Emigration from Usenet [was: Re: PTD was the most-respected of the AUE regulars ...]

[Anton Shepelev]

[Followup-To: comp.misc]

Athel Cornish-Bowden to Steve Hayes:

> > Katy Jennison is another RR who doesn't seem to be here
> > any more. I still see her sometimes on Facebook.
>
> Yes, but she specifically announced that she was leaving.

There is an epidemic abroad of people leaving clean, stable,
accessible, and independent venues such as Usenet, Fidonet,
Mailing lists, and IRC, for centralised capitalist
corporate-owned cenusured commercial "products" that are
huge, bloated, tasteless, and require up-to-date hardware,
OS, and software. To me, this is a reiteration of the story
of the red pottage[1]: selling one's freedom and cleanliness
for immediate comfort.
____________________
1. Genesis 25, 25-34.

--
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments

[D]

On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:

> [Followup-To: comp.misc]
>
> Athel Cornish-Bowden to Steve Hayes:
>
>>> Katy Jennison is another RR who doesn't seem to be here
>>> any more. I still see her sometimes on Facebook.
>>
>> Yes, but she specifically announced that she was leaving.
>
> There is an epidemic abroad of people leaving clean, stable,
> accessible, and independent venues such as Usenet, Fidonet,
> Mailing lists, and IRC, for centralised capitalist
> corporate-owned cenusured commercial "products" that are
> huge, bloated, tasteless, and require up-to-date hardware,
> OS, and software. To me, this is a reiteration of the story
> of the red pottage[1]: selling one's freedom and cleanliness
> for immediate comfort.
> ____________________
> 1. Genesis 25, 25-34.
>
>

It is a shame, but when I walk the city streets and see the young with
their faces in their smart phones, I am not surprised. You get all the
evils as preinstalled little icons, and the good stuff requires a few
hoops to jump through.

But I do wonder if there will be a movement away from the corporate
islands eventually?

[Johanne Fairchild]

D <***@example.net> writes:

> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>
>> [Followup-To: comp.misc]
>>
>> Athel Cornish-Bowden to Steve Hayes:
>>
>>>> Katy Jennison is another RR who doesn't seem to be here
>>>> any more. I still see her sometimes on Facebook.
>>>
>>> Yes, but she specifically announced that she was leaving.
>>
>> There is an epidemic abroad of people leaving clean, stable,
>> accessible, and independent venues such as Usenet, Fidonet,
>> Mailing lists, and IRC, for centralised capitalist
>> corporate-owned cenusured commercial "products" that are
>> huge, bloated, tasteless, and require up-to-date hardware,
>> OS, and software. To me, this is a reiteration of the story
>> of the red pottage[1]: selling one's freedom and cleanliness
>> for immediate comfort.
>> ____________________
>> 1. Genesis 25, 25-34.

Cool. The phenomenon is pretty old.

> It is a shame, but when I walk the city streets and see the young with
> their faces in their smart phones, I am not surprised. You get all the
> evils as preinstalled little icons, and the good stuff requires a few
> hoops to jump through.

I'm from a time that taking the hard paths was more exciting than the
easy ones. But, yeah, things change.

> But I do wonder if there will be a movement away from the corporate
> islands eventually?

There's always a movement and their period of stability has been
decreasing. When a movement is not a healthy one, its period is surely
short. But we have no guarantee that the next one will be brighter.

[The Real Bev]

On 7/24/24 2:08 AM, D wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>
>> [Followup-To: comp.misc]
>>
>> Athel Cornish-Bowden to Steve Hayes:
>>
>>>> Katy Jennison is another RR who doesn't seem to be here
>>>> any more. I still see her sometimes on Facebook.
>>>
>>> Yes, but she specifically announced that she was leaving.
>>
>> There is an epidemic abroad of people leaving clean, stable,
>> accessible, and independent venues such as Usenet, Fidonet,
>> Mailing lists, and IRC, for centralised capitalist
>> corporate-owned cenusured commercial "products" that are
>> huge, bloated, tasteless, and require up-to-date hardware,
>> OS, and software. To me, this is a reiteration of the story
>> of the red pottage[1]: selling one's freedom and cleanliness
>> for immediate comfort.
>
> It is a shame, but when I walk the city streets and see the young with
> their faces in their smart phones, I am not surprised. You get all the
> evils as preinstalled little icons, and the good stuff requires a few
> hoops to jump through.
>
> But I do wonder if there will be a movement away from the corporate
> islands eventually?

How would that work? The aforementioned young are too stupid to realize
how trapped they are and/or too ignorant to do anything about it if they
DO figure it out. The rest of us are just too damn tired :-(

--
Cheers, Bev (Registered Linux User 85683)
Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really
embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen
an angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a
lot more careful about what they say if they had. -- Linus Torvalds

[D]

On Thu, 25 Jul 2024, Rich wrote:

> D <***@example.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, The Real Bev wrote:
>>
>>> On 7/24/24 2:08 AM, D wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> [Followup-To: comp.misc]
>>>>>
>>>>> Athel Cornish-Bowden to Steve Hayes:
>>>>>
>>>>>>> Katy Jennison is another RR who doesn't seem to be here
>>>>>>> any more. I still see her sometimes on Facebook.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes, but she specifically announced that she was leaving.
>>>>>
>>>>> There is an epidemic abroad of people leaving clean, stable,
>>>>> accessible, and independent venues such as Usenet, Fidonet,
>>>>> Mailing lists, and IRC, for centralised capitalist
>>>>> corporate-owned cenusured commercial "products" that are
>>>>> huge, bloated, tasteless, and require up-to-date hardware,
>>>>> OS, and software. To me, this is a reiteration of the story
>>>>> of the red pottage[1]: selling one's freedom and cleanliness
>>>>> for immediate comfort.
>>>>
>>>> It is a shame, but when I walk the city streets and see the young with
>>>> their faces in their smart phones, I am not surprised. You get all the
>>>> evils as preinstalled little icons, and the good stuff requires a few
>>>> hoops to jump through.
>>>>
>>>> But I do wonder if there will be a movement away from the corporate
>>>> islands eventually?
>>>
>>> How would that work? The aforementioned young are too stupid to realize how
>>> trapped they are and/or too ignorant to do anything about it if they DO
>>> figure it out. The rest of us are just too damn tired :-(
>>>
>>
>> A slow building up over time? Even if the majority is too stupid, perhaps
>> there are a few who do see the light?
>
> This is how it almost always happens (i.e., anyone remember 'myspace'
> from years ago)? And I've seen news articles that imply the shift is
> already well underway for facebook. Apparently the "young crowd" (as
> in the 20somethings and below) are all on Instagram because "facebook
> is for old people" (i.e., their parents, aunts, uncles, etc. are on
> facebook).
>
> Sadly, the young crowd is just trading one corporate devil for another
> equally bad corporate devil.
>

Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads of women by
telling them I'm a regular usenet user!

[Anton Shepelev]

D to Rich:

> > Sadly, the young crowd is just trading one corporate
> > devil for another equally bad corporate devil.
>
> Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads
> of women by telling them I'm a regular usenet user!

It's not what you say, it's the way you say it.

--
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments

[D]

On Fri, 26 Jul 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:

> D to Rich:
>
>>> Sadly, the young crowd is just trading one corporate
>>> devil for another equally bad corporate devil.
>>
>> Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads
>> of women by telling them I'm a regular usenet user!
>
> It's not what you say, it's the way you say it.
>

;)

[The Real Bev]

On 7/25/24 8:38 AM, D wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, 25 Jul 2024, Rich wrote:
>
>> D <***@example.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, The Real Bev wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 7/24/24 2:08 AM, D wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> [Followup-To: comp.misc]
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Athel Cornish-Bowden to Steve Hayes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Katy Jennison is another RR who doesn't seem to be here
>>>>>>>> any more. I still see her sometimes on Facebook.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Yes, but she specifically announced that she was leaving.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> There is an epidemic abroad of people leaving clean, stable,
>>>>>> accessible, and independent venues such as Usenet, Fidonet,
>>>>>> Mailing lists, and IRC, for centralised capitalist
>>>>>> corporate-owned cenusured commercial "products" that are
>>>>>> huge, bloated, tasteless, and require up-to-date hardware,
>>>>>> OS, and software. To me, this is a reiteration of the story
>>>>>> of the red pottage[1]: selling one's freedom and cleanliness
>>>>>> for immediate comfort.
>>>>>
>>>>> It is a shame, but when I walk the city streets and see the young with
>>>>> their faces in their smart phones, I am not surprised. You get all the
>>>>> evils as preinstalled little icons, and the good stuff requires a few
>>>>> hoops to jump through.
>>>>>
>>>>> But I do wonder if there will be a movement away from the corporate
>>>>> islands eventually?
>>>>
>>>> How would that work? The aforementioned young are too stupid to realize how
>>>> trapped they are and/or too ignorant to do anything about it if they DO
>>>> figure it out. The rest of us are just too damn tired :-(
>>>>
>>>
>>> A slow building up over time? Even if the majority is too stupid, perhaps
>>> there are a few who do see the light?
>>
>> This is how it almost always happens (i.e., anyone remember 'myspace'
>> from years ago)? And I've seen news articles that imply the shift is
>> already well underway for facebook. Apparently the "young crowd" (as
>> in the 20somethings and below) are all on Instagram because "facebook
>> is for old people" (i.e., their parents, aunts, uncles, etc. are on
>> facebook).
>>
>> Sadly, the young crowd is just trading one corporate devil for another
>> equally bad corporate devil.
>
> Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads of women by
> telling them I'm a regular usenet user!

Way to go, guy! I assume you also flash a wad.

Maybe 20 years ago I would chat with the people I rode up with on the
ski-lift. 6 minutes. I asked them if they were involved with usenet
and the skiing newsgroups. Not a single one for several years, maybe
120 rides per year. And this is before the ascendancy of facebook.

Most of the usenet people I've "known" since 1995 have switched to
facebook, and a significant percentage of those have just disappeared.
Some of us are still hanging in, though. Those are my facebook
'friends' along with RL friends and friends of friends. Mostly we all
know who we are and some of us have even met each other IRL.

And if we really want to talk about stupid, there's always Nextdoor...

--
Cheers,Bev
"It is a matter of regret that many low, mean suspicions
turn out to be well-founded." -- Edgar Watson Howe

[D]

On Thu, 25 Jul 2024, The Real Bev wrote:

> On 7/25/24 8:38 AM, D wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 25 Jul 2024, Rich wrote:
>>
>>> D <***@example.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, The Real Bev wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 7/24/24 2:08 AM, D wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> [Followup-To: comp.misc]
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Athel Cornish-Bowden to Steve Hayes:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Katy Jennison is another RR who doesn't seem to be here
>>>>>>>>> any more. I still see her sometimes on Facebook.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Yes, but she specifically announced that she was leaving.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> There is an epidemic abroad of people leaving clean, stable,
>>>>>>> accessible, and independent venues such as Usenet, Fidonet,
>>>>>>> Mailing lists, and IRC, for centralised capitalist
>>>>>>> corporate-owned cenusured commercial "products" that are
>>>>>>> huge, bloated, tasteless, and require up-to-date hardware,
>>>>>>> OS, and software. To me, this is a reiteration of the story
>>>>>>> of the red pottage[1]: selling one's freedom and cleanliness
>>>>>>> for immediate comfort.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It is a shame, but when I walk the city streets and see the young with
>>>>>> their faces in their smart phones, I am not surprised. You get all the
>>>>>> evils as preinstalled little icons, and the good stuff requires a few
>>>>>> hoops to jump through.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But I do wonder if there will be a movement away from the corporate
>>>>>> islands eventually?
>>>>>
>>>>> How would that work? The aforementioned young are too stupid to realize
>>>>> how
>>>>> trapped they are and/or too ignorant to do anything about it if they DO
>>>>> figure it out. The rest of us are just too damn tired :-(
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> A slow building up over time? Even if the majority is too stupid, perhaps
>>>> there are a few who do see the light?
>>>
>>> This is how it almost always happens (i.e., anyone remember 'myspace'
>>> from years ago)? And I've seen news articles that imply the shift is
>>> already well underway for facebook. Apparently the "young crowd" (as
>>> in the 20somethings and below) are all on Instagram because "facebook
>>> is for old people" (i.e., their parents, aunts, uncles, etc. are on
>>> facebook).
>>>
>>> Sadly, the young crowd is just trading one corporate devil for another
>>> equally bad corporate devil.
>>
>> Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads of women by
>> telling them I'm a regular usenet user!
>
> Way to go, guy! I assume you also flash a wad.
>
> Maybe 20 years ago I would chat with the people I rode up with on the
> ski-lift. 6 minutes. I asked them if they were involved with usenet and the
> skiing newsgroups. Not a single one for several years, maybe 120 rides per
> year. And this is before the ascendancy of facebook.
>
> Most of the usenet people I've "known" since 1995 have switched to facebook,
> and a significant percentage of those have just disappeared. Some of us are
> still hanging in, though. Those are my facebook 'friends' along with RL
> friends and friends of friends. Mostly we all know who we are and some of us
> have even met each other IRL.
>
> And if we really want to talk about stupid, there's always Nextdoor...

I never had a facebook account, so my evolution went from brief usenet in
the late 90s, to BBS:s, to web forums for many years, and lately a come
back for usenet.

I think there is a small trickle of new people from the digital minimalism
movement.

[Johanne Fairchild]

D <***@example.net> writes:

[...]

