12 ms·

Classic Usenet posts on computer architecture, operating systems and languages

267 points by caned 2y ago

DonHopkins 2y ago
I can't find the thread or email archives any more, but I got flamed for daring to abuse the Internet for commercial software distribution purposes in July 1992, for posting this announcement of SimCity for HyperLook on NeWS for SunOS 4.1, and making it available on ftp.uu.net. You could download the fully functional demo via ftp from ftp.uu.net, but it melted your city after a few minutes. Then you could buy a license key over the phone via an 800 number with your credit card and immediately unlock it, and they'd optionally mail you a box with a floppy and printed manual for an additional charge. There weren't any https or many http web servers at the time, and it was unwise to send your credit card number via email. Before that time, that was strictly prohibited by the Department of Defense's (DOD's) official ARPANET Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), but around 1991 the National Science Foundation (NSF) lifted the restrictions on commercial use of the NSFNET, however everybody hadn't gotten the memo by the time I released SimCity commercially for Unix in July 1992, so I got flamed of course. Rick Adams, who was on the forefront of commercializing the Internet, gave me an account on uunet to distribute it via anonymous ftp from ftp.uu.net, so he was fine with it, and I ignored the flamers. A huge amount of usenet uucp traffic was routed through the uunet hub, so I often got so some strange misdirected emails to don@uunet / uunet!don, but never any with credit card numbers. https://donhopkins.com/home/SimCity_HyperLook.gif https://donhopkins.com/home/SimCity_HyperLook.gif https://donhopkins.com/home/HyperLookSimCityManual.pdf https://donhopkins.com/home/HyperLookSimCityManual.pdf https://groups.google.com/g/comp.windows.x/c/ukCskm_x410/m/GmdsHHfv3ysJ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.windows.x/c/ukCskm_x410/m/G... Date: Jul 26, 1992, 12:11:53 PM Subject: SimCity available via ftp [...] SimCity Ordering Information ---------------------------- This version of SimCity will run in demo mode (you can play for a while, but you can't save your city, and after 5 minutes, something horrible happens to your city), until you get a license and install a valid key. To get a license, contact DUX Software at: [...] To get the most out of the game: 1. Get a license key! It's cheap, and you'll get a manual with lots more tips! 2. Save your city often. You have to have a key to do that, though! 3. Print out your city periodically. But don't kill too many trees. You can even edit the city map images in the HyperLook drawing editor, annotate them, print them out, and save them as drawing or EPS files. 4. Don't forget to eat. Keep in mind the closing times of local restaurants, or keep lots of munchies on hand. 5. Have fun! If things are going bad, remember not to take it too seriously, it's only a simulation! ChatGPT recalls: In the early days of the ARPANET, it was indeed prohibited to use the network for commercial purposes. This prohibition was formalized in what was known as the "Acceptable Use Policy" (AUP). The ARPANET, funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and managed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), was intended for research and educational purposes only. The AUP strictly limited the use of the network to activities that supported government-sponsored research and education, explicitly forbidding commercial activities such as advertising or distributing commercial software. The relevant rule was part of the terms of service for ARPANET users and was enforced to ensure that the network resources were dedicated to academic and research endeavors. This prohibition was reflective of the original intent behind the ARPANET, which was to facilitate communication and collaboration among research institutions and government bodies. The change in policy came with the commercialization and privatization of the internet in the early 1990s. One significant milestone was the transition from ARPANET to the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) in the mid-1980s, which continued to enforce similar restrictions on commercial