately most of their up to date documentation is on discord. there is a channel there with a list of active projects. this one caught my eye: https://github.com/cmars/distrans/ https://github.com/cmars/distrans/
- fullspectrumdev 2y ago> documentation on discord Disgusting. I have been looking for solid example code to play with building stuff on top of Veilid, but I’m absolutely unwilling to waste time on that shit chat platform tbh.
- squigz 2y agoThere's more than a little irony in a group complaining about the commercialization of the Internet putting documentation/information on Discord
- trustno2 2y agoThe demo VeilidChat app doesn't lead anywhere, but there is a gitlab. I haven't tried it yet. https://gitlab.com/veilid/veilidchat https://gitlab.com/veilid/veilidchat edit: I did, I failed to build it with "version solving failed.", I am not learning how to debug Dart builds right now edit2: well, build.sh finished with some installing, but I still don't see any binary. Eh, other day.
- badgersnake 2y agoThere is a discord, which kinda misses the point.
- cdchn 2y agoThink this is something they'd be trying pretty hard to self-host.
- dustfinger 2y agoOh man, does this bring back memories. I loved BackOrfice. I installed it on the network at the University where I was a student. I had a friend call me on a payphone from a vantage point where he could view the layout of the computer terminals being used by students doing research. At first, I would open the cd trays of a couple of the computers and he described the students confusion as they kept closing the trays that would open again moments later. After sharing a good laugh, I popped up a dialog on one of the computers with a message similar to: > Hey, I am the guy at station #7. I think you are really hot. Want to go out tonight? Then, I sent similar messages to other stations until we were nearly in tears laughing at the chaos we caused. Ahh, those were good memories.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- uhoh-itsmaciek 2y agoThat sounds like a crummy thing to do to the people in the lab.
- devjab 2y agoThe internet was different back then. We used to put trojans into image files which we distributed through a fake dating site peofile. For shits and giggles. We never did anything “serious” just stupid things like opening CD rom drives or moving their mouse around. We’d UDP “nuke” teacher computers. We’d use open networks, and download warez… all sort of silly stuff. Looking back on it… well a lot of it obviously wasn’t cool at all. I’m just happy that my “teenagers do stupid things” happened in a time where the internet crime was basically not taken serious unless you hacked a bank.
- uhoh-itsmaciek 2y agoIt's just a different kind of bullying.
- 2y ago
- a_vanderbilt 2y agoThey gave a great presentation on veiled for us at BSides Orlando last year. At the afterparty, I had a chance to discuss the protocol with Paul over some drinks. They've really thought through the design and he had answers for almost all of my what-ifs.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jeroenhd 2y agoI had high hopes for Veilid when it was unveiled (ha) but I stopped hearing about it soon after it was published online. Veilid Chat didn't really seem to work once I found the source code and except for a few "hello world" networking programs I haven't seen anything use the protocol yet. The official website doesn't seem to be getting any updates anymore. A shame, because this has a lot to offer, in my opinion.
- ganoushoreilly 2y agoThey're still updating it regularly, but it hasn't grown nearly as fast as they wanted it to. Last I heard they're working on doing nightlies and weeklies for release too. I don't really think that matters as much as just having a good release schedule and tools that leverage it.
- Retr0id 2y agoI think it basically released before it was ready, to much fanfare. Not an undeserved fanfare, but a premature one. I think the concept is solid and they're still actively developing it, but it's not really something end-users can play with yet.
- gnuser 2y agolove cDc but they drop more projects than google - people just remember the ones that stick/stuck
- andoando 2y agoThe issue as I see it is free open source software can't normally compete with commercial simply because it relies on the good will of developers to contribute. People need money to live, most of us can't dedicate hours a day to working on something like this. For every 20 devs you can get to do this theres a 1000+ working for the commercial equivalent. We need a paid, non corporate model, not free.
- beardog 2y agoI went to the launch party they had during defcon, it was a lot of fun. I like that Veild is oriented toward being an application framework. In the same way that we have things like libsodium to use cryptography in our apps without being a master of it, we need frameworks/libraries to help build privacy oriented apps as well.
- underseacables 2y agoThis brings back so many BBS memories!
- klaussilveira 2y agoThe amount of people in this comment section, on "Hacker News", that are completely oblivious to one of the most iconic groups of hacker culture is... depressing. I wonder how can we spread more zeitgeist about it to newer generations?
- DoreenMichele 2y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Dead_Cow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Dead_Cow I dunno, but maybe try being informative instead of critical that losers like me never got the memo?
- klaussilveira 2y agoI'm sorry if it felt critical or condescending, it certainly was not the intent. If anything, I just want people to experience that coolness the same way I did.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- elzbardico 2y agoA frequently overlooked issue about Gen-X online culture is that it was always have on gatekeeping, snobbism and hierarchy. It is not surprising that newer generations don't know it, because at this time, people did the most to keep things on their small clubs of initiated folks, newbies NOT welcome. Frankly, millenials and zoomer have a far more open and welcoming approach, and probably their culture will survive better because of that.
- kmbfjr 2y agoThe world was a smaller place back then. At the onset of this culture, a lot of it was built on avoiding the costs of reaching out to the next city (toll phone calls). Their culture will be derided and discarded, just like all those before them.
- elzbardico 2y ago
- LastNevadan 2y agoI'm amazed that CdC is still around. I remember dialing into their BBS, Demon Roach Underground, in the mid 80s. That was nearly forty years ago! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Roach_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Roach_Underground
- netsharc 2y agoOne of their members had presidential hopes a few years ago: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/03/it-turns-out-beto-orourke-stole-phone-service-pirated-software-as-a-kid/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/03/it-tu...
- HDPDV 2y agoThe phone number is seared into my brain for life, I think. I can't remember my girlfriend's phone number, but the number of BBSs I called 30+ years ago? That's stuck in there until the day I die.
- ergonaught 2y agoCan’t remember the last time I called Ripco or Lunatic Labs but I still know their numbers better than any other phone numbers, including my own.
- beaugunderson 2y agoRaT CiTY in Seattle had 24-666-47 and that'll be in my brain forever too...
- tylershuster 2y agoIt borrows some of its marketing directly from Urbit, which HN famously has a bias against.
- RyJones 2y agoThey recently became a member of PQCA, too. Disclosure: I work for LF, assigned to PQCA. https://pqca.org/#members https://pqca.org/#members https://veilid.org/ https://veilid.org/ https://github.com/pqca https://github.com/pqca
- Aerbil313 2y agoAlso check out https://freenet.org https://freenet.org. Ian is going to launch in a few weeks if all goes well.
- orthecreedence 2y agoI think Veilid is closer to https://iroh.computer/ https://iroh.computer/ than Freenet. That said, I'm watching all three extremely closely.
- UberFly 2y agoI watched them unveil Back Orifice at defcon in the late 90s. Those were fun times.
- seomint 2y agoThat beautiful phosphorus green...
- pyinstallwoes 2y agoThis is kind of exactly what I’ve been looking for, and have shared at various times features of on hnews and elsewhere. Nice! Thank you!
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoWoah. A blast from the past from the era of l0pht, shmoo, and w00w00. I'm wondering how they defend against tor's problem where large % of nodes are malicious. More doc: https://veilid.gitlab.io/developer-book/index.html https://veilid.gitlab.io/developer-book/index.html