> I never had a facebook account, so my evolution went from brief usenet
> in the late 90s, to BBS:s, to web forums for many years, and lately a
> come back for usenet.
>
> I think there is a small trickle of new people from the digital
> minimalism movement.

Some people think of Stack Overflow as a certain replacement or
competitor for the USENET. But have you considered that perhaps they
could be getting near their end? With Google Groups leaving the USENET,
I wonder if the USENET will house the experts once again. Experts are
people who study. People who study do need to exchange ideas. These
trendy tools out there are obviously inadequate for experts. So there
must be the need for experts to communicate. And when we look at the
USENET today, it's doing great.

And if you're someone who has come back to the USENET, we can ask---why?
What happpened that brought you back? If you're not an outlier, then
perhaps you're an illustration of a relevant phenomenon.

[D]

On Fri, 26 Jul 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:

> D <***@example.net> writes:
>
> [...]
>
>> I never had a facebook account, so my evolution went from brief usenet
>> in the late 90s, to BBS:s, to web forums for many years, and lately a
>> come back for usenet.
>>
>> I think there is a small trickle of new people from the digital
>> minimalism movement.
>
> Some people think of Stack Overflow as a certain replacement or
> competitor for the USENET. But have you considered that perhaps they
> could be getting near their end? With Google Groups leaving the USENET,
> I wonder if the USENET will house the experts once again. Experts are
> people who study. People who study do need to exchange ideas. These
> trendy tools out there are obviously inadequate for experts. So there
> must be the need for experts to communicate. And when we look at the
> USENET today, it's doing great.
>
> And if you're someone who has come back to the USENET, we can ask---why?
> What happpened that brought you back? If you're not an outlier, then
> perhaps you're an illustration of a relevant phenomenon.
>

Well, in my case, it was a combination of several factors. First of all, I
don't like to update my web browser every day, so more and more websites
are no longer working for me, including forums. Second, more discussions
moved to discord, chat rooms, facebook etc. I tried mastodon, but find it
awful for long form discussions. So one day I remembered mailinglists and
usenet from my youth and thought that perhaps the quality and signal to
noise have become better on those platforms since the world has moved on,
and since the common man no longer knows how to access them... and lo and
behold... I was right! ;)

So web sites no longer working, discussions moving into proprietary
platforms, discussions moving to platforms I do not like (discord,
mastodon etc.) are probably some of the factors I hopped onto usenet and
mailinglists again.

[Retrograde]

> On 7/25/24 8:38 AM, D wrote:
>> Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads of women by
>> telling them I'm a regular usenet user!
>
> Way to go, guy! I assume you also flash a wad.

For bonus points, tell them you enjoy a good campaign of Dungeons and
Dragons. Girls go nuts for guys that like D&D and Usenet too.

[D]

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024, Retrograde wrote:

>> On 7/25/24 8:38 AM, D wrote:
>>> Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads of women by
>>> telling them I'm a regular usenet user!
>>
>> Way to go, guy! I assume you also flash a wad.
>
> For bonus points, tell them you enjoy a good campaign of Dungeons and
> Dragons. Girls go nuts for guys that like D&D and Usenet too.
>

This is the truth! I hear you know your way around the world of the fairer
sex!

[Scott Dorsey]

On Fri, 26 Jul 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> D to Rich:
>
>>> Sadly, the young crowd is just trading one corporate
>>> devil for another equally bad corporate devil.
>>
>> Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads
>> of women by telling them I'm a regular usenet user!
>
> It's not what you say, it's the way you say it.

Please take this to alt.sex.wizards where it belongs.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

In article <66a4642e$2$1439830$***@reader.netnews.com>,
Retrograde <***@amongus.com.invalid> wrote:
>> On 7/25/24 8:38 AM, D wrote:
>>> Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads of women by
>>> telling them I'm a regular usenet user!
>>
>> Way to go, guy! I assume you also flash a wad.
>
>For bonus points, tell them you enjoy a good campaign of Dungeons and
>Dragons. Girls go nuts for guys that like D&D and Usenet too.

Please move this thread to alt.drugs.i.am.totaly.wasted and rec.ponds
where it belongs.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[D]

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> In article <66a4642e$2$1439830$***@reader.netnews.com>,
> Retrograde <***@amongus.com.invalid> wrote:
>>> On 7/25/24 8:38 AM, D wrote:
>>>> Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads of women by
>>>> telling them I'm a regular usenet user!
>>>
>>> Way to go, guy! I assume you also flash a wad.
>>
>> For bonus points, tell them you enjoy a good campaign of Dungeons and
>> Dragons. Girls go nuts for guys that like D&D and Usenet too.
>
> Please move this thread to alt.drugs.i.am.totaly.wasted and rec.ponds
> where it belongs.
> --scott
>

It is too late... the virus has already escaped! ;)

[The Real Bev]

On 7/25/24 5:03 AM, Rich wrote:
> D <***@example.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, The Real Bev wrote:
>>
>>> On 7/24/24 2:08 AM, D wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> [Followup-To: comp.misc]
>>>>>
>>>>> Athel Cornish-Bowden to Steve Hayes:
>>>>>
>>>>>>> Katy Jennison is another RR who doesn't seem to be here
>>>>>>> any more. I still see her sometimes on Facebook.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes, but she specifically announced that she was leaving.
>>>>>
>>>>> There is an epidemic abroad of people leaving clean, stable,
>>>>> accessible, and independent venues such as Usenet, Fidonet,
>>>>> Mailing lists, and IRC, for centralised capitalist
>>>>> corporate-owned cenusured commercial "products" that are
>>>>> huge, bloated, tasteless, and require up-to-date hardware,
>>>>> OS, and software. To me, this is a reiteration of the story
>>>>> of the red pottage[1]: selling one's freedom and cleanliness
>>>>> for immediate comfort.
>>>>
>>>> It is a shame, but when I walk the city streets and see the young with
>>>> their faces in their smart phones, I am not surprised. You get all the
>>>> evils as preinstalled little icons, and the good stuff requires a few
>>>> hoops to jump through.
>>>>
>>>> But I do wonder if there will be a movement away from the corporate
>>>> islands eventually?
>>>
>>> How would that work? The aforementioned young are too stupid to realize how
>>> trapped they are and/or too ignorant to do anything about it if they DO
>>> figure it out. The rest of us are just too damn tired :-(
>>>
>>
>> A slow building up over time? Even if the majority is too stupid, perhaps
>> there are a few who do see the light?
>
> This is how it almost always happens (i.e., anyone remember 'myspace'
> from years ago)? And I've seen news articles that imply the shift is
> already well underway for facebook. Apparently the "young crowd" (as
> in the 20somethings and below) are all on Instagram because "facebook
> is for old people" (i.e., their parents, aunts, uncles, etc. are on
> facebook).
>
> Sadly, the young crowd is just trading one corporate devil for another
> equally bad corporate devil.

Worse, I think. The level of thought required has gone steadily
downhills. Usenet people still pay attention to writing clearly and
ENOUGH to get their point across. One-liners, unless funny, just don't
cut it. OTOH, I've noticed that we rarely intersperse comments any
more. In our favor, we rarely top-post.

Facebook discourages complex discussion. For one thing, it's sometimes
really hard to get back to the post that you spent some time thinking
about before you were ready to reply, and then that post is gone.
Probably still there, but not easy to find. So most comments are just
off-the-cuff reactions, which is OK, but it would be nice if there were
more.

Can't speak to twitter or the other things because I don't use them, but
I suspect that there is even less complexity involved.

So what the kids have now is a series of post-it notes.

--
Cheers, Bev
"In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has
had to worry about where the next meal would come from."
-- Peter S. Drucker, who invented management

[Rich]

D <***@example.net> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, The Real Bev wrote:
>
>> On 7/24/24 2:08 AM, D wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>>
>>>> [Followup-To: comp.misc]
>>>>
>>>> Athel Cornish-Bowden to Steve Hayes:
>>>>
>>>>>> Katy Jennison is another RR who doesn't seem to be here
>>>>>> any more. I still see her sometimes on Facebook.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, but she specifically announced that she was leaving.
>>>>
>>>> There is an epidemic abroad of people leaving clean, stable,
>>>> accessible, and independent venues such as Usenet, Fidonet,
>>>> Mailing lists, and IRC, for centralised capitalist
>>>> corporate-owned cenusured commercial "products" that are
>>>> huge, bloated, tasteless, and require up-to-date hardware,
>>>> OS, and software. To me, this is a reiteration of the story
>>>> of the red pottage[1]: selling one's freedom and cleanliness
>>>> for immediate comfort.
>>>
>>> It is a shame, but when I walk the city streets and see the young with
>>> their faces in their smart phones, I am not surprised. You get all the
>>> evils as preinstalled little icons, and the good stuff requires a few
>>> hoops to jump through.
>>>
>>> But I do wonder if there will be a movement away from the corporate
>>> islands eventually?
>>
>> How would that work? The aforementioned young are too stupid to realize how
>> trapped they are and/or too ignorant to do anything about it if they DO
>> figure it out. The rest of us are just too damn tired :-(
>>
>
> A slow building up over time? Even if the majority is too stupid, perhaps
> there are a few who do see the light?

This is how it almost always happens (i.e., anyone remember 'myspace'
from years ago)? And I've seen news articles that imply the shift is
already well underway for facebook. Apparently the "young crowd" (as
in the 20somethings and below) are all on Instagram because "facebook
is for old people" (i.e., their parents, aunts, uncles, etc. are on
facebook).

Sadly, the young crowd is just trading one corporate devil for another
equally bad corporate devil.

[D]

On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, The Real Bev wrote:

> On 7/24/24 2:08 AM, D wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>
>>> [Followup-To: comp.misc]
>>>
>>> Athel Cornish-Bowden to Steve Hayes:
>>>
>>>>> Katy Jennison is another RR who doesn't seem to be here
>>>>> any more. I still see her sometimes on Facebook.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, but she specifically announced that she was leaving.
>>>
>>> There is an epidemic abroad of people leaving clean, stable,
>>> accessible, and independent venues such as Usenet, Fidonet,
>>> Mailing lists, and IRC, for centralised capitalist
>>> corporate-owned cenusured commercial "products" that are
>>> huge, bloated, tasteless, and require up-to-date hardware,
>>> OS, and software. To me, this is a reiteration of the story
>>> of the red pottage[1]: selling one's freedom and cleanliness
>>> for immediate comfort.
>>
>> It is a shame, but when I walk the city streets and see the young with
>> their faces in their smart phones, I am not surprised. You get all the
>> evils as preinstalled little icons, and the good stuff requires a few
>> hoops to jump through.
>>
>> But I do wonder if there will be a movement away from the corporate
>> islands eventually?
>
> How would that work? The aforementioned young are too stupid to realize how
> trapped they are and/or too ignorant to do anything about it if they DO
> figure it out. The rest of us are just too damn tired :-(
>

A slow building up over time? Even if the majority is too stupid, perhaps
there are a few who do see the light?

Another way might be some big event or disaster, but given the reaction to
cambridge analytic, and countless other privacy leaks and manipulation
attemps, I do doubt it.

When it comes to being tired, there comes a time in everyones lives when
it is time to hand over to the next generation. You did your part, and
that is fine, so you can rest content with that fact.

[The Real Bev]

On 7/25/24 2:24 AM, D wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, The Real Bev wrote:
>> On 7/24/24 2:08 AM, D wrote:

>>> It is a shame, but when I walk the city streets and see the young with
>>> their faces in their smart phones, I am not surprised. You get all the
>>> evils as preinstalled little icons, and the good stuff requires a few
>>> hoops to jump through.
>>>
>>> But I do wonder if there will be a movement away from the corporate
>>> islands eventually?
>>
>> How would that work? The aforementioned young are too stupid to realize how
>> trapped they are and/or too ignorant to do anything about it if they DO
>> figure it out. The rest of us are just too damn tired :-(
>>
>
> A slow building up over time? Even if the majority is too stupid, perhaps
> there are a few who do see the light?
>
> Another way might be some big event or disaster, but given the reaction to
> cambridge analytic, and countless other privacy leaks and manipulation
> attemps, I do doubt it.
>
> When it comes to being tired, there comes a time in everyones lives when
> it is time to hand over to the next generation. You did your part, and
> that is fine, so you can rest content with that fact.

Rest, maybe, but not content. It's become way too easy to just say
"fuck it".

I've come to use Gemini rather than a real search -- SOOO much easier,
although you do have to subject the answers to a sanity check. But I
CAN search and read stuff. What about the kids who never learn to do
that because asking AI is so easy? Every once in a while I read where
some idiot says that people don't have to actually learn programming any
more because there are TOOLS...

What happens when there are no more toolmakers?


--
Cheers, Bev
======================================================================
Eat this, NSA: bomb assassinate Washington North Korea Iraq spy poison
ISIS AlQaeda Bush Clinton Pelosi Reid Obama Muslim Crusader explosion
Anthrax plutonium das bi Dania JD Salinger genius obama shithead akbar
72 revolution antifa Dave Foreman a god meet me in Berlin binary Iran
shoe underwear breakfast bitcoin dirty underground launch NSA soft kitty

[Stefan Ram]

The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:
>What happens when there are no more toolmakers?

Well, if by "toolmakers" you mean those devs cranking out text
editors, search engines, or AI chatbots: We're swimming in them these
days, more than ever before in human history! So I'd say: I'll cross
that bridge when I come to it, if we ever actually run low on those
folks. (Sure, some tech fields are hurting for talent, but that's
probably not because of the new AI chatbots hitting the scene.)

