HN Gopher Feed (2017-10-05) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
A Pre-History of Slashdot
431 points by cmdrtaco
https://medium.com/@cmdrtaco/a-pre-history-of-slashdot-6403341dabae___________________________________________________________________
uuoc - 5 hours ago
Ah, slashdot. Things were good in the beginning. Then they sold
out to Dice. And Dice took it in a bad direction. So bad that a
bunch of us abandoned it for the comp.misc Usenet group.And in my
case, I have simply not returned, and don't plan to return, even
though they 'claim' to be past the Dice era now. Fool me once,
shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
jimjimjim - 3 hours ago
so much nostalgia. big big thank you to rob and the rest of the
team.
iamleppert - 39 minutes ago
Slashdot was truly a part of my youth, it was the site I went to
when I was a teenager, in between taking breaks from coding. It
made me feel like there were others out there like me and was a
great source of inspiration growing up in a less than stellar
childhood in Ohio.It makes me nostalgic for the web of yesteryear,
when it was mostly about just a bunch of nerds sharing their
passion for technology.Thanks, CmdrTaco.
whathaschanged - 5 hours ago
Slashdot was awesome right up until the point that they forced the
redesign on everybody and drove away all the users that made it
great. It would be the equivalent of HN forcing autoplay videos and
animated banner ads on each page.A lesson to reflect upon--
monetizing is ok when it doesn't kill your userbase. My ID is under
5000 (cue the older ID replies) and I refuse to give them pageviews
now.
eps - 4 hours ago
Redesign was a contributing factor to what's been coming for a
long time. The main problem was that the community had an
extremely limited say in moderation of the content.Puny 5 mod
points once every few months is not a way to instill a sense of
belonging. Imagine being able to upvote a post or a comment on HN
only once a month, and passively watch random stuff of
questionable quality float up the rest of the time. That ruined
/. for me and I suspect I wasn't alone in that.
com2kid - 2 hours ago
> Puny 5 mod points once every few months is not a way to
instill a sense of belonging. Imagine being able to upvote a
post or a comment on HN only once a month, and passively watch
random stuff of questionable quality float up the rest of the
time. That ruined /. for me and I suspect I wasn't alone in
that.To be fair, they pretty much invented user moderation,
Slashdot was an early experiment with user curated discussions.
That they never saw past the 5 mod points is understandable, it
was a foundation the site was based on, and seeing past one's
foundations can be hard.They also had to likely balance against
malicious users, who were a less small % of the user base than
on other sites.
flukus - 25 minutes ago
Slashdot made a lot of mistakes (amongst the good parts) for the
industry to learn from but it doesn't seem like this one was ever
heeded, Digg made the same mistake and it's looking like Reddit
is going to follow it (the moment the main site looks like the
mobile one and the mobile app is they day I'll leave), many sites
and products have been ruined by redesigns and over complicating
things.
uuoc - 5 hours ago
Same here. I actively refuse to click on any url that goes to
slashdot anymore.I've only been back, by accident, a handful of
times when a "short link" actually expanded out to slashdot, and
every time, I closed the page as soon as I realized where the
shortened url was really headed.
geezerjay - 5 hours ago
> Slashdot was awesome right up until the point that they forced
the redesign on everybody and drove away all the users that made
it great.The redesign wasn't what killed it. The constant
astroturfing and (what I assumed to be) collusion between
astroturfers and site maintainers killed it real dead.
rhizome - 5 hours ago
No, the redesign made it unusable, with an inscrutable learning
curve. The astroturfers then took over once the organic traffic
dropped off a cliff.
geezerjay - 4 hours ago
I recall that the redesign might have been very ugly but
didn't increased the learning curve. Yet, the userbase stuck
around and pushed for at least a way to get their old
slashdot back. Complaining about slashdot's lack of unicode
support was a in-joke.But then the astroturfing problem blew
up and in no time killed slashdot. The community tolerated
trolls, even the infamous GNAA, but slashdot's industrial-
level astroturfing campaigns in what I believe to be
collulsion with site maintainers was something that was
massively abhorrent.
rhizome - 4 hours ago
The redesign changed the filtering and visibility settings
and the way they worked. It was virtually impossible to
read the way I did prior to the redesign.
npsimons - 4 hours ago
> > Slashdot was awesome right up until the point that they
forced the redesign on everybody and drove away all the users
that made it great.> The redesign wasn't what killed it. The
constant astroturfing and (what I assumed to be) collusion
between astroturfers and site maintainers killed it real
dead.Agreed; I remember the day they started advertising the
Apple marketing conventions and thought "who put Apple on my
Linux site? This isn't 'news for nerds; stuff that matters'".
The influx of microsoft apologists and apple shills soon after
is what killed it for me, and I had been there for a long time
(not since the beginning, but still user 32752; so close to a
power of two!).Still, I'm eternally grateful to Rob Malda.
Great community, great moderation system, and a site that was
unique. I'll wager we shall not look upon it's like again soon.
isostatic - 47 minutes ago
There were several changes over the years, but beta was when I
left, but that was really just the straw. The politics was
getting too much for me, it was always a factor (remember Katz
and the buried commodore64 in Afghanistan)Sadly nothing really
recaptured the spirit of the first few years, and it can't. The
internet isn't the Wild West any more, you're not using it over
dial up from a box room staring down a CRT, times change, and you
can never go home.
jbgreer - 2 hours ago
Slashdot user #4245 here, with comments dating to April of 1999, 2
friends and 1 fan, no foes or freaks. I also had the pleasure of
meeting Cmdr Taco at an early LinuxWorld (1998?) in California. I
admit it fed a lot of my biases at the time, but also provided a
lot of useful information.
clairity - 5 hours ago
wow, crazy, how time flies. i stumbled onto slashdot in late '97 as
a side effect of wanting to put together a computer for a project.
i still think it had the best moderation system, however
complicated it was. it gave you lots of control on how you wanted
to view comments.
jedberg - 6 hours ago
Thanks Rob for the trip down memory lane. I have two to share:I
started using Slashdot in ?97. I remember back then you had a cron
to update the front page and we figured out you only run it every
10 minutes, so I built small shell script on my Linux desktop that
would pop up a notification reminding me to reload slashdot every
10 minutes.My second memory was when I was working for Sendmail.
Because we were ?famous? and appeared on Slashdot for every
Sendmail release, one of my first jobs was helping the senior
admins set up a new web server for Sendmail.org. I was told by the
creators of Sendmail ?this server must be able to handle getting
Slashdotted.?So we bought the biggest Dell server we could find,
put it in Level 3 in San Francisco (back when they still hosted
things ? that datacenter is now Dropbox?s HQ), and then I asked the
creator of Bind if he could secondary my DNS on a.root-servers.net.
When he actually replied and said yes I felt huge pressure to get
that entry right and was a bit starstruck.I was also awestruck as I
was doing tail -f on the logs and we hit Slashdot for the first
time after setting up the server. I couldn?t believe one site could
send that much traffic.If it weren?t for you none of that would
have happened, so thanks Rob!
fred_is_fred - 6 hours ago
> I started using Slashdot in ?97. I remember back then you had a
cron to update the front page and we figured out you only run it
every 10 minutes, so I built small shell script on my Linux
desktop that would pop up a notification reminding me to reload
slashdot every 10 minutes.I did something similar but then at
some point I ended up blocking slashdot.org in my hosts file
because it was killing my ability to focus or get work done. I
need a beowulf cluster of attention at work.
smacktoward - 5 hours ago
> I need a beowulf cluster of attention at work.I used to have
one of those! Sadly, Natalie Portman filled it with hot grits.
otakucode - 4 hours ago
It makes my heart swell to know there are still those out
there thinking of dear Natalie, petrified and with hot grits
down her pants...
hathawsh - 15 minutes ago
In Soviet Russia, where the pants wear you!
shortoncash - 48 minutes ago
I don't have time for Natalie; I'm fretting over Netcraft's
confirmation that BSD is dying.
antod - 30 minutes ago
Well you didn't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict
that.
smacktoward - 11 minutes ago
We need a poll to determine what CowboyNeal says on the
matter.
jzl - 5 hours ago
Is there a way to figure out when you joined? Not seeing a "member
since" date. My id # is 7xxxxx (6 digits). I was reading it
regularly for quite a few years, maybe 4-5 years IIRC, before
finally deciding to sign up. No idea why I waited so long, I guess
I was more into the articles than the commenting side of things.
