Because ipv6 is yucky

Removed by mod

Because SecOps still thinks NAT is security, and NetOps is decidedly against carrying around that stupid tradition.

Try to remember a handful of them

I’m stupid, can you elaborate a little further about how ipv6 would make becoming an ISP easier?

Matrix I have doubts about. The idea of Tox was nicer, but the implementation quality and the scandal at some point didn’t help.

Tox felt more playable, like piping files over it or a remote shell over it (I know, bad associations, but still), or even using it for VPN. I think there were clients allowing to do such stuff, and the protocol allows it.

EDIT: I mean, it’s still alive, just don’t see it claiming the place of FOSS old Skype replacement as it did.

GNUNet - all you people mentioning it have peers? I tried to set it up a few weeks ago, couldn’t get peers.

Yggdrasil - feels cool.

I2P - not intended for that, I think.

I really hope matrix gets native VoIP. I saw like 2 years ago it was in beta, haven’t kept up with it though. I’d also really like voice channels like discord so my friends and I can replace discord but it seems like matrix isn’t interested in being a discord replacement

90% of the bullshit mass emails at my work could be an RSS feed.

It’s seen it’s renneisance recently

I wish more websites would use RSS Feeds. :-(

WebSub (formerly PubSubHubbub). Should have been a proper replacement for RSS with push support instead of polling. Too bad the docs were awful and adopting it as an end user was so difficult that it never caught on.

Theres quite a few sites that still use it and existing ones in the Fediverse have it built in (which is really cool). But your right, the general public have no concept of having something download and queue up on a service rather than just going to the site. And the RSS clients are all over the place with quality…

Wait, encryption counts as bullshit now? ;)

In that case, I’d like to chime in and add NFS to this list. The often overlooked jewel of the glorious past days. /j

I’d like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as FTP is, in fact, smelly hot garbage.

For context, I wrote this while waiting for a migraine to pass. I was angry at my brain for ruining my morning, and I like to shit on FTP. It’s fun to be hyperbolic. I don’t intend for this to be an attack on you, I was just bored and decided to write this ridiculous rant to pass the time.

I must once again rant about FTP. I’ve no idea if you’re serious about liking it or you’re just taking the piss, but seeing those three letters surrounded by whitespace reminds me of all the bad things in the world.

FTP is, as I’ve said, smelly hot garbage, and the infrastructure built to support FTP is even worse. Why? Well, one reason is that FTP has the most idiotic networking model conceivable. To see how crazy it is, let’s compare to a more sane protocol, like HTTP (for simplicity’s sake, I’ll do HTTP/1.1. First, you get the underlying transport protocol stuff and probably SSL. The HTTP client opens a connection from some local ephemeral port to the destination server on port 80/443/whatever and does all the normal protocol things (so syn->synack->ack and Client Hello -> Server Hello+server cert -> client kex+change cipher -> change cipher -> encrypted data). FTP does TCP too! Same same so far (minus SSL, unless you’re using FTPS). Next, the HTTP client goes like this:

GET /index.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.whatever.the.fuck
# a bunch of other headers

and you know what fucking happens here? The fucking server responds with the data and a response code on the same goddamn TCP connection. You get a big, glorious response over the nice connection you established:

200 OK
# a bunch of headers and shit

HERE'S YOUR DAMN DATA NERD

So that’s nice, and the client you’re using to read this used that flow (or an evolution of that flow if you’re using HTTP/2 or HTTP/3). So what does FTP do? It does one of two really stupid things depending on whether you’re using active or passive mode. Active mode is the default for the protocol (although not the default for most clients), so let’s analyze that! First, your FTP client initiates a TCP connection to your server on port 21 (by default), and then the server just sends this:

<--- 220 Rebex FTP Server ready.

ok, that kinda came out of nowhere. You’re probably using a modern client that saves you from all of the godawful footguns, so it then asks the server what it supports:

---> FEAT
<--- 211-Supported extensions:
<---  AUTH TLS;SSL;
<---  CDUP
<---  CLNT
# A whole bunch of other 4 letter acronyms. If I was writing an FTP server, I'd make it swear at the user since there are a lot of fun 4 letter words

There’s some other bullshit we don’t care about right now, although highlights include sending the username and password in plain text. There’s also ASCII vs binary mode. WE’LL GET BACK TO THAT. :|

So then we want to do a LIST. You know what happens in active mode? Your computer opens up some random fucking TCP port. It then instructs the FTP server to CONNECT TO YOUR GODDAMN COMPUTER. Your computer is the server, and the other side is now the client. I would post a more detailed overview of the FTP commands, but most servers on the internet disable active mode because it’s a goddamn liability.