[The Real Bev]

On 8/6/24 6:55 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
> The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:
>>What happens when there are no more toolmakers?
>
> Well, if by "toolmakers" you mean those devs cranking out text
> editors, search engines, or AI chatbots: We're swimming in them these
> days, more than ever before in human history! So I'd say: I'll cross
> that bridge when I come to it, if we ever actually run low on those
> folks. (Sure, some tech fields are hurting for talent, but that's
> probably not because of the new AI chatbots hitting the scene.)

I mean people who have serious work to do and know how to make a
computer do it for them. REAL experts. If there are only people who
know how to use the tools already provided for them, who will make NEW
tools?

--
Cheers, Bev
"Don't you wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the
intelligence? There's one marked "brightness", but it
doesn't work." -- Gallagher

[Richard Kettlewell]

The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> writes:
> On 8/6/24 6:55 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
>> The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:
>>>What happens when there are no more toolmakers?
>> Well, if by "toolmakers" you mean those devs cranking out text
>> editors, search engines, or AI chatbots: We're swimming in them these
>> days, more than ever before in human history! So I'd say: I'll cross
>> that bridge when I come to it, if we ever actually run low on those
>> folks. (Sure, some tech fields are hurting for talent, but that's
>> probably not because of the new AI chatbots hitting the scene.)
>
> I mean people who have serious work to do and know how to make a
> computer do it for them. REAL experts. If there are only people who
> know how to use the tools already provided for them, who will make NEW
> tools?

Obviously nobody. But it’s a hypothetical situation which isn’t about to
happen.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

[Aharon Robbins]

In article <***@LkoBDZeT.terraraq.uk>,
Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> writes:
>> On 8/6/24 6:55 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
>>> The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:
>>>>What happens when there are no more toolmakers?
>>> Well, if by "toolmakers" you mean those devs cranking out text
>>> editors, search engines, or AI chatbots: We're swimming in them these
>>> days, more than ever before in human history! So I'd say: I'll cross
>>> that bridge when I come to it, if we ever actually run low on those
>>> folks. (Sure, some tech fields are hurting for talent, but that's
>>> probably not because of the new AI chatbots hitting the scene.)
>>
>> I mean people who have serious work to do and know how to make a
>> computer do it for them. REAL experts. If there are only people who
>> know how to use the tools already provided for them, who will make NEW
>> tools?
>
>Obviously nobody. But it’s a hypothetical situation which isn’t about to
>happen.

Don't be sure. A CS professor I know told me this last week:

I'm one of the very few that teach Systems. It amazes me that
our PhD students almost all in AI have never heard of a program
counter.

Scary times. I'm glad I retire from software development in a few years.
--
Aharon (Arnold) Robbins arnold AT skeeve DOT com

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On 07 Aug 2024 15:04:21 GMT, Aharon Robbins wrote:

> A CS professor I know told me this last week:
>
> I'm one of the very few that teach Systems. It amazes me that our
> PhD students almost all in AI have never heard of a program
> counter.

“Program counter” ... is that a von Neumann thing?

[Scott Dorsey]

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <***@nz.invalid> wrote:
>On 07 Aug 2024 15:04:21 GMT, Aharon Robbins wrote:
>
>> A CS professor I know told me this last week:
>>
>> I'm one of the very few that teach Systems. It amazes me that our
>> PhD students almost all in AI have never heard of a program
>> counter.
>
>“Program counter” ... is that a von Neumann thing?

Turing.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On 8 Aug 2024 09:21:29 -0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <***@nz.invalid> wrote:
>
>>On 07 Aug 2024 15:04:21 GMT, Aharon Robbins wrote:
>>
>>> A CS professor I know told me this last week:
>>>
>>> I'm one of the very few that teach Systems. It amazes me that
>>> our PhD students almost all in AI have never heard of a program
>>> counter.
>>
>>“Program counter” ... is that a von Neumann thing?
>
> Turing.

The Turing Machine never had a “program counter”.

[Scott Dorsey]

In article <v93ln7$b31t$***@dont-email.me>,
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <***@nz.invalid> wrote:
>On 8 Aug 2024 09:21:29 -0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <***@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>>On 07 Aug 2024 15:04:21 GMT, Aharon Robbins wrote:
>>>
>>>> A CS professor I know told me this last week:
>>>>
>>>> I'm one of the very few that teach Systems. It amazes me that
>>>> our PhD students almost all in AI have never heard of a program
>>>> counter.
>>>
>>>“Program counter” ... is that a von Neumann thing?
>>
>> Turing.
>
>The Turing Machine never had a “program counter”.

It's the tape position.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On 9 Aug 2024 20:54:17 -0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> In article <v93ln7$b31t$***@dont-email.me>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro
> <***@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>On 8 Aug 2024 09:21:29 -0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>
>>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <***@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>>On 07 Aug 2024 15:04:21 GMT, Aharon Robbins wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> A CS professor I know told me this last week:
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm one of the very few that teach Systems. It amazes me that
>>>>> our PhD students almost all in AI have never heard of a
>>>>> program counter.
>>>>
>>>>“Program counter” ... is that a von Neumann thing?
>>>
>>> Turing.
>>
>>The Turing Machine never had a “program counter”.
>
> It's the tape position.

It doesn’t “count” anything. That’s a von Neumann thing.

[Dan Purgert]

On 2024-08-07, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On 07 Aug 2024 15:04:21 GMT, Aharon Robbins wrote:
>
>> A CS professor I know told me this last week:
>>
>> I'm one of the very few that teach Systems. It amazes me that our
>> PhD students almost all in AI have never heard of a program
>> counter.
>
> “Program counter” ... is that a von Neumann thing?

It's the thing that holds the address of the current instruction being
executed.

Effectively, CPU's operate like this loop here

int pc=0;
while (1) {
execute_instruction (pc);
pc++;
}

After that, 'execute_instruction' can be thought of as a big conditional
statement that actually performs the task -- moving data between CPU
registers, reading from RAM, whatever.

--
|_|O|_|
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: DDAB 23FB 19FA 7D85 1CC1 E067 6D65 70E5 4CE7 2860

[D]

On Thu, 8 Aug 2024, Dan Purgert wrote:

> On 2024-08-07, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> On 07 Aug 2024 15:04:21 GMT, Aharon Robbins wrote:
>>
>>> A CS professor I know told me this last week:
>>>
>>> I'm one of the very few that teach Systems. It amazes me that our
>>> PhD students almost all in AI have never heard of a program
>>> counter.
>>
>> “Program counter” ... is that a von Neumann thing?
>
> It's the thing that holds the address of the current instruction being
> executed.
>
> Effectively, CPU's operate like this loop here
>
> int pc=0;
> while (1) {
> execute_instruction (pc);
> pc++;
> }
>
> After that, 'execute_instruction' can be thought of as a big conditional
> statement that actually performs the task -- moving data between CPU
> registers, reading from RAM, whatever.
>
>

Could it have been called instruction counter on some platforms? My memory
is very hazy but I vaguely remember a register you could manipulate
directly from my assembler labs and the long gone days when I thought
computer viruses were interesting.

[Rich]

D <***@example.net> wrote:
> [-- text/plain, encoding 8bit, charset: UTF-8, 36 lines --]
>
>
>
> On Thu, 8 Aug 2024, Dan Purgert wrote:
>
>> On 2024-08-07, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>> On 07 Aug 2024 15:04:21 GMT, Aharon Robbins wrote:
>>>
>>>> A CS professor I know told me this last week:
>>>>
>>>> I'm one of the very few that teach Systems. It amazes me
>>>> that our PhD students almost all in AI have never heard of a
>>>> program counter.
>>>
>>> “Program counter” ... is that a von Neumann thing?
>>
>> It's the thing that holds the address of the current instruction
>> being executed.
>>
>> Effectively, CPU's operate like this loop here
>>
>> int pc=0;
>> while (1) {
>> execute_instruction (pc);
>> pc++;
>> }
>>
>> After that, 'execute_instruction' can be thought of as a big
>> conditional statement that actually performs the task -- moving data
>> between CPU registers, reading from RAM, whatever.
>
> Could it have been called instruction counter on some platforms? My
> memory is very hazy but I vaguely remember a register you could
> manipulate directly from my assembler labs and the long gone days
> when I thought computer viruses were interesting.

Some architectures named it "program counter", others used the name
"instruction pointer", still others likely used "instruction counter".
If one searched through much of computer architecture history I'd say
one could find a least a half dozen names for it (used by different
architectures) if not more.

[D]

On Thu, 8 Aug 2024, Rich wrote:

> D <***@example.net> wrote:
>> [-- text/plain, encoding 8bit, charset: UTF-8, 36 lines --]
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 8 Aug 2024, Dan Purgert wrote:
>>
>>> On 2024-08-07, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>> On 07 Aug 2024 15:04:21 GMT, Aharon Robbins wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> A CS professor I know told me this last week:
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm one of the very few that teach Systems. It amazes me
>>>>> that our PhD students almost all in AI have never heard of a
>>>>> program counter.
>>>>
>>>> “Program counter” ... is that a von Neumann thing?
>>>
>>> It's the thing that holds the address of the current instruction
>>> being executed.
>>>
>>> Effectively, CPU's operate like this loop here
>>>
>>> int pc=0;
>>> while (1) {
>>> execute_instruction (pc);
>>> pc++;
>>> }
>>>
>>> After that, 'execute_instruction' can be thought of as a big
>>> conditional statement that actually performs the task -- moving data
>>> between CPU registers, reading from RAM, whatever.
>>
>> Could it have been called instruction counter on some platforms? My
>> memory is very hazy but I vaguely remember a register you could
>> manipulate directly from my assembler labs and the long gone days
>> when I thought computer viruses were interesting.
>
> Some architectures named it "program counter", others used the name
> "instruction pointer", still others likely used "instruction counter".
> If one searched through much of computer architecture history I'd say
> one could find a least a half dozen names for it (used by different
> architectures) if not more.
>

Ahh.. so maybe my memory did come up with something then! =) Thank you for
the clarification.

[Bob Eager]

On Thu, 08 Aug 2024 22:24:30 +0200, D wrote:

>> It's the thing that holds the address of the current instruction being
>> executed.
>>
>> Effectively, CPU's operate like this loop here
>>
>> int pc=0; while (1) {
>> execute_instruction (pc);
>> pc++;
>> }
>>
>> After that, 'execute_instruction' can be thought of as a big
>> conditional statement that actually performs the task -- moving data
>> between CPU registers, reading from RAM, whatever.
>>
>>
>>
> Could it have been called instruction counter on some platforms? My
> memory is very hazy but I vaguely remember a register you could
> manipulate directly from my assembler labs and the long gone days when I
> thought computer viruses were interesting.

Instruction counter, to me, is something different. On the ICL 2900, it
literally counts the number of instructions executed. It can be used
instead of (or as well as) an interval timer, for scheduling.

The NCR/Elliott 4100 machines called the PC the S register (for Sequence
register).




--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Thu, 8 Aug 2024 09:33:10 -0000 (UTC), Dan Purgert wrote:

> On 2024-08-07, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On 07 Aug 2024 15:04:21 GMT, Aharon Robbins wrote:
>>
>>> A CS professor I know told me this last week:
>>>
>>> I'm one of the very few that teach Systems. It amazes me that
>>> our PhD students almost all in AI have never heard of a program
>>> counter.
>>
>> “Program counter” ... is that a von Neumann thing?
>
> It's the thing that holds the address of the current instruction being
> executed.

Like I said, it’s a von Neumann thing.

[Dan Purgert]

On 2024-08-08, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Aug 2024 09:33:10 -0000 (UTC), Dan Purgert wrote:
>
>> On 2024-08-07, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> On 07 Aug 2024 15:04:21 GMT, Aharon Robbins wrote:
>>>
>>>> A CS professor I know told me this last week:
>>>>
>>>> I'm one of the very few that teach Systems. It amazes me that
>>>> our PhD students almost all in AI have never heard of a program
>>>> counter.
>>>
>>> “Program counter” ... is that a von Neumann thing?
>>
>> It's the thing that holds the address of the current instruction being
>> executed.
>
> Like I said, it’s a von Neumann thing.

Pretty sure my AVR Microcontrollers are Harvard Architecture, and they
certainly use a program counter...

--
|_|O|_|
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: DDAB 23FB 19FA 7D85 1CC1 E067 6D65 70E5 4CE7 2860

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Fri, 9 Aug 2024 01:14:18 -0000 (UTC), Dan Purgert wrote:

> Pretty sure my AVR Microcontrollers are Harvard Architecture ...

Come back to us when you have something from Yale.

[Scott Dorsey]

Aharon Robbins <***@skeeve.com> wrote:
>Don't be sure. A CS professor I know told me this last week:
>
> I'm one of the very few that teach Systems. It amazes me that
> our PhD students almost all in AI have never heard of a program
> counter.
>
>Scary times. I'm glad I retire from software development in a few years.

Isn't this in the "301" class in the ACM standard curriculum?
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[The Real Bev]

On 8/7/24 12:57 AM, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
> The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> writes:
>> On 8/6/24 6:55 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
>>> The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:
>>>>What happens when there are no more toolmakers?
>>> Well, if by "toolmakers" you mean those devs cranking out text
>>> editors, search engines, or AI chatbots: We're swimming in them these
>>> days, more than ever before in human history! So I'd say: I'll cross
>>> that bridge when I come to it, if we ever actually run low on those
>>> folks. (Sure, some tech fields are hurting for talent, but that's
>>> probably not because of the new AI chatbots hitting the scene.)
>>
>> I mean people who have serious work to do and know how to make a
>> computer do it for them. REAL experts. If there are only people who
>> know how to use the tools already provided for them, who will make NEW
>> tools?
>
> Obviously nobody. But it’s a hypothetical situation which isn’t about to
> happen.

