The hippest internet cafe of 1995 [video] | Hacker News Reader

The hippest internet cafe of 1995 [video]

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110 pointsshifte70 comments

My uncle used to run this back in 1993 in Helsinki. Good times. Love the hair styles and the jungle soundtrack. Coming from BBS's, the web and IRC blew my mind.

I wish I could find my old geocities page now. I'm sure it had a few transparent gif explosions on it.

This is wonderful. Thanks so much for sharing this!

I wanna feel superior about how none of those television people knew how to pronounce @, but to be honest I didn't know that in 1995 either.

To be fair, I was 9 and didn't know any other words in English either.

It's a bit like how a lot of people refer to '#' as 'hashtag' these days, without knowing about 'the pound symbol' or 'sharp' (if you are a musician). :)

or octothorp

The symbol is named 'hash' in Britain.

It's a different symbol than the sharp, and I don't blame anyone for not knowing it's rarely used for that purpose these days.

I had a web design professor who said its "true" name was octothorpe, and while various sources confirm that, I've never heard anyone else call it that. Another student in the same class once called it the "tic tac toe symbol."

> It's a different symbol than the sharp

Ok, the true pedants can tilt their head a little to see the difference between a # and a [Edit: Hmm it seems HN doesn't support pasting of extended characters such as the musical 'sharp'?!?]...

I will have to change the pronunciation in my C# programming books to 'C-hash' instead of 'C-sharp'... :)

I think you're missing the point. There's the shape and there's the symbol.

An octagon is a shape. A stop sign is a symbol that happens to be an octagon. Inversely, an octagon in the context of street signs represents "stop."

The octothorpe, used in music, represents "sharp." In front of a number it represents "pound." In front of a string on twitter it represents "hashtag."

AFAIK the typographical/visual differences are basically irrelevant. It's just a different symbol with a different meaning in different contexts, all represented with the same shape.

In my opinion the sharp symbol is very different from the hash symbol #. If you argue that these two are the same symbol, then so would be "d" and "q".

You were correct before ASCII and English keyboards and Microsoft C# gave the # an expanded role out of convenience

> In my opinion the sharp symbol is very different from the hash symbol #.

Yes, the pound sign is different than the sharp symbol, just as single quotes are different than apostrophes, and guillemets are different than less-than and greater-than symbols, and the flat symbol is different than "b".

Now, limitations of first common US typewriters and then the ASCII character set have led to conventions where some of these have been used in place of the other because the correct symbol wasn't available, but that's different than the symbols being the same, and in most modern contexts, the correct symbol is usually available.

- sharp [1]

# ‎- octothorpe [2]

Different symbols, though very similar.

(Edit: So much so that the true sharp symbol apparently does not render correctly on HN)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_(music)

[2] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/octothorpe

Most books I've seen use C rather than C#. Bad editor if they don't.

I assume there was supposed to be a sharp after the first C?

Microsoft, the inventor and trademark owner, use # on their website.

But I'm guessing that you've figured out after reading your own comment that the musical sharp symbol is not rendered in all mediums (including HN). Were I required to search for reference material related to Microsoft's C-like language using proper typography, I'd have to go cut-and-paste the symbol from a WikiPedia page because I don't know how to get it from keyboard to textfield otherwise.

IMO, yeah, maybe not the best choice by MSFT. But pragmatically, we all know what "#" means in that context even if it's not correct. All the Monday-morning-quarterbacking in the world isn't going to change that. So I'm as all for an academic discussion as the next person, but that's all it is.

I used to call it "fence" (gärdsgård) in Swedish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundpole_fence

Where I'm from (UK) this has always been called the "hash" symbol. Although British Telecom voice prompts insisted on calling it the "square" key for a while.

"For drugs, press the hash key"

To hash means to chop up, which is a possible origin. To [cross] hatch means to colour in a space with [crossed] parallel lines, which is also possible.

(I know you know this. Others probably don't.)

Corned Beef #.

It has always been called hash in some regions/contexts. I'm pretty sure the shape itself (i.e. regardless of context) is called an octothorpe. So no it's not at all like that.

I never understood why it was known as a "pound sign" in America. Surely that would be "£" ?

I think I have some Googling to do. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign#Usage_in_North_Ame...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound

"Pound symbol" always confuses me. £ is the symbol for Pound sterling, and on UK keyboards that's at the same place (shift-3) as the # is on the US keyboards that we use in the Netherlands.

It's as if people who call # the pound sign are from the UK and typed shift-3 on someone else's keyboard without actually noticing what showed up on the screen.

'#', by the name "pound sign" and used after a number (like 12#), refers to pounds of weight, not pounds of currency.

Are you sure about that? Pounds weight has its own symbol, ℔ (U+2114, http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2114/index.htm if HN won't show it).

