Back to the BBS part 3 should be released this weekend reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gnu2tux · 2021-03-11 23:14 Hi all, I've been busy putting the final touches to the third installment of the BBS documentary, Back to the BBS. This episode is part hands on, part informational. Firstly it discusses how BBSes offer a great alternative for people seeking privacy online. Then it covers messaging, including a how-to demonstration of both echomail and netmail. Finally, a small section on hardware such as the wifi232 to connect your retro computers to modern telnet BBSes. The link will follow shortly, it will be in premiere format too, so please join us for the live screening, which was a lot of fun last time, with many people tuning in and chatting away during the premiere! Thanks again, Alistair aka hyjinx ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Scoth42 · 2021-03-12 04:09 Uhg, I never did get you that footage I promised. I even had some good ideas and some preliminary stuff recorded, but it's so hard to get good quiet time these days. I'm the worst, but your stuff looks neat. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- robbiew · 2021-03-12 05:03 Very cool. Looking forward to it. I wrote a little about that here as well !! https://medium.com/@alpha_11845/setting-up-ftn-style-message- networks-with-enigma%C2%BD-bbs-709b22a1ae0d ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gnu2tux · 2021-03-12 06:26 Excellent! I'm sure that will be super relevant in episode 4! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dmine45 · 2021-03-12 09:37 Looking forward to it! :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sai_ruk · 2021-03-12 10:46 great stuff, looking forward to it ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wndrbr3d · 2021-03-12 14:39 Super curious how you handle the topic of how a BBS offers people seeking privacy online vs. modern alternatives. Some concerns I always have: * Insecure Transport Protocols (both to the clients and message networks) * Physical Data Security (not every board runs in a datacenter) * Insecure Data At Rest (lots of older board platforms don't encrypt passwords, emails, chat history, etc.) I'm not saying BBS's \*\*couldn't\*\* eventually offer better privacy -- but I'm interested your take on the current state. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SqualorTrawler · 2021-03-12 19:04 The entire problem with boards today, and why I almost have to force myself to connect to them, is they are almost entirely focused on replicating the 80s and 90s experience, with little regard for modern realities. It's a nostalgia trip taken to an extreme. To each his own, and I'm cool with people putting up whatever they want, but there are a series of problems with boards, some of which will result in me never calling back. Insecurity has bothered me for awhile. While it is probably true no one cares about what people do on BBSes such that they would expend time and energy exploiting outdated security, if there was any chance of expanding the community to younger populations, which I'd like to do, this is one issue. Some boards offer SSH at least. The main thing which really chaps my ass is the 80x25 thing. This is just a ridiculous screen size for 2021. Some boards have these massive message headers and then sigs, which leave like 10 lines of actual text for reading. I find this claustrophobic and irritating. And since these boards are nostalgia trips, the /<-r4d ANSI in the headers seems to override usability in terms of concern. Secondly is rEaDiNg ThIs sHIt oN BoARDs iN mIDDLe Age. Was this ever cool, or just stupid? I can't remember a time going back to my C-NET 10.0 system where I would have done this, nor tolerated it in messages. This l33t scener shit was dumb then, and it's dumb now. ANSI is cool but the sheer unreadability of some systems because of the crazy-ass capitalization means I won't be calling back. A lot of boards neglect to tell you what CTRL sequences pause screens such that ANSIs spanning 90 pages scroll by so fast you don't even know what they are. What I really want is: A secure system based on modern protocols, secure, hashed password storage with an eye toward updating the experience to modern realities and capabilities. I'd like a display-agnostic system which wraps properly at wide and varying terminal widths. I think the idea of a text-based system which supports any column width would really make them more attractive. It would allow things like nesting of headers and replies (like reddit). A flash of realization that for all but boards running single-tasking retro software, timing me out after 5 minutes because I got up to shit is going to mean I am just never calling your board back. I have complained about this before and if you're running GBBS Pro or something I understand why you'd have to do this, but there are a lot of boards running modern software that do this with 15 of 16 of their nodes constantly idle. That irks me. The whole modern Internet doesn't work this way, and if I was new to BBSes, this would be a WTF moment. ANSI bukkake where every single thing I do on a system blasts me in the face with massive ANSI screens. I switch my read mode or something and MASSIVE ANSI IN MY FACE. ANSI is cool as hell but some boards take this to an extreme which makes their systems unusable. Why not just have an ANSI gallery. There are also an alarming number of systems I log into with broken basic functionality, and a lot of these have had endless work done to customize screens, more ANSI still, but basic functionality doesn't work. One board I called a few months ago required, as most do, a new user mail to the SysOp. That function threw an error. So did the [F]eedback option. The upshot of it was because the SysOp will never be using these features, he's not going to realize anytime soon that they are broken. And I can't tell him it's broken because I can't actually message him. That is just depressing. To get on track, I also wouldn't mind a client which can do some sort of client-side encryption to allow true secured messaging via these systems. People have mentioned before that BBSes are sort of like the deep web in the sense that they're off the radar of search engines and the like unless a public web interface is offered. BBSes could be secure, private messaging systems. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gnu2tux · 2021-03-12 22:32 So, ultimate privacy is something that can never be fully stated, no matter how protected your data is. If there is a will, there is a way. The main area of that featurette is to point out that bbs owners are not harvesting your data (what you may nievely expect to be private information), to be used for advertising or other nefarious matters. Insecure transport: ssh is widely available on many boards so that's end to end encrypted Physical data security: depends on the bbs owners and what statements they make about the data they hold. My bbs *is* in a secured datacentre. In germany because of their privacy laws being higher than other countries. Basically, find a BBS that meets your requirements. Insecure at rest: most modern bbs software, including Enigma 1/2, Synchronet and Enigma all use salted passwords, I couldn't tell you your password even if I wanted to. When you log into MRC chat, you are informed that it is not private, just in the same way that sending an email to a friend on the internet is not private. If you want absolute privacy then you need to use an absolutely private form of communication. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gnu2tux · 2021-03-13 03:57 Here's the link y'all: https://youtu.be/VpFaoLPPRGc It premieres tomorrow, 13th March at 12PM PST / 8PM UTC.!