I'm not so sure. I look at the general dumbing down of our (and
apparently non-USA) population and wonder if there are enough
intelligent people left to make a difference. Look at the schools. Loot
at the governments. Look at the media. Is there any reason to be
optimistic?

--
Cheers, Bev
"We've got some stupid people out there. This morning, I woke
up in a bathtub filled with ice and I had an extra kidney."

[D]

On Fri, 9 Aug 2024, The Real Bev wrote:

> On 8/7/24 12:57 AM, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>> The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> writes:
>>> On 8/6/24 6:55 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
>>>> The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:
>>>>> What happens when there are no more toolmakers?
>>>> Well, if by "toolmakers" you mean those devs cranking out text
>>>> editors, search engines, or AI chatbots: We're swimming in them these
>>>> days, more than ever before in human history! So I'd say: I'll cross
>>>> that bridge when I come to it, if we ever actually run low on those
>>>> folks. (Sure, some tech fields are hurting for talent, but that's
>>>> probably not because of the new AI chatbots hitting the scene.)
>>>
>>> I mean people who have serious work to do and know how to make a
>>> computer do it for them. REAL experts. If there are only people who
>>> know how to use the tools already provided for them, who will make NEW
>>> tools?
>>
>> Obviously nobody. But it’s a hypothetical situation which isn’t about to
>> happen.
>
> I'm not so sure. I look at the general dumbing down of our (and apparently
> non-USA) population and wonder if there are enough intelligent people left to
> make a difference. Look at the schools. Loot at the governments. Look at the
> media. Is there any reason to be optimistic?
>

In my case... short term no, long term, yes. We've survived, as a species,
world wars, famines, pestilence. Anything we're seeing today is nothing in
comparison.

Yes, we're perhaps at a local minimum, but give it a decade or two, and
we'll again sprint for a local maximum. =)

[The Real Bev]

On 8/9/24 1:28 PM, D wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, 9 Aug 2024, The Real Bev wrote:
>
>> On 8/7/24 12:57 AM, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>>> The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> On 8/6/24 6:55 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
>>>>> The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:
>>>>>> What happens when there are no more toolmakers?
>>>>> Well, if by "toolmakers" you mean those devs cranking out text
>>>>> editors, search engines, or AI chatbots: We're swimming in them these
>>>>> days, more than ever before in human history! So I'd say: I'll cross
>>>>> that bridge when I come to it, if we ever actually run low on those
>>>>> folks. (Sure, some tech fields are hurting for talent, but that's
>>>>> probably not because of the new AI chatbots hitting the scene.)
>>>>
>>>> I mean people who have serious work to do and know how to make a
>>>> computer do it for them. REAL experts. If there are only people who
>>>> know how to use the tools already provided for them, who will make NEW
>>>> tools?
>>>
>>> Obviously nobody. But it’s a hypothetical situation which isn’t about to
>>> happen.
>>
>> I'm not so sure. I look at the general dumbing down of our (and apparently
>> non-USA) population and wonder if there are enough intelligent people left to
>> make a difference. Look at the schools. Loot at the governments. Look at the
>> media. Is there any reason to be optimistic?
>>
>
> In my case... short term no, long term, yes. We've survived, as a species,
> world wars, famines, pestilence. Anything we're seeing today is nothing in
> comparison.

We've never had as many people on earth as we have today, and there will
be more. At least in cities the big problem is just too many people,
most of them pretty stupid.

Still, I have to believe that smarter/cooler heads will prevail. Knock
wood...

> Yes, we're perhaps at a local minimum, but give it a decade or two, and
> we'll again sprint for a local maximum. =)

I don't see a mechanism...

--
Cheers, Bev
"Tell someone you love them today, because life is short.
But scream it at them in Klingon, because life is also
terrifying and confusing." -- D. Moore

[Scott Dorsey]

The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> wrote:
> "Don't you wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the
> intelligence? There's one marked "brightness", but it
> doesn't work." -- Gallagher
>

Uncle Miltie used this joke years before Gallagher was even born.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[David LaRue]

D <***@example.net> wrote in news:fdc6b7b9-b22a-0fa3-83c7-1710be288c51
@example.net:

>
>
> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>
>> [Followup-To: comp.misc]
>>
>> Athel Cornish-Bowden to Steve Hayes:
>>
>>>> Katy Jennison is another RR who doesn't seem to be here
>>>> any more. I still see her sometimes on Facebook.
>>>
>>> Yes, but she specifically announced that she was leaving.
>>
>> There is an epidemic abroad of people leaving clean, stable,
>> accessible, and independent venues such as Usenet, Fidonet,
>> Mailing lists, and IRC, for centralised capitalist
>> corporate-owned cenusured commercial "products" that are
>> huge, bloated, tasteless, and require up-to-date hardware,
>> OS, and software. To me, this is a reiteration of the story
>> of the red pottage[1]: selling one's freedom and cleanliness
>> for immediate comfort.
>> ____________________
>> 1. Genesis 25, 25-34.
>>
>>
>
> It is a shame, but when I walk the city streets and see the young with
> their faces in their smart phones, I am not surprised. You get all the
> evils as preinstalled little icons, and the good stuff requires a few
> hoops to jump through.
>
> But I do wonder if there will be a movement away from the corporate
> islands eventually?
>

I use USENET and foreign web sites to keep abreast of many things.

My wife uses her iPhone and Facebook for what she considers news.

Last week I pointed out to her the stories and opinions she thought were
hours old were actually weeks old, older, or just plein inaccurate. I had
to go over several news stories and alleged governement feedback responses
with her and verify the dates and untruths from other more reliable
resourses.

That got her looking at a few new web sites, but she still relies on her
biased FB feed to tell her what is going on.

Her initial inquiry to me was asking why Google had suddenly started giving
her very biased political reporting and not mentioning her hobby news. It
was a Google reset. She had to retrain her account to give her what she
wanted.

I'm happy reading all sides of stories and deciding for myself what is true
and what needs to be verified elsewhere before repeating it.

[D]

On Mon, 5 Aug 2024, David LaRue wrote:

> D <***@example.net> wrote in news:fdc6b7b9-b22a-0fa3-83c7-1710be288c51
> @example.net:
>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>
>>> [Followup-To: comp.misc]
>>>
>>> Athel Cornish-Bowden to Steve Hayes:
>>>
>>>>> Katy Jennison is another RR who doesn't seem to be here
>>>>> any more. I still see her sometimes on Facebook.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, but she specifically announced that she was leaving.
>>>
>>> There is an epidemic abroad of people leaving clean, stable,
>>> accessible, and independent venues such as Usenet, Fidonet,
>>> Mailing lists, and IRC, for centralised capitalist
>>> corporate-owned cenusured commercial "products" that are
>>> huge, bloated, tasteless, and require up-to-date hardware,
>>> OS, and software. To me, this is a reiteration of the story
>>> of the red pottage[1]: selling one's freedom and cleanliness
>>> for immediate comfort.
>>> ____________________
>>> 1. Genesis 25, 25-34.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> It is a shame, but when I walk the city streets and see the young with
>> their faces in their smart phones, I am not surprised. You get all the
>> evils as preinstalled little icons, and the good stuff requires a few
>> hoops to jump through.
>>
>> But I do wonder if there will be a movement away from the corporate
>> islands eventually?
>>
>
> I use USENET and foreign web sites to keep abreast of many things.
>
> My wife uses her iPhone and Facebook for what she considers news.
>
> Last week I pointed out to her the stories and opinions she thought were
> hours old were actually weeks old, older, or just plein inaccurate. I had
> to go over several news stories and alleged governement feedback responses
> with her and verify the dates and untruths from other more reliable
> resourses.
>
> That got her looking at a few new web sites, but she still relies on her
> biased FB feed to tell her what is going on.
>
> Her initial inquiry to me was asking why Google had suddenly started giving
> her very biased political reporting and not mentioning her hobby news. It
> was a Google reset. She had to retrain her account to give her what she
> wanted.
>
> I'm happy reading all sides of stories and deciding for myself what is true
> and what needs to be verified elsewhere before repeating it.
>

One site I enjoy is https://www.improvethenews.org/ . If you enjoy
multiple sides of a story, you might enjoy the site too! =)

[Marco Moock]

On 25.07.2024 um 11:49 Uhr George Musk wrote:

> You may try to make them use more modern open solutions like Mastodon,

I've tried out mastodon and I don't like it. Only usable for chit-chat,
you can't open a "thread" in a new tab by middle click, so rather
uncomfortable to use.
The content is also mostly non-interesting, like Twitter. Some people
who hate Elon Musk now moved to mastodon and post their bullshit there.

--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to ***@cartoonies.org

[yeti]

Marco Moock <mm+usenet-***@dorfdsl.de> writes:

> I've tried out mastodon and I don't like it. Only usable for chit-chat,
> you can't open a "thread" in a new tab by middle click, so rather
> uncomfortable to use.
> The content is also mostly non-interesting, like Twitter. Some people
> who hate Elon Musk now moved to mastodon and post their bullshit there.

I only can halfway bear Mastodon by ignoring the global timelines and
only focus on the local one of my preferred instance (emacs.ch), but
despite that I still need a break sometimes ('m in one right now).

A federation of nodes of not identical feature-sets has to fail. Not
all of them support multiple markup variants, the diversity of the
maximum message length of the nodes is very diverse (IIRC from 500 chars
to some huge value) and not all nodes can use hashtags and the lack of
properly isolated groups increases that mess exponentially.

New Fedistan is just a federated mess.

Lets be happy about this: I already saw some New Fedistan inhabitants
join the Original Fediverse. Not only for Usenet, but for Feedbase,
Gmane, Gwene too.

--
1. Hitchhiker 5: (101) "You just come along with me and have a good
time. The Galaxy's a fun place. You'll need to have this fish in your
ear."

[D]

On Thu, 25 Jul 2024, yeti wrote:

> Marco Moock <mm+usenet-***@dorfdsl.de> writes:
>
>> I've tried out mastodon and I don't like it. Only usable for chit-chat,
>> you can't open a "thread" in a new tab by middle click, so rather
>> uncomfortable to use.
>> The content is also mostly non-interesting, like Twitter. Some people
>> who hate Elon Musk now moved to mastodon and post their bullshit there.
>
> I only can halfway bear Mastodon by ignoring the global timelines and
> only focus on the local one of my preferred instance (emacs.ch), but
> despite that I still need a break sometimes ('m in one right now).

I do the same thing. Mastodon, only useful for trivial things and lighter
memes, but definitely not for long form or deep discussions. For those, I
turn to email, mailinglists or usenet depending on the person and topic.

[Johanne Fairchild]

Marco Moock <mm+usenet-***@dorfdsl.de> writes:

> On 25.07.2024 um 11:49 Uhr George Musk wrote:
>
>> You may try to make them use more modern open solutions like Mastodon,
>
> I've tried out mastodon and I don't like it. Only usable for chit-chat,
> you can't open a "thread" in a new tab by middle click, so rather
> uncomfortable to use.
> The content is also mostly non-interesting, like Twitter. Some people
> who hate Elon Musk now moved to mastodon and post their bullshit there.

That's what most people don't realize: most of these chat systems are no
good for conversation. People don't realize this because they also
can't really tell a good conversation from chit-chat. That's because a
good conversation requires thinking, but most people can't tell thinking
from brain activity. In other words, the underlying phenomenon is more
worrying. We've reduced thinking quality in the large.

USENET is antiquated in some sense, but it's still the system where
people can write calmly with no distractions. Therefore USENET is still
the most adequate because there is no other system with these most
important features. As I'm writing this paragraph, there is nothing
flashing on my screen and nobody is waiting for me, so I can take all
the time I want. And that increases the quality of the conversation.

Here's an example. Most USENET clients maximize your writing screen.
Compare that with Whatsapp or Discord. You write your message in a
small region of the program, clearly implying that your writing is not
important. What about all the flashing stuff? These programs all look
like a Christmas tree. If you read writers blogs, you will notice
sometimes they write about their tools and they talk about pens, paper,
computers and text editors. The same applies to programmers and other
technical people such as scientists. They all talk about not getting
distracted with nonsense.

Good conversation is sort of the same. If you start an oral
conversation with someone and, say, the person goes off on some tangent
all the time, that conversation doesn't get very deep. (For most
people, perhaps, that's no problem because they don't even know what
depth is.) Getting off on tangents is not so bad on USENET because we
can easily backtrack a thread, say. Conversation in writing is
different from oral conversation. But the point is that not getting
distracted is important in conversation or anything else that requires
thinking.

