[HN Gopher] www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Du... ___________________________________________________________________ www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :( Author : hougaard Score : 125 points Date : 2022-03-07 18:13 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.userfriendly.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.userfriendly.org) | crb3 wrote: | Haven't seen it in years, but I still remember naming the cat: | "Script or Five? Which hurts less?" | ssl232 wrote: | Can someone explain the significance of this to HN noobs | (apparently I'm one)? | faeyanpiraat wrote: | . | techsupporter wrote: | I think you mean UF--- | | (Does anyone remember Geek Code? Does anyone else still have | their Geek Code .sig file?) | Sohcahtoa82 wrote: | I've got some old e-mails in my Yahoo mailbox with Geek | Code in it. | menjaprunes wrote: | -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCS d--- s-:- | a-- C+++ UL++++$ P+> L+++$ !E W+ !N-- o? K- w--- O!? M-- | V-- PS+++ PE-- Y+ PGP+ t- X+ R+ tv+ b++ DI D+ G e h! r++ y? | ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ | jfim wrote: | It was a webcomic that was popular when slashdot and kuro5hin | were more popular. You can read more about it on wikipedia: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly | deltarholamda wrote: | I just wandered over to Slashdot earlier today. It's sad to | see what it has become. It's also sad to see UF burn out as | well. | | I miss Ye Olde Internets. | folkrav wrote: | I've never really frequented Slashdot, I've taken a short | look at it right now. What's going on with it that's so sad | to look at? I feel like I'm missing context... | kstrauser wrote: | Among other things, almost all stories used to have at | least a couple hundred comments. Today there are stories | on the front page with less than 10. | | The last nail in the coffin for me was their utter | refusal to remove absolutely abhorrent comments. Not | stuff like "I voted for someone different than you did", | but bullshit like https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?si | d=11756830&cid=561389... (CW: extreme antisemitism). I | spent a lot of time on Slashdot over the years, and had a | 4-digit UID that I'd bust on the inevitable "who's been | here longer?" comment chains. But while they have the | right to allow the comments section to fill with horrid | stuff, I don't want anything to do with that. | oliyoung wrote: | > at least a couple hundred comments. | | for context, that's when a "a couple hundred comments" | was as big as "a couple of thousand/tens of thousands" of | comments is now. | | Slashdot was the centre of the (tech) internet for a long | time. | kstrauser wrote: | Definitely. Given how much smaller the Internet was at | the time, a lot of the people actually making the | Internet -- Linux developers, webmasters, hardware | designers, network protocol authors, etc. -- were packed | into that one amazing forum and debating what to do next. | It was amazing in its heyday. | eadmund wrote: | That filth you linked to is scored 0, which I think means | it is not visible by default. I think it is preferable to | leave stuff like that available-but-hidden rather than to | delete it altogether. Free speech is a virtue. | morelisp wrote: | Sustained shortage of ASCII Penis Birds over the past | decade. | laumars wrote: | It was a series of comics aimed at people who work in IT. You | might have come across some of their sketches without realising | it. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly | MandieD wrote: | It was often hilarious if you happened to work at a local ISP | in the era the comic was started (late 90s), back when | $20-30/mo for dialup was a good deal, and customers could drop | their computers off to have their modems and Netscape installed | and Windows configured to dial in. Or for $40 extra, have some | high school kid working there drop by :) | ianai wrote: | I was one of those HS kids! | rob74 wrote: | Let's just say it was hilarious if you had anything to do | with computers - I could totally relate to the story of an | intelligent being emerging from the "primordial soup" of dust | collected over the years in an old PC. Or that running gag | about the guy who always managed to kill himself by falling | into lava in any multiplayer FPS game (even those that didn't | have lava). | vikingerik wrote: | User Friendly was the first big web-comic, the first to | establish the idea of a web-comic as a primary medium, as | opposed to being adapted from another source (newspapers) or | intellectual property. It started in 1997 which was really | early in Internet time, around the peak of the dial-up era (and | the setting is a workplace of a dial-up ISP.) It may not have | quite been the _first_ web-comic, but it was the one that first | reached a critical mass of general notability in geek culture. | pavlov wrote: | Wow, one of the originals from the Precambrian era