Dumb of me!
rconti - 5 hours ago
Ditto. I just logged in to check. Mine is 2xxxxx (also 6 digits)
and I, too, regret not signing up when I first started browsing
-- was probably more like 2-3 years for me though. I'm guessing
1998-1999? But I really have no idea.
isostatic - 37 minutes ago
My first account was 1xxxxx, lost that, second account 2xxxxx.
I remember reading slashdot on NYE 1999, code red, the
Billenium in Sep 01, and of course 9-11 when it was one of a
few sites that stayed up.Back in the day the comments section
was full of "famous people" like Wil Wheaton and Bruce Perens,
which I found fascinating.Slashdot inspired me to jump to
Debian in 2000, and E17. I didn't stick with e17, but did with
Debian until about 07 when I transitioned on to ubuntu. The
standard broadcast Linux build (1200+ machines on 6 continents)
for a major UK based global broadcaster is ubuntu because of
slashdot introducing me to apt after a coupe of years of
frustration with rpmfind.net. Funny how these things work out.
frankwiles - 5 hours ago
Getting something on the front page of Slashdot was one of my
proudest moments.
TailorJones - 3 hours ago
Great. Yet another non-closable pop-up window.
TekMol - 5 hours ago
The notion of ?A Blog? was years away, so I wrote my own code.
I wish he did so for this blog post. When I visit it, I get a full
screen popup first and after closing it, two dickbars that make it
hard to read the actual content.
shabbyrobe - 41 minutes ago
Medium is shocking for this. I added this to my uBlock custom
filters list and now it's not a problem any more: ! medium
dickbars and other bullshit: ##.u-clearfix.metabar
##.metabar ##.js-stickyFooter ##.highlightMenu I have
not limited it by domain so I can catch all the other Medium-
based blogs that use other domains (hackernoon, etc). This raises
my risk of false positives but that doesn't bother me anywhere
near as much as all the extraneous garbage on their site does.
YMMV.
Mediterraneo10 - 3 hours ago
I had a four-digit Slashdot UID (just over 4000, I think). I have
lots of great memories of technical discussions. As a young man who
had managed to install Linux on his computer but still knew little
about programming or the mighty Unix tradition, it was amazing to
be able to participate there in discussions with so many big names
in *nix or Free Software.But some of my fondest memories come from
trolling there with another account. Trolling Slashdot often wasn't
like how trolling works on other news sites, where some user tries
to make some controversial point or racist remark related to the
submitted story in order to spark arguments and take the
conversation off course.Instead, troll posts on Slashdot were
usually completely unrelated to the submitted story. They consisted
of themes that were sometimes coarse and tasteless, but which
fascinatingly evolved over time as each troll adapted the
copy/paste to new circumstances or his own personal whims. The
million variations on "BSD is dying" is a good example, but my
personal favourite was "X touched my junk". And while I was never
so cruel to link to Last Measure, I was grimly impressed by the
work that had gone into it, completely with having an autoplay
audio file "I'M LOOKING AT GAY PORN!!!!" which must have cost a
least one or two cubicle dwellers their jobs.
rdslw - 3 hours ago
goatse.cx trolling under cloak of redirection...ah those early
days...
bdamm - 2 hours ago
Even now I can see it, still burned into my amygdala.
Ugh.However, the result was browsers starting showing you the
link URL with a text in the info-box at the window base
(remember those?) so I guess that was some positive result. Who
knew this would be the wax-off training of the future?
ChuckMcM - 6 hours ago
Hah, my daughter was in Voorhees freshman year (hmm, it might have
been Van Vleck (sp?) the first year but there was a year she was in
Voorhees). And all this time she had no idea she was living and
studying in a place of historical interest :-)The great thing this
shares with a lot of stories about that time is that Rob didn't say
"What can I build that will make me a million bucks?" instead he
was just providing a service that was interesting and useful to him
and people who shared his interests (which turned out to be a lot
of people).Congrats Rob.
reaperducer - 7 hours ago
Coincidentally, 90% of what's on /. is also on HN. I'm not sure
who's copying whom, but it seems like someone is wheezing someone
else's feed.
jandrese - 7 hours ago
Or they just cover the same interest areas? New Intel chips come
out and both Slashdot and HN cover it, but not because someone is
copy/pasting articles, it's just a story that both would
cover.Slashdot has a lot less "Everybody should switch to
strongly typed functional programming language X" articles than
HN, while HN definitely has fewer Your Rights Online type
articles.
reaperducer - 4 hours ago
An article or two or three would be one thing. But when I can
flip between the two windows and see NINE of the same articles,
there's something afoot. It's a big world out there. Lots of
news to be had. Someone's being lazy.
AlbertoGP - 7 hours ago
Yes, and I've started reading it again a couple of weeks ago
when I found that my account still worked. The reason to open
an account back then was that the number of comments grew so
large that I could not hope to read/skim them all and had to
store the filter settings.The current HTML/JS seems lighter
than I remember, which was a problem for me as I started moving
to other boards like HN.We'll see. For now I've meta-moderated
again after all those years.[edit] BTW, relevant discussion in
/.: https://meta.slashdot.org/story/17/10/03/2356229/20-years-
of...
drallison - 7 hours ago
HN is a latter day Slashdot, but there are differences. Slashdot
curated the news whereas HN is mostly a list of pointers with
references to articles.
chaoticmass - 7 hours ago
I typically see stuff on HN first and then on /. a day or more
later.
EpicEng - 7 hours ago
Yes, extremely strange that two sites focused on the same niche
would have similar content.
attawahid - 2 hours ago
I remember Chips&Dips and got confused one day when I couldn't find
it. Started searching and found it again under Slashdot and have
been a fan and loyal visitor ever since. Thanks a lot for this
awesome write-up of Internet History :-)
kevin_thibedeau - 5 hours ago
I once scraped a subset of all Slashdot posts for the month of
October. There were some interesting trends. The bulk of posting is
by old UIDs in the 100k to 300k range and those are dropping off
rapidly, suggesting that it will die around 2022. Some of that is
attributable to the rise of mobile and more frequent anon posts but
that doesn't balance out the decline from logged in posts.There is
also evidence of UID inflation by only issuing odd or even numbers
during certain periods.
lazyjones - 1 hours ago
User 8xxx here... Slashdot was great while it provided the best
daily overview of IT stories. I wonder what changed - I can vaguely
recall switching to heise.de and later HN.Perhaps the way it
presented the stories worked better for a few major pieces per day
and everyone tries to read "all" interesting stories every day now,
so pages with just headlines and broader coverage took over?I miss
the quieter "online life" of the late 90's...
drallison - 7 hours ago
Slashdot has been a major influence. Everyone (who was someone)
read Slashdot. Sergey Brin, for example, was a great fan. To be
mentioned on slashdot was a meant instant saturation for a website.
Personally, I miss CmdrTaco's wry take on the new of the moment.
mschaef - 7 hours ago
> To be mentioned on slashdot was a meant instant saturation for
a website.For quite a while, that was even referred to as being
'slashdotted'...
digi_owl - 7 hours ago
On that note, i seem to recall some physicist's personal web
page that got a massive attention on /., Reddit and some other
site all in the same day, leading to quite the surprise from
the server admin.
zokier - 6 hours ago
> Everyone (who was someone) read SlashdotYeah, they had good
concentration of people "who were someone". HN had similar thing
going on too; I wonder what's the next one is going to be...
moxious - 6 hours ago
There's not going to be a next one, there's going to be 10.20
years ago the web was a much smaller place, and a few billion
people currently online weren't even aware that the place
existed.Now, the population has exploded and there will be lots
of different sites, all good in different ways, to "nurture the
next generation of nerds". In different languages, too.Growth,
evolution -- all good.
geezerjay - 5 hours ago
> There's not going to be a next one, there's going to be
10.I don't agree. People tent to congregate on online forums
that achieved critical mass, and tend to flock where everyone
already is. Plenty of slashdot alternatives, including
slashdot clones, were already launched across the ages, and
they never succeeded attracting the same level of content and
same sort of community. Well, except HN which, at least to
me, represents a far improvement.
scj - 4 hours ago
I think there are 2 components to look at articles and
comments.I don't know if it is nostalgia, but I recall
preferring /.'s articles from 15ish years ago (compared to
what /. and HN have today). Maybe that is a reflection of
the news at the time, my age, the communities' interests,
or a combination of the above.With HN, I wish I could
filter Valley specific news ("Zucktown, USA"[0] would be a
recent example). HN aims for news for both Jobs and Woz
types, where I think /. was really focused on just "News
for Nerds, stuff that matters." That's all I really
wanted.So in terms of articles, I don't know what to
believe. But I know that HN's community is more civil than
/.'s, and this is one of the few sites on the web where I
read the comment section.[0]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15398430
cmdrtaco - 7 hours ago
Thanks!
sterwill - 7 hours ago
I vaguely remember you posting a link to Chips & Dips on a
Linux-related EFNet channel more than 20 years ago. I gave it
a look, and it was sort of interesting, but I didn't bookmark
it and forgot about it. Then later you announced Slashdot and
the new design must have made it stick in my head or something,
because I read it multiple times a day for the next 10 or so
years. Slashdot was an important source of news and hosted a
valuable community during those early days.My only regret is
that I missed out on a two-digit user ID when you added
registration, because I figured it probably wouldn't catch on
(boy, was I wrong!) and I didn't comment much anyway.Thanks
Rob, and best of luck!