I've always known # as representing "number", which is why you see it in lists: #1, #2, #3 etc.

Draw ℔ very carelessly, and you end up with #.

# is never, ever, ever called the "pound sign" in Britain or Ireland. That's always £.

# after the number is widely understood to refer to pounds (as in weight) in the US. Not sure how common that use is these days but most people would understand what was meant if they saw it.

Pounds weight has its own symbol, ℔

A symbol that, after many decades of living in the U. S., I'm seeing for the first time just today. In my experience, if it's not written as "lb." or "lbs.", a hash is often used: "#".

I have to admit that possibility did cross my mind shortly after I posted my sibling comment. That said, I've never actually seen it used that way (only ever "lb")

A problem with calling # a "pound sign" is that it's easily confused with £.

Aka small gate

There is a podcast on the origin of the octothorpe name http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/octothorpe/

It's a hash, not a hashtag. The hashtag is the # plus a "tag" word. When someone says "hashtag foo", they went spelling it out # + foo, they are saying "this is a hashtag, not a regular word in my setencen; the tag is foo" and the # is silent.

#prescriptivism.

1995 was such a weird year. My biggest dream was to have a computer at home. Didn't even know yet that internet was a thing that existed.

Then around 1997, the internet was something that you went to the library to use. And we finally had a computer at home. I remember how long it took us to figure out that the mouse tail should point up, not down.

I really never thought they would take off.

I did buy an Atari 2500St for college, and didn't tell anyone. I felt like I was cheating.

While all the other students were griping about typing, or paying a typist; I just hit print.

My girlfrined in college hated the "thing". Yes--she called it the "thing". "Leave that thing alone."

She is now a millionaire, and head of technology at some company.

After college, I bought a small electronic typewritter, that did word processing.

I hated everything about computing, besides word processing, and didn't see the need for a computer if I wasen't in school.

Plus, I tried programming, and I Knew I didn't want to spend my life in front of a screen, for anyone, for any amout of money. I hated those 500 page computer programming phone books. I just hated computing on so many levels, it's ironic now.

I honesly didn't get the magic in programming until later on--a lot later on. Well that Atari went right into the garbage in the 90's. Yes--ouch! I so wish I had it now.

I don't think people realize, in the 90's, it was really a gamble if the average person would buy a computer, even a GUI based system. Some people just hated everything about them. They were just so unsexy. So dry to many of us. So boring. So tedious, and never seemed to just work.

I had a friend remind me in the 90's computing is an art too. He is now a multimillionaire. We worked at a chit job, and his friend's said, "My dad is willing to invest in a gaming company for us. Do you want to join?" He did have to think about it. In a few years he was set for life. He didn't ask me to join them, but I probally would have turned the offer down. I idnt get games, nor did I think the business would last more than a few months. Awe--again, so wrong!

My mom was one of the first to buy a used blue Mac, and she loved every thing about it. It was then, I knew they would be big, and I was so wrong. I figured if she was willing to try them, they are making strides, at least Apple.

I still didn't find the magic in computing/programming until about 15 years ago--sadly.

I can't quite remember when we Germans transitioned from "Klammeraffe" (lit. "spider monkey") to "at" when spelling out email addresses...

As a non-German: Please do explain the etymology here

The at symbol looks like it has a long tail wrapping around over its head, like a spider monkey sometimes sits.

I'm guessing it's because spider monkys have long curling tails that look a bit like an @ if you squint: http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/kids/photos/a...

The circle bit looks like a monkey tail, simple as that. And there was no need for a shorter word, as it really wasn't used in common speech or writing (the French "à" was/is used in the commercial sense).

I can only speculate but I believe it is due to the fact that it kind of looks like a paper clip shaped like a monkey ear (speculation on my part but I've heard that before).

Klammer is short for Büroklammer (= paper clip) and Affe is monkey (or ape).

My guess used to be that it started as a "Klammer-A" ("a in a bracket") and that at some point the joking extension from A to Affe (monkey or ape, everyday German does not make a distinction) went viral, supported by the tail-like shape. Now that I know that the monkey connection even exists in languages without the a -> Affe link I'm not so confident anymore.

I faintly remember the Klammeraffe. Fun times.

In Poland it is still called Małpa, which means monkey.

In Dutch we call it a "apenstaartje" ("monkey tail") although "at" is used and understood as well nowadays.

In Danish, it's "snabel-a", ie "[elephant's] trunk-a". # was at a time when a popular youth radio show had an IRC channel called "havelåge" or "garden gate", but "firkant" (simply "square") was and remains in wide use in voice response systems. Neither symbol had as far as I know any mainstream use before this time.

# in internet-contexts has transitioned to "hashtag" (remains "firkant" in voice response), but as far as I know snabel-a is still in use (I just realised that I haven't participated in a Danish verbal transmission of an email address in quite a while).

