Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

userfriendly.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 149 posts

Re: www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

#21

Post by techsupporter »

laumars wrote: post #18
techsupporter wrote: post #16

I still have my "lifetime" User Friendly membership card signed by Illiad and "Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell, a User Friendly Guide to World Domination" from O'Reilly. I wish I had found a copy of the first UF compilation book, and that my copy of "Ten Years of UserFriendly.org" hadn't been destroyed in a move. For those of us who have been doing this for a very long time, User Friendly was the salve to the dry busines…

Dilbert was a lot more generic too. I think most companies reflected Dilbert in one way or another. But User Friendly was a lot more specialised. At least that’s how I remembered them.

Agreed. Dilbert was for if you worked in an office building doing pretty much anything. User Friendly was for a very specific niche of people who either worked at mid-sized ISPs (like MandieD wrote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30593421) or who supporter or empathized with people who worked at mid-sized ISPs.

"Thank you for calling Columbia Internet, this is Miranda."

Re: www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

#22

Post by an_mp_speaks »

This gives me a chance to ask about a different webcomic that I read in the early 2000s, but have totally forgotten. It also took place at a small development company or ISP. There was a dog who was a system administrator, and he might have been in love with a cat? All the characters were animals, I think, and there were the usual 90s-early 00s Linux/Microsoft jokes.

Re: www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

#24

Post by deltarholamda »

jfim wrote: post #8
ssl232 wrote: post #6

Can someone explain the significance of this to HN noobs (apparently I'm one)?

It was a webcomic that was popular when slashdot and kuro5hin were more popular. You can read more about it on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly

I just wandered over to Slashdot earlier today. It's sad to see what it has become. It's also sad to see UF burn out as well.

I miss Ye Olde Internets.

Re: www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

#26

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

techsupporter wrote: post #19
faeyanpiraat wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.

I think you mean UF--- (Does anyone remember Geek Code? Does anyone else still have their Geek Code .sig file?)

I've got some old e-mails in my Yahoo mailbox with Geek Code in it.

Re: www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

#27

Post by techsupporter »

oh_sigh wrote: post #23

Why now? I think there hasn't been any fresh non-forum content on the site for at least 12 years. Just didn't feel like paying hosting costs, or something else?

According to this subthread, it's that the code is positively ancient: https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082909/http://ars.userfr...

"Like for the past 17+ years...

... I own the ISP hosting UF.

The biggest problem is supporting the legacy mod_perl stuff that the site is built on... you'd basically have to re-write the entire front end, or find a very bored perl monk to update the code base.

Basically to keep the ARS active, you'd need someone to take over the operations of the server & code. Maintaining it is a big deal.

Cost-wise, I could bring it down quite a bit if it was moved into a VPS (which we also offer), but again - it's a maintenance/care & feeding issue. This site is still running on Apache 1.3 here.

Someone would need to volunteer some senior technical skill for several weeks, and start... pretty much now."

Post reply on HN