KGIII - 7 hours ago
My post literally adds nothing to the thread. I'm just saying
hello.
blakesterz - 7 hours ago
Wow, just realized something totally crazy.. Honestly, I ended
up where I am today because of Slashdot. In 1999 I wanted to
build a Slashdot site but had no idea what I was doing. So I
sat down and just learned how all that stuff worked, ran
phpSlash for a while, then Slashcode, then Drupal. All the
while I kept learning to code and run servers because of my
little site. All the while new doors opened, and I kept working
and learning... and now 18 years later I'm doing what I do
because of your site. I've had a great little career, so many
thanks for helping me get here :-)
cmdrtaco - 7 hours ago
That makes two of us!
Nelson69 - 1 hours ago
I will echo this. I absolutely knew I was a software
engineer pre-Slashdot but it shaped what and where and how I
do that. And I also have had a very good run so far. So
thank you for that impact on my life.I did a book review on
there, way back when, and I meet Rob and Hemos at the Atlanta
Linux Showcase (I guess it was 1997 or 1998) as I took part
in the "Loki Hack" (they might have brought food, I don't
fully remember.) I don't know how to fully describe it but I
was a fresh out of school engineer at IBM, generally
introverted and shy, and I somehow felt like I needed
"permission" to take part in opensource and the community.
Not permission from work, that was actually very very easy,
but more like "where do you start" and I didn't want to look
like a fool. Someone else was running a project and I had
some ideas and had no idea if my ideas meshed with their
mission. It's just easy to stand on the sideline and talk
about stuff, but you sort of have to take a risk and put
yourself out there to take part, and maybe I needed
"permission" to do that. The slashhdot guys were
particularly down to earth, and laid back and totally
welcoming, Hemos even told me that they could probably send
me more books to review if I was up to it, just made me feel
totally welcome for my fairly trivial contribution. I think
it's really easy to turn away newbs with a bad experience and
these guys didn't do that. A big website and a business are
some neat things to be a part of and to have created, but to
be really early members of a new community and to do that
well and welcome people and grow it and nurture it is a major
accomplishment.
onion2k - 7 hours ago
+5 Interesting
[deleted]
paul - 7 hours ago
Slashdot is where I first encountered both Google ('98 / early
'99) and YC (the Summer Founders Program). So pretty valuable
personally. Thanks for that :)I miss the enthusiasm of that
community.
mljoe - 1 hours ago
Ditto. It almost felt like Google got its nerd cred from
being featured on Slashdot multiple times. BitCoin too
(waaaay before it was "popular"), and probably Linux itself.
tritium - 7 hours ago
Recently, the new of the moment is pretty weird though. In
retrospect, the things warranting criticism were easier targets,
and there was a lot of low hanging fruit.These days, a lot of
what used to catch some well-deserved flak has been refined and
corrected for. The things that deserve criticism lately are a
little more obtuse, and it's hard not to sound like a whiny,
petulant critic, when everything's not perfect.
#firstworldproblems
[deleted]
sah2ed - 7 hours ago
> Everyone (who was someone) read Slashdot.... as well as some of
those that would eventually become someone. Like Mark Zuckerberg
[0] who co-built an MP3 player that learns your taste [1] in
2003:> "It looks like they're both college freshmen now. But last
year, Adam D'Angelo went to Korea for the IOI contest.
Apparently, the other one is a smart guy too. A friend at Exeter
said Mark Zuckerberg was a bigshot in math there and had some
interesting coding projects of his own. Go figure."[0]
https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=61425&cid=5774512[1]
https://news.slashdot.org/story/03/04/21/110236/machine-lear...
lucasverra - 6 hours ago
> I may be paranoid, but I'd prefer not to have anyone, even my
own computer, perform data mining on me. - 2003 about MZ mp3AI
playerif the guy knew...
icebraining - 5 hours ago
He probably did, like the rest of us who read /. and
e-zines:https://yro.slashdot.org/story/00/07/26/1217248
/inside-
echel...https://yro.slashdot.org/story/01/05/25/1312239/the-
eu-repor...https://yro.slashdot.org/story/01/04/10/1626236
/aclu-
takes-o...https://news.slashdot.org/story/02/02/12/051200
/australia-
sp...https://yro.slashdot.org/story/99/07/16/1025259/britain-
tapp...
beezle - 4 hours ago
Wow.. time flys when you are getting old! To protect the mostly
innocent, my uid is just over 64K, so definitely one of the early
adopters. /. was definitely the premier place for nerdy/tech news
prior to the dot.bomb and it definitely had an outsized influence
in the tech world.Many have spoken of having their websites
slashdotted though it was not uncommon to get email months and
years later about a story submission. Somehow early netizens
believed the submitter must be an authority and would be more than
happy to answer their questions lol.
aklemm - 6 hours ago
Ahh the memories, especially that time I got an Ask Slashdot
accepted. That was a BIG DEAL for some reason.Addendum: Thinking
back, Slashdot is where I came of age in tech. Also, I browsed
casually without registering for at least a couple years before
finally getting a userid in the low 600K area. I regret not
registering right away!
dbg31415 - 1 hours ago
I remember, about 20 years ago, having an argument with someone on
Slashdot. Then realizing, about 10 messages in, that I actually
knew the person I was arguing with. Being able to connect with
friends online, being able to make friends through dialogue
online... the site was easily the best online community at the
time.Bonus: Even 20 years ago it had better design than Hacker
News! (= (Couldn't resist.)
barkingtoad - 3 hours ago
User #333 here. Back in the day, someone offered me oral sex for
the low user number. What a perfect metaphor for the dot-com era:
offering to wildly overpay for a social media asset that would
eventually turn out to be useless.
dotancohen - 2 hours ago
But if course you wouldn't have taken the offer, /.ers never have
sex. That would require leaving mom's basement!
[deleted]
[deleted]
disease - 4 hours ago
slashdot was one of the few news sites that stayed up during 9/11.
I think there was even a follow-up technical article about how they
kept it up that day.
digi_owl - 3 hours ago
Could be how i first read about it back then.
jonathankoren - 3 hours ago
Yeah, but that day showed just how weak they were in the
journalism department. So many unsubstantiated rumors.
trollied - 4 hours ago
No mention of Natalie Portman or Hot Grits in the Post. Colour me
disappointed.
ipunchghosts - 3 hours ago
Does anyone else remember kerneltrap?
KGIII - 7 hours ago
I lost access to my first account because I lost access to the
email address. This was quite a while back and it was a moniker
less able to be tied to me. So, I eventually stopped posting as AC
and signed up with my 'real' moniker.Same username as here.Anyhow,
I seldom post there, as of late at least, but I've met a bunch of
them in real life. Mostly, they're good people.Lately, I've found
the HN conversation to be more stimulating. I should try to visit
Slashdot later and see who dropped by.What I like best about sites
like Slashdot is the vast amount of intelligence there. You will
need to wade through some troll posts, but it is worth it to find
the gems. Reading at -1 is not for the faint of heart nor for the
easily offended. Still, I find it worth the effort.The new owners
have done away with the hidden trolltalk board. They have
disallowed the n-word, so people found a workaround using the few
Unicode characters they do allow. Still, no sign of the promised
UTF-8 support - which is funny because Soylent News got that
figured out pretty quickly.I do like to point out that Slashdot was
never good. No, no it wasn't. I read it before they allowed
comments and, as mentioned, even had a five digit UID. (I lost it
and now have a six digit UID.) Slashdot was never good.When people
on Slashdot like to talk about how it was so much better in the
past, about how the level of comments was so much better, I like to
link them to the announcement of VMWare releasing their first VM
software.The comments are mostly people insisting that it can't
work, won't work, and that VMs are a bad idea - because they are
quite happy dual booting Win95 and Linux. The comments range from
mockery to disbelief that such a product could even exist - even
though virtualization wasn't really new.So, no... Slashdot was
never really great. I'm not even sure it was ever really good.And
that was part of its charm - and still is. From GNAA to Yoda-in-
your-ass guy, Slashdot is just Slashdot. The racism is rampant, the
puns are still bad, and mobile is still broken, but not as bad as
beta. Slashdot is like your drunk college buddy that you really
hope doesn't show up at your wedding. And that's okay.Yeah, I'm
going to have to visit later. If you do visit, I'd suggest reading
at -1, just so you get the full experience.
mljoe - 1 hours ago
I can trace almost everything that helped me professionally and
even many of my tech opinions to something I read on Slashdot.
