Subj : Re: SSH on BBSes
To   : poindexter FORTRAN
From : boraxman
Date : Sat Apr 16 2022 19:05:35

 pF> He says, on a BBS networked on home machines around the world.   :)
 pF> 
 pF> It'd be interesting to come up with a social network platform that
 pF> followed  the Skype model, where servers just kept up with lists of
 pF> other servers  instead of hosting the content. Peers would pull down the
 pF> content. Throw  some torrent-like capabilities in there as well to make
 pF> peers able to talk  to each other.
 pF> 
 pF> You'd need an encrypted blob on your home PC, otherwise some jerk would
 pF> try  to sue people for content they didn't like hosted on your home PC.
 pF> And, then  you'd need to deal with having encrypted content sitting on
 pF> your PC.
 pF> 
The Internet itself is great, but that is old tech, and I should clarify.  The real decline is in the software ecosystem, though the closing-off of hardware is also a problem

We have the physical infrastructure to do great things, to empower people.  But we are a dumb society, so we also believe that people should never have to go through the pain of learning how to do something.  That the more you can spoon feed them, the more progress you make.

I think we underestimate the cost of using Big Tech's solutions, and the smaller upfront cost of setting it up yourself seems to impact people more than the massive delayed social cost of having society heavily influenced by these platformarchs.

I joined FB initially, simply because someone who was going to Europe felt it a little easier to send those pics over FB than by e-mail.  This was in 2006. Who would have thought this simple choice, repeated by many people would result in the troubles that it gave us later on.

Small tech which has fewer unforeseen implications is better.

pF>  bo> Sometimes (more often than not), the vision of
making computers  pF>  bo> user-friendly, ubiquitous and accessible was a mistake.  pF> 
 pF>  bo> The pubnixes don't really sandbox you that much, you can compile code
 pF>  bo> run programs, write shell scripts.  As long as the permissions are
 pF>  bo> initially set up right, the administrative burden wouldn't be much
 pF>  bo> greater.  More a matter of just monitoring and keeping out
 pF>  bo> troublemakers.
 pF> 
 pF> I'm having a lot of fun on the tildes - finally learning tmux,
 pF> hand-hacking  HTML again, playing with gemini, rediscovering IRC, and
 pF> reliving my youth.
 pF> 
 pF> 

Tmux is great, and Gemini is something I've discovered last year.  IRC I hop on time to time.

I don't really use the tildes, except to message others, because I run my own Unix like system and can use all those tools on my own system.

For creating HTML, I prefer to use either a Markdown to html converter, or use ORG mode of Emacs.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

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