#othernetworks — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #othernetworks, aggregated by home.social.
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I am so excited (and nervous) that I get to teach #othernetworks to undergrads this semester! gulp. I hope they like geeking out abt semaphore, telegraph, radio, television, telephone etc. as much as I do...here's the schedule of readings if you'd like to follow along https://loriemerson.net/2026/08/12/syllabus-for-other-media-histories-networks/
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omg. People especially people who don’t follow me and don’t know me. I was not suggesting we consort with Nazis because both sides etc. I was merely thinking about the folks I’m fond of on Bluesky who sound like they’ve personally failed somehow because they don’t enjoy Mastodon. Heterogeneous, cooperative, open, fair, and all the other adjectives to describe a world where there is an abundance of #othernetworks.
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reminded of a little something I learned en route to writing #othernetworks: that we need to shift from thinking in terms of one network/platform or another and instead to thinking in terms of building up a heterogeneous ecosystem consisting of many networks. not Mastodon vs Bluesky but both and
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i was so surprised and delighted to see BBSes, FidoNet, and MUDs/MUCKs get mentions in the anthropomorphic (furry) culture history documentary The Fandom (2020).
i always knew there was significant overlap between furry culture and networked computing, but i had never fully made the connection. it's so nice to see a real, non-corporate, grassroots culture grown through informal othernetworks. no wonder masto is so furry-rich!
trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF9DQQsUcs0
watch here (free):
https://archive.org/details/the-fandom-a-furry-documentary-full-movie#bbs #fidonet #documentary #film #furry #othernetworks #mud #mush
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Aaaaaand now we have a baby little ADSL DSLAM in the CO homelab :3
ET&Y is now offering very competitive rates for home internet services (limit 12 customers only, actual speeds may vary). :bec_grin:
Really really need to pick up a telecom rack to stuff all this year into; the table is getting cramped and we don't even have the DSX patchbay, HDSL mechanics shelf, or -48V plant supply in there yet.
#HomeLab #VoiceLab #RetroLab #OtherNetworks #Telecommunications
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Wonder if there would be any interest in [FPV] streaming some retro CO phone lab tinkering.
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Most of the phone messaging/calling I do is with my wife. Both working from home we’re usually in close range. Thinking about installing a 1970s-style intercom system between house, barn and home office. If we had a CB radio in the car we could wire a transceiver into the intercom and have a pretty slick system that covers our remote communication needs. Do away with these distracting smartphones and pricey data contracts.
It’d be good weird fun + a big quality-of-life upgrade. #othernetworks
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In continued phone-nerdery: Welcome to the Tandem Straylight.
Let's get some old CO gear talking to each other :pixelheart: ☎️
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It has been a good, silly, evening, filled with 66 blocks, phones, T1 circuits, and glittering hardware.
Need to order (find?) some plug-in surge modules for this building terminal.
Safe to say things are getting deeply nerdy, here.
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From the 1977 MIT Press book "The social impact of the telephone", a poem for the telegraph #othernetworks cc @loriemerson
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Jack in and join IRC. For the Aesthetic. For the Chooms. For the 'Net we were promised. :bec_grin:
#RetroNetworking #RetroComputing #IRC #OtherNetworks #Windows98 #Windows98se #Windows9x
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@loriemerson Thank you for collecting all these #othernetworks wonders that open up new links and connections for me. Today, someone recommended me a detailed article about the southafrican example of #Sneakernet you describe in the book ... and I listened to a recording of #EarthMoonEarthCommunication by Katie Paterson.
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This is going to be a good day, and a good week. #othernetworks
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CW: lots of nerd talk about dreamcast and phone lines with dubious delivery
In the service of totally overdoing some #Dreamcast #RetroGaming, I've successfully patched the #DreamPi gateway to be less useful. Buckle up, because this is a kinda long post with little in the way of delivery. :bec_smug:
Normally the DreamPi throws its modem into voice mode, plays a dial tone to fake out the dreamcast, listens to the digits dialed, and then switches to data mode and kicks off a handshake. Stays off-hook the entire time.
This makes sense if you're using an electrically-simple Line Voltage Inducer and a straight connection between the Dreamcast and the modem for minimum part count get-up-and-go. It's actually a really clever workaround.
My tweak adjusts the modem behavior such that it stays on-hook until it detects an incoming ring, then answers and jumps straight into data mode.