Really the site that influenced me the most.
chrissnell - 5 hours ago
User #5825 here. Here are a few of my favorites:The whole anti-
Microsoft movement on /. Thy were the evil empire and Google was
saintly. It?s funny how times change.The weather station we sent
you in hopes of doing a promotion for our weather equipment site,
weathertools.com.OOG THE CAVEMAN. He was DevOpsBorat at least a
decade before Twitter.The launch of Mac OS X and the launch of the
first titanium PowerBook.That CPU startup that Linus was a part of.
Most disappointing build-up ever. LOL
peatmoss - 1 hours ago
#5648 - We probably signed up the same month!
Isamu - 5 hours ago
> That CPU startup that Linus was a part of. Most disappointing
build-up ever. LOLYeah, Transmeta. That whole "stealth mode"
startup mystery kept the buzz
going.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransmetaRe Microsoft the
evil empire: it was deserved at the time. But it's nice to see
they have a better reputation these days.
organsnyder - 2 hours ago
My college laptop (Fujitsu Lifebook P-2046) had a Transmeta
Crusoe chip, running at 800 mhz. It was slow as molasses, but
could easily do 15 hours of battery life (screen on) with the
drive-bay and extended batteries, all in a sub-note form
factor. It was a perfect note-taking machine (all of my real
dev work was done on desktops or via SSH/telnet). Transmeta may
have had a short lifespan, but I think they played a big part
in jumpstarting Intel's movement to focus on power consumption
(remember, this was the Pentium 4 era).
MattGrommes - 6 hours ago
Slashdot user #578 here. :) Besides pre-web stuff like Usenet and
BBS boards /. was the first place I really felt like part of a
community. I still remember fondly the times that stuff I submitted
made it to the front page (like the story announcing the title of
Star Wars Episode 1), like I was now "famous" with a bunch of
people I really wanted to impress. Like most of us, I drifted away
a long time ago but I'm always happy to see people in new
communities who were around back then. Happy Birthday /. and thanks
for all the grits!
kazinator - 1 hours ago
#1483 here, yo. :) I logged in recently to poke around a bit.
jasongill - 18 minutes ago
User #527 here. I sold my username (iota) on eBay for $150, back
when your slashdot user number still meant something. I've always
wondered what the buyer was up to, it was funny at the time to
think of "selling" something that didn't exist. I guess it's
commonplace now
300bps - 5 hours ago
Like most of us, I drifted away a long time agoI just checked and
was shocked I remembered my password there.
FabHK - 3 hours ago
Wow, good memory, assuming your username, boasting of your new
high speed acoustic coupler modem, is any indication of when
you registered your account :-)
bdamm - 2 hours ago
Turbo button.
[deleted]
gm-conspiracy - 4 hours ago
Imagine a beowulf cluster of grits?
aembleton - 4 hours ago
Imagine a beowulf cluster of hot grits and Natalie Portman
dfrey - 2 hours ago
I don't know how GNAA would feel about that...
davidw - 6 hours ago
Yeah, I recall reading stuff there 'back in the day' and it was
pretty cool. I tried to find my old account, but couldn't :-/ I
did find a few stories I sent in in 1998.
dekhn - 6 hours ago
I am where I am today because of Slashdot. All those early
articles about Google running Linux...
katastic - 5 hours ago
I hope this doesn't come off as dickish but it's not intended as
such:I was really expecting more... well... history. As soon as I
get interested "he's gotta upgrade for the onslaught of users! How
will he handle it?", the article stops.p.s. Just realized Mr. Taco
submitted it himself. So let me add, "Hope your having a great day,
and thanks for contributing to the internet and hacker culture."
... But I still want to hear more about your history. ;) I've
thought about starting my own IT-centric social site so I'm dying
for info.
threeio - 3 hours ago
I remember registering wwwslashdot.org in my young days of being a
typo-domain advertiser (had to eat in college, I've repented) and
CmdrTaco posted a message indicating that they "Must have made it
because someone registered our typo domain."My mailserver crashed
about an hour later from the flood. Lesson learned :)
akeck - 3 hours ago
I learned about Slashdot from a screenshot demoing the
Enlightenment VM.
Mc_Big_G - 7 hours ago
I was always proud of having a slashdot userid < 262000 :)
Definitely spent too much time on slashdot in the university
computer lab.
onion2k - 7 hours ago
You need to be less than or equal to 203094 to be one of the cool
kids.
acomjean - 5 hours ago
ID > 20611, No wireless, Less space than a Nomad... LameI
always found it funny how the ranking of user by the order they
joined encourages people to join. I guess its the same as not
being a "green" user here.
ipunchghosts - 3 hours ago
What's the story behind Anonymous Coward, the most popular slashdot
user?!
rmason - 6 hours ago
Whether they know it or not Slashdot inspired a lot of Michigan
startup founders. They proved that you didn't have to be in
Silicon Valley to found a notable company.I well remember after
reading Slashdot for a few months and then finding out that they
were in West Michigan and being absolutely floored.Fun fact one of
Rob's friends who helped found the company is now a professor at
Michigan State University:https://msu.edu/~kdemaagd/bio.html
blakesterz - 7 hours ago
Feels like the Slashdot guys chased the wrong end of blogging.
Rather than seeing what Drupal/Wordpress saw (building the site is
the real money) the Slashodt folks chased the advertising/traffic
side to their site. It seems really obvious now, 20 years later,
that they should've spent time on Slashcode and made that better
for a larger audience and they could've maybe turned out to be
something like Drupal or WordPress now.I totally love slashdot
still, tried like hell to run Slashcode many years ago, but it
always feel like they were focused on Slashdot.org rather than
making slashcode work for many other sites.(really not meant as a
criticisms at all, just thinking about the good old days and what
its like looking back now)
bluedino - 3 hours ago
>> they should've spent time on Slashcode and made that better
for a larger audience and they could've maybe turned out to be
something like Drupal or WordPress now.I'd be curious as to how
much of the original code is left, but there's "Forked from
Slashcode, rehash is the codebase that powers SoylentNews.org,
powered by mod_perl 2"https://github.com/SoylentNews/rehashI
wonder if a Perl-based CMS would have became as popular...Part of
the appeal of Wordpress is any goober that 'knows a little PHP'
can hack on it.
cmdrtaco - 7 hours ago
Our shoestring budget probably prevented us from chasing that
rabbit like it deserved. And Frankly there were far more seismic
shifts that rocked us more.
alex_hitchins - 7 hours ago
Can you divulge any of those seismic shifts? Would be
interesting to hear.
EpicEng - 6 hours ago
I'd also love to hear some behind the scenes details if you're
willing. I was on /. every day for years.
[deleted]
[deleted]
fak3r - 3 hours ago
In case the site is down, here's a mirror
http://www.invitinghome.com/Mirrors/img/mirror-1534.jpg
[deleted]
hesk - 3 hours ago
Can't wait to read the same post 10 years from now.
[deleted]
garyrichardson - 7 hours ago
For me, Slashdot was the first big internet community. I wasn't
materially involved in news groups before that.It's a little weird
to think I wasn't 20 when I started using /. I was also a little
surprised to see there's still a website at the URL. And I can
still log in with my old username.And, for the record, my
autoincrement user id was 6533. During the height of their
popularity having a 4 digit id give me a bit of geek cred :)
soulskill - 5 hours ago
I was with Slashdot for 8 years. There are a lot of memories I
could share, but the thing I appreciated most about my time there
was just how much Rob (and the core team of engineers and editors)
really cared about the site and its users. It's rare to see such
conviction from tech companies or leaders of large, user-centric
websites.I'm not sure Slashdot's users ever really understood how
much time and energy Rob expended defending the site from user-
hostile changes tossed without concern from the upper echelons of
the org chart.Thanks Rob.
chris_wot - 2 hours ago
They sent pizza to Kuro5hin during a difficult time. That showed
real class.
jrmg - 33 minutes ago
Oh, man, Kuro5hin! That was such a great, diverse, welcoming
site for a couple of years. So sad what it descended into.
ocschwar - 4 hours ago
What I miss about Slashdot more than anything was the editors and
writers using the comments section to fact check the stories.Ye
ghods, do I miss that.
ciustuc - 5 hours ago
Sharing the audio version of the article for those who'd like to
listen to the article: http://bingewith.com/#id694
hprotagonist - 7 hours ago
I have some real fond memories of reading slashdot before classes
in high school. I think my favorite was the day Rob proposed, and
I was late to AP chemistry because I was frantically reloading the
page to see what happened..Through it i discovered the EFF, the
jargon file, the FSF, and much else (hot grits, anyone?), and I
miss that community. I haven't spent any serious time there in
about 8 years.
baseten - 4 hours ago
I haven't thought about Natalie Portman covered in hot grits in
some years, so thanks for that.
digi_owl - 7 hours ago
I check the comments from time to time, but i fear the place is
crawling with paid shills these days.
