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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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.