Seems like the content is still there? Here's me getting smacked down as a kid for asking for warez: https://groups.google.com/g/alt.games.doom/c/RrzQBjHIa6k/m/Q...
Most of what I know about online knife-fight arguing came from Usenet.
I remember seeing this guide decades ago, but I can't say I participated in the social scene it documents: https://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/
What I find now is that there is less community. Even "social networks" like TikTok aren't really social, in that nobody is doing much socializing. We're all just throwing out witty little comments and leaving.
My theory is that it has to do with the ubiquity of feedback mechanisms. Likes, followers, upvotes, etc. It's a never-ending popularity contest. We're now living this Onion satire from 14 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFpK_r-jEXg
The ubiquity of the "news feed" concept could also play a role -- long-running discussions are now fairly impossible. People who disagree just take potshots at each other, instead of getting to the root of the disagreement.
It's a shame there's so much homogeneity across different social sites. Wish people would experiment more.
I used to have friends I would meet in a random video game or chat room and then communicate with them for _years_ over AIM or IRQ or mIRC. In a lot of cases not even knowing their real names.
Reminds me of this old 1997 MMO released by Sony Online Entertainment (and later reimplemented by KaZaA and Skype co-author Priit Kasesalu) named Subspace (renamed Continuum) I grew up playing. So anyways...
10 years ago or so everyone got added to a FB group and suddenly everyone knew each others real names and faces. It was a very strange feeling.
Just some reminiscing.
Why think about it when you can play right now? [0]
It was this game that got me into technology and programming. Implementing bots to run king of the hill or elimination style games.
A bit of history..
One of the original programmers (Jeff P? maybe) included the server software along with the client with the CD. After SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) ended the game, the community ressurected the game by using the included server software.
After many years of cheats due to the stagnating closed-source client, PriitK (of KaZaA and later Skype fame) reimplmented the client from scratch with better encryption, and named it Continuum. It still communicated with the original server software.
Years later, someone would reimplement the server side software named ASSS (a small subspace server) giving complete freedom to implement certain gamemodes and features wanted by the community for decades. For awhile you could only connect to "third party" servers which was a lot scarier and used a different chat/name/etc service than the main zones. It took a few years, but eventually PriitK give access to the encryption code and now most servers and zones are hosted by ASSS.
It was still limited by the original Subspace/Continuum client features though.
Maybe 5 or so years ago the community got the game on Steam Greenlight and we expected a bunch of new users. It didn't really plan out that way but it was fun while it lasted. It didn't happen earlier because while the entire game at this point had been re-implemented by the community - it still used original graphics which were stilled owned by SOE. Somehow, it got done though.
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum...
Too bad to miss the renewal five years ago.
I think the lack of any 'news feed' or forced revealing of your identity makes it a much more social experience. We're behind a screen talking nonsense and sometimes saying horrible things to each other, but it is fun.
Kinda like private Facebook Groups I guess, except not all controlled by one megacorp, in fact not controlled at all.
You also had to be quite technical to be able to host a site, so that defined the culture. Anarchy but tech nerd.
I love the Reddit format, I think for the most part it works well in terms of commenting (same as HN), but the problem is the "news feed" concept, like you say. A Reddit post is only alive for a few hours before it drops away never to return.
At least on forums whenever there is a reply it bounces back to the top and keeps topics alive.
Also Black Mirror Season 3 Episode 1, "Nosedive" and Community Season 3 Episode 1, "Biology 101" apparently have similar topics (but I haven't seen them).
Hat tip to ChatGPT for helping me track these down, since I couldn't remember at first what show I'd seen related to this:
https://chat.openai.com/share/d2ac7651-4ab3-4504-9369-7ea4db...
Social there is for 'social graph'
I found a random book about Boston transportation that was edited by Kibo.
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.programmer/c/j0CqgQSoV...
As someone who writes small hobby OpenGL 4 games with zig for fun and because I'm not using a game engine I think I'm doing low level stuff, but this really appropriately puts what I'm doing into perspective. This quote is pretty awesome. I love how we got to where we are these days. Early game developers were true pioneers and we owe you so much!
Also, lots of people on Netcom. That was my ISP as well around that time and I still have their DNS server IPs memorized.
Around 1994/5 I was doing perspective-correct texture mapping on a Sun SPARC (with real-time dithering too), an Atari Jaguar and a 486 DX4/100. 16k/sec polys on the DX4 (which is only ~500 at 30fps) sounds modest to me. (We had technically more texture-mapped polys than that, but they had geometric constraints with each other so they weren't all independent polys and shouldn't be counted the same way.)
I was surprised, coming from earlier processors including the 386, to find floating-point was sometimes faster for calculations for things like texture UV interpolation, instead of integers (fixed-point), x86 sub-register tricks and hyperbolic-Bresenham or line-at-infinity techniques to avoid division for perspective.
That recent Mario 64 rewrite has me questioning everything. At least Nintendo's first party developers made the same mistake, and they had the hardware guys right there.
There are better profiling tools available now. I might be able to do it much better. Plus, not all registers are equal on the 486. Using FS and GS to hold data might be slower than pulling it from RAM. How much on chip cache does a 486 have? I don't know.