In greece I'd say the majority still uses the "papaki" which means little duck: Papia is duck, -aki is the little one, papaki.

In Italian, it's still "chiocciola" (pron. kiotcholah), i.e. snail.

So you say "merraksh snail yahoo dot com"?

yes.

in Ukraine it's "собака" (pron. "sobAka") and it means simply "dog"

I was just going to say the same for Russian, but you beat me to it. Never really thought about why we have named it that way though, it was always something I just accepted... seems weird now.

In Bulgaria it's gone through several disjointed phases. You can use either "кльомба" (klyomba, I have no idea what it's supposed to mean), "маймунка" (maymunka, monkey), "маймунско А" (maymunsko A, monkey A) or "at" to refer to it.

In Swedish you can hear "snabel-A" (trunk-A, same as in Danish) or "at".

In Finland we call it "kissanhäntä" (cat's tail) or "miukumauku". "Miu" and "mau" are actually cat's meows, so "miukumauku" is kind of a "a meow, a meow" with two different words.

Nowadays it's usually called "ät-merkki" as in "at-sign" as "at" is spelled in Finnish.

It used to be fairly common in manufacturing and retail, where you might have a line on an invoice stating:

12 widgets @ £12ea

Having seen that usage (coming from a family that ran a small business), the email address notation made sense straight away.

On the other hand, I probably pronounced the dot in ".com" as "point" at least once, before hearing it read aloud by someone else.

I remember thinking 'how quaint' while watching that, then suddenly realising that it all happened only a year before I started my current software consulting business!

Interesting to see that T1 was quite expensive back then even in NYC. I clearly remember in 1996 getting one of the first ISDN connections in the country - $1000/month for a whopping 128KB connection in the days of 33.6KB dial up. Ah, the memories...

They didn’t plan for ventilation for all the hardware, so they cooled the server room with a garbage can full of ice!

In the video, he said they had no money for it, but that is quite possibly the most expensive way to cool a server.

Sounds like they had a restaurant-grade ice maker already, so it may not have been any further sunk cost to get the ice. Probably lost some of that in electricity and water bills!

I think you underestimate how much energy it takes to cool down and freeze water and how inefficient it is to simply place that near the server.

Second-hand story from 20 years ago man... who cares?

Me. Someone is wrong on the internet and I am right!

Yes, that was a joke ;)

My favorite Internet cafe of old was "EasyEverything" (from the EasyJet guy) -- huge cafes and great PXEboot resetting machines, so they were relatively free of malware. Pretty far ahead of its time.

The memory this sparked in me was of the great old Speakeasy cafe in Seattle, which opened circa '94/'95:

http://www.historylink.org/File/3300

I really miss the Speakeasy, I saw some wonderful shows there and made many great friends there.

Some friends and I worked on the original Speakeasy RAIN (Remote Access Internet Node) servers that were essentially a 486 host that booted Linux off of a floppy disk. We installed 4/8 port Cyclades serial cards and attached recycled Wyse dumb terminals to them. The attached modem dialed back to the Speakeasy mothership and allowed users in Seattle to read their email from places like The Alibi Room, the Sit & Spin, and Cafe Allegro. We processed credit cards so non Speakeasy users could use the system, and when their time was up we utilized a hacked up version of GNU Screen to pop open a text window to let them agree to pay for more time or to disconnect.

It was a pretty sweet setup, I remember remotely upgrading the "firmware" on the RAIN nodes by scping the new tomsrtbt disk image to /dev/fd0 and then rebooting. Those were the days. It's hard to imagine Seattle hipsters happily camped out on old dumb terminals in bars and cafes using Lynx to surf the web, and Pine to read their email, but it happened.

I remember the RAIN network! I also remember the lovely spray-painted recycled Wyse terminals that were installed locally at the Speakeasy itself. Those were all I used -- I didn't bother with the PCs they had there.

I never lived in Seattle, but every time I visited (from California) I made it a point to stop by the Speakeasy nearly every day... and sometimes in the evening as well to take in a show. It's fun to hear from someone like yourself who was involved in the magic!

The CyberSmith Cafe in Harvard Square was pretty epic! VR rigs, specially designed ceiling mounted downward firing speaker setups so you could hear full stereo for your game while your neighbor heard his and not yours, ordering food/drink from the computer, and so on.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/03/business/waiter-oh-waiter-...

Watching this made me nostalgic for world.std.com, in Boston -- that was many folks' first dialup ISP.

They paid $9k/month for a T1 in 1995, in NYC? Sounds very high. Either that or my reference point of paying $3k/month for a full T1 in 1994 in a small Wisconsin city is low.

Anybody have more numbers from that era?

I thought the hippest spot in '95 was Cyberdelia http://cyberdelianyc.tumblr.com/

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