Back

@Janeishly

Unless those refugees are Jews, then it's basically like being on Twitter or Facebook circa 2017.

@serge I initially had a harsher response to this, then I went through your feed, and I'll instead simply say this:

I get where you're coming from, but your post was extremely off-topic, and I think is more likely to cost than gain you allies. You can agree or not agree with how Mastodon has a disproportionate number of grizzled tech veterans, but I don't think that's the right context to bring Zionism into the chat. And if you were actually around in 2017? Honestly, I'd *take* 2017 Twitter or Facebook over 2025 *anything*. So I'm not even entirely sure what your point was

@bmp

I'm pointing out that there's a high degree of antisemitism on the Fediverse.

I didn't bring up Zionism. I talked about antisemitism, and I can assure you that there's plenty of antisemitism thrown at Jews who have either never expressed an opinion on Zionism, or who have expressed anti-Zionist views.

I was on Twitter in ~2008/2009, so yeah I was on twitter in 2017.

My point was that antisemitism and harassment of Jews was widespread then,. and that's about the level that the Fediverse is now.

@TheLancashireman Yeah, I've already had a mate saying "Pah! 2800 baud rate was all we had".

I'm not actually sure how fast(slow) my first connection was, because after I finished my MA in 1991 I was offline for about 8 years and missed all the very slow bits!

@Janeishly @TheLancashireman

2800 baud, you speed freak 1200\75 BBC Micro Prestel was my first online experience.

@Mark62 @Janeishly @TheLancashireman if we’re comparing, my 110/300bps acoustic coupler wants it’s hat thrown into the ring.

@shawnhooper @Janeishly @TheLancashireman
The ones where you put the actual phone receiver on them? My dad had one of those.

@katrinakatrinka @Janeishly @TheLancashireman No, you’d dial the phone and then when you heard it pick up, you’d press a big red button on the modem and hang up the phone.

@shawnhooper @Janeishly @TheLancashireman
Ah.

This is the one I was remembering, btw.

http://www.trs-80.org/telephone-interface/

@katrinakatrinka @shawnhooper @Janeishly @TheLancashireman yeah, I’ve got one of these… was my first modem.

I’ve even kept a leased USWest rotary phone so I have a legit handset for using it if the opportunity arises.

@vertigo @TheLancashireman Ha, I didn't - I just thought it fitted with the quote!

@PizzaDemon That's one of the things that really bugs me about enshittification. I used to *recommend* HP products. That makes me feel rather ill now.

@Janeishly @PizzaDemon
Oh god, HP products used to be -so good-! And like, cheap! The desktops were bricks that just worked, the printers you could drop off a truck mid printjob and they'd be fine.

And...now...

@Oggie @PizzaDemon Exactly! The printers! So good!

Meanwhile my laptop before this one was an HP because there were no suitable Asuses (Asusii??) when I came to buy one. When it got stolen from my car I was annoyed, because expense, and hammering a new Windows machine into shape always takes about a fortnight, BUT I was also sniggering at the fact that someone was now trying to use my piece of shit HP machine that had been crap since I bought it.

@Janeishly @PizzaDemon
Very much that gene wilder Wonka gif 'oh no, wait, come back'.

But i'm sorry you lost the laptop if only because it IS such a pain to set it all up again

@Oggie @PizzaDemon Yeah, it was a bit of a gut punch at the time, but fortunately I have a bunch of spare former laptops knocking around (probably like the rest of the seafarers) and a good backup, so I was up and working again after a couple of hours. New laptop arrived a few days later (Asus – I learned that particular lesson) and overall it was a positive experience. (Could have done without a sudden and unexpected massive car repair two weeks later, but hey ho.)

@Lightfighter @Janeishly Usenet was not on the Internet then - not until it was bridged by InterNetNews in 1992 (after the Web).

I remember Usenet discussions around 1987: "I've heard of this new thing called the Internet. What is it? Is it any good?"

@robinadams @Lightfighter I'm afraid I've got a very vague understanding of when the internet actually began as a thing, because I was using what I now *think* of as the internet in 1989 (it was actually JANET) to play MUD. I had another couple of years of that until I finished my MA, and then an 8-ish year gap. By the time I got back it was definitely the internet.

@Janeishly @Lightfighter Jan 1 1983 is usually the date named as the "birthday of the Internet", when ARPANET switched to using TCP/IP so it could share traffic with any other network using that protocol.

Usenet started before then in 1980, spreading from BBS to BBS via dial-up users uploading and downloading the posts.

The Web came later in 1989, using the Internet so you could click on a link in one document to jump to a document on a completely different machine.

Before then to use the Internet, you had to know where the machine that had thing you wanted was, connect to it by FTP or Telnet, log in (the log in prompt would give you instructions, usually username "anonymous" and password your email address), read the "message of the day", and navigate through that machine's file system (this was how I first learned Unix commands).

MUDs were big then. I spent a lot of time on MOOs (object-oriented MUDs where you could create your own items by coding their behaviour in an object-oriented language).

Now get off my lawn you darn kids.

@cascheranno @Lightfighter @Janeishly By Internet I mean the network that uses the Internet Protocol Suite and grew out of ARPANET.

There were a few rival global networks in the 1980s, including the Internet, UUCPNET (which used bangpaths etc.), FidoNet and BITNET.

The World Wide Web was the killer application that made the Internet much more popular than its rivals, most of which have died out. (Checked just now and happy that FidoNet still exists, but traffic on it is tiny compared to the Internet and compared to what it used to be.)

@monstreline I think the non-grizzled ones are still hoping Bluesky is going to work.

@Janeishly @monstreline Booskie is like the endless September, and we snuck around it.