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Back in the day when we ran random exes, good times
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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I remember I used to be subscribed to a mailing list for a programming language. A friend of the lead developer set the mailing list up for them at his university, and then went off and did his own thing. It was completely unmoderated. Some kid sent a "neat little proggy" his friend Dieter wrote. If the extent of my Internet usage wasn't limited to free email through Juno, my entire hard drive probably would have gotten deleted that day lol
There used to be this thing going around on pre-smartphone phones (via Bluetooth, I assume) that showed a pocket watch closing and when it was fully closed, the phone shut down. We all thought it was hilarious to send it to as many people as possible and watch them panic. I don't even know what format it was to look like a normal gif or video and do that. I certainly didn't even care back then.
My guess is it was an actual gif that exploited some flaw in how the OS handled gifs and thus was able to execute code.
That would make sense. Thanks for coming up with an explanation. I did wonder when I thought about this earlier.
Or Bloover(?) The Bluetooth hacking app that could copy someone's texts and call log
Remembering the good old days of eSheep.exe and my dad freaking out that "It's a virus!" because he saw "a black sheep come running up to the other one and hit it! It started bleeding!"
Dad, that's a ram... The other sheep's not bleeding. It's blushing!
Embarrassingly recently a load of people were i worked (including me) downloaded from some sketchy website and installed a snow effect and christmas tree generator on our work PCs just added christmassy overlay over what you're doing.
I shudder to think of it now
Back in the day it was innocent fun. I miss those days.
Our parents, 10 years ago "Don't trust anything you read online!"
Parents, today: "I do my own research online!"
We were not prepared, as a species, for a device that let us come up with any opinion at all and find validation for it.
It used to be that when you had an opinion that was wrong, you’d say it out loud a number of times, and you’d notice that everyone around you would call you an imbecile and ridicule you. It would make you reassess yourself and grow as a person.
Now that societal failsafe is gone. Now people just aren’t challenged for holding the wrong opinion.
That was an integral part of growing up and maturing. We don’t have a solution for it.
This exactly. I think theres a saying that goes “our technology far outstrips our actual intelligence”. Surprisingly smart phones & arguably the internet as well are both technologies that we are unable to manage responsibly as a species. Confirmation bias is one hell of a drug
Back in the 90’s & early 00’s, if you were running around ranting about Jewish space lasers or kids being dissected in the basement of your local Pizza Hut, you’d be shunned, ridiculed and likely catch a visit from your local police department haha
Yeah. I firmly believe it will be a hurdle the human race cannot overcome. Technology advances faster than our own maturity. If you gave a room full of 4 year olds loaded guns, how long would they last in there?
That is us with the internet.
Of course, sometimes those ideas being ridiculed were "I don't think our king, who claims Primae Noctis and whips anyone who looks at him, was actually chosen by God to rule. Gramp said he remembers when the king murdered the old king and skull-fucked him. Maybe we're just victims of an inherently violent system?"
When you see "Account created: 1997".
"These are the sacred scrolls of the ancient ones."
Internet absolutely was better 15 years ago. Everything is paywalled now and there's constant disinformation. Algorithms feed you bullshit and people all post outrage bait to get attention. Not saying that stuff didn't exist 15 years ago, but it's absolutely become the dominant experience online.
Hardware has gotten better though!
Hardware has gotten better though!
Can't even tell cause software has gotten so much worse
You can't even Google shit anymore, it's all AI written articles. I used to use Reddit for that with site:reddit.com but I wonder how long we will be able to.
People suggest using other search engines instead like Bing or DuckDuckGo, but the fact that they no longer support the "-" operator in search is annoying.
And you can get rid of anything you hate, meanwhile porn loads in seconds.
I wouldn't go back
You forgot clickbait
When I first started my career I was in tier 3 tech support and to troll a colleague we put an mp3 in the startup folder on Windows. Every time he booted the computer to troubleshoot he lost his s*** trying to figure out why the music was playing. The dude ended up formatting C:
Precious memories.
I used to wonder why my mom mistrusted online banking so much but looking back at the free programs I downloaded plus limewire it makes sense
25 years ago. I remember.
I am still active in several forums. They are great and have even more of a sense of community them they used to. People talk about the subject and even meet in person around the world.
I also host a forum for a different group. No ads either cause fuck that shit.
My wife called them invisible friends, even after we all met lol
When I was a teenager, a bunch of my friends online were tossing that around. I found a trojan and started sending it around as cupholder.exe but making it look like I wasn't the one who sent it... and just immediately logged in and opened their CD tray. Then started fucking with their system in silly ways.
Ahh the good old days when even malware wasn't that bad. Or maybe I was just a really stupid kid. At least I password-locked the trojan and removed it when I left.
Forums aren't gone. They just were never really big to begin with. Reddit eclipsed all of them to the point that most forums were irrelevant unless they were highly specific (not like, a gaming or show community) or couldn't be on reddit (straight piracy with linking, other stuff we won't talk about)
They're not even gone, just the communities that want them are fewer and far between.
One thing that happened since I joined the feddieverse is that I've spend more time on the underbelly of the internet. Like, the other day I found someones blog. Not their tumblr or anything, their own personal blog.
It looked like shit and was filled with pointless entries but it was the internet in it's rawest form
We're on a forum right now!
Fun fact, the forum post is now 17 years old.
I view forums as the middle era of the internet.
Th early era was chatrooms, the middle era was forums, and the late era, which we are in now, is all social media.
I miss the middle era of the internet. Forums were a blast. You could really build a community with those things.
BBS predate chatrooms and are proto-forums.
More like 20 years ago