JoshMnem - 3 hours ago
I wish that people would stop blogging on Medium, especially about
Free software topics. I click the link and get an obnoxiously
animated popup shoved in my face that tells me that I've read my
two articles for the month and that I should log in for the full
experience. Why should people be asked to sign in to follow a blog
when there is RSS/Atom? Learning how to use Hugo, Metalsmith, Hexo,
Pelican, or Jekyll is not difficult.
Jarwain - 3 hours ago
For an author, I'd imagine there are discoverability and
convenience aspects involved in the decision to post on medium,
versus hosting one's own blog.
isostatic - 34 minutes ago
I wonder if the author has ever hosted his own blog?
JoshMnem - 1 hours ago
Free software issues are more important than "convenience".
Passively consuming TV shows from a couch is more convenient
than developing technical skills and building things online,
but one is objectively more useful to society than the other.
kevin_thibedeau - 2 hours ago
Works fine with NoScript. Never knew Medium had a page view
limit.
clutchdude - 6 hours ago
Thanks cmdrtaco!Throughout the years, I'd turn to /. to keep up to
date on latest shakings and goings ons. I first heard about MythTV
there back in the heady days before the home media landscape was
bought up and "civilized". I got to see a constant reminders of the
failings for the RIAA and so....many....patent troll cases. I
remember the crap packt publishing reviews too - basically getting
someone to pimp their book. Tons of discussions on cell phones and
where the technology was going before Apple did put out the 3g
phone and created the walled gardens we have today...then reading
about the jailbreaking and what not that was created.I owe a lot to
/. for helping shape me into the slightly jaded but functional
developer I am today.One of my fondest memories was the time we did
an Oktoberfest party on the 10th anniversary of /. We were the only
party in the state I think.
visarga - 3 hours ago
I remember the endless IBM vs. SCO lawsuit discussions.
digi_owl - 3 hours ago
heh, now i remind myself that i still have User Friendly in the
RSS reader. Anyone know what Illiad is up to these days?
peter303 - 5 hours ago
Five digit slashdot here and star post name, but I have most
switched to Hacker news. HN updates immediately, raises highest
voted topics to top. I notice both cover the same articles. The
slashdot ads are a lttle annoying.
johansch - 5 hours ago
Ahh, memories. (I'm slashdot user #9784.)I remember when our tiny
company (with a 2 Mbit/s uplink, iirc) was
slashdotted:https://ask.slashdot.org/story/00/05/27/2227209
/thoughts-on-...I was running (our homebrew) web server with debug
output in an xterm (with timing details for every request served)
throughout this ordeal, just to be sure it didn't screw up. (We
didn't really have a thorough testing regime, ahem.)
gfodor - 4 hours ago
I remember getting my house's cable modem slashdotted in 2001 when
i launched a community site (half-empty.org) I built -- what a wild
ride that was. (If you are reading, thanks to Tim Wilde and the
rest of the DynDNS crew for all the memories helping me, a young
kid, get that site into an actual DC :))I remember always rolling
my eyes at the Linux and Free Software crowd on /. and the anti-
Microsoft zeitgeist that you could find at the top of pretty much
any thread, even if it was about something completely unrelated. At
the the height of it these people were painted as communists by
Microsoft (and if they had any real visibility in the media, I'd
imagine they'd have gotten the same treatment.)But here I am today
sitting at my desk at Mozilla committed to working only on open
source software for the rest of my career and never writing another
line of proprietary code, after having seen enough good and pure-
intentioned closed source projects morph and turn bad after the
pointy haired bosses, the "visionaries", and the investor class got
enough control over them.I guess those days have always been in the
back of my mind. It took a lot of life lessons to really understand
how important the things the /. community was always debating back
then around software licenses, privacy, and IP really were. Images
of "billg" as the borg were fun, but behind those gags were serious
conversations that ended up shaping our world, and ensuring to one
degree or another there would always be a hedge against corporate
control of software.In today's world of mass surveillance,
corporate consolidation of internet infrastructure, and the call
for censorship of speech on the web, a community like /. is sorely
needed. Here we are on the modern day equivalent, a site owned and
operated by a startup incubator. It's fortunate that a community
like this exists at all in some form, but how truly times have
changed.
samstave - 2 hours ago
>>In today's world of mass surveillance, corporate consolidation
of internet infrastructure, and the call for censorship of speech
on the webI am going to have to call you out.I had a low-digit ID
on /.We (people like me) have been calling this out for FUCKING
DECADES.I feel that we can talk about generational millenials
etc.. but we can also call out DIGITAL millenials; those who
thing they know what the fuck is up just because they "work at
facebook"I have been a whistle against NSA router backdoors since
1997...So nobody wanted to hear it then - and the giants have
surpassed me - and I concede...but to think that this is some
freaking revelation is bullshit.We have been talking about it for
literally decades. FFS FB threatened to sue me for that which I
revealed even here on HN.Today's "world" has been here since the
70s.
serf - 1 hours ago
same story here. Low number ID, privacy advocate, etc since the
90s.the part that disgusts me recently is that when these
conspiracies are turned into fact by post-facto released
information from official sources, a good amount of the
reaction is "So? Everyone already knew that anyway."I feel like
that reaction is so blas? that it will ultimately be the
deathknell of the personal privacy movement.Whether or not the
propagation of that kind of attitude and reaction to such
things is state-induced is another question, but the damage
that such opinions do to such activism is definetly real. If I
were an adversary to a cause, I would definetly consider those
kind of tactics against the ideals of my enemy.
sizzle - 2 hours ago
Thank you for sticking up for what's right.
donavanm - 2 hours ago
Indeed. I remember the evolution of ECHELON in the 90s having
the same impact in some circles. And then Carnivore coming out
a decade later. If someone doesnt (at least) know of SHAMROCK
and MINARET they really have no context.
ethbro - 1 hours ago
Also Clipper/Skipjack
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
hinkley - 10 minutes ago
Unfortunately, people had already forgotten about the
Clipper Chip when Al Gore got the nomination the first
time.
gfodor - 1 hours ago
I think you misinterpreted my post. I wasn't claiming these
were new problems. I was just claiming that now more than ever
(since software is eating the world) we need communities like
/. raising the alarm. I was also admitting that I
underestimated the importance of these things back when I was
reading /. as a high schooler in the late 90's (I, too, have a
low digit ID on slashdot.)
HeyLaughingBoy - 2 hours ago
Hear, hear. I had a conversation last week where I mentioned
that 20 years ago, on Usenet of all places, people were saying
that due to the growing size of corporate databases, privacy
had already been dead for a long time.
gcb0 - 2 hours ago
context is everything.you were lucky to be doing an online gig.
the rest of /. audience was probably in desktop software. most of
the people there were ruthlessly crushed by Microsoft business
tactics.they mostly had a very good reason to attack Microsoft.
MartinCron - 1 hours ago
most of the people there were ruthlessly crushed by Microsoft
business tacticsThat has to be hyperbole. Even at the height of
Microsoft's aggression, there were many professional software
devs left uncrushed.
chris_wot - 1 hours ago
Microsoft deliberately went out of their way to make life
incredibly difficult for anyone who competed with them. To
the point of corrupting standards bodies. Just look at their
document format, and we are still dealing with that bullshit
years later.
hinkley - 20 minutes ago
You didn't have to be crushed directly if they crushed one of
your favorite tools.Happened to me three or four times and I
picked up a pitchfork too.
gfodor - 1 hours ago
I feel like avoiding the steamroller of "embrace and extend"
that was MS at the time was highly dependent upon luck.
flukus - 1 hours ago
The steam roller is still there from quite a few companies,
make something popular and Google, MS, Facebook will clone
it and force it on people. No luck about it though, these
companies are only interested in mass market stuff, the
long tail has only gotten longer.