use. However, by the late 1980s and early 1990s, the growth of the internet and increasing demand for broader access and commercial services led to policy changes. The key changes occurred in: 1991: The National Science Foundation (NSF) lifted the restrictions on commercial use of the NSFNET. This was largely due to the recognition that commercial entities could benefit from internet access and that their participation could spur further development and innovation. This decision was encapsulated in a revised AUP that allowed for limited commercial use. 1995: The full privatization of the internet occurred when the NSFNET backbone was decommissioned, and the network's infrastructure was handed over to commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs). This effectively marked the end of government restrictions on commercial use of the internet, leading to the rapid expansion of commercial online services, the birth of the World Wide Web, and the internet boom of the 1990s. These changes were driven by the realization that the potential of the internet extended far beyond academic and research applications, and that commercial involvement was essential for its growth and sustainability. The commercialization of the internet has since had profound impacts on global communication, commerce, and society. Rick Adams and UUNET Rick Adams, leveraging his experience at the Seismological Research Labs where he managed the Usenet hub (seismo) and monitored nuclear tests for the government, founded UUNET Technologies in 1987. This company was crucial in transforming the internet from a government and academic tool into a commercial resource. As one of the first commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs), UUNET offered dial-up and other connectivity services, extending internet access to businesses and individuals. By developing one of the first commercial internet backbones and essential infrastructure, UUNET significantly boosted the internet's growth as a commercial resource. Initially focused on Usenet and email services via UUCP, UUNET expanded to high-speed connections, supporting the burgeoning internet industry. The company's acquisition by MFS Communications in 1995, followed by a merger with WorldCom, underscored the growing value of commercial internet services and highlighted Adams' significant role in transforming the internet into a global commercial platform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Adams_(Internet_pioneer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Adams_(Internet_pioneer) Suck.com Net.Moguls Internet Mogul Trading Cards: https://web.archive.org/web/20181211075708/http://www.suck.com/netmoguls/ https://web.archive.org/web/20181211075708/http://www.suck.c... Rick Adams, Front: https://web.archive.org/web/20180802115113im_/http://www.suck.com/netmoguls/96/11/29/cardfront.jpeg https://web.archive.org/web/20180802115113im_/http://www.suc... Rick Adams, Back: https://web.archive.org/web/20180802143444im_/http://www.suck.com/netmoguls/96/11/29/cardback.gif https://web.archive.org/web/20180802143444im_/http://www.suc...
- tomalbrc 2y ago
  Can we not use ChatGPT to write garbage HN comments please
  - DonHopkins 2y ago
    What do you mean by garbage? Is it incorrect in any way? As I stated, I used ChatGPT because I tried and failed to find the original sources. I checked all the information myself, and searched google groups and the wayback machine for the original sources, and linked to what I could find (like the suck.com Net.Mogul cards), but I don't have all the usenet and email archives any more. Can you please constructively suggest some better citations that have the same information instead of just complaining? Or should I just leave out all that relevant information, even though I checked ChatGPT's results against what I know from being there at the time? Or would you rather I just not disclose that I used ChatGPT to write the comment, so as not to trigger you? Edit: Gumby: then that's what he should have said. But I'm responding to what he did actually say. Were all the facts correct, according to your memory? And can you cite a better source with the same information? I'd be grateful and glad to rewrite the comment to point to that, then.
    - gumby 2y ago
