agiacalone

> EDIT: I think you'll have a lot of 1st amendment problems here.

> To be honest I'm not sure how the FCC was allowed to do it.

Amateur Radio Extra here. I have a tiny bit of insight into this.

Back in WW1, the radio spectrum became the property of the US military and the DoD actually "leases" spectrum to the federal government through the FCC.

The Fairness Doctrine was a handshake agreement with the political parties of the day and enforced by FCC policy. The FCC is the regulatory body for airwaves.

So the spectrum is a public good in the sense that it is 100% owned by the US military for military purposes and it only grants radio spectrum to the rest of the FCC that it doesn't care about. You can actually go to prison for using radio spectrum that you're not allowed to use (I have never actually heard of it happening...but it is theoretically possible).

Edit: I should also add, that 1st amendment rights DO NOT APPLY on the airwaves. The FCC has 100% control of regulating what you can and cannot say or do on them.

Second this. I played the hell out of the original SC2 back in the day...and UQM improves on the entire experience.

They even updated the Super-Melee mode to be playable over the Internet.

I've been looking for a lightweight CSV reader for some time now. Thanks for making this.

I remember the debut of the Newton. My father took me to a showcasing event that Apple had at the time (I was probably early high-school at the time).

This was years before Steve Jobs' (in)famous big unveiling events.

After that, I wanted a Newton so badly...never did end up getting one. Alas.

That kind of thing weirdly trips up people, though.

I mean...not you or me or probably most people on HN...but it happens.

Um...it's obviously telling you that Linux is just very unsafe. Every MSDN knows this: it's one of the first things they read when opening up the Tome of Knowledge.

Best to re-install Windows 11. Be sure to beg forgiveness of the Microsoft gods by secure-deleting a copy of the Halloween Documents while chanting the true name of the Great Bill over the chorus of Bing bells.

I started on the web in late 1993, so yes. This stuff was around then.

There was actually a competing protocol in those days: gopher. It still exists and has a small, near-fanatical community these days.

Plus, it all had to be done (typically) on a dial-up modem which made all of those "web effects" absolutely horrible.

Even today's web sucks without some heavy ad-blocking and script controls.

As an Amateur Extra myself, I 100% approve :D

Slashdot did the same thing even before digg. I miss those days sometimes.

> Most products today are less durable and are generally worse than "yesterday", in my opinion.

Much of this, I feel, is survivor bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias) and I totally agree with your thoughts on it.

Anecdotal story from my grandfather which occurred circa 1955:

He purchased a "name brand" television in 1955, when TVs were still very new and rather expensive (I don't know the brand, sadly, and he's long since passed to ask him). Got the TV home, plugged it in, and almost immediately the vacuum tubes in the television burned out.

Called a repairman to service the television. Repairman came out, replaced all of the vacuum tubes, ran a few checks on the electronics to see if everything checked out. It did, and the serviceman took care of the billing and left--all the while, the television was on and operating.

As the serviceman was leaving the driveway, the tubes burned out again.

I lived in San Francisco from ~1999 to about 2003, and the homeless problem then was pretty bad. I can only imagine what the city must be like these days.

> I managed news servers back in the day, and I'm tempted > to just spin up an NNTP server again with my own damn > cabal (TINC!LLTC!) and to hell with everyone else

I've thought about doing this exact thing over the years, but could never get anyone else interested. If you do it, I'd happily join and contribute

Zork acquired Frobozz, Co:

https://zork.fandom.com/wiki/FrobozzCo_International

I'm saddened at the lack of modern Usenet clients. I still use slrn (which isn't bad, honestly) to browse Usenet from time to time, but I have yet to find a suitable replacement that utilizes modern GUIs.

Long-time SDF user here as well (MetaARPA). Agree that bboard has some of the most interesting discussion that I've seen on the Internet in a long time.