[D]

On Thu, 25 Jul 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:

> Marco Moock <mm+usenet-***@dorfdsl.de> writes:
>
>> On 25.07.2024 um 11:49 Uhr George Musk wrote:
>>
>>> You may try to make them use more modern open solutions like Mastodon,
>>
>> I've tried out mastodon and I don't like it. Only usable for chit-chat,
>> you can't open a "thread" in a new tab by middle click, so rather
>> uncomfortable to use.
>> The content is also mostly non-interesting, like Twitter. Some people
>> who hate Elon Musk now moved to mastodon and post their bullshit there.
>
> That's what most people don't realize: most of these chat systems are no
> good for conversation. People don't realize this because they also
> can't really tell a good conversation from chit-chat. That's because a
> good conversation requires thinking, but most people can't tell thinking
> from brain activity. In other words, the underlying phenomenon is more
> worrying. We've reduced thinking quality in the large.
>
> USENET is antiquated in some sense, but it's still the system where
> people can write calmly with no distractions. Therefore USENET is still
> the most adequate because there is no other system with these most
> important features. As I'm writing this paragraph, there is nothing
> flashing on my screen and nobody is waiting for me, so I can take all
> the time I want. And that increases the quality of the conversation.
>
> Here's an example. Most USENET clients maximize your writing screen.
> Compare that with Whatsapp or Discord. You write your message in a
> small region of the program, clearly implying that your writing is not
> important. What about all the flashing stuff? These programs all look
> like a Christmas tree. If you read writers blogs, you will notice
> sometimes they write about their tools and they talk about pens, paper,
> computers and text editors. The same applies to programmers and other
> technical people such as scientists. They all talk about not getting
> distracted with nonsense.
>
> Good conversation is sort of the same. If you start an oral
> conversation with someone and, say, the person goes off on some tangent
> all the time, that conversation doesn't get very deep. (For most
> people, perhaps, that's no problem because they don't even know what
> depth is.) Getting off on tangents is not so bad on USENET because we
> can easily backtrack a thread, say. Conversation in writing is
> different from oral conversation. But the point is that not getting
> distracted is important in conversation or anything else that requires
> thinking.
>

Makes a lot of sense to me. I fear for the day that Microsoft and Google
will try to take away my email from me, by no longer allowing third party
email operators, or making it very hard to be one.

[candycanearter07]

D <***@example.net> wrote at 21:40 this Thursday (GMT):
>
>
> On Thu, 25 Jul 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>
>> Marco Moock <mm+usenet-***@dorfdsl.de> writes:
>>
>>> On 25.07.2024 um 11:49 Uhr George Musk wrote:
>>>
>>>> You may try to make them use more modern open solutions like Mastodon,
>>>
>>> I've tried out mastodon and I don't like it. Only usable for chit-chat,
>>> you can't open a "thread" in a new tab by middle click, so rather
>>> uncomfortable to use.
>>> The content is also mostly non-interesting, like Twitter. Some people
>>> who hate Elon Musk now moved to mastodon and post their bullshit there.
>>
>> That's what most people don't realize: most of these chat systems are no
>> good for conversation. People don't realize this because they also
>> can't really tell a good conversation from chit-chat. That's because a
>> good conversation requires thinking, but most people can't tell thinking
>> from brain activity. In other words, the underlying phenomenon is more
>> worrying. We've reduced thinking quality in the large.
>>
>> USENET is antiquated in some sense, but it's still the system where
>> people can write calmly with no distractions. Therefore USENET is still
>> the most adequate because there is no other system with these most
>> important features. As I'm writing this paragraph, there is nothing
>> flashing on my screen and nobody is waiting for me, so I can take all
>> the time I want. And that increases the quality of the conversation.
>>
>> Here's an example. Most USENET clients maximize your writing screen.
>> Compare that with Whatsapp or Discord. You write your message in a
>> small region of the program, clearly implying that your writing is not
>> important. What about all the flashing stuff? These programs all look
>> like a Christmas tree. If you read writers blogs, you will notice
>> sometimes they write about their tools and they talk about pens, paper,
>> computers and text editors. The same applies to programmers and other
>> technical people such as scientists. They all talk about not getting
>> distracted with nonsense.
>>
>> Good conversation is sort of the same. If you start an oral
>> conversation with someone and, say, the person goes off on some tangent
>> all the time, that conversation doesn't get very deep. (For most
>> people, perhaps, that's no problem because they don't even know what
>> depth is.) Getting off on tangents is not so bad on USENET because we
>> can easily backtrack a thread, say. Conversation in writing is
>> different from oral conversation. But the point is that not getting
>> distracted is important in conversation or anything else that requires
>> thinking.
>>
>
> Makes a lot of sense to me. I fear for the day that Microsoft and Google
> will try to take away my email from me, by no longer allowing third party
> email operators, or making it very hard to be one.


At the very least, you could still maybe use third party apps with
imap3?
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

[D]

On Fri, 26 Jul 2024, candycanearter07 wrote:

> D <***@example.net> wrote at 21:40 this Thursday (GMT):
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 25 Jul 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>>
>>> Marco Moock <mm+usenet-***@dorfdsl.de> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 25.07.2024 um 11:49 Uhr George Musk wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> You may try to make them use more modern open solutions like Mastodon,
>>>>
>>>> I've tried out mastodon and I don't like it. Only usable for chit-chat,
>>>> you can't open a "thread" in a new tab by middle click, so rather
>>>> uncomfortable to use.
>>>> The content is also mostly non-interesting, like Twitter. Some people
>>>> who hate Elon Musk now moved to mastodon and post their bullshit there.
>>>
>>> That's what most people don't realize: most of these chat systems are no
>>> good for conversation. People don't realize this because they also
>>> can't really tell a good conversation from chit-chat. That's because a
>>> good conversation requires thinking, but most people can't tell thinking
>>> from brain activity. In other words, the underlying phenomenon is more
>>> worrying. We've reduced thinking quality in the large.
>>>
>>> USENET is antiquated in some sense, but it's still the system where
>>> people can write calmly with no distractions. Therefore USENET is still
>>> the most adequate because there is no other system with these most
>>> important features. As I'm writing this paragraph, there is nothing
>>> flashing on my screen and nobody is waiting for me, so I can take all
>>> the time I want. And that increases the quality of the conversation.
>>>
>>> Here's an example. Most USENET clients maximize your writing screen.
>>> Compare that with Whatsapp or Discord. You write your message in a
>>> small region of the program, clearly implying that your writing is not
>>> important. What about all the flashing stuff? These programs all look
>>> like a Christmas tree. If you read writers blogs, you will notice
>>> sometimes they write about their tools and they talk about pens, paper,
>>> computers and text editors. The same applies to programmers and other
>>> technical people such as scientists. They all talk about not getting
>>> distracted with nonsense.
>>>
>>> Good conversation is sort of the same. If you start an oral
>>> conversation with someone and, say, the person goes off on some tangent
>>> all the time, that conversation doesn't get very deep. (For most
>>> people, perhaps, that's no problem because they don't even know what
>>> depth is.) Getting off on tangents is not so bad on USENET because we
>>> can easily backtrack a thread, say. Conversation in writing is
>>> different from oral conversation. But the point is that not getting
>>> distracted is important in conversation or anything else that requires
>>> thinking.
>>>
>>
>> Makes a lot of sense to me. I fear for the day that Microsoft and Google
>> will try to take away my email from me, by no longer allowing third party
>> email operators, or making it very hard to be one.
>
>
> At the very least, you could still maybe use third party apps with
> imap3?
>

Let's hope so.

[Stefan Ram]

Johanne Fairchild <***@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
> As I'm writing this paragraph, there is nothing
>flashing on my screen and nobody is waiting for me, so I can take all
>the time I want.

I know a social networking site where you can join chats,
participate in forums, or publish articles.

I can spend hours writing a forum post or article in my text
editor without any distractions, then just open my browser and
paste the text into the site's input field when I'm done.

But I also don't recall anything flashing on this social networking
site, so I don't even need a text editor to avoid distractions.

>Compare that with Whatsapp or Discord.

Alright, those are off my radar. Maybe they're cooked up for
folks who get their kicks from watching flashing. And these
people roll up and go, "Holy guacamole! Flashing! I'm gonna
plant my flag right here." It's like they've found their
personal Disneyland or something.

> If you read writers blogs, you will notice
>sometimes they write about their tools and they talk about pens, paper,
>computers and text editors. The same applies to programmers and other
>technical people such as scientists. They all talk about not getting
>distracted with nonsense.

Is that why all these big-shot coders, wordsmiths, and scientists
are sticking around here in Usenet instead of using websites?

[Johanne Fairchild]

***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:

[...]

>> If you read writers blogs, you will notice
>>sometimes they write about their tools and they talk about pens, paper,
>>computers and text editors. The same applies to programmers and other
>>technical people such as scientists. They all talk about not getting
>>distracted with nonsense.
>
> Is that why all these big-shot coders, wordsmiths, and scientists
> are sticking around here in Usenet instead of using websites?

Let's translate that to ``the experts are not here''. The experts who
are in social networks seem to be a minority, so I conjecture that most
experts are off the radar, perhaps waiting for something better.

Changing subject, perhaps the USENET isn't good for the expert either.
Experts likely enjoy talking to other experts, so perhaps today they
need their own semi-closed conference system such as e-mail because the
USENET is far too open. (I, for example, use a semi-closed NNTP
system---for local conversation.)

I believe communities should effectively not be too large and that is
very likely true for technical subjects. So perhaps the USENET is no
good for the expert. I don't consider myself an expert and I think I'm
still here because the USENET is currently pretty small.

[Stefan Ram]

Johanne Fairchild <***@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>Let's translate that to ``the experts are not here''. The experts who
>are in social networks seem to be a minority, so I conjecture that most
>experts are off the radar, perhaps waiting for something better.

The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
Tim Berners Lee published a summary of the World Wide Web project to
the alt.hypertext newsgroup. Marc Andreessen announced Netscape in
comp.infosystems.www.users. The launch of AltaVista was announced in
biz.digital.announce. "Uncle Bob" wrote in comp.objects. Greg Egan
asked about the science for his SF novels in sci.physics.research.
Dennis Ritchie wrote in comp.lang.c. They just disappeared.

[Johanne Fairchild]

***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:

> Johanne Fairchild <***@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>>Let's translate that to ``the experts are not here''. The experts who
>>are in social networks seem to be a minority, so I conjecture that most
>>experts are off the radar, perhaps waiting for something better.
>
> The experts used to be here.

Just in case we're not on the same page, that's precisely what I was
saying too.

> Linux was announced in comp.os.minix. Tim Berners Lee published a
> summary of the World Wide Web project to the alt.hypertext
> newsgroup. Marc Andreessen announced Netscape in
> comp.infosystems.www.users. The launch of AltaVista was announced in
> biz.digital.announce. "Uncle Bob" wrote in comp.objects. Greg Egan
> asked about the science for his SF novels in sci.physics.research.
> Dennis Ritchie wrote in comp.lang.c. They just disappeared.

Thanks for the examples. Indeed, if there's something certain about
experts is that they like to exchange ideas. So, if they're not here
doing what they like do, they must be somewhere else doing it or waiting
for the weather to change and experts don't wait around much.

[Stefan Ram]

Johanne Fairchild <***@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>Johanne Fairchild <***@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>>>Let's translate that to ``the experts are not here''. The experts who
>>>are in social networks seem to be a minority, so I conjecture that most
>>>experts are off the radar, perhaps waiting for something better.
>>The experts used to be here.
>Just in case we're not on the same page, that's precisely what I was
>saying too.

I'm sorry! I probably rushed through your post without catching
everything.

[Richard Kettlewell]

***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
> Johanne Fairchild <***@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>> Let's translate that to ``the experts are not here''. The experts
>> who are in social networks seem to be a minority, so I conjecture
>> that most experts are off the radar, perhaps waiting for something
>> better.
>
> The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
> Tim Berners Lee published a summary of the World Wide Web project to
> the alt.hypertext newsgroup. Marc Andreessen announced Netscape in
> comp.infosystems.www.users. The launch of AltaVista was announced in
> biz.digital.announce. "Uncle Bob" wrote in comp.objects. Greg Egan
> asked about the science for his SF novels in sci.physics.research.
> Dennis Ritchie wrote in comp.lang.c. They just disappeared.

The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.

A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
contribution to a discussion is negative. If you have absolutist ideas
about free speech then, or are part of the problem, that may be what you
want. But if you actually want to get something useful done there are
better options available.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

[Stefan Ram]

Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
. . .
>The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
>can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.

BTW: I shouldn't be calling Linus Torvalds and the others
I mentioned “experts.” That would be a serious downgrade for
them! These folks are top-tier innovators. But yeah, there
were definitely experts back in the Usenet days, and some
of them are still around in certain Newsgroups.

>A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
>contribution to a discussion is negative.

Or maybe the real issue is the folks who think you can't just block
certain people out? Yeah, Usenet expects everyone to manage their
own filters. If someone’s bugging you, you can totally filter them
out of your feed. And if it drives you nuts to see how others respond
to them, just find a newsreader that lets you filter that too!
Heck, you can filter posts that have a specific word pattern in them!
But it’s not like there’s a central authority doing that for you.

[D]

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024, Stefan Ram wrote:

> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>> ***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>> The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
> . . .
>> The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
>> can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.
>
> BTW: I shouldn't be calling Linus Torvalds and the others
> I mentioned “experts.” That would be a serious downgrade for
> them! These folks are top-tier innovators. But yeah, there
> were definitely experts back in the Usenet days, and some
> of them are still around in certain Newsgroups.
>
>> A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
>> contribution to a discussion is negative.
>
> Or maybe the real issue is the folks who think you can't just block
> certain people out? Yeah, Usenet expects everyone to manage their
> own filters. If someone’s bugging you, you can totally filter them
> out of your feed. And if it drives you nuts to see how others respond
> to them, just find a newsreader that lets you filter that too!
> Heck, you can filter posts that have a specific word pattern in them!
> But it’s not like there’s a central authority doing that for you.
>

That's what I thought too, but perhaps he meant that even if you filter
out, the person can just register a new account, change their handle, and
continue? That does raise the bar though, since it is a bit of a hassle to
register a new account every single time you would like to harass someone.

As for blocking or killfiling, works great for me.