Nition - 2 hours ago
> The anti-Microsoft zeitgeist that you could find at the top of
pretty much any thread, even if it was about something completely
unrelated.Just a side comment, I feel like Hacker News is going
this way with Facebook a little. Posts that tangentially mention
Facebook, there's usually a high-rated comment about how Facebook
is evil and since the user left Facebook their life has improved.
Those "I don't even own a TV"-like posts are a bit grating as the
top comment on every thread, but hey maybe like you say, it's
really pushing towards a better future in the end.
bdamm - 2 hours ago
Not owning a TV is pushing my kid to watch a lot of YouTube.
I'm seriously considering buying a TV, after living for 30
years without one, just so that I can have a quality
entertainment feed that doesn't bend to the new media's idea of
what my kid should watch, because what that ends up being is
endless advertisements ("open this egg! What's inside? A Ken
doll!! Wow!!") and videos of pandas killing each other with
chainsaws, then reaching into the body cavity to find their
surprise egg.What a world.
jrmg - 36 minutes ago
I totally know what you mean.I?m worried that my kid is not
getting a ?big? view of the world, and is instead seeing it
via YouTube, and anti-Trump playground conversations (which I
agree with, to be sure, but it?s not a very deep or diverse
understanding of the world).When I think back to my
childhood, my view of what the world, and human society
(civic society?) ?is? came from TV news my parents happened
to be watching - and occasional glances at their
newspapers.Even though I try to consume news from wide
ranging sources, my kid sees none of that; it?s all an
individual pursuit.I fear there?s also a lack of ?coherence?
in society today, and suspect that everyone watching the same
news programme was something that provided it. When we think
of current events, I don?t think that we?re all even aware of
things outside our ?bubbles? - adults are sort of aware of
this. What must growing up like this be like though?I?m
considering starting to watch evening network news. One
problem with that is that we don?t have a TV - just iPads,
laptops, and a projector for watching movies.I?ve also
subscribed to a delivery of the newspaper on Sunday (though
it?s been a month and it?s never actually been successfully
delivered to my home yet...)Who?d?ve thought we?d be
lamenting the decline of TV the same way our parents lamented
the decline of newspapers?!
j_s - 1 hours ago
I've limited it to Netflix on the big screen. I don't want
the constant jumping from video to video either, pick one and
then be stuck with it 'til it's done (or turn it off).I am
considering Amazon FreeTime Unlimited as well, I would
recommend trying that before a TV though I would appreciate
any anecdata on it.Also, a shout out to
https://dnslearning.org/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14913547 (Aug 2017) <-
expanding that whole YouTube discussion might be worth your
time.> utefan001: This is how my 11 year old daughter uses
YouTube now... After 30 min, DNS no longer works for
entertainment sites.
jerf - 2 hours ago
Depending on the age of your kids, I suggest total YouTube
curation. I've only got up to a nine-year-old but I'm
thinking it's going to have to go up to at least 13 or 14
before I can have a serious discussion about just what is out
there and how people are trying to manipulate them.Five years
ago that would have been more to avoid them from stumbling
across the various types of adult content that for various
reasons I would have preferred them not to view, and perhaps
the HN zeitgeist would have called me a puritan (although I'm
not just thinking sex and violence here, but also things like
conspiracy theories and politics they are currently incapable
of processing and other things [1]). Now, unfortunately, it's
more about avoiding the brain hackers that you describe that
know how to hack their brains into getting low-level addicted
to that sort of garbage, and now perhaps the HN zeitgeist
will be less offended at my policy that a poor defenseless
six-year-old or nine-year-old in my case can't be expected to
defend themselves against this level of
sophistication.(Because however stupid those videos may
strike you as an adult, they are sophisticated, in their own
way. The "cartoons that were just toy commercials" of my
youth were nothing compared to what modern kids are being
targeted by.)The good news is that we're actually finding
some channels where we have some common ground. For instance,
they're really digging Homestar Runner now, and I've got some
others that I can pick and choose from that we all like.I
increasingly pity the "digital natives" that didn't get to
ease themselves into this world like I did. I'm not saying
they're hopelessly lost; today's article about kids
rebelling against social media is heartening. I'm just
saying, I had a much easier on-ramp than they did. My first
few years worth of youthful indiscretions are now utterly
obliterated, because the dial-in BBS they were on is now long
gone. I wasn't fucking up on Facebook or where the Internet
Archive could find me. By the time I got on to the real
internet, oh, I'm sure I could find things that would make me
cringe now, but I'm pretty confident I wasn't blowing my foot
off anymore.[1]: Oh, and I'm pleased to say that they both
seem to be on track to be voracious book readers, which I
think is the strongest Step One to being able to deal with
the onslaught they will eventually face. My strategy here is
not just mere "denial of access", as I am well aware that
doesn't work into their adulthood, and my goal is to raise
good adults, not good children. I'm still feeling through
what my strategy is, on what is shifting sand anyhow, but
there's more to it than just "shield them forever."
Nition - 2 hours ago
How are you managing "total curation"? Are you always there
with them when they're on YouTube, or are you whitelisting
specific channels in some way?
zo1 - 1 hours ago
Not the OP, but there is no way that I'm aware of to
whitelist (or blacklist!) specific channels on youtube.
And thanks to HTTPS, I can't even intercept + modify
youtube pages at the network level. Thank you, privacy
folks, hope you're happy!Alternatively, there is always
kids.youtube.com which is weirdly just an app for
Ios/Android. I haven't tried it, and myself have actively
disabled/removed all Youtube from being accessible by the
younglings. Curated media, decided by me is all they get
to watch then.
j_s - 1 hours ago
Does YouTube app/whatever not honor device-trusted root
certs? I know Google pins some stuff, and some YouTube
players are embedded in appliances.If it were possible to
mitm HTTPS specifically for YouTube that would still be a
lot of work, maybe a good Raspberry Pi project.
ballenf - 15 minutes ago
I'd look into youtube-dl. I tried all the parental
controls on Youtube, Netflix, Amazon and devices only to
finally realize that my idea of what's suitable doesn't
have an equivalent rating.There are so many safe for any
age videos that have a bunch of kids with the worst, most
cynical attitudes and no respect for authority and then
wholesome shows with "intense emotion" or whatever that
get rated tv-14.So I download everything and put it on a
USB hard drive hooked to a media hub.
Nition - 1 hours ago
The YouTube Kids app has a really nice interface, but
there's no whitelist option unfortunately. I wish there
was. It does let you block videos or channels
individually, but you can imagine how much good that does
on a site as big as YouTube.As you say, it's also
iOS/Android only. No PC option for kids at all.
Nition - 2 hours ago
I really just meant the "I left Facebook" posts have the same
kind of feel as the old "I don't even own a TV" clich?, but
yeah, I know what you mean as well, and it's a problem. I
wish the YouTube Kids app let you optionally whitelist a set
of channels instead of only allowing a blacklist. It's nice
that you can block a video or a channel, but there are
thousands of low-quality channels.
geezerjay - 1 hours ago
> Just a side comment, I feel like Hacker News is going this
way with Facebook a little.In slashdot, PR companies working
for Microsoft were operating dozens of sock puppet accounts to
post copy-paste messages extolling the company for its
perfection, and praising each and every single product they
were announcing. Slashdotters became aware of the problem, and
what appeared to be a deep collusion between those PR companies
and slashdot itself to keep pushing that propaganda while
persecuting vocal critics who raised attention to the problem,
and started to nurture a profound dislike for the whole
affair.Some people may not like Facebook, but HN is far from
the path that slashdot was driven into.
serf - 1 hours ago
>In slashdot, PR companies working for Microsoft were
operating dozens of sock puppet accounts to post copy-paste
messages extolling the company for its perfection, and
praising each and every single product they were
announcingthe more things change the more they stay the
same.It's not a winnable bet (at least right now), but i'd
wager that groups are doing that right this very second, even
here.Techies are an important group to influence, and there
are a lot of interests here. The level of discourse and
discussion is fairly high here, but don't let that trick you
into the naivet? that folks with vested interests here are
any more honest than they are anywhere else in the world or
on the net.
j_s - 54 minutes ago
Can you link to any examples?I'm curious as I don't remember
things as being that bad - no expectations of any unwanted
work for my sake though!
delinka - 5 hours ago
Has someone yet curated a list of All Slashdot Polls Concerning or
Mentioning Cowboy Neal?
fak3r - 3 hours ago
Fact: Slashdot is dyingIt is official. Netcraft now confirms:
Slashdot is dyingOne more crippling bombshell hit the already
beleaguered Slashdot community when CmdrTaco confirmed that he is
resigning from Slashdot, now that Slashdot market share has dropped
yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all
geek news outlets. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey
which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more market share, this
news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is
collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by
failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive
geek news reading test.You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin
[amazingkreskin.com] to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing
is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't
be any future at all for Slashdot because Slashdot is dying. Things
are looking very bad for Slashdot. As many of us are already aware,
Slashdot continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river
of blood.Slashdot YRO is the most endangered of them all, having
lost 93% of its core contributors. The sudden and unpleasant
departures of long time Slashdot contributors only serve to
underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any
doubt: Slashdot is dying.Let's keep to the facts and look at the
numbers.Slashdot leader CmdrTaco states that there are 7000 users
of Slashdot. How many users of Ask Slashdot stories are there?
