You're inspiring me to attempt a rescue of my last BBS (MajorBBS system) from 1991-1993. It had some great ANSI room and section screens. It was run from a single 1GB(!!) drive that cost us $1000. We had email, a couple stores (one of the first online book stores) and store-n-forward mail systems, maybe finger and telnet(?). Unfortunately, a neighbor got stoned, had a cigarette in bed and burned up his house and ours. Nobody hurt, but the BBS wasn't backed up offsite.
It was a weird time frame. My partner was living in the house, and I was moving to Seattle. The backup was pretty much inches from the system itself. Not the last time I learned that lesson. But, the original SCSI drive did survive, even if the machines and desk and couches, etc. were all ruined. With HTML coming along we didn't rebuild. It's still seems like such a huge loss not having entities like BBSs on the internet. Just like the loss of IRC and other basic systems / plumbing of the capital I Internet. Yeah, they needed upgrades, but that's what IETF, RFC, and scrappy hackers are for. <sigh> Loving on the ANSI!
There were telnet BBSes on the internet in the 1990s. I even used some in 2005. Haven't gone looking, but I'm sure if you look, you'll find one. (But it might be better to use ssh today.)
In the BBS days persistent storage was expensive. Backups were at best saving something to two different floppy disks. If you got lucky you could rebuild most stuff from files you had shared with friends.
Just checked out MoveOMeter.com Great idea - and I get how pitching to "an old coot" like my parents would get a laugh out of them before an insulting hurtful pass. Very clever positioning - I'd lean in on that. Your audience is there and waiting - which is tricky since your customer is actually the sales person and you need to give them the training up front to close the deal with their elder. Nice work!
Same here - it's like programming with a couple of buddies. Occasionally they goof off and wreck everything, but we put it back together and end up with a finished project. I'm literally going through my backlog of projects from the early 80s! There are parts of each of these projects that were black holes for me - just didn't know enough to get a toe hold. With Karl (that's my agent) he explains everything I don't understand, does stuff, breaks stuff, and so on. It's really a blast.
Same for me (even though I am a bit younger). I burned out a couple of times and assumed I will never finish so many sideprojects I have lying around. Now I can just feed them into claude and guide it to completion. It feels great. And yes, ideally I would have more time and energy to do it all by myself, but I don't. And to me results matter, not the tinkering itself, if I would be after that, I would do some code puzzles for fun. But I am rather interested in making ideas reality and AI is helping with that.
It has felt that way lately, but I can't say it is limited to HN. It's pretty tough to have a conversation last for more than a few minutes without it ending in a political discussion, a news item that isn't good, or a local issue that isn't good. A only slightly less than world war can do that. On top of that is the AI thing. Not going to unpack that here, but yeah, exciting and kind of crappy at the same time.
What I'm about to say isn't meant to be mean, but all you said up there? That's on you. That's all you. Keep doing the right thing with your votes and downvotes. Keep trying to come up with that great startup project and build it out and find an audience. Use AI to make you better, smarter, and stronger. Tolerate the ignorant and the different. Pfft...what does it matter anyway what we think of a goofball mouthing off about the remake of Like Water for Chocolate?
Take care of your self and find more fun stuff! If that means taking a vacation from HN, do it. I took a year off a while back and it did wonders. Also dumped most news. Even now, I'm writing Atari 800 programs for the next two days as a small retreat myself.
Yes, the world is on a little decline right now. That just means there's a chance coming to fix things, and the time to prepare for it just happens to be NOW! Be ready! If you do drop off HN, drop me a line and stay in touch!
Agreed with others here...and updating intel for primary targets is customary. Which obviously didn't happen here. The targeting cycle and the F2T2 cycle, dynamic targeting loops (probably) should have brought the latest intel about the school to light.
As for whether it was AI - the US DOD Ethic's first tenent is Responsible - personnel remain responsible...
My "hello world" for a new stack is always a version of Worm. Somewhere between Life and your Swarm, Worm wanders around looking for food and water, trying to avoid birds and other issues. Each round the worm survives it grows by a segment. If it doesn't get food or water, it is reduced a segment. And so on. Your Swarm is a few levels up from my iterations, totally inspirational! Thanks!
I hope you don't go! It's clearly a minority position you hold, but that doesn't mean it's a bad one. Or wrong. I've been perplexed by this and many other related issues. I wonder and hope every year, every step in the wrong direction that gets attention, we'll get to that magic 3% that stands up and corrects things for citizen good. No matter how your up or down votes end up in a few hours, know you aren't alone or wrong. At least from my point of view.
I've messed around with remote viewing and GC data for stock trading systems. Less for the profit than just to have a separate system for balance. It's fascinating stuff. It's not nothing, and yet it's just so weird. And, it divides / scares people instantly. If this isn't on your list of resources or area of interest, give it a look!
I worked on a massive audio (78s) digitization project for the LOC and it was a blast to see the process of how these archivists and their outsourced crews (like us) worked to maintain the human arts. It was an odd feeling, I never had a client prior to that make me feel like our work was so important.
It reminds me of a story I was told about a certain vault in Hollywood that contained hundreds of priceless films that were destroyed in a fire...but they locked up the vault and pretended everything was fine. And to this day...
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