Google announcing that it will drop #Usenet support from Google Groups gave me a reason to write a short version of the Usenet eulogy I've had in the back of my mind for the last couple of decades.
(Yes, I am not only old enough to remember Usenet but to have written about the Green Card Lawyers early on in my time at the Post. They did not appreciate the coverage, and one of them--Martha Siegel, if I recall--vaguely threatened me with a lawsuit before doing nothing.) https://www.pcmag.com/news/end-of-an-era-google-groups-to-drop-usenet-support
One of the many reasons I love #usenet all the #hackers are still #hackers with
out all the cry babys in the http space! fuck google get out of our usenet!
Mastodon is great for sudden burst if words, but lack of real tree structure of postings is a serious hindrance to any longer conversation. This brings me back to trying #usenet :-)
This announcement also signifies the conclusion of Google’s Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) server services, including content peering with other NNTP servers.
still playing around with my shiny new #bbs, added a lot of basically empty #ttrpg groups to the #usenet section of it, now trying to get them to load.
it would help if the documentation of the software doesn't just assume I know how the parameters for their command line are supposed to work.
De kwaaa ? Usenet serait aux mains de Google ? Alors, bon, non... En fait, Google arrête son service d'accès à Usenet, mais le protocole est toujours là, les serveurs sont encore là et on peut encore y trouver quelques perles et y échanger des messages !
Donc, la mort de #Usenet ?
Non.
(mais ça reste la faute de #google, faut pas déconner, on est en 2024, mais les bonnes habitudes restent :)
Effective from 15 February 2024, Google Groups will no longer support new Usenet content. Posting and subscribing will be disallowed, and new content from Usenet peers will not appear. Viewing and searching of historical data will still be supported as it is done today.
I am in a way too long call where we slowly work through stuff at work, and so on the side I started configuring #usenet access on my private laptop on the side.
let's see if it has gotten any more active than... hmm... 8 months ago when I checked last?
so there's actual life in #usenet, they even registered their first new newsgroup in I don't know how long (for the #gemini protocol, another rather obscure corner of the #internet)
Not surprising news for gray-haired social-media veterans, but it still has end-of-an-era vibes: Google Groups to drop most #Usenet support on Feb. 22, keeping only a read-only archive of pre-2/22/2024 posts. https://support.google.com/groups/answer/11036538
Mastodon seems to be a lot more fragile than USENET; the whole PubSub thing seems to assume better connectivity than old-style distribution permits
This blog has been offline from ActivityPub / Fediverse for a few days, due to a bug in the WordPress Supercache plugin regarding (not) honouring the HTTP Accept header.
Back in the days of USENET, a node going offline for that length of time would not be a huge problem; the articles would be pushed or offered downstream to other peers, and dropped if they were deemed too stale (generally 1 week, often more) and all that would happen is a brief spike.
Yes, it’s a different world with different choices Alec, blah blah blah blah blah, but I am not impressed. If the ActivityPub architectures are not tuned in the expectations of delivering robustness of communication in the face of outages, it is going to (for instance) lose all account of protests in <some oppressive regime> where the in-country instances can only achieve intermittent connectivity in the face of state attempts to block communication.
It could be WordPress at fault, it could be Mastodon, it could be the ActivityPub spec or the recommended timeouts or who knows what cause; I cannot say and I am also not going to be the one to fix it because I also have bigger fish to fry.
But nor am I going to leave this issue unobserved. We need to talk about weakness in order to have it addressed.
with another foolish idea in my brain I have started to look into how to run my own #bbs on my spare raspberry pi. mostly for messaging (#usenet and stuff), but I guess I'd try to have LORD on there as well. also... maybe a #fediverse server on the same machine?
that might be pushing it though.
I think I spend too much time on all that.