This change was made because presently we're using a Valcom DLE-200B phone line simulator which does provide 'local' tone, ringing voltage, and ringdown.
This necessarily means that we lose out on capturing the dialed digits, but it turns out we don't need those at all for pretty much any of the PPP-based games with central servers, and I'm not interested in playing anything outside of that scope.
So now we have a dreampi that can only work in PPP mode and it requires a line simulator to work correctly. Why?
All, ultimately, so that we can hook the DreamPi and two dreamcasts up to a TDM-based #PBX instead of the line simulator, wherein either of the latter can dial the former, thinking they're dialing Dreamcast Online Services. It goes through the whole ring-in process, which terminates at DreamPi, handshakes, and tunnels to Dreamcast Live -- getting us the goods.
And there's lots of Friday left to go :3
#RetroGaming #OtherNetworks #PhoneLab #RetroLab #POTS #Modem
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Hnngh, talk about an anticlimax. Been hunting down this IP Office chassis to install in the telecoms lab and it *seems* to have a dead internal PSU.
It's gonna get repaired, of course, but it just totally killed all immediate forward progress.
#VoiceLab #OtherNetworks #HomeLab #RetroLab #Avaya #PhoneSystems #PBX #IPOffice
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Hot damn! 6 holds already on 2 copies. I requested SPL buy this book months and months ago and so was first on the wait list for it when their copies finally came in. I thought I’d have lots of time (and renewals) to myself to read it, but seems not. Better get to it!
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Good new (library) book day!
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Any neat #xmpp channels out there for #RetroGaming, #CyberPunk, #OtherNetworks, #SelfHosting, #Fedi, or #Streaming interests?
Playing around with Snikket/XMPP a little bit tonight. Would be nice to find some home bases to work out of for the time being.
:boost_request: :bec_grin:
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back in the early 90s, it was very difficult to find a means for connecting to the internet.
for the very few who did have (pre-www) internet access, it was via their university or (much less likely) through a large corporation.
and then, in october of 1994, a local nonprofit started Edmonton FreeNet: for $25 per year, you got an e-mail address, usenet access, shell access to lynx and pine, and 1mb of file storage
i hung on to my account so i'd always have access to a shell no matter where I was in the world. my friends used it as a cheap ISP for years; they would eventually add SLIP/PPP.
i always wondered how the freenet initiative got started - and learned recently that it was all thanks to the NPTN Blue Book: a National Public Telecomputing Network that distributed a software package called FreePort, containing all of the sub-modules necessary to delivery dial-up access to a small community.
the whole NTPN concept itself was way ahead of its time, and i'd love to read a book on it some day.
for the time being, i'm overjoyed to see that there have been many articles written on freenets, and @ernie's is one of the best:
https://tedium.co/2022/04/13/internet-free-net-history/ -
My copy of @loriemerson's “Other Networks” arrived last night and I sat on the couch for over an hour straight and flipped through every single page. Y’all, my attention span is not normally capable of that, but this is a wide and deep *page-turner*. Astoundingly well researched and it will make you realize what a Matrix we’re living and thinking in. Currently sold out at Mexican Summer, but go find a copy somewhere! https://shop.mexicansummer.com/merch/495898-lori-emerson-other-networks-a-radical-technology-sourcebook #othernetworks
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Pre-ordered "Other Networks A Radical Technology Sourcebook" in February, but cancelled that order after @loriemerson posted in April that her book would be available in local bookshops. Ordered it on amazon.nl in April, but delivery is delayed and planned in 6 months.😭 #OtherNetworks
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How extra does it have to be before we're officially Extra with the CO TDM project?
The H4TU-C cards are due to be delivered today (theoretically)...
...but now I'm noodling on picking up a building entrance terminal and set up a 110 block handoff.
...... reaaaally this is an excuse to add those pluggable surge suppressors to the mix. I saw them in an RT cabinet "tour" years ago and really want to add them here. For completeness. Yeah.
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Good news! My H4TU-C card has been delivered!
... bad news: it was delivered to the wrong address, about 5 states away.
Making up for it short term with updating the firmware on our TA908, which is only about 6 major versions out of date, and then we're gonna see about linking it somewhere.
Then, maybe, set up the 908 to be a SIP-TDM gateway and tie the IP Office to it? Egress through @eventphone 's EPVPN until I get my act together?
