h2g2bob @h2g2bob@mastodon.dbatley.com

https://housefresh.com/beware-of-the-google-ai-salesman/

i just ftp'd into a public ftp server running in Ecuador, and discovered an absolutely critical piece of US Robotics ISP modem pool software that has been missing for 20 years

thank you from the bottom of my heart, rolando felix of Educational Unit 10 De Agosto, for leaving your departmental computer ftp wide open ❤️ you just preserved some insanely useful and important dial-up ISP history. (don't worry rolando - i didn't peek too deeply into your ms-dos games and music folders)

the story:
in the mid-90s i was a teenager who had a summer job at a dial-up isp. we had 32 incoming lines which were handled by 32 external USR Courier modems, which were fed into a super chonky Livingston Portmaster terminal server. all of the support hardware took up an entire rack - just to let 32 people call in for internet service at 28.8kbaud. it ate a ton of power, and made a lot of heat.

then, in 95-96, US Robotics delivered two insane appliances: the Total Control Modem Pool. these were *tiny* devices that offered 16 dial-up modems at 33.6kbaud. if you paid a bit more, you could buy the NetServer version, which gave you a terminal server too. an entire isp in a box the size of a network switch.

the modems had buggy firmware. so USR offered firmware updates via their ftp site. you could even upgrade some of the modems to "x2" 56k service with a firmware patch. they supported it for years, and when 3com bought USR, they kept the ftp site running for years. and then, 3com shut down their ftp site. and no one thought to mirror it.

after 3 hours of searching, i was able to track down a single filename thanks to WBM: mpv90an.zip. not a single site on the web had it - not even IA or discmaster. on a hunch, i plugged it into the Napalm FTP Indexer (https://www.searchftps.net) and... unbelievably, there it was, sitting on an ancient box in someone's university office in Quito, Ecuador.

the most amazing part was how slow the server was. at 250 ms pings, it was like digging through a public ftp on a 14.4k modem in 1994.

tomorrow i'll be uploading these files to IA. for now, sleep.

#digiPres #softwarePreservation #ISP

I made a typeface, it's called Flexflex 🔠

I've been working on this project on-and-off for many months. Very happy to finally release it!

Flexflex is a typeface that responds to spatial requirements rather than imposing them. Built on a modular system, each letter can fit inside any given rectangular container and transforms continuously if its ratio changes. In theory, it's infinitely flexible.

For more information and interactive demos, see the website: https://ronikaufman.github.io/flexflex

Some good news from the UK for a change: the government is introducing agent-of-change principles to urban planning, putting the responsibility for sound insulation near existing music venues on developers of new buildings, and giving venues legal protections from noise complaints from new tenants:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jul/26/music-venues-pubs-hospitality-uk-noise-government-

When your city has an open data portal with the location of every tree, you can do this:

https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/local-news/map-best-places-trees-hang-hammock-public-vancouver-bc-10948870

Why I 🧡 the web.

https://drawafish.com

Just draw the fish. Trust me. 🐟

The accessibility link is a lie: my adventures in weaponizing corporate virtue signalling, by WeirdWriter@caneandable.social
https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/20250724/

#accessibility #a11y

OpenStreetMap.org now has a vector tiles layer. 😍
read more: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2025/07/22/vector-tiles-are-deployed-on-openstreetmap-org/
#OpenStreetMap #OSM #maps #gischat

My water bill, for a household of 4, using somewhat less water than the average for 3, has suddenly hit £70 a month, up from about £50. For the most essential of essential services.

We can weather it I guess, but for households with lower incomes this is a huge squeeze.

Meanwhile United Utilities are still spilling sewerage, setting us up for water shortages, making £634 million in profits, and paying their chief exec £1.4m.

This is so not on. Water should never be run for profit.

Rare to have democracy wins! So hurrah for (at first look) some of these announcements today, esp on the automated voter registration and votes at 16: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restoring-trust-in-our-democracy-our-strategy-for-modern-and-secure-elections/restoring-trust-in-our-democracy-our-strategy-for-modern-and-secure-elections

This is the part of deploying a satellite that you never hear about, and the European Space Agency let me have a go!

I spent two days at their Mission Control, and you won’t believe how precisely they can position a satellite in space!

https://youtu.be/0i1Xz-xiYSU?si=cL4eSgbeRus0w3pL

This is INCREDIBLE; the Macs alongside the text aren't showing screenshots, it's booting emulators so you interact with what's being written about, and even includes the NeXT https://aresluna.org/frame-of-preference/

Following an innocuous link in a Full Fact article unexpectedly dropped me into the BBC politics website, 1997. Seems to have been created solely to cover that year, and then kept in it's final state ever since.

Fascinating stuff, and kudos to the Beeb for keeping (most of) it online. There are GIFs, though not as many as I would have preferred.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/

Wikipedia has a cheat sheet of well-known tells for identifying generated text. (With an appropriate warning not to over-index on minor ones as absolute proof) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_AI_Cleanup/AI_catchphrases

"Projections suggest that ongoing deep funding cuts—combined with the potential dismantling of [USAID] — could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4·5 million deaths among children younger than 5 years." https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext #globalhealth