usenet and irc were ‘the fediverse’ before it became trendy.
So much this! I am old, I guess, but I was on Usenet for years before the web was even invented. When I became aware of the fediverse, I got serious Usenet vibes. A decentralized model, several servers, you access one and get what it sends you, but it syncs with all other servers. You‘re getting everything in the entire Usenet and what you post gets everywhere too… we’ve come full circle, I think, even if we now use ActivePub instead of NNTP… a shame people nowadays know of it as “that piracy thing” instead of what it once was (and was designed to be).
Preach! My first experience with Usenet was rexx scripts on a mainframe using tn3270. Same with all of the ftp sites. Remember fingering id software?
Also, you can post to nntp via email.
Yah, I can’t imagine finger being widely deployed nowadays, the huge security and privacy hole it would be!
As for nntp and email… I also remember using email relay proxies for FTP way back when! FTP access to some places was spotty at best, so I sent a GET request to an email server that would get the file, UUENCODE it, and send it multipart by email. Not that files were big back then, but not was it possible to attach more than a few hundred KBs at once, if that.
In fact, I just remembered a funny story from when I was using the Usenet. I used a client that ran on our VAX/VMS mainframe. While browsing the newsgroups, I would get a figure for the transfer rate at the bottom of the screen. It was usually in tens of bytes per second, sometimes a few hundred. Often it stalled, etc. One day, out of the corner of my eye, I see it is showing “1”. My immediate thought as the most plausible interpretation: “damn, one byte per second. this is especially slow today!” And then I noticed the units: one KILOBYTE per second. it was the first time I had ever seen such a fast transfer rate!
A few years later, mid 90s I was trying to download a video that accompanied a conference paper. It was 6MB in size if memory serves. It took me from Friday afternoon to Sunday to manage it. Not only was it slow, but it kept interrupting and I had to start over numerous times. But I did manage in the end, and walked away with it split into a few floppy disks 🙂.
We’ve certainly come a long way since!
I remember stitching multipart uuencoded files together by hand, lol. Then when OS/2 2.0 came out, IBM fully embraced the Internet of the time and had the best Usenet client that would gasp do all of that automatically and display the image or save the binary file you were after. WebEx was also the best web browser until Netscape took over.
Back in the day I’d use UUCP over dial up to the local university to get email and my chosen usenet groups. Ah, the nostalgia of coming home to find my Amiga’s floppy had run out of room…
IRC wasn’t federated though, but you could indeed connect to multiple servers with the same client.
All of the protocols that have been ratified are federated. That was kind of the big thing of the internet. HTTP, SMTP (email), FTP, etc. All federated.
When people talk about defederating threads, I’m always curious why they think Net Neutrality is a bad idea, or if they’d appreciate if their email providers didn’t allow emails to Gmail because they don’t like big corporations…
While text based messages on usenet may be dieing, the file sharing is still quite popular. My radar and sonar still pick up plenty of signals.
You should also check IRC. Many 1st releases sprout from there and filter into Usenet and torrents and is far more active than NNTP. Rizon is a good start point.
Are there any tools that would make it easy to use with Sonarr or Radarr?
XDCC although i dont know if that can be used with sonarr/radarr
I’ll check that out, thanks!
XDCC. Sorry I didn’t see your reply earlier.
Well the issue with Usenet is the following:
- Usenet is quite old
- Usenet is not very well known.
- Usenet has many barriers to entry.
- Usenet groups have garnered an exclusionary reputation.
- Other easier options have existed for a long time for basic social media interaction.
Usenet also largely became a venue for bootlegging and porn – and due to the nature of the protocol, companies hosting Usenet services didn’t want to have to store all of that shit. After about 1995, you didn’t go there for discussion anymore. Eternal September messed it up. Lemmy is fortunate that you can’t really use it for file sharing, a few images notwithstanding, or the same thing would happen.
and due to the nature of the protocol, companies hosting Usenet services didn’t want to have to store all of that shit.
You can opt not to carry certain newsgroups, eg skipping alt.binaries.* would reduce your storage requirements drastically.
The fact of the matter is that people wanted something more “instant and accessible” than newsgroups that were synced overnight, and modern social media sprang from that desire.
It should be emphasized, the above list is accurate for Social Interaction as the discussions and text have indeed waned. It does mention that at the end, but still.
For media sharing specifically, many of those above items are either trivial OR are actually what helps it thrive. Somehow, 30 years later, we’re still under the radar and maxing out connection speeds without having to VPN, seed, share or dodge ISP rules and DMCA requests.
I don’t think irc and usenet is dead. It’s still used a lot for piracy.
I think it comes to down to the definition of “dead”. Both are certainly dead for the reasons they were created.
I still use irc every day for legitimate work/technical support purposes.
what kinda product do you work on?
Historically I’ve been a Unix/Linux/VMware sysadmin, though I’ve moved into a professional services role doing automation/orchestration/config-management.
There’s a lot of good IT/Development technical channels on IRC, especially on libera.chat and oftc.net, since freenode went down the drain.
Historically I’ve been a Unix/Linux/VMware sysadmin, though I’ve moved into a professional services role doing automation/orchestration/config-management.
Are you me?
Honestly, your nick is familiar, so I’d only rejoice to hear you were in the 07974 for Unix during such exciting times (Random love, shadow legal, blue November etc).
Go learn mgmtConfig!
Either you die a hero…
They’re dead as social media; all anyone uses them for is piracy these days and not to, you know… Talk to people.
I think IRC could be made more appealing pretty easily though. Just make a client for it with a slick UI and features like Discord has (like voice and video chat, not simply text), and then allow any Nitro-like shit for free.
I’m old, but does anyone remember alt.pave.the.earth? And the spinoff alt.chrome.the.moon?
I found my first girlfriend over Usenet. de.rec.sf.starwars. You can probably still find my messages in archives.
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