      Don, I’m guessing the complaint is really that sure, your comment is a piece of Usenet history, but not really germane to the post.
    - gary_0 2y ago
      Posting AI generated info-dumps is considered bad netiquette.
      - camus_absurd 2y ago
        We’ll see for how long I guess
        DonHopkins 2y ago
quotemstr 2y ago
https://yarchive.net/comp/sandboxes.html https://yarchive.net/comp/sandboxes.html is an interesting example of Clarke's first law: " When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." The post, from Theodore Ts'o, argues that software sandboxing is, if not quite impossible, rather difficult: in his post, he argues that either the user or the sandboxed program has to configure a sandbox. The user won't know what to do, and the executable can't be trusted. The author neglects to consider a third possibility: the OS dictates the shape of all sandboxes and software conforms to fit. This is model we use in Android and iOS and increasingly even on conventional Linux (via snap and flatpak). Sandboxing is not only possible, but essential. Anyway, being wrong is no great crime. Everyone's wrong sometimes. The author went on to do great things with the Linux kernel. It's interesting to think of why smart people are wrong and to be skeptical of claims of impossibly.
- Veserv 2y ago
  It is not even that. All you need is the program to present a “understandable” manifest of its requirements and you can choose to accept or deny. Standardized sandboxs just facilitate ease of use and analysis, and enable application developers to target easy-to-understand security models. The problem with the post is that it assumes that the most important thing is making sure that all non-malicious programs run no matter how convoluted. It is the same thought process that makes people say nonsense like formal methods are impossible due to the halting problem. No, we can just reject unless you make it easy to analyze; halting problem averted.
  - quotemstr 2y ago
    > It is not even that. All you need is the program to present a “understandable” manifest of its requirements and you can choose to accept or deny. Sure. And if these understandable manifests contain requests only from a predefined set that the system provides, we call these requests "permissions" in the iOS and Android sense. You don't get to request arbitrary things and ask the user to approve them. > The problem with the post is that it assumes that the most important thing is making sure that all non-malicious programs run no matter how convoluted Agreed. > No, we can just reject unless you make it easy to analyze; halting problem averted Yes, and it's this idea that makes minimalism essential in OS design. The narrower your contract, the more flexibility you have to change your implementation.
mg 2y ago
I wish there was a way to sort these by date.
- Bewelge 2y ago
  You can paste this into your console :-) Not entirely sure that I parsed all the dates correctly. Simply used the first occurrence of "Date: **" for each link. https://gist.github.com/Bewelge/1f42c4ba999128ae1ded6f0ecc63fd48 https://gist.github.com/Bewelge/1f42c4ba999128ae1ded6f0ecc63...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mrweasel 2y ago
The older I get the more I feel like Usenet was/is a lost opportunity. With a few improvements it could have taken the place of Facebook (not the original connecting with friends version Facebook) and Reddit. It could have been a great option for local business promotion and news distribution, and the same segmentation into groups would map almost perfectly into subreddits. It is decentralized, multiple clients where available and you could segment into as narrow topics as you'd like.
- kseistrup 2y ago
  @asjo over at koldfront.dk is still using NNTP for all sorts of things (RSS aggregator, blog engine, ActivityPub server): https://koldfront.dk/just_call_me_mr_nntp_1871 https://koldfront.dk/just_call_me_mr_nntp_1871 Indeed, it was a lost opportunity. The protocol os easy to understand, and it plays well with decentralization as you say, and with self hosting. With Python 3.12 out, its nntplib module is scheduled for deletion/removal in v3.13. What a pity. The NNTP protocol surely deserves a revival.
- ktosobcy 2y ago