I’m probably not blowing many minds right now because people know about this shit. I just want to mention that this is how FTP was built. The data plane and control plane are separate, and back in 19XX when this shit was invented, you could trust your fellows on ARPANET and NAT didn’t exist and sure HAM radio operators here’s the entire goddamn 44.0.0.0/8 block for you to do packet switched radio. A simple protocol for simple times, back before we knew what was good and what was bad.

So, active mode sucks! PASV is the future, and is the default on basically all modern clients and servers! Passive mode works exactly the same as the above, except when the client goes to LIST, the server opens some random TCP port (I’ve often seen something like 44000-44010) and tells the client, “hey you, connect to 1.2.3.4:44000 to get you your tasty data.” Sounds great, right? Well, there’s a problem that I actually touched on in my last paragraph. Back when this dogshit was first squeezed out back in the 70s, everyone had a public address. There were SO MANY addresses! 4 billion addresses? We’ll never use all of those! That is clearly not the case anymore. We don’t have enough addresses, and now we have this wonderful thing called NAT.

Continued in part 2.

I agree 💯

Man, I’ve written three novels plus assorted shorter form stories in markdown.

There’s a learning curve, but once you get going, it’s so fluid. The problem is that when it comes time to format for release, you have to convert to something else, and not every word processor can handle markdown. It’s extra work, but worth it, imo.

I frigging love markdown for everything!

It is too basic. I guess something more full-fledged like… typst?

Markdown is awesome, I agree! I did not realize you could extend markdown with anything other than html. The html extension is quite nice to do anything that markdown doesn’t support natively, but I wish there was an easier way to extend markdown. Maybe the ones you listed are what I need.

Depends on the type of book. Since you need HTML for all non default styles. Therefore, it raises the bar… you need a bit of web dev knowledge which removes the biggest benefit of markdown: simplicity / ease of use.

I think Obsidian and Logseq are helping to change this.

Markdown is terrible as a standard because every parser works differently and when you try to standardize it (CommonMark, etc.), you find out that there are a bajillion edge cases, leading to an extremely bloated specification.

I was actually surprised to find out QUIC is fairly close to being default.

Wikipedia

HTTP/3 uses QUIC, a multiplexed transport protocol built on UDP.HTTP/3 uses QUIC, a multiplexed transport protocol built on UDP.

HTTP/3 is (at least partially) supported by 97% of tracked web browser installations (thereof of 98% of “tracked mobile” web browsers), and 29% of the top 10 million websites.

Nobody knows about unifiedpush. Last time I checked, their Linux dbus distributor also wasn’t ready. There has to be a unified push to get it adopted.

Fuck Unified Push. Just use the Web Push standard. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8030

It is what is used for browser push messages, is already widely supported. Is compatible with existing push infrastructure and users and is end-to-end encrypted. IDK why Unified Push felt the need to create a new protocol when a perfectly good one already existed.

Although there is no “client side” spec. The Unified Push client side could be useful. But they should throw away their custom backend protocol and just use Web Push.

The delay is there because email has no deletion support.

And a host of other shortcomings.

I’d rather we replaced email with matrix

SMTP is actually a pretty great protocol for real time communication.

remembers greylisting is a common thing

SMTP is a terrible protocol. Text based for sending effectively binary data with complex header wrapping and “generate a random delimiter” framing. We really need a HTTP/2 of SMTP.

That being said I agree that it exists and works. The biggest blocker to more IM-style communication is largely the UI and user expectations. I have no problem having quick back-and-forths over email but most people don’t expect it.

Oh, another awesome thing about email is that you can ensure that your address is always yours, even if you use an email service provider like Gmail. Any provider that supports custom domains will allow you to use your own domain for your address, then if you want to change your provider, you keep your address. So, since I own hperrin.com, I can use the address me@hperrin.com, and I know it’ll always be mine as long as I pay for that domain.

This is a much better model than anything else. Even on the fediverse, you can’t have your own address unless you run your own instance.

If your email service provider goes out of business or gets sold off (skiff.com, anyone?), as long as you’re on your own custom domain, your address is still yours.

I’m working on custom domains for Port87. It’s definitely a feature I think every email provider should offer.

IRC is still in use by several open source projects, and it can be nice for quick and open public chatting for meeting people,and to ask questions.

Probably because it’s not as flashy as Discord

Markdown really should have more widespread support than it does. It’s just the right mix between plain text and an office document, I took my college notes with it in fact cause of how fast it was to format stuff. But as far as I know, there’s no default program on any of the (major) OS’s or Distros for viewing it.

Maybe it’s just due to a lack of standards for formatting or something, but regardless I do wish it was used and supported more.

Heads up for anyone (like me) who isn’t already familiar with SimpleX, unfortunately its name makes it impossible to search for unless you already know what it is. I was only able to track it down after a couple frustrating minutes after I added “linux” into the search on a lark.

Anyway it’s a chat protocol

The more they grow, the busier the spectrum will be. I really hope it doesn’t grow too much.