blog post: death's inheritance and the future of tomo

today, tomo appears to be the only fork of the RSLight nntp server that is still alive. so what now?

i'll be honest: once Thom/Retro Guy died, i was very tempted to trash the project and move on. I have a half dozen other neglected development projects and books and a podcast to devote my research time to.

and then I thought about Thom and the thousands of hours of his life that he put into his final project before he passed away. his dedication was infectious. and in 2026, we need decentralized forum software more than ever.

that being said, I sure as hell don't want to be responsible for taking over someone else's open source project. that's almost as bad as adopting their kid. hard pass.
.....
rest of the post here:
https://tomodori.net

rss here:
https://tomodori.net/rss.xml

screenshot: the tomo interface for the user's private mailbox

#tomo #smallWeb #nntp #usenet #indieWeb

blog post: death's inheritance and the future of tomo

today, tomo appears to be the only fork of the RSLight nntp server that is still alive. so what now?

i'll be honest: once Thom/Retro Guy died, i was very tempted to trash the project and move on. I have a half dozen other neglected development projects and books and a podcast to devote my research time to.

and then I thought about Thom and the thousands of hours of his life that he put into his final project before he passed away. his dedication was infectious. and in 2026, we need decentralized forum software more than ever.

that being said, I sure as hell don't want to be responsible for taking over someone else's open source project. that's almost as bad as adopting their kid. hard pass.
.....
rest of the post here:
https://tomodori.net

rss here:
https://tomodori.net/rss.xml

screenshot: the tomo interface for the user's private mailbox

#tomo #smallWeb #nntp #usenet #indieWeb

Usenet dà ancora segnali di vita.

Attualmente sto frequentando:

alt.chat-programs.jabber
alt.cypherpunks comp.infosystems.gemini comp.os.linux.misc
it.cultura.libri
it.test

Segnalatemi qui altri gruppi attivi.

Per accedere vi consiglio:

https://www.eternal-september.org/

è un server ad accesso gratuito che richiede la registrazione.

#nntp #usenet #xmpp

Usenet dà ancora segnali di vita.

Attualmente sto frequentando:

alt.chat-programs.jabber
alt.cypherpunks comp.infosystems.gemini comp.os.linux.misc
it.cultura.libri
it.test

Segnalatemi qui altri gruppi attivi.

Per accedere vi consiglio:

https://www.eternal-september.org/

è un server ad accesso gratuito che richiede la registrazione.

#nntp #usenet #xmpp

If you could access your #PieFed
instance using your Usenet client of choice (e.g. Thunderbird), would you?

#nntp #fediverse

If you could access your #PieFed
instance using your Usenet client of choice (e.g. Thunderbird), would you?

#nntp #fediverse

the best way I saw #ActivityPub explained was as being like email protocols.

On the most basic level, text works, but the more complexity you add the more inconsistency you see.

For example, if you attach large files, some email providers will not deliver it. If you use some css some email services won't format it the same way.

And recently - well about a year ago - some yahoo accounts weren't able to receive some exchange emails.

We're all so used to this we don't even think about, but from what I've read it;'s the same issue at work with the #fediverse.

Because servers get so much freedom in how to operate, it breaks things for some users.

The social media we're used to is more homogeneous, but it wasn't always that way.

We used to have these issues with #nntp servers, where for example some servers refused to encapsulate #yenc messages correctly

It's not that #mastodon is the new way; it's just that we've forgotten the old way :)

In the end I took the plunge and decided that maybe having #nntp connections is not all that bad for our #uucp network.

Mostly because despite the beautiful simplicity of the protocol, actually getting uucp to work on modern machines is a whole different matter. It really is made for a dial-up world.

Also we don't actually have all that much traffic on our network to begin with, considering #usenet is kinda... I don't want to write dead, but it if it was a body it might start smelling soon.

In the end I took the plunge and decided that maybe having #nntp connections is not all that bad for our #uucp network.

Mostly because despite the beautiful simplicity of the protocol, actually getting uucp to work on modern machines is a whole different matter. It really is made for a dial-up world.

Also we don't actually have all that much traffic on our network to begin with, considering #usenet is kinda... I don't want to write dead, but it if it was a body it might start smelling soon.