[Rich]

D <***@example.net> wrote:
> [-- text/plain, encoding 8bit, charset: UTF-8, 35 lines --]
>
>
>
> On Sat, 27 Jul 2024, Stefan Ram wrote:
>
>> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>> ***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>>> The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
>> . . .
>>> The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
>>> can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.
>>
>> BTW: I shouldn't be calling Linus Torvalds and the others
>> I mentioned “experts.” That would be a serious downgrade for
>> them! These folks are top-tier innovators. But yeah, there
>> were definitely experts back in the Usenet days, and some
>> of them are still around in certain Newsgroups.
>>
>>> A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
>>> contribution to a discussion is negative.
>>
>> Or maybe the real issue is the folks who think you can't just block
>> certain people out? Yeah, Usenet expects everyone to manage their
>> own filters. If someone’s bugging you, you can totally filter them
>> out of your feed. And if it drives you nuts to see how others respond
>> to them, just find a newsreader that lets you filter that too!
>> Heck, you can filter posts that have a specific word pattern in them!
>> But it’s not like there’s a central authority doing that for you.
>>
>
> That's what I thought too, but perhaps he meant that even if you filter
> out, the person can just register a new account, change their handle, and
> continue?

You don't need to register a new account to nymshift on USENET anymore.
When USENET accounts went commercial (or free for all) instead of being
tied to one's college/business account it became trivial to post as any
name you like, all from the same account.

But as most users are unaware of how to do so, most users don't
nymshift, and so killfiles do work.

The problem is that many people don't want to be bothered with managing
their own personal killfile and would rather that work be offloaded to
"the moderators" (which is mostly what they get on the centralized
forums) so they don't have to bother with it.

> That does raise the bar though, since it is a bit of a hassle to
> register a new account every single time you would like to harass someone.
>
> As for blocking or killfiling, works great for me.

Because most folks don't nym-shift on a regular basis.

[D]

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024, Rich wrote:

>> That's what I thought too, but perhaps he meant that even if you filter
>> out, the person can just register a new account, change their handle, and
>> continue?
>
> You don't need to register a new account to nymshift on USENET anymore.
> When USENET accounts went commercial (or free for all) instead of being
> tied to one's college/business account it became trivial to post as any
> name you like, all from the same account.
>
> But as most users are unaware of how to do so, most users don't
> nymshift, and so killfiles do work.
>
> The problem is that many people don't want to be bothered with managing
> their own personal killfile and would rather that work be offloaded to
> "the moderators" (which is mostly what they get on the centralized
> forums) so they don't have to bother with it.

Very interesting! I thougt the people/companies who provide usenet
access would have done something against that, so interesting to hear
that they have not.

>> That does raise the bar though, since it is a bit of a hassle to
>> register a new account every single time you would like to harass someone.
>>
>> As for blocking or killfiling, works great for me.
>
> Because most folks don't nym-shift on a regular basis.

This is the truth!

[Stefan Ram]

Rich <***@example.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>The problem is that many people don't want to be bothered with managing
>their own personal killfile and would rather that work be offloaded to
>"the moderators" (which is mostly what they get on the centralized
>forums) so they don't have to bother with it.

BTW: As early as 1994, there was a suggestion called "GROUPLENS":
"An Open Architecture for Collaborative Filtering of Netnews."

We also have some moderated newsgroups in the USENET.

[Richard Kettlewell]

***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>>The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
> . . .
>>The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
>>can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.
>
> BTW: I shouldn't be calling Linus Torvalds and the others
> I mentioned “experts.” That would be a serious downgrade for
> them! These folks are top-tier innovators. But yeah, there
> were definitely experts back in the Usenet days, and some
> of them are still around in certain Newsgroups.
>
>>A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
>>contribution to a discussion is negative.
>
> Or maybe the real issue is the folks who think you can't just block
> certain people out? Yeah, Usenet expects everyone to manage their own
> filters. If someone’s bugging you, you can totally filter them out of
> your feed. And if it drives you nuts to see how others respond to
> them, just find a newsreader that lets you filter that too! Heck, you
> can filter posts that have a specific word pattern in them!

My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good candidate
for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

[Stefan Ram]

Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good candidate
>for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.

That's a trip, 'cause I'm totally the "roll your own filters" kind of
guy. I even took the Usenet approach and ran with it for my news fix.
I whipped up this gnarly little Python script that scrapes headlines
from all these news sites and wire services, then it goes HAM
on filtering everything. You can bet your last avocado toast
if there's a peep about Kim K, that noise ain't making it to my
eyeballs! At the end of the day, my code spits out this sweet little
digest with all the stories that made the cut. If anything slips
through the cracks that I'm not vibing with, I just tighten up the
filter. It's like, how do people even function without this setup?
It's as essential as my morning cold brew from Blue Bottle, I swear.

[D]

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024, Stefan Ram wrote:

> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>> My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good candidate
>> for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.
>
> That's a trip, 'cause I'm totally the "roll your own filters" kind of
> guy. I even took the Usenet approach and ran with it for my news fix.
> I whipped up this gnarly little Python script that scrapes headlines
> from all these news sites and wire services, then it goes HAM
> on filtering everything. You can bet your last avocado toast
> if there's a peep about Kim K, that noise ain't making it to my
> eyeballs! At the end of the day, my code spits out this sweet little
> digest with all the stories that made the cut. If anything slips
> through the cracks that I'm not vibing with, I just tighten up the
> filter. It's like, how do people even function without this setup?
> It's as essential as my morning cold brew from Blue Bottle, I swear.
>

Interesting! Do you have that script available somewhere? Would be
interesting to have a look and see if there's something in there that I
can use myself.

[Richard Kettlewell]

***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>> My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good
>> candidate for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.
>
> That's a trip, 'cause I'm totally the "roll your own filters" kind of
> guy.

Do you get that for most people it looks like a waste of time?

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

[Stefan Ram]

Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>>My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good
>>>candidate for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.
>>That's a trip, 'cause I'm totally the "roll your own filters" kind of
>>guy.
>Do you get that for most people it looks like a waste of time?

But for me, the whole point is just to save time! I used to get
tangled up in reading news about vanity or trivial stuff that had
zero relevance to me. There was this one news source where I'd
skim through about 40 headlines with article descriptions daily,
and end up reading stories about some bartender's teenage years.
Now, my system only shows me about two or three headlines from the
same source. I only need a fraction of the time. Sure, I had to put
in some time upfront to write my Python script, but it was worth it.

[Stefan Ram]

***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote or quoted:
>Now, my system only shows me about two or three headlines from the

On the flip side, having too few news articles can be a time suck too!
I'm used to squeezing in a quick Usenet read and firing off a couple
replies between household chores. Back in the day, I'd mostly chime
in to help newbies in programming groups. These days, though, it's
like crickets in there. So I end up checking the newsgroups only to
come up empty-handed. And that also eats up time. There's just too
much nothing burger going on in those newsgroups now!

|Too much of nothing
|Can make a man feel ill at ease
|One man's temper might rise
|While another man's temper might freeze
|In the day of confession
|We cannot mock a soul
|Oh, when there's too much of nothing
|No one has control

[Rich]

Stefan Ram <***@zedat.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>>Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>>>My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good
>>>>candidate for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.
>>>That's a trip, 'cause I'm totally the "roll your own filters" kind of
>>>guy.
>>Do you get that for most people it looks like a waste of time?
>
> But for me, the whole point is just to save time! I used to get
> tangled up in reading news about vanity or trivial stuff that had
> zero relevance to me. There was this one news source where I'd
> skim through about 40 headlines with article descriptions daily,
> and end up reading stories about some bartender's teenage years.
> Now, my system only shows me about two or three headlines from the
> same source. I only need a fraction of the time. Sure, I had to put
> in some time upfront to write my Python script, but it was worth it.

Except... The typical computer user thinks Python is a particular kind
of snake with scales and fangs.

And the typical computer user also is quite incapable of recognizing
accumulated effort over time (i.e., the integral of "effort vs.
time"). In fact this is typical of most people in general, they are
incapabile of recognizing that "extra effort today, for 1h, will save
me effort for every tomorrow to come". They see only the instantaneous
effort right now, and if it looks too to be too much, right now, they
never bother making the effort.

[Richard Kettlewell]

Rich <***@example.invalid> writes:
> Stefan Ram <***@zedat.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
>> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>>***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>>>Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>>>>My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good
>>>>>candidate for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.
>>>>That's a trip, 'cause I'm totally the "roll your own filters" kind of
>>>>guy.
>>>Do you get that for most people it looks like a waste of time?
>>
>> But for me, the whole point is just to save time! I used to get
>> tangled up in reading news about vanity or trivial stuff that had
>> zero relevance to me. There was this one news source where I'd
>> skim through about 40 headlines with article descriptions daily,
>> and end up reading stories about some bartender's teenage years.
>> Now, my system only shows me about two or three headlines from the
>> same source. I only need a fraction of the time. Sure, I had to put
>> in some time upfront to write my Python script, but it was worth it.
>
> Except... The typical computer user thinks Python is a particular
> kind of snake with scales and fangs.

The original context was the contemporary absence of ‘experts’ from
Usenet; the examples cited are perfectly well able to distinguish
programming languages from reptiles.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

[Rich]

Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Rich <***@example.invalid> writes:
>> Stefan Ram <***@zedat.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
>>> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>>>***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>>>>Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>>>>>My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good
>>>>>>candidate for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.
>>>>>That's a trip, 'cause I'm totally the "roll your own filters" kind of
>>>>>guy.
>>>>Do you get that for most people it looks like a waste of time?
>>>
>>> But for me, the whole point is just to save time! I used to get
>>> tangled up in reading news about vanity or trivial stuff that had
>>> zero relevance to me. There was this one news source where I'd
>>> skim through about 40 headlines with article descriptions daily,
>>> and end up reading stories about some bartender's teenage years.
>>> Now, my system only shows me about two or three headlines from the
>>> same source. I only need a fraction of the time. Sure, I had to put
>>> in some time upfront to write my Python script, but it was worth it.
>>
>> Except... The typical computer user thinks Python is a particular
>> kind of snake with scales and fangs.
>
> The original context was the contemporary absence of ‘experts’ from
> Usenet; the examples cited are perfectly well able to distinguish
> programming languages from reptiles.

While true, at least you shifted the context to include non-experts
(note your own quote above):

>>>>>Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>>>>>My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good
>>>>>>candidate for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.

(expert or not) -- the 'not' shifting the context to include
non-experts.

And then your reply to ***@... shifted it some more to "most people":

>>> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>>>***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
...
>>>>>That's a trip, 'cause I'm totally the "roll your own filters" kind of
>>>>>guy.
>>>>Do you get that for most people it looks like a waste of time?

And in any group of "most people" there will be a few 'experts' and a
large majority of non-experts, and some, likely sizable, chunk of those
non-experts will not think "programming language" when they see the
word "Python".

[D]

On Sun, 28 Jul 2024, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

> ***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>> My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good
>>> candidate for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.
>>
>> That's a trip, 'cause I'm totally the "roll your own filters" kind of
>> guy.
>
> Do you get that for most people it looks like a waste of time?
>

I asked most people and they said it is not a waste of time.

[The Real Bev]

On 7/27/24 1:01 PM, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
> ***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>>***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>>>The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
>> . . .
>>>The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
>>>can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.
>>
>> BTW: I shouldn't be calling Linus Torvalds and the others
>> I mentioned “experts.” That would be a serious downgrade for
>> them! These folks are top-tier innovators. But yeah, there
>> were definitely experts back in the Usenet days, and some
>> of them are still around in certain Newsgroups.
>>
>>>A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
>>>contribution to a discussion is negative.
>>
>> Or maybe the real issue is the folks who think you can't just block
>> certain people out? Yeah, Usenet expects everyone to manage their own
>> filters. If someone’s bugging you, you can totally filter them out of
>> your feed. And if it drives you nuts to see how others respond to
>> them, just find a newsreader that lets you filter that too! Heck, you
>> can filter posts that have a specific word pattern in them!
>
> My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good candidate
> for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.

That's the GOOD part about usenet. You can look at the list of threads
and authors and easily decide what you want to read. When you're done,
mark the rest 'read'. Simple. After a few decades you actually know
how to do this stuff.

I've only killfiled two people, and I think one of them is actually dead
now.


--
Cheers, Bev
All bleeding eventually stops.

[Johanne Fairchild]

***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:

> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>>The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
> . . .
>>The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
>>can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.
>
> BTW: I shouldn't be calling Linus Torvalds and the others
> I mentioned “experts.” That would be a serious downgrade for
> them! These folks are top-tier innovators. But yeah, there
> were definitely experts back in the Usenet days, and some
> of them are still around in certain Newsgroups.

Yes. ``Expert'' has been redefined.

>>A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
>>contribution to a discussion is negative.
>
> Or maybe the real issue is the folks who think you can't just block
> certain people out? Yeah, Usenet expects everyone to manage their
> own filters. If someone’s bugging you, you can totally filter them
> out of your feed. And if it drives you nuts to see how others respond
> to them, just find a newsreader that lets you filter that too!
> Heck, you can filter posts that have a specific word pattern in them!
> But it’s not like there’s a central authority doing that for you.

It's true that NNTP is able to handle the job, but most people are not
willing to be experts at using NNTP clients.