  This! I still hands on a couple of groups though the traffic there is getting thinner with each day... It was simple. I wasn't forced with account (though would be nice/useful nowadays I guess with all the impersonation and whatnot), threading was awesome. Scoring+plonk was even more amazing. There was a problem with syncing what was read and not but that could be easily improved now... I think I mostly miss scoring - it was such an amazing tool to manage/filter out desired content...
  - mmcgaha 2y ago
    I hope the last post is in alt.obituaries for usenet itself. Unfortunately it will probably be a post about a free ebook download cross posted to half of usenet.
- immibis 2y ago
  There was some minor discussion in this direction in the thread about email 2.0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40392709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40392709 Bad service drives out good service just like bad money, for some reason. Centralized beats decentralized because convenience. The convenience is what they're paying to entice you to come into their home and let them eat your brains, and every single person falls for it, probably including you and me. Classic Usenet is still around. If you have an email address, you can get an account on Eternal September. There aren't that many users. You can be one of them.
doener 2y ago
One of the Usenet postings that still gives me the chills is this on from Berlin November 10, 1989: https://groups.google.com/g/eunet.politics/c/LbrVEM7zp-Y/m/ae_hhAk9jd8J?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/g/eunet.politics/c/LbrVEM7zp-Y/m/a...
- lionkor 2y ago
  Thats madness. I sent it to my dad who lives in west berlin since 1950
- xucian 2y ago
  whoa, I just learned usenet was started in 1980. this is incredible
- amadeuspagel 2y ago
  I saw this on HN a year ago[1]. I was amazed to see people discuss this event that I only knew from documentaries just like we discuss so many things on HN. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35937637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35937637
- macintux 2y ago
  That thread is an interesting read. Predicting the future is hard.
- cowboylowrez 2y ago
  "On the subject of reunification, the next day on the Today program on BCC Radio 4 they were interviewing various "notable" people about the situation. A very interesting comment was made by some notable Frenchman that Germany has only ever been unified between ~1890 and 1945 and it wasn't exactly as runaway success then." 1980's savagery could that even be typed today in polite circles? lol
amadeuspagel 2y ago
> There is also a vicious circle here, because the primary audience for a new programming language is existing programmers -- people who are already accustomed to using programming languages with English keywords. Folks who have trouble with English keywords probably aren't working as programmers, so their voices are not heard.[1] This is a problem way beyond english and programming languages. [1]: https://yarchive.net/comp/english.html https://yarchive.net/comp/english.html
amadeuspagel 2y ago
> Why do you think Linux ends up being the most widely deployed Unix? It's avoided niches, it's avoided inbreeding, and not being too directed means that it doesn't get the problems you see with unbalanced systems.[1] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40404440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40404440
anthk 2y ago
For offline usage: https://yarchive.net/downloads/ https://yarchive.net/downloads/ If you use something like Midnight Commander under GNU/Linux or BSD, you can directy read the files without extracting them, it's handy.
SyberShock 2y ago
For those who might think that NNTP does not scale, keep in mind that in its heyday Usenet was not the only NNTP network. There were countless niche NNTP servers not necessarily peering with Usenet. Some niche NNTP communities continue to thrive to this day. A small closed network of just a few peers can service hundreds to thousands of participants. Social media architecture has accustomed users to having the whole world flooding their feed or inbox, when it need not be this way. This is why I like NNTP. The lack of overwhelming mass participation is a feature, not a bug.