of the web. | | I have a vague recollection that User Friendly started publishing | on an OS/2 Warp fan site sometime around 1995-96. | | (Edit: on quick googling, I'm probably wrong and confusing it | with something else from that era.) | MaxBarraclough wrote: | At least the original Space Jam website lives on, although I | see they relocated it with the release of the sequel last year. | | https://www.spacejam.com/1996/ | pavlov wrote: | While looking for the OS/2 site that would have hosted User | Friendly, I found OS/2 e-Zine! whose first issue is still | online, with the exact same HTML as in 1995: | | http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n1/ <FONT SIZE=+3> | xtracto wrote: | Part of the good old web for me: userfriendly, slashdot, | zophar's domain, crackstore, fosi.da.ru, fravia, gamasutra... | among several others. Those were amazing times. | wolpoli wrote: | There's something special about the picture of a pencil serving | as the navigation bar for the comic. | squarefoot wrote: | I loved that webcomic back then, also have one of his books. Sad | to see it go away, although there have been no new submission for | some time. Some cartoons were quite hilarious; I had this one on | the wall above my desk. | https://teddit.net/pics/w:720_5tenj3387my51.png | an_mp_speaks wrote: | This gives me a chance to ask about a different webcomic that I | read in the early 2000s, but have totally forgotten. It also took | place at a small development company or ISP. There was a dog who | was a system administrator, and he might have been in love with a | cat? All the characters were animals, I think, and there were the | usual 90s-early 00s Linux/Microsoft jokes. | yayachiken wrote: | Hackles? | | http://www.hackles.org/ | an_mp_speaks wrote: | That's the one! | yayachiken wrote: | By the way, if you liked the old-school "ISP shenenigans | and Unix jokes" web-comic genre, make sure to check out | https://www.gpf-comics.com/ | | It's still going, IMO still not stale (without going into | spoilers: the setting really helps), even though it is also | scheduled to wind down (tying up all loose threads) in the | next 1-2 years. | | As a teen I read web-comics like GPF, Userfriendly, Sluggy | Freelance religiously, which really helped my English and | my nerd career. Finding out about all those big web comics | dying is the first time that I genuinely feel in my core | that I am getting older... :( | hkt wrote: | I feel older for the same reason - it sucks watching the | internet of my youth slip away. | kawsper wrote: | I used to read that when I was a child, I am glad it is still | online. I am also happy that they managed to finish the story | :) | fluidcruft wrote: | Oh... I remember that. What the heck was that... | duskwuff wrote: | Could you be thinking of _Kevin and Kell_ | (https://www.kevinandkell.com/)? The species don't quite match | up, but the general description and the time period do. (And | it's still running daily strips, making it the longest-running | web comic!) | an_mp_speaks wrote: | That's not it, as far as I can tell. The art in the comic I'm | thinking of had something of an MS-Paint quality, and wasn't | nearly as developed. But thanks for the guess! I've never | heard of this one before. | oh_sigh wrote: | Why now? I think there hasn't been any fresh non-forum content on | the site for at least 12 years. Just didn't feel like paying | hosting costs, or something else? | techsupporter wrote: | According to this subthread, it's that the code is positively | ancient: | https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082909/http://ars.userfr... | | "Like for the past 17+ years... | | ... I own the ISP hosting UF. | | The biggest problem is supporting the legacy mod_perl stuff | that the site is built on... you'd basically have to re-write | the entire front end, or find a very bored perl monk to update | the code base. | | Basically to keep the ARS active, you'd need someone to take | over the operations of the server & code. Maintaining it is a | big deal. | | Cost-wise, I could bring it down quite a bit if it was moved | into a VPS (which we also offer), but again - it's a | maintenance/care & feeding issue. This site is still running on | Apache 1.3 here. | | Someone would need to volunteer some senior technical skill for | several weeks, and start... pretty much now." | [deleted] | dredmorbius wrote: | There were a number of early webcomics, with UF being among the | more prominant. | | Others I recall: | | - "Cafe Hugo", I believe. Tagline included "vague enneui", | possibly also "coffee, puns, ..." or something like that. Mostly | college students / recent graduates and their life at a cafe. All | traces seem lost. | | - "Westward Ho!" was a _very_ short-lived, and I think | intentionally limited, comic about a young woman engaged in | finding mutually-beneficial relationship and /or fighting for | justice on the fronteir. Well executed and largely in good taste | given the premise. | | - "