Google as much as I love them, killed off the truly best social media platform, USENET newsgroups. It was based on NNTP a IETF standard protocol very similar to email SMTP except that you were sending information to a news group rather than to an email address. It was self-archiving (you could see entire threads unlike email where you have to already be a recipient to see old posts), you could send URL links to a post, you could remove a post if you made a mistake and create a new one, etc. etc. When you sent email you could CC a newsgroup or vice versa. Otherwise email is one the remaining social media platform that is based on IETF standards. All other "forums" are a hodgepodge of non standard adhoc creations that pale in comparison to SMTP and NNTP based standards and USENET newsgroups.

@fropenn stated:
> The roads in the US are also covered with trash, debris, garbage...

You left out tents.

(-:

I pay about $10/month for YouTube Premium so NEVER see YouTube adds.

I asked Bard, which confirmed I won't see the new 30 second ads either.

It's well worth $10/month to never see YouTube ads and watch the excellent high quality YouTube content out there.

Dennis Allard
Santa Monica
http://oceanpark.com/

When Google Groups acquired Dejanews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Groups things looked promising since we now had a good web browser interface to newsgroup postings.

The following points bear mention:

(1) Newsgroups are based on an IETF standard http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc977 so anyone can provide a server and anyone can write a newsgroup reader.
(2) Embedding a Newsgroup in a Web page is (was) a great way to add a standards-based discussion forum to a Website where the forum GUI was maintained by Google and had all the advantages of NNTP (but see (8) below)
(3) Almost all email readers (used to) include a newsgroup reader
(4) A newsgroup is JUST like email (except that it is *TO* the group, not to an individual email)
(5) A newsgroup is self-archiving (a new reader is able to see all posts back to beginning -- note how if you CC someone a normal email, they have no ability per se to see previous posts in the thread - but with newsgroup threads they do)
(6) When posting TO a newsgroup, one can add CC and BCC to assure the post goes to individuals' email addresses
(7) One can *link* to newsgroups postings. The URL looks like this:

nntp://... (instead of http://.../

(8) Embedding a newsgroup in a Web page had one fatal flaw
Several years ago I attended a Google I/O conference (an annual event for developers) for the sole purpose of finding someone at Google who could explain to me how to fix a bug in embedded Google Groups, When I embedded a group into my Web site in order to instantly have a fully functioning discussion forum everything worked fine EXCEPT that if someone was not yet logged in to the google group the google group GUI would display a login in a pop-out page. Once the user then logged in, they would see the googlegroups GUI but in a new window, breaking the embedding in my Web site. That essentially trashed the goal of adding a forum to a Web site by using an embedded GoogleGroup.

I pushed a bit and found one Google engineer who told me that there were some kind of security risks so they were forced to show the GoogleGroups login in a separate page. I could not figure out how to get back to my page embedding the group once the login succeeded (since I had no control over the popped up Google login page HTML or javascript).

Later on Google entirely removed the ability to embed a google group. See: https://oceanpark.com/socialweb.html.

FINAL REMARKS

I believe newsgroups are still one of the best internet technologies whose time is yet to come (in spite of being over 40 years old). Newsgroups are truly social media in a way that the owned so-called "social" media are not and never will be. We can hope that the vestiges of USENET will survive and perhaps new RFCs be written to enhance security and durability of newsgroups going forward.

Dennis G Allard
Santa Monica, California

Plausible explanations of the originally released UAP videos are offered here:

https://youtu.be/Hv-sbtCAz9Y

These explanations are by Joe Scott, an expert in photography and prolific content creator on YouTube.

-- Dennis Allard

Joe Scott offers plausible explanations of all three of the phenomena shown in the original release of the UAP videos.

Must see:

https://youtu.be/Hv-sbtCAz9Y

-- Dennis Allard

I am a non-E bike cyclist going back 50 years. So I speak from experience. The solution to the getting sweaty when commuting to work problem is to ride easy going to work and then to do the workout on the way back. Then shower when you get home. A better solution is for work places to provide showers for the cycling employees.

The author's opinions seem very jumbled and it's clear to me that he is not a bicyclist.

I have used and continue to use bicycles to get around town, go to the grocery store, commute when my work is not remote which it usually is and has been for decades (I worked on the Internet since the mid-80s), and to do meditation and workouts (spent many years as an ultramarathon cyclist). I encourage people who aren't athletic to try riding a bike. Any bike ride is a good bike ride. Ride safe be courteous (but OK to run stop signs if it doesn't get in the way of anyone) and enjoy the experience that is bicycling.

Although I don't own an E-bike yet, as I get older I am definitely considering one. I just need about 100 W of additional power and maybe a 500 W hour battery which should keep the bike battery and motor still reasonably lightweight.

Dennis Allard
Santa Monica
4 Sept 2022

You mean like training it on slashdot posts? :-)

https://youtu.be/Hv-sbtCAz9Y

A typical /. first reply. Totally ignoring an interesting topic and instead starting a thread of idiotic comments about race and gender.

I wish slashdot would add a link to indicate "do not show me any of this thread".

I will now scroll through the tedious slashdot Interface hoping to find a different thread which is actually talking about this bullshit move by Facebook.

Dennis Allard
Santa Monica, California

I switched to Firefox from Chrome because when I run chrome on my Linux box it sometimes causes the system load average to go through the roof. I want to use the same browser on windows and on Linux and on my iphone. So instead of using Chrome on all of those I now use Firefox and all of those and no longer have the load average problem on Linux.

Dennis Allard
Santa Monika
September 13, 2021

And Asian women drivers.

(-:

Where is "retired ICS" getting his data? And why was his post rated as "insightful"?

I have had my Linux server on the AWS cloud for 10 years now and I also use it as a remote workstation connecting my desktop to my EC2 server via a VNC based remote desktop (Cendio Thinlinc).

I have noticed no degradation in performance, neither latency nor throughput, during the coronavirus crisis.

My local laptop is a Windows box which I use to display the VNC remote Linux display. But I also use Microsoft Drive for my many gigabytes of data files that I have in windows. Again I've noticed no degradation in service.

I would recommend ignoring this thread entirely.

Dennis Allard
Santa Monica
March 29, 2020

https://oceanpark.com/blog/cat...

My reasons for switching to Firefox from Chrome is that I use Ubuntu Linux and Chrome would fairly often hand (send load average through the roof). Some Google search indicated this was a known issue with Chrome in Ubuntu 18.04. Since switching to Firefox I no longer have the hanging issue. So I swithced to Firefox on all my platforms in order to still be able to sync bookmarks, logins, etc. And I imported my bookmarks from Chrome to Firefox. I'm living fine in Firefox now. https://askubuntu.com/questions/765974/chrome-freeze-very-frequently-with-ubuntu-16-04 -- Dennis Allard, January 12, 2020