[The Real Bev]

On 7/28/24 6:00 PM, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
> ***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>
>> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>>***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>>>The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
>> . . .
>>>The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
>>>can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.
>>
>> BTW: I shouldn't be calling Linus Torvalds and the others
>> I mentioned “experts.” That would be a serious downgrade for
>> them! These folks are top-tier innovators. But yeah, there
>> were definitely experts back in the Usenet days, and some
>> of them are still around in certain Newsgroups.
>
> Yes. ``Expert'' has been redefined.
>
>>>A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
>>>contribution to a discussion is negative.
>>
>> Or maybe the real issue is the folks who think you can't just block
>> certain people out? Yeah, Usenet expects everyone to manage their
>> own filters. If someone’s bugging you, you can totally filter them
>> out of your feed. And if it drives you nuts to see how others respond
>> to them, just find a newsreader that lets you filter that too!
>> Heck, you can filter posts that have a specific word pattern in them!
>> But it’s not like there’s a central authority doing that for you.
>
> It's true that NNTP is able to handle the job, but most people are not
> willing to be experts at using NNTP clients.

Most people are not able to be experts at anything.

--
Cheers, Bev
"I love to go down to the schoolyard and watch all the
little children jump up and down and run around yelling and
screaming...They don't know I'm only using blanks." --Emo

[Mike Spencer]

The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> writes:

> Most people are not able to be experts at anything.

I'm amazed at how many people seem to be experts at using a smart
phone. Might that be that the touchscreen GUI is like shopping?


The command line is like language but way more people are experts on
shopping than on language.

I can barely manage to use my cell phone for basic functions. There
are no manpages and no source code. There is a PDF "manual" which
appears to have been written by shopping consultants, not by wizard
hackers. Ho hum.


--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

[The Real Bev]

On 7/29/24 10:20 AM, Mike Spencer wrote:
> The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Most people are not able to be experts at anything.
>
> I'm amazed at how many people seem to be experts at using a smart
> phone. Might that be that the touchscreen GUI is like shopping?
>
> The command line is like language but way more people are experts on
> shopping than on language.
>
> I can barely manage to use my cell phone for basic functions. There
> are no manpages and no source code. There is a PDF "manual" which
> appears to have been written by shopping consultants, not by wizard
> hackers. Ho hum.

OTOH, the man pages written by wizards clearly are intended to make you
work for it just like the writers had to!

I'm ashamed to say that more and more I'm asking Gemini (and others)
how-to questions rather than doing an actual search, reading multiple
documents, etc. If something looks off I can look for the info myself,
but I wonder if the kids whose first experience with finding information
is an AI will be able to do that.

--
Cheers, Bev
I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand.

[Stefan Ram]

The Real Bev <***@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:
>I'm ashamed to say that more and more I'm asking Gemini (and others)
>how-to questions rather than doing an actual search

I'm totally on the same wavelength! These days, I don't even bother
coding those little Python scripts myself anymore - I just whip up
prompts to crank them out (for the beefier Python projects, I have
it spit out the chunks one by one). Heck, I even use such a system
to churn out most of my Usenet posts in laid-back Cali-English . . .

[D]

On Sun, 28 Jul 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:

> ***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>
>> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>> ***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>>> The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
>> . . .
>>> The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
>>> can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.
>>
>> BTW: I shouldn't be calling Linus Torvalds and the others
>> I mentioned “experts.” That would be a serious downgrade for
>> them! These folks are top-tier innovators. But yeah, there
>> were definitely experts back in the Usenet days, and some
>> of them are still around in certain Newsgroups.
>
> Yes. ``Expert'' has been redefined.
>
>>> A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
>>> contribution to a discussion is negative.
>>
>> Or maybe the real issue is the folks who think you can't just block
>> certain people out? Yeah, Usenet expects everyone to manage their
>> own filters. If someone’s bugging you, you can totally filter them
>> out of your feed. And if it drives you nuts to see how others respond
>> to them, just find a newsreader that lets you filter that too!
>> Heck, you can filter posts that have a specific word pattern in them!
>> But it’s not like there’s a central authority doing that for you.
>
> It's true that NNTP is able to handle the job, but most people are not
> willing to be experts at using NNTP clients.
>

People have no choice but to use a client regardless of what service or
system they are using to communicate with others. They don't need to be
experts. NNTP is simple, so if someone wants more users, they are always
free to write a web client or something, which seems to be what the masses
want these days.

[Andreas Eder]

On Sa 27 Jul 2024 at 17:24, Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> ***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>> Johanne Fairchild <***@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>>> Let's translate that to ``the experts are not here''. The experts
>>> who are in social networks seem to be a minority, so I conjecture
>>> that most experts are off the radar, perhaps waiting for something
>>> better.
>>
>> The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
>> Tim Berners Lee published a summary of the World Wide Web project to
>> the alt.hypertext newsgroup. Marc Andreessen announced Netscape in
>> comp.infosystems.www.users. The launch of AltaVista was announced in
>> biz.digital.announce. "Uncle Bob" wrote in comp.objects. Greg Egan
>> asked about the science for his SF novels in sci.physics.research.
>> Dennis Ritchie wrote in comp.lang.c. They just disappeared.
>
> The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
> can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.
>
> A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
> contribution to a discussion is negative.

Oh you can. That is what killfiles are for.
Or you can use scoring if you like.
That is, if you are using a good newsreader like gnus.

'Andreas

--
ceterum censeo redmondinem esse delendam

[Johanne Fairchild]

Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> writes:

> ***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>> Johanne Fairchild <***@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>>> Let's translate that to ``the experts are not here''. The experts
>>> who are in social networks seem to be a minority, so I conjecture
>>> that most experts are off the radar, perhaps waiting for something
>>> better.
>>
>> The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
>> Tim Berners Lee published a summary of the World Wide Web project to
>> the alt.hypertext newsgroup. Marc Andreessen announced Netscape in
>> comp.infosystems.www.users. The launch of AltaVista was announced in
>> biz.digital.announce. "Uncle Bob" wrote in comp.objects. Greg Egan
>> asked about the science for his SF novels in sci.physics.research.
>> Dennis Ritchie wrote in comp.lang.c. They just disappeared.
>
> The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
> can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.
>
> A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
> contribution to a discussion is negative. If you have absolutist ideas
> about free speech then, or are part of the problem, that may be what you
> want. But if you actually want to get something useful done there are
> better options available.

I agree. I came to the conclusion that technical communities should be
semi-closed. Like mailing lists, they can be open for reading, but
closed for writing. I like NNTP. I think that closing NNTP servers for
writing is a good thing. I like the idea of getting an account by
invitation (from any other member). Perhaps we could have good
communities this way again.

What about the USENET? The USENET seems small again, so it seems to
work again.

[Richard Kettlewell]

Johanne Fairchild <***@tudado.org> writes:
> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> writes:
>> A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
>> contribution to a discussion is negative. If you have absolutist
>> ideas about free speech then, or are part of the problem, that may be
>> what you want. But if you actually want to get something useful done
>> there are better options available.
>
> I agree. I came to the conclusion that technical communities should be
> semi-closed. Like mailing lists, they can be open for reading, but
> closed for writing. I like NNTP. I think that closing NNTP servers for
> writing is a good thing. I like the idea of getting an account by
> invitation (from any other member). Perhaps we could have good
> communities this way again.

They do exist, including closed NNTP networks, not just single servers.

I’m sentimental about NNTP too. But the decentralization (of clients as
well as servers) leads, at scale, to insoluble structural problems. The
impossibility of exclusion referred to above is one of the consequences.
Another is that’s very hard to upgrade: any innovation will only really
work properly either if it degrades gracefully on legacy servers and/or
clients, or if it’s so compelling that essentially everyone is motivated
to upgrade.

For example Unicode has existed for more than half of Usenet’s lifetime
and yet adoption in the client software remains partial.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

[Javier]

Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> They do exist, including closed NNTP networks, not just single servers.

closed NNTP *networks* in 2024? I cannot think of anything besides a
backup server of a private server. Let's say a backup of the main
GMANE server in case of an outage. The only people I can think
running those networks are SDF. And BTW their private sdf.* hierarchy
had very little activity (as I witnessed myself a few years ago).

[yeti]

Javier <***@invalid.invalid> writes:

> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> They do exist, including closed NNTP networks, not just single servers.
>
> closed NNTP *networks* in 2024?

The Tildeverse's NNTP network was public writable until abuse happened,
now it still remains public readable while being writable only from
known systems, which in most cases seems to mean Tildeverse nodes.

> The only people I can think running those networks are SDF. And BTW
> their private sdf.* hierarchy had very little activity (as I witnessed
> myself a few years ago).

It IMO isn't even worth losing a tear, they just should take it down.

A more P2Pish NNTP would be nice. Maybe combined with bringing the
pubnix idea to everyones' home as peernixes. That'd be my favourite
Fediverse.

--
MESH THE PLANET!

[Rich]

Javier <***@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> They do exist, including closed NNTP networks, not just single servers.
>
> closed NNTP *networks* in 2024? I cannot think of anything besides a
> backup server of a private server.

By virtue of being *closed* it is unlikely you'd know about them.

If someone wanted a "team/slack" like ability for remote indivduals to
communicate, they /could/ setup a close NNTP network for themselves.

Granted, the likelyhood is small and said team is more likely to setup
msteams or slack -- but the *closed* nature means none of the rest of
us would know it existed.

[Johanne Fairchild]

Rich <***@example.invalid> writes:

> Javier <***@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>> They do exist, including closed NNTP networks, not just single servers.
>>
>> closed NNTP *networks* in 2024? I cannot think of anything besides a
>> backup server of a private server.
>
> By virtue of being *closed* it is unlikely you'd know about them.
>
> If someone wanted a "team/slack" like ability for remote indivduals to
> communicate, they /could/ setup a close NNTP network for themselves.
>
> Granted, the likelyhood is small and said team is more likely to setup
> msteams or slack -- but the *closed* nature means none of the rest of
> us would know it existed.

Average people seem to want Slack or Discord a lot more than NNTP
servers. I think an explanation for this is in part psychological but
also a matter of training. NNTP is a lot more focused on writing than
Slack or Discord, say. People are not well-trained in writing, so
perhaps they can't quite distinguish good writing from bad writing.
It's also psychological. Posting a message and not knowing if the other
part has read it at all is too frightening for most people: it doesn't
alleviate their feeling of loneliness either. (And it's terrible for
the typical work, which is more involved with the notion that people are
doing something than actually getting it done.)

I think NNTP, however, is the better tool for people who do work with
writing such as thinkers of all sorts---programmers, writers,
scientists. These are people who prefer not to be distracted by
Christmas trees and know how to operate a computer.

[Stefan Ram]

Johanne Fairchild <***@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>Average people seem to want Slack or Discord a lot more than NNTP
>servers.

For comparison, a text from 2001:

|Since Usenet was created in 1979, it has seen an impressive
|growth from a small academic community to a network used by
|millions of people from a wide variety of backgrounds all
|over the world. The total size of the data flowing through
|Usenet has been more than tripling every year between 1993
|and 2001.
"Handling Information Overload on Usenet" (2001) - Jan Ingvoldstad.

[Johanne Fairchild]

***@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:

> Johanne Fairchild <***@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>>Average people seem to want Slack or Discord a lot more than NNTP
>>servers.
>
> For comparison, a text from 2001:
>
> |Since Usenet was created in 1979, it has seen an impressive
> |growth from a small academic community to a network used by
> |millions of people from a wide variety of backgrounds all
> |over the world. The total size of the data flowing through
> |Usenet has been more than tripling every year between 1993
> |and 2001.

This makes sense. I would not think these were really average people.
I think average people are more like someone in this thread put it:
shopping people. I would think that, for most of the world, the
Internet really took off around the year 2000, so up to this point it
makes sense that the USENET was still blossoming.

> "Handling Information Overload on Usenet" (2001) - Jan IngvoldstadF.

Thanks for the thesis reference.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On 30 Jul 2024 12:15:27 GMT, Stefan Ram wrote:

> For comparison, a text from 2001:
>
> |Since Usenet was created in 1979, it has seen an impressive |growth
> from a small academic community to a network used by |millions of people
> from a wide variety of backgrounds all |over the world. The total size
> of the data flowing through |Usenet has been more than tripling every
> year between 1993 |and 2001.
> "Handling Information Overload on Usenet" (2001) - Jan Ingvoldstad.

I for one welcome our new information overloads.

[Richard Kettlewell]

Javier <***@invalid.invalid> writes:
> Richard Kettlewell <***@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> They do exist, including closed NNTP networks, not just single servers.
>
> closed NNTP *networks* in 2024?

Yes.

> I cannot think of anything besides a backup server of a private
> server.

Why would you expect to know about a closed network that you weren’t
participating in?

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

[Rich]

Marco Moock <mm+usenet-***@dorfdsl.de> wrote:
> On 25.07.2024 um 11:49 Uhr George Musk wrote:
>
>> You may try to make them use more modern open solutions like
>> Mastodon,
>
> I've tried out mastodon and I don't like it. Only usable for
> chit-chat, you can't open a "thread" in a new tab by middle click,
> ...

Any web dev that breaks middle click to open a link in a new tab should
never be allowed to work on any web projects ever again.

[Computer Nerd Kev]

Rich <***@example.invalid> wrote:
> Marco Moock <mm+usenet-***@dorfdsl.de> wrote:
>> I've tried out mastodon and I don't like it. Only usable for
>> chit-chat, you can't open a "thread" in a new tab by middle click,
>
> Any web dev that breaks middle click to open a link in a new tab should
> never be allowed to work on any web projects ever again.

I've seen reference to it requiring Javascript, in which case that
might be deliberate to avoid people opening a big bunch of tabs at
once, therefore requesting the full bloated JS interface from the
server each time and causing extra server load.