Let's see. The number of Ask Slashdot stories versus Slashdot posts
is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 =
1400 Ask Slashdot stories users. Slashdot book reviews (or,
'Slashvertisements') are about half of the volume of Ask Slashdot
stories. Therefore there are about 700 Slashvertisments. A recent
article put Slashdot Security posts at about 80 percent of the
Slashdot market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400
Slashdot users. This is consistent with the number of Slashdot
posts.Due to the troubles of OSNews, abysmal sales and so on,
OSNews went out of business and was taken over by Digg, another
troubled geek news site. Now Digg is also dead, its corpse turned
over to yet another charnel house.All major surveys show that
Slashdot has steadily declined in market share. Slashdot is very
sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot
is to survive at all it will be among geek news dilettante
dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle
could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes,
Slashdot is dead.Fact: Slashdot is dying(source from Thursday
August 25, 2011 @12:39PM:
https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2397584&cid=37209054 also
notice I got a n00b to respond to me... oh, such simpler times ;) )
conesus - 7 hours ago
I never publicly announced this but I loved Slashdot?s friend/foe
system so much that I built it as a cross browser extension for
Hacker News. It?s called Hacker Smacker and it?s on
GitHub.https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmackerSupports not only
friends and foes but also friends of friends and foes of friends.
Makes it easy to scan the HN homepage and comment threads and see
what?s good. Much like how Slashdot?s friend foe system highlighted
the good stuff in threads.
mercer - 4 hours ago
Oh, that's nice!It's not currently compatible with Hacker News
Enhancement Suite. Quickest solution I found was to change a line
in findCurrentUser(), but just FYI. It would've been a deal-
breaker for me.Looking forward to playing around with this :).
t3f - 1 hours ago
@mercer - There a PR or Fork for that?
repler - 5 hours ago
This is awesome!! Thank you!Hey - it's a little hard to see the
splits like foe of a friend (I'm red/green color blind), what's
an easy way to tweak the colors?EDIT: I unpacked it and tweaked
the CSS. Wooo!
jessriedel - 7 hours ago
I read the Slashdot FAQ on the Friend/Foe system, but I still
don't understand it. Is the idea just that it lets you filter a
comment thread to emphasize comments written by people you're
interested in (friends)? Does it hide the comments of foes?
maxerickson - 5 hours ago
Yes, alter the displayed scoring.Also based on the 2nd degree
information, friends of friends and such.I would use it behind
the scenes to look for bad accounts too. Someone with lots of
foes would be a candidate for some silent moderation.
snerbles - 7 hours ago
Slashdot's score weighting is configurable. You could even add
a positive score offset to foes.
digi_owl - 7 hours ago
The impression i have is that it gives fores a personal -1 on
their comment score. So unless they get some +1s from others,
or you have set /. to show everything, they will vanish below
the breakpoint.Note though that anyone can look up who has them
flagged as foe on /..
digi_owl - 7 hours ago
Been looking for something like this, as i have been using RES
over at Reddit for a similar purpose.
jandrese - 7 hours ago
The one thing that the friend/foe system missed IMHO was the
ability to tag posters with comments like "suspected oil shill"
or "actual Intel chip designer" or stuff like that. That's
often more useful than some vague idea that a poster had some
especially good or poor posting in the past.
mercer - 4 hours ago
The Hacker News Enhancement Suite does this, plus other
things.It's not compatible currently with Hacker Smacker, but
fixing that takes one line of tweaking.
kibwen - 6 hours ago
The RES browser extension does this for Reddit (which I
suspect you might already know, but others might not). It
also sort of does automatic friend/foe for you, as it
displays the net number of votes that you've given to each
user next to their username, turning bright green for
positive numbers and bright red for negative.
jandrese - 7 hours ago
Funnily enough, every time I see the friend/foe dots/pills on a
post my first thought is "that's an old-timer". I'm betting well
over 75% of the current Slashdot readers don't even know it
exists.
cannam - 5 hours ago
I have a four-digit Slashdot ID and I don't remember friends
and foes. Is it after my time, or is it just that I don't
remember anything any more?
sethrin - 2 hours ago
It still exists if you have the original discussion system
enabled. I never moved on to the javascript-based one.
kevstev - 3 hours ago
You just don't remember anything anymore. IIRC, it was
implemented around 2001. It was little more than a curiosity
though, you may have just bypassed the little colored "pills"
on comments, but aside from being angry about having foes, or
happy about getting a new friend, nothing was really done
with the feature.
marcosdumay - moments ago
The point of it was letting you give free pass from the
moderation for some people's comments always appearing for
you, or hiding other people.
dotancohen - 2 hours ago
I think that friends' posts had an extra point of
moderation calculated for your display, though that feature
might not have been present in early incarnations.
KGIII - 7 hours ago
I have wanted HN to have a friend/foe system since I first found
the site. I'd also like it to have the ability to make notes,
like 'farkies' from Fark.On Slashdot, you simply add them to a
friend or for list. On Fark, you get to flag them in certai
colors and then leave yourself a note (other people can't see it
but admins probably can) that I use to remind me of why I put
them on the list.I'd like a combination of those two things. A
simple friend/foe list with comments that show next to their
name. I'd have no use for ignore functionality. Also, I usually
use said note to write polite things that help me remember the
user.I think it encourages getting to know the other people and
humanizes the pixels on the screen. Both sites have led to my
meeting people in real life and making real life friendships.
That's easier, for me at least, when I can more easily identify
them as individuals and remember them.
[deleted]
[deleted]
rwmj - 1 hours ago
Slashdot got a surprisingly large amount of stuff right, amazing
considering it was one of the pioneering web-based discussion
systems.- You cannot both moderate and comment on the same
article.- Limited moderation points (too limited on Slashdot
arguably, but better than infinite up/down votes).- They didn't
have up/down, but a system of "Interesting", "Informative", "Off-
Topic" and a few others. These are the same as up/down votes in
the end, but make you classify postings.- Set threshold to (say)
3 and quickly see only the +3 interesting comments on an
article.- Meta-moderation didn't work well, but was an
interesting idea.
seanalltogether - 7 hours ago
I wonder where sites like slashdot and digg will continue to fit in
to the news landscape over time? If I'm looking for tech news
straight from the horses mouth, I often end up at arstechnica,
anandtech, or verge. If I'm interested in the zeitgiest I might
look to HN or reddit. Is there a middle ground to this that's
viable?
zokier - 6 hours ago
I love(d) /. article summaries, even if the quality of editing
was a running joke. Also the fact that it was simple sequential
list and not constantly changing and living front page was a nice
aspect. On HN you might miss a good story either because of bad
title or because not checking the front page often enough. On the
other hand aggressively refreshing HN and optimistically clicking
more links leads to massive overload. Personally I think the
middle road of /. hits a very good balance.
qu4z-2 - 2 hours ago
Hey cmdrtaco. This isn't entirely related, but I just wanted to say
thanks for the chili recipe from your blog. I've been using it for
years and it's great.(I also miss the Slashdot that was).
snapetom - 3 hours ago
Fond memories, as many others have pointed out. I still check it
out every few days. I find the stories there almost as interesting
as the ones that make it to HN and a lot more interesting and
educational than those making it to the top of reddit.Shot in the
dark and off topic, but for years I've been trying to find a
comment posted on /. during the Columbia disaster. A poster
mentioned how he was part of some high school science program and
got to visit the Columbia before her maiden voyage. When it was
lost, he was driving across remote Texas on the way back from a
client visit when he saw the debris across the sky. It was quite a
sad and moving story, and I'd love to re-read it.
titzer - 6 hours ago
I learned about 9/11 from the slashdot front page. Wow, 16 years
ago.
isostatic - 35 minutes ago
I did the same when the dupe was posted 3 weeks later
bluedino - 3 hours ago
Perl Monks was my favorite thing that came from the Slashdot guys.
