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Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#241

Post by jonhohle »

aledalgrande wrote: post #233
dsr_ wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheap. I mean, expensive by the standards of 1994, but -- inevitable comparison inbound -- a Raspberry Pi 4 has more CPU, more IOPS, more storage, and more RAM than many a 1994 small-ISP Usenet server. And modern Linux is a heck of a lot nicer to work with than any of the OS back then. A T1 is 1.5Mb/s, and if you don't take binaries, you would not quite fill that pipe back then. These days, a $10/month VPS is not mer…

Still remember the times when T1 was only a legend I heard of, while running on my expensive (for my family) 56K.

My university got half of a T3 split with another organization in the early 2000s. Going home over breaks was such a drag!

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#242

Post by creamyhorror »

_x14i wrote: post #83
qznc wrote: post #65

https://join-lemmy.org/ Lemmy is a federated Reddit clone. It already works and is available. As far as I know currently the best alternative. Please, join a smaller instance currently. The biggest ones are already overloaded.

The political views of some of the major developers (tankie, pro-china, castro-profile-picture communists) has put me off lemmy, particularly because they're (allegedly) removing anything critical of Russia/China and promoting genocide denial on their instance.

I've heard of more politically neutral instances like beehaw.org - places like that might fit you better.

There's also kbin, which is a newer alternative to Lemmy (and possibly less political?).

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#243

Post by TylerE »

rainonmoon wrote: post #231
TylerE wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly? Ever federated project has all this faff about "which instance should I use?". How is that possibly easier .44

Just join one. Portability is inherent to the software. If you don't like it, move to another one.

Yea, extra steps. Confusion. Uncertainty. The exact opposite of easier.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#245

Post by kristopolous »

Eisenstein wrote: post #238
kristopolous wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also this was during the real halcyon days of the third way and DLC right after the end of the cold war. The libertarian fanboys on HN really don't like it because this is what they furtively shake their pom-poms for and it's clearly trending towards a socially net negative These hands off approaches will get a thousand flowers to bloom but they'll mostly be weeds

People who think that the robber baron days are to be aspired to frighten me.

It's fine in luxury industries. Yachts, jets, jewelry, cruises, etc.

But things that people with limited capital need? That obviously doesn't work. Look at the Cochabamba Water War or the California electricity crisis for good examples.

An unspoken rule of their models is all consumers value money the same and have an unlimited supply.

These assumptions fall flat on >99.5% of people.

But ruby and sapphire encrusted watches? fine! Game on.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#246

Post by nine_k »

u801e wrote: post #224
SoftTalker wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I much prefer email groups to online forums or Reddit. Easy to register, just send a subscribe message. Trolls can be ignored or banned by the list administrators. I am subscribed to several specific interest email lists. The information I get there is typically much better than what I find online.

> No I much prefer email groups to online forums or Reddit. Easy to register, just send a subscribe message. Trolls can be ignored or banned by the list administrators. Do you also prefer email lists over a moderated newsgroup? If so, why?

Why can't an email list be moderated? I've seen several that very much were.

OTOH your own moderation by just ignoring certain senders may be relatively efficient even if nobody actually controls the list server, and the whole thing is just a bunch of peer-to-peer messages with CC large headers.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#247

Post by forgetfreeman »

Icathian wrote: post #155
forgetfreeman wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember having to resort to submitting a post to alt.tech-support.recovery using a text editor and a raw telnet session due to the "lay-an-egg" requirement for posts to be accepted there and I didn't have software that would let me fiddle with headers in a sane fashion. HN most certainly does not achieve this level of filtration.

I am very curious but my search-fu has failed me. What was the requirement? Is there a link or jargon file or something I could read? I love this kind of stuff. Thanks!

Man you're asking a lot here. I've had at least three concussions and the tail end of my drug use between when this was a thing and now. I cannot recall the exact specifics but what I do remember was that to get a post accepted to the group you had to include a custom x-header (name escapes me). The contents of that header could be anything, it didn't matter, the presence of the non-standard extra header was what was checked. The best part of it all was nobody, literally no one, would tell aspiring new members how to post to the group. There was the vaguest of hints dropped in the group FAQ and that was it. You could post if you could figure out how to post.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#248

Post by wombat-man »

fwungy wrote: post #244

What about a crypto token based use net where every message would cost a small token fee that would be credited to the node operator? This would give an incentive to run a node and would serve as a hurdle to the unwashed masses.

I don't see why this needs to involve crypto

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#249

Post by nine_k »

guraf wrote: post #159
hattmall wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to ad revenue, but I helped with managing some large ~100k member forums and the cost wasn't by any means prohibitive. Costs today would be cheaper by a couple orders of magnitude. Spam wasn't a big problem either. Basic filters, and mandatory intro posts and post count restricted forums solved most issues. Moderation was much more focused on keeping things in topic and redirecting duplicate topics.

Yeah you can easily host a phpbb or vbulletin or whatever still exists these days on a single dedicated server (ovh or hetzner) and be able to serve 100k MAU for about 50-75 USD/month. Hell, for less than 10k MAU you can still get away with shared hosting if you're really strapped for cash, 5-7 bucks per month. People around here really lost perspective of what can be accomplished with a dedicated box and a PHP forum…

Few people seem to need custom-run forums when a plethora of subreddits exists! It's the network effect: everyone interested will head there, because they know that everyone else interested will head there.

It's relatively harder to make your forum even known among potential interested users on the background of the entire Web, while you have a much narrower search space within reddit.com. (Widely popular Facebook groups also exist.)

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#250

Post by wombat-man »

I do think I could go for something like reddit that is free to read but posting and commenting requires a paid account. Could really cut down on spam, but hard to get enough people to pay to make it interesting.

I guess the SA model could work. Where you pay to join. Or annual fee is waived if karma is good.

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