Discourse annoyes me that way. It allows you to open threads in
new tabs, but then depending on my internet speed when I go to a
new tab I'm looking at a loading animation for 5 - 30s. There's
a JS-free version offered to "unsupported" browsers that I usually
use, but it doesn't have a way to go straight to the last page of
a long thread, and no search.

Facebook/Twitter people don't interest me much, it's clunky web
forums that actually annoy me more. I must get around to trying to
build a web forum to NNTP gateway one day, although It'll probably
send me crazy trying to keep up with scraping different forum
platform page layouts.

--
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#_ < |\| |< _#

[Anton Shepelev]

Computer Nerd Kev:

> I must get around to trying to build a web forum to NNTP
> gateway one day, although It'll probably send me crazy
> trying to keep up with scraping different forum platform
> page layouts.

In case you are building it for the heck of it, there is one
already:
<https://news.novabbs.org>

If, on the other hand, your ambition is a bridge between
real web forums and NNTP, there have been working
implementations in englishforums.com (many years ago) and
the Microsoft forums (via NNTPBridge, not so many years
ago). Both were abandoned, partly because forums do not
agree with NNTP either ideologically (centralisation)
physically (different message format). For the same reason
Discourse is not a replacement for mailing lists, just a
lousy surrogate for them. Somehow the majority of users
prefer wading the bloated and clumsy web interfaces of their
Chrome-based browsers...

--
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments

[Computer Nerd Kev]

Anton Shepelev <***@gmail.moc> wrote:
> Computer Nerd Kev:
>
>> I must get around to trying to build a web forum to NNTP
>> gateway one day, although It'll probably send me crazy
>> trying to keep up with scraping different forum platform
>> page layouts.
>
> In case you are building it for the heck of it, there is one
> already:
> <https://news.novabbs.org>
>
> If, on the other hand, your ambition is a bridge between
> real web forums and NNTP, there have been working
> implementations in englishforums.com (many years ago) and
> the Microsoft forums (via NNTPBridge, not so many years
> ago). Both were abandoned, partly because forums do not
> agree with NNTP either ideologically (centralisation)
> physically (different message format).

Perhaps I was too vague, I'm talking about something run
separately from the forum operators, like Gwene does with RSS.
I described my ambitions better last year in news.software.nntp
when I asked about any existing projects (without receiving any
relevent suggestions). See below.

Later I found this project that might help as a basis for the forum
scraping aspect:
https://github.com/mikwielgus/forum-dl

Though I don't think I could rely on that project to be maintained
and keep up with forum platform changes, since a recent comment
from the author is:
"Sadly, I haven't had much time to continue this project as I'm
currently very busy with another one."
So I'd probably have to maintain something like it myself, which
might not be worth the pain.

Message-ID: <***@news.ausics.net>
Subject: Client-Side Bridge to Web Forums?
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp

Web forums keep annoying me more and more with bloated interfaces,
so I'm using them less and less, yet there's less and less to read
on Usenet too. So lately I've been considering, not entirely
seriously, writing a program to scrape specific web forums and
generate a news spool with the content of the forum's latest posts
for me to read (either locally, or perhaps remotely via NNTP).

Has anyone done this before? I know there are various web forum
platforms that support NNTP server-side, but I'm talking about web
forums hosted by other people who I have no association or
influence with. Has anyone done something that's purely a
client-side implementation?

Simple Machines Forum and Discourse are prime targets for me, maybe
phpBB too. Most don't have RSS enabled, or the feed only shows the
start of new posts. The ideal would be a system supporting scrapers
for multiple forum platforms which can be easily extended.

Support for posting would be nice, but read-only access in a news
reader (Tin) would be better than nothing.

--
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#_ < |\| |< _#

[D]

On Fri, 26 Jul 2024, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

> Anton Shepelev <***@gmail.moc> wrote:
>> Computer Nerd Kev:
>>
>>> I must get around to trying to build a web forum to NNTP
>>> gateway one day, although It'll probably send me crazy
>>> trying to keep up with scraping different forum platform
>>> page layouts.
>>
>> In case you are building it for the heck of it, there is one
>> already:
>> <https://news.novabbs.org>
>>
>> If, on the other hand, your ambition is a bridge between
>> real web forums and NNTP, there have been working
>> implementations in englishforums.com (many years ago) and
>> the Microsoft forums (via NNTPBridge, not so many years
>> ago). Both were abandoned, partly because forums do not
>> agree with NNTP either ideologically (centralisation)
>> physically (different message format).
>
> Perhaps I was too vague, I'm talking about something run
> separately from the forum operators, like Gwene does with RSS.
> I described my ambitions better last year in news.software.nntp
> when I asked about any existing projects (without receiving any
> relevent suggestions). See below.
>
> Later I found this project that might help as a basis for the forum
> scraping aspect:
> https://github.com/mikwielgus/forum-dl
>
> Though I don't think I could rely on that project to be maintained
> and keep up with forum platform changes, since a recent comment
> from the author is:
> "Sadly, I haven't had much time to continue this project as I'm
> currently very busy with another one."
> So I'd probably have to maintain something like it myself, which
> might not be worth the pain.
>
> Message-ID: <***@news.ausics.net>
> Subject: Client-Side Bridge to Web Forums?
> Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
>
> Web forums keep annoying me more and more with bloated interfaces,
> so I'm using them less and less, yet there's less and less to read
> on Usenet too. So lately I've been considering, not entirely
> seriously, writing a program to scrape specific web forums and
> generate a news spool with the content of the forum's latest posts
> for me to read (either locally, or perhaps remotely via NNTP).
>
> Has anyone done this before? I know there are various web forum
> platforms that support NNTP server-side, but I'm talking about web
> forums hosted by other people who I have no association or
> influence with. Has anyone done something that's purely a
> client-side implementation?
>
> Simple Machines Forum and Discourse are prime targets for me, maybe
> phpBB too. Most don't have RSS enabled, or the feed only shows the
> start of new posts. The ideal would be a system supporting scrapers
> for multiple forum platforms which can be easily extended.
>
> Support for posting would be nice, but read-only access in a news
> reader (Tin) would be better than nothing.
>
>

Read only sounds very simple. I usually scrape in python with the requests
library and the beautiful soup library. A simple scraping loop could look
like this (modify per web board of course):

for page in range(100, 150):
html = requests.get("https://www.svt.se/text-tv/" + str(page))
soup = BeautifulSoup(html.text, 'html.parser')
div_bs4 = soup.find('div', {"class": "Content_screenreaderOnly__3Cnkp"})
try:
email_body += div_bs4.string + "\n"
except AttributeError:
None

So basically a range of pages, then loop over those pages, clean it up
with beautifulsoup, and then generate messages for nntp. In my case, the
code generates an email message, so I can read the content in my mail
client instead of online.

What you could do then, is to generate nntp format files and dump them
into leafnode, and then read locally with a nntp reader by connencting to
leafnode.

That would, very broadly and high level, be how I would do it.

https://www.leafnode.org/ .

[Computer Nerd Kev]

D <***@example.net> wrote:
>
> Read only sounds very simple. I usually scrape in python with the requests
> library and the beautiful soup library. A simple scraping loop could look
> like this (modify per web board of course):
>
> for page in range(100, 150):
> html = requests.get("https://www.svt.se/text-tv/" + str(page))
> soup = BeautifulSoup(html.text, 'html.parser')
> div_bs4 = soup.find('div', {"class": "Content_screenreaderOnly__3Cnkp"})
> try:
> email_body += div_bs4.string + "\n"
> except AttributeError:
> None
>
> So basically a range of pages, then loop over those pages,

You need to sync it to the messages in the forum index though,
otherwise when they get a spam flood of messages that the admin
deletes, or just jump the thread counter around for some other
reason, the scraper is stuck looking for the next 25 threads
after the last one it saw when it needs to jump forwards 150. I
guess you could interpret the deleted thread pages and crawl
through them, but then you need the crawler to remember the gap
that was left so it doesn't forget to check for new posts in the
threads before the spam flood.

So even if it's possible to iterate over threads that way on all
forum platforms (which I'm not sure about), I think it would be
more reliable in the long run to parse the index pages to determine
which threads to retrieve. Also less risk of getting blocked by web
servers for too many requests.

But thanks for the example. I'm not really sure whether a HTML
parser library would be helpful or just a pointless extra layer
of complexity. So far I've just used regular expressions for
scraping webpages. I was thinking along the lines of a template
system defining strings that indicate the start/end of fields (and
any key features in-between) ideally allowing new forum parsers to
be added without needing to touch the code. There must be things
like that around already...

Perhaps I'm determined to make it hard for myself, but if it broke
all the time and was complicated to fix, then that would be worse.

Anyhow now I've got onto thinking about that I've wasted all the
time I was actually going to spend finishing a PHP static site
generator to format data that I scraped off a website last week.
That seemed simple at first too...

--
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#_ < |\| |< _#

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On 26 Jul 2024 22:18:48 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

> I'm not really sure whether a HTML parser
> library would be helpful or just a pointless extra layer of complexity.
> So far I've just used regular expressions for scraping webpages.

I learned about BeautifulSoup early on, and never looked back. I use it
for all my web-scraping projects nowadays.

By the way, this is the kind of discussion you could not have on a
platform like Discord. The last time I was on there, the server Ts&Cs had
prohibitions against talking about web-scraping, since so many websites
didn’t like it.

[Theo]

Computer Nerd Kev <***@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
> Web forums keep annoying me more and more with bloated interfaces,
> so I'm using them less and less, yet there's less and less to read
> on Usenet too. So lately I've been considering, not entirely
> seriously, writing a program to scrape specific web forums and
> generate a news spool with the content of the forum's latest posts
> for me to read (either locally, or perhaps remotely via NNTP).
>
> Has anyone done this before? I know there are various web forum
> platforms that support NNTP server-side, but I'm talking about web
> forums hosted by other people who I have no association or
> influence with. Has anyone done something that's purely a
> client-side implementation?

There's a mobile app called Tapatalk, which hooks into a number of web
forums to make them mobile friendly, including posting. I think they have
plugins for various platforms like phpBB, which forum operators can install
to get access to their forum from mobiles. If you see postings on a forum
that include text like 'Sent from my Samsung SM-GT9711QB via Tapatalk' then
that forum is Tapatalk enabled (or was at the time of posting).

It's been a decade or more since I looked at it, but thinking was that it
might be possible to hook into the Tapatalk interface and get some kind of
access to the raw forum database, rather than scraping the forum's web page.

Tapatalk still seems to be a thing, but use of phpBB and similar forums has
declined. Maybe they have plugins for Discourse and friends now?

Anyway, it might be worth digging into the Tapatalk protocol and seeing if
there's a way to hook into it from outside the Tapatalk ecosystem. I have
no idea if it's possible.

Theo

[Computer Nerd Kev]

Theo <theom+***@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> Computer Nerd Kev <***@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
>> Web forums keep annoying me more and more with bloated interfaces,
>> so I'm using them less and less, yet there's less and less to read
>> on Usenet too. So lately I've been considering, not entirely
>> seriously, writing a program to scrape specific web forums and
>> generate a news spool with the content of the forum's latest posts
>> for me to read (either locally, or perhaps remotely via NNTP).
>>
>> Has anyone done this before? I know there are various web forum
>> platforms that support NNTP server-side, but I'm talking about web
>> forums hosted by other people who I have no association or
>> influence with. Has anyone done something that's purely a
>> client-side implementation?
>
> There's a mobile app called Tapatalk, which hooks into a number of web
> forums to make them mobile friendly, including posting. I think they have
> plugins for various platforms like phpBB, which forum operators can install
> to get access to their forum from mobiles. If you see postings on a forum
> that include text like 'Sent from my Samsung SM-GT9711QB via Tapatalk' then
> that forum is Tapatalk enabled (or was at the time of posting).

Interesting, though I don't think I've ever seen reference to it on any
forum I view regularly so they probably don't have the Tapatalk plug-in
installed.

> It's been a decade or more since I looked at it, but thinking was that it
> might be possible to hook into the Tapatalk interface and get some kind of
> access to the raw forum database, rather than scraping the forum's web page.
>
> Tapatalk still seems to be a thing, but use of phpBB and similar forums has
> declined. Maybe they have plugins for Discourse and friends now?
>
> Anyway, it might be worth digging into the Tapatalk protocol and seeing if
> there's a way to hook into it from outside the Tapatalk ecosystem. I have
> no idea if it's possible.

Looks like it's possible, this PHP lib. has an extensive set of
functions:
https://github.com/netzmacht/tapatalk-client-api

Tapatalk don't support Discourse, but do support the other common
forum platforms I was looking at. It might be interesting if I get
keen enough to set up a Gmane-style news server where other people
can submit forums to be added, but for my own use it doesn't look
like it's installed on the forums I want to watch.

Thanks for the tip though.

--
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#_ < |\| |< _#

[George Musk]

On Wed, 24 Jul 2024 11:58:28 +0300, Anton Shepelev wrote:

> There is an epidemic abroad of people leaving clean, stable,
> accessible, and independent venues such as Usenet, Fidonet, Mailing
> lists, and IRC, for centralised capitalist corporate-owned cenusured
> commercial "products" that are huge, bloated, tasteless, and require
> up-to-date hardware, OS, and software. To me, this is a reiteration of
> the story of the red pottage[1]: selling one's freedom and cleanliness
> for immediate comfort.
> ____________________
> 1. Genesis 25, 25-34.

You may try to make them use more modern open solutions like Mastodon,
Matrix, XMPP. Usenet et al. are just too antiquated.
Even Gajim (XMPP client) now tries to look like Skype or Discord or
something.