I never got Perl, but did a few projects with it over the years and
I was always amazed at how cool the community on that site
was.www.perlmonks.org
jonstokes - 6 hours ago
Slashdot was a major inspiration to us as we grew Ars Technica, not
to mention a major source of critical traffic and growth in those
early years.Hats off to Rob! I owe you, dude. We all do :-)
rtx - 2 hours ago
You all are doing good work too.
antod - 23 minutes ago
Yeah it was slashdot that sent me to the embryonic Ars to find
out all about Pentium2 (or was it 3?) architectures, BeOS, and
this new-fangled unstable unixy MacOS in beta etc.
katastic - 5 hours ago
You seem to write almost exclusively CPU and tech articles. Good
for you. I wish your co-workers would stick to technology and lay
off pushing politics.[edit] Wow, the moderators couldn't even
tell I was complimenting the guy.
digi_owl - 3 hours ago
I honestly agree that ArsTechnica has lost something since Jon
quit (or he quit because the writing was on the door).And not
as much the politics, as the feeling that the site has become
more "partisan" in the tech world.
katastic - 3 hours ago
I know right? I don't feel like my opinion was really that
controversial.Ars Technica has been a bittersweet story for
years in all of the communities / circles that I hang out at.
Some of their articles are great journalism. Others make you
pine for "the good old days".I wish they'd bring back
Computer Gaming World. That was the gold standard of computer
journalism. You can actually find PDF's of every issue ever
released online and if you compare them to today, they used
to be so methodical and objective. They didn't read like
advertisements and there was no forced-in message about the
political climate. You didn't read about Battle Chess and get
shamed for liking that the Queen looked pretty.
qmarchi - 2 hours ago
Frequent reader of Ars, I don't comment/post much on Civis but
enjoy reading the deep dives into updates like Oreo and iOS 11.
sillyquiet - 5 hours ago
Yep. I found Ars via a link to a system build guide off of
Slashdot oh so very many years ago.
AndrewStephens - 5 hours ago
I remember the early days of slashdot fondly, although I didn't
actually make an account until a few years later. It was such an
interesting mix of serious discussion, in-jokes, and amusing trolls
(even the infamous goatsx troll that I fell for more than once.)I
still think that the moderation and meta-moderation was one of the
most interesting experiments in a self-governing commenting system,
even though it was clear that it was mostly a failure in the long
run. My conclusion is that a site needs hands-on human moderation
to maintain quality.Slashdot is also a perfect example of the
general life-cycle of cool social site. Humble beginnings -> lots
of interesting people -> own little subculture -> lots of
interesting content with some impenetrable in-jokes -> existing
userbase ages out as they get jobs or have kids -> less interesting
content, more in-jokes -> owners sell -> dry husk of a site
remains.
matt_wulfeck - 5 hours ago
More like:1. Group #1 joins who care about site2. Group #1
improves site. Sense of "community" keeps things in check.3. Site
grows in popularity and group #2 joins4. Site loses sense of
community and ability to moderate itself effectively.5. Group #1
leaves
IncRnd - 3 hours ago
Where's the Profit ???
sthu11182 - 2 hours ago
from stealing underpants obviously
Yetanfou - 1 hours ago
There is even a term for this phenomenon: eternal September
[1]. It originated as Usenet slang for a period beginning in
September 1993, AOL started offering Usenet access to its users
which overwhelmed the existing culture for online forums.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
zen35 - 4 hours ago
I don't know what you guys are talking about. What happened was
very clearly:1. Group #1 joins who care about site2. Group #1
improves site. Sense of "community" keeps things in check.3.
Site grows in popularity and group #2 joins4. ?????5. Profit
ktta - 5 hours ago
For some reason I think this going to happen to HN too, and I
feel it is at 3. And I'm not sure if I'm in group #1 or group
#2.
brandnewlow - 4 hours ago
I, along with a lot of people, joined HN in 2008 after
Techcrunch wrote about it. That's pretty close to "Group 2
joins" and yet 9 years later HN persists!
supergreg - 4 hours ago
I think there's more keeping things in check here than at ./
when group #2 joined.
nathanm412 - 4 hours ago
I think it's been at step 3 for longer than most sites have
last. I know I'm part of group 2, but I've seen a somewhat
consistent culture since I arrived over five years ago.
ktta - 4 hours ago
Looks like you joined about 5 1/2 years ago. I'm surprised
you think you're part of Group #2.Before what date do you
think people can be group #1? Or are you ascribing the
group number to contributions rather than date of joining?
stingrae - 3 hours ago
When a friend first recommended hackernews to me it
didn't show up in google searches. So I gave up. I think
techcrunch finally led me to finding it. By the time I
actually created an account(just 10 days before nathan^),
people were already complaining about the deterioration
of the community, so I assumed I was in group 2.
jimjimjim - 3 hours ago
also see: twitter, the internet, tech in general...
crusso - 4 hours ago
That general pattern is followed by companies, social
organizations, and even countries - to an extent.
digi_owl - 4 hours ago
1. Eternal September.2. https://meaningness.com/metablog/geeks-
mops-sociopaths
peatmoss - 1 hours ago
> I remember the early days of slashdot fondly, although I didn't
actually make an account until a few years later.I still consider
my mid 4-digits slashdot id a mark of pride. It's also a great
regret that I had spent a significant amount of time on the site
before a friend convinced me to finally register an account. I'm
pretty sure I could have been in the 3 digit club.I too remember
slashdot fondly, but the webbernets are a very different place
today?more fractured, self-selected into groups, more appealing
to the masses, less wild west freedom.
jasonwmiller - 6 hours ago
cmdrtaco, thanks for all the grits, inventing the blog and the
watering hole that helped facilitate the discourse and creation of
the open source movement.#1794
taftster - 3 hours ago
Actually this is a great comment. I wonder how many ideas grew
out of Slashdot? What was its influence on the world? The
"watering hole of the open source movement." +1
InsightfulSlashdot shaped the minds, ideas and opinions of many
people, and definitely changed the world. It helped get people
into the internet, software development, perl, etc.Would
HackerNews exist without slashdot paving the way? Interesting to
think about.
raphlinus - 6 hours ago
Slashdot was one of the main inspirations for Advogato. One clue in
support of this is that the codebase was called "mod_virgule". The
trust metrics were designed to be a more sophisticated moderation
system than what Slashdot did, but in retrospect I'm not sure it
actually worked that much better; Advogato never reached a mass
audience and to the extent it had higher quality posts it was
probably due to a smaller and more focused community.I still have
my slashdot account (number 3148), but rarely use it. I can well
imagine the "complicated feelings" that Rob has, and wanted to add
my voice to the many saying that Slashdot was an important Internet
space.
wslh - 2 hours ago
I enjoyed Slashdot every single day as a passive reader but not as
an user. I never received feedback from the founders when I pointed
them to incorrect facts in their news and the never corrected the
posts there. I specially rember an important security issue
discovered by the company where I worked (Core Security
Technologies) that was mistakenly reported as if was found by CERT.
You can say that this is very common but at that time Slashdot was
the top influential place in the community and security wise.
20721 - 44 minutes ago
My favourite part of Slashdot was the trolling.Some classic trolls
there like "egg troll", "The Turd Report", etc. with their quite
absurd yet entertaining posts.Then there was the rather ruder
trolling, like not knowing if the link you were about to follow was
yet another Goatse Man. Or the more helpful trolls, such as ones
taking music requests to spam as the first post.There was even a
'hidden SID' forum, trolltalk, which was rather amusing (and
somewhat disturbing) until it was overrun by some Markov chain
bot.And spinoff trolling sites like http://adequacy.org - satire to
rile uptight nerds and amuse the rest.I think the bizarre trolling
subculture, amidst the righteous frothing of Linux fanaticism, was
what really made Slashdot.Anyway, good times.
wiremine - 4 hours ago
I worked at The Image Group a few years after Rob left, and one of
the designers there confirmed the story.> "I took a rejected
template from a project at work"The version I heard was he pitched
this as the actual website for The Image Group, except it had
different colors and the boxes where on the left instead of the
right. Crazy to think if ownership had accepted it.Side note: I
built sets with Rob in high school: crazy and all around nice guy.
Very high energy back then. I'll never forget his rant/love letter
for Pascal I heard one day during a break.
crusso - 4 hours ago
I was on slashdot from the very early days until way too recently.
In 2011, I joined a startup company of young guys and one of them
saw that I had a slashdot page up. He said, "Slashdot is for old
people. Let us show you Hacker News".