267 points by caned 2y ago

I can't find the thread or email archives any more, but I got flamed for daring to abuse the Internet for commercial software distribution purposes in July 1992, for posting this announcement of SimCity for HyperLook on NeWS for SunOS 4.1, and making it available on ftp.uu.net. You could download the fully functional demo via ftp from ftp.uu.net, but it melted your city after a few minutes. Then you could buy a license key over the phone via an 800 number with your credit card and immediately unlock it, and they'd optionally mail you a box with a floppy and printed manual for an additional charge. There weren't any https or many http web servers at the time, and it was unwise to send your credit card number via email. Before that time, that was strictly prohibited by the Department of Defense's (DOD's) official ARPANET Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), but around 1991 the National Science Foundation (NSF) lifted the restrictions on commercial use of the NSFNET, however everybody hadn't gotten the memo by the time I released SimCity commercially for Unix in July 1992, so I got flamed of course. Rick Adams, who was on the forefront of commercializing the Internet, gave me an account on uunet to distribute it via anonymous ftp from ftp.uu.net, so he was fine with it, and I ignored the flamers. A huge amount of usenet uucp traffic was routed through the uunet hub, so I often got so some strange misdirected emails to don@uunet / uunet!don, but never any with credit card numbers. https://donhopkins.com/home/SimCity_HyperLook.gif https://donhopkins.com/home/SimCity_HyperLook.gif https://donhopkins.com/home/HyperLookSimCityManual.pdf https://donhopkins.com/home/HyperLookSimCityManual.pdf https://groups.google.com/g/comp.windows.x/c/ukCskm_x410/m/GmdsHHfv3ysJ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.windows.x/c/ukCskm_x410/m/G... Date: Jul 26, 1992, 12:11:53 PM Subject: SimCity available via ftp [...] SimCity Ordering Information ---------------------------- This version of SimCity will run in demo mode (you can play for a while, but you can't save your city, and after 5 minutes, something horrible happens to your city), until you get a license and install a valid key. To get a license, contact DUX Software at: [...] To get the most out of the game: 1. Get a license key! It's cheap, and you'll get a manual with lots more tips! 2. Save your city often. You have to have a key to do that, though! 3. Print out your city periodically. But don't kill too many trees. You can even edit the city map images in the HyperLook drawing editor, annotate them, print them out, and save them as drawing or EPS files. 4. Don't forget to eat. Keep in mind the closing times of local restaurants, or keep lots of munchies on hand. 5. Have fun! If things are going bad, remember not to take it too seriously, it's only a simulation! ChatGPT recalls: In the early days of the ARPANET, it was indeed prohibited to use the network for commercial purposes. This prohibition was formalized in what was known as the "Acceptable Use Policy" (AUP). The ARPANET, funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and managed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), was intended for research and educational purposes only. The AUP strictly limited the use of the network to activities that supported government-sponsored research and education, explicitly forbidding commercial activities such as advertising or distributing commercial software. The relevant rule was part of the terms of service for ARPANET users and was enforced to ensure that the network resources were dedicated to academic and research endeavors. This prohibition was reflective of the original intent behind the ARPANET, which was to facilitate communication and collaboration among research institutions and government bodies. The change in policy came with the commercialization and privatization of the internet in the early 1990s. One significant milestone was the transition from ARPANET to the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) in the mid-1980s, which continued to enforce similar restrictions on commercial use. However, by the late 1980s and early 1990s, the growth of the internet and increasing demand for broader access and commercial services led to policy changes. The key changes occurred in: 1991: The National Science Foundation (NSF) lifted the restrictions on commercial use of the NSFNET. This was largely due to the recognition that commercial entities could benefit from internet access and that their participation could spur further development and innovation. This decision was encapsulated in a revised AUP that allowed for limited commercial use. 1995: The full privatization of the internet occurred when the NSFNET backbone was decommissioned, and the network's infrastructure was handed over to commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs). This effectively marked the end of government restrictions on commercial use of the internet, leading to the rapid expansion of commercial online services, the birth of the World Wide Web, and the internet boom of the 1990s. These changes were driven by the realization that the potential of the internet extended far beyond academic and research applications, and that commercial involvement was essential for its growth and sustainability. The commercialization of the internet has since had profound impacts on global communication, commerce, and society. Rick Adams and UUNET Rick Adams, leveraging his experience at the Seismological Research Labs where he managed the Usenet hub (seismo) and monitored nuclear tests for the government, founded UUNET Technologies in 1987. This company was crucial in transforming the internet from a government and academic tool into a commercial resource. As one of the first commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs), UUNET offered dial-up and other connectivity services, extending internet access to businesses and individuals. By developing one of the first commercial internet backbones and essential infrastructure, UUNET significantly boosted the internet's growth as a commercial resource. Initially focused on Usenet and email services via UUCP, UUNET expanded to high-speed connections, supporting the burgeoning internet industry. The company's acquisition by MFS Communications in 1995, followed by a merger with WorldCom, underscored the growing value of commercial internet services and highlighted Adams' significant role in transforming the internet into a global commercial platform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Adams_(Internet_pioneer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Adams_(Internet_pioneer) Suck.com Net.Moguls Internet Mogul Trading Cards: https://web.archive.org/web/20181211075708/http://www.suck.com/netmoguls/ https://web.archive.org/web/20181211075708/http://www.suck.c... Rick Adams, Front: https://web.archive.org/web/20180802115113im_/http://www.suck.com/netmoguls/96/11/29/cardfront.jpeg https://web.archive.org/web/20180802115113im_/http://www.suc... Rick Adams, Back: https://web.archive.org/web/20180802143444im_/http://www.suck.com/netmoguls/96/11/29/cardback.gif https://web.archive.org/web/20180802143444im_/http://www.suc...

