Wow, that takes me back. It reminds me of the pre-web days when people would set up telnet services for providing information about the weather, ham radio callsigns, lyrics, FTP search engine (archie), and of course BBSs. An acquaintance of mine maintained a list of telnet BBSs and services that was fairly popular at the time. [1]
My first introduction to the internet was through the telnet-based EW-too talkers like Foothills (Boston U) and Forest (UTS). I have very fond memories of staying up late talking to people from all over the globe. It was truly amazing to me.
The best part was how the users moderated behaviour - bad actors were ejected swiftly but rarely permanently.
The first BBS I used in the 80's eventually ended up with a telnet daemon but its owner passed away and I think the person that took it over eventually shut lois.org down. Domain is still registered. I can't fault them, it was an ancient system.
A list of fun destinations for telnet
(telnet.org)207 points by tokyobreakfast 11 hours ago | 67 comments
Comments
There's something pure about text-based interfaces. No loading spinners, no JavaScript frameworks, no cookie banners. Just text.
[1] http://www.textfiles.com/bbs/BBSLISTS/internetinfo.txt
Captcha: Repeat the first spacecraft to land on another planet three times.
All my answers failed. I guess I must be a computer.
The best part was how the users moderated behaviour - bad actors were ejected swiftly but rarely permanently.
Missed a trick not being able to “telnet telnet.org” though. :-)
#set signature="cat ~/.signature && telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl 666 | tail -n3|"
Not that it buys you anything other than being retro. :)
> doom.w-graj.net 666
> Play Doom in the terminal (code and details)
Maybe then we just go back to an oldschool text based way of communicating.
No google. No socials. Just text.