Back to the future - Interacting with threadiverse communities through Usenet / NNTP

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PieFed dev

https://media.piefed.social/posts/L3/Pa/L3PaYgCLl5AH48V.mp4

A few months ago I threw this question out into the void - “what if you could access the fediverse through your Usenet reader??” and got almost no response. Still, the idea had lodged in my brain and wouldn’t go away so this weekend I caved in and built the thing. Hat tip to the author of the excellent nntpserver package that did all the hard stuff.

I look forward to seeing someone’s screenshots of fediverse posts on a Commodore 64, some day.

This will be released as a part of PieFed 1.7, coming soon.

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This is basically backporting Piefed to computers made in the last 40 years! E-waste will be prevented!

Fantastic work mate!

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Gopher support next? lol

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Awesome! Now do it the other way around by federating Usenet through piefed 🤪

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PieFed dev OP

Oh god no, that howling abyss needs to stay lost and forgotten. Usenet is a disaster zone, the only way to do it these days is with a private server, disconnected from all the others.

A few months ago I signed up for https://www.eternal-september.org/ and had a poke around. It was utter trash, just mountains of spam and insane people and insane spam.

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Usenet is a disaster zone

It doesnt have to be that way though. it already is (and has been) the type of discussion network (no logging, no ads, no selling our data, etc) we all want already set up and ready for discussions and we all keep trying to reinvent the wheel year after year. The spam can be dealt with and could be quickly cleaned. Your insane people comment is silly. There are “insane” people on every platform (unless you are just saying anyone who doesnt agree with you is insane) so that wont go away. What usenet needs is good software so that reddit type folks can access the network.

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Amazing! I feel like slrn was the peak of the threaded-forum UI, and I’ve had the urge to make it into a Threadiverse app. Now I don’t have to!

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She/Her

I don’t think I’m following.

If this allows you to access fediverse communities through a 3rd party usenet reader, what part does piefed 1.7 play in the picture?

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PieFed dev OP

PieFed 1.7 will include a Usenet server for Usenet readers to connect to.

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When my *arr home server downloads Linux distros from Piefed over Usenet we’ll know Piefed has made it.

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That’s a kind of mail interaction ?

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Waaat thats crazy.

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Comments in Technologie - 🤖@jlai.lu

very cool! i may need to dust off an old copy of forte agent…

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Comments in RetroComputing@billboard.bsd.cafe

PieFed dev OP

Looks like NodeBB didn’t receive the video part of my post, so here is the link to watch the screencast of using a Usenet client (Thunderbird) to access the fediverse - https://media.piefed.social/posts/L3/Pa/L3PaYgCLl5AH48V.mp4

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@rimu - Is the goal to do this to show it can be done? Or is usenet groups still more active than I expect or remember?

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PieFed dev OP

I’ve done it, but it’s not documented or deployed to production yet.

In this scenario, each PieFed instance is it’s own separate usenet server and does not interact with the wider usenet network at all (only the fediverse). NNTP is just used to serve clients, not to connect to other servers (although that would be cool!)

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Are there free usenet services available for text?

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