tomalbrc 2y ago
Can we not use ChatGPT to write garbage HN comments please
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  What do you mean by garbage? Is it incorrect in any way? As I stated, I used ChatGPT because I tried and failed to find the original sources. I checked all the information myself, and searched google groups and the wayback machine for the original sources, and linked to what I could find (like the suck.com Net.Mogul cards), but I don't have all the usenet and email archives any more. Can you please constructively suggest some better citations that have the same information instead of just complaining? Or should I just leave out all that relevant information, even though I checked ChatGPT's results against what I know from being there at the time? Or would you rather I just not disclose that I used ChatGPT to write the comment, so as not to trigger you? Edit: Gumby: then that's what he should have said. But I'm responding to what he did actually say. Were all the facts correct, according to your memory? And can you cite a better source with the same information? I'd be grateful and glad to rewrite the comment to point to that, then.
  - gumby 2y ago
    Don, I’m guessing the complaint is really that sure, your comment is a piece of Usenet history, but not really germane to the post.
  - gary_0 2y ago
    Posting AI generated info-dumps is considered bad netiquette.
    - camus_absurd 2y ago
      We’ll see for how long I guess
      - DonHopkins 2y ago

quotemstr 2y ago

https://yarchive.net/comp/sandboxes.html https://yarchive.net/comp/sandboxes.html is an interesting example of Clarke's first law: " When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." The post, from Theodore Ts'o, argues that software sandboxing is, if not quite impossible, rather difficult: in his post, he argues that either the user or the sandboxed program has to configure a sandbox. The user won't know what to do, and the executable can't be trusted. The author neglects to consider a third possibility: the OS dictates the shape of all sandboxes and software conforms to fit. This is model we use in Android and iOS and increasingly even on conventional Linux (via snap and flatpak). Sandboxing is not only possible, but essential. Anyway, being wrong is no great crime. Everyone's wrong sometimes. The author went on to do great things with the Linux kernel. It's interesting to think of why smart people are wrong and to be skeptical of claims of impossibly.

Veserv 2y ago
It is not even that. All you need is the program to present a “understandable” manifest of its requirements and you can choose to accept or deny. Standardized sandboxs just facilitate ease of use and analysis, and enable application developers to target easy-to-understand security models. The problem with the post is that it assumes that the most important thing is making sure that all non-malicious programs run no matter how convoluted. It is the same thought process that makes people say nonsense like formal methods are impossible due to the halting problem. No, we can just reject unless you make it easy to analyze; halting problem averted.
- quotemstr 2y ago
  > It is not even that. All you need is the program to present a “understandable” manifest of its requirements and you can choose to accept or deny. Sure. And if these understandable manifests contain requests only from a predefined set that the system provides, we call these requests "permissions" in the iOS and Android sense. You don't get to request arbitrary things and ask the user to approve them. > The problem with the post is that it assumes that the most important thing is making sure that all non-malicious programs run no matter how convoluted Agreed. > No, we can just reject unless you make it easy to analyze; halting problem averted Yes, and it's this idea that makes minimalism essential in OS design. The narrower your contract, the more flexibility you have to change your implementation.

mg 2y ago

I wish there was a way to sort these by date.

Bewelge 2y ago
You can paste this into your console :-) Not entirely sure that I parsed all the dates correctly. Simply used the first occurrence of "Date: **" for each link. https://gist.github.com/Bewelge/1f42c4ba999128ae1ded6f0ecc63fd48 https://gist.github.com/Bewelge/1f42c4ba999128ae1ded6f0ecc63...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mrweasel 2y ago

The older I get the more I feel like Usenet was/is a lost opportunity. With a few improvements it could have taken the place of Facebook (not the original connecting with friends version Facebook) and Reddit. It could have been a great option for local business promotion and news distribution, and the same segmentation into groups would map almost perfectly into subreddits. It is decentralized, multiple clients where available and you could segment into as narrow topics as you'd like.

kseistrup 2y ago
@asjo over at koldfront.dk is still using NNTP for all sorts of things (RSS aggregator, blog engine, ActivityPub server): https://koldfront.dk/just_call_me_mr_nntp_1871 https://koldfront.dk/just_call_me_mr_nntp_1871 Indeed, it was a lost opportunity. The protocol os easy to understand, and it plays well with decentralization as you say, and with self hosting. With Python 3.12 out, its nntplib module is scheduled for deletion/removal in v3.13. What a pity. The NNTP protocol surely deserves a revival.
ktosobcy 2y ago
This! I still hands on a couple of groups though the traffic there is getting thinner with each day... It was simple. I wasn't forced with account (though would be nice/useful nowadays I guess with all the impersonation and whatnot), threading was awesome. Scoring+plonk was even more amazing. There was a problem with syncing what was read and not but that could be easily improved now... I think I mostly miss scoring - it was such an amazing tool to manage/filter out desired content...
- mmcgaha 2y ago
  I hope the last post is in alt.obituaries for usenet itself. Unfortunately it will probably be a post about a free ebook download cross posted to half of usenet.
immibis 2y ago
There was some minor discussion in this direction in the thread about email 2.0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40392709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40392709 Bad service drives out good service just like bad money, for some reason. Centralized beats decentralized because convenience. The convenience is what they're paying to entice you to come into their home and let them eat your brains, and every single person falls for it, probably including you and me. Classic Usenet is still around. If you have an email address, you can get an account on Eternal September. There aren't that many users. You can be one of them.

doener 2y ago

One of the Usenet postings that still gives me the chills is this on from Berlin November 10, 1989: https://groups.google.com/g/eunet.politics/c/LbrVEM7zp-Y/m/ae_hhAk9jd8J?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/g/eunet.politics/c/LbrVEM7zp-Y/m/a...

lionkor 2y ago
Thats madness. I sent it to my dad who lives in west berlin since 1950
xucian 2y ago
whoa, I just learned usenet was started in 1980. this is incredible
amadeuspagel 2y ago
I saw this on HN a year ago[1]. I was amazed to see people discuss this event that I only knew from documentaries just like we discuss so many things on HN. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35937637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35937637
macintux 2y ago
That thread is an interesting read. Predicting the future is hard.
cowboylowrez 2y ago
"On the subject of reunification, the next day on the Today program on BCC Radio 4 they were interviewing various "notable" people about the situation. A very interesting comment was made by some notable Frenchman that Germany has only ever been unified between ~1890 and 1945 and it wasn't exactly as runaway success then." 1980's savagery could that even be typed today in polite circles? lol

amadeuspagel 2y ago

> There is also a vicious circle here, because the primary audience for a new programming language is existing programmers -- people who are already accustomed to using programming languages with English keywords. Folks who have trouble with English keywords probably aren't working as programmers, so their voices are not heard.[1] This is a problem way beyond english and programming languages. [1]: https://yarchive.net/comp/english.html https://yarchive.net/comp/english.html

amadeuspagel 2y ago

> Why do you think Linux ends up being the most widely deployed Unix? It's avoided niches, it's avoided inbreeding, and not being too directed means that it doesn't get the problems you see with unbalanced systems.[1] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40404440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40404440

anthk 2y ago

For offline usage: https://yarchive.net/downloads/ https://yarchive.net/downloads/ If you use something like Midnight Commander under GNU/Linux or BSD, you can directy read the files without extracting them, it's handy.

SyberShock 2y ago

For those who might think that NNTP does not scale, keep in mind that in its heyday Usenet was not the only NNTP network. There were countless niche NNTP servers not necessarily peering with Usenet. Some niche NNTP communities continue to thrive to this day. A small closed network of just a few peers can service hundreds to thousands of participants. Social media architecture has accustomed users to having the whole world flooding their feed or inbox, when it need not be this way. This is why I like NNTP. The lack of overwhelming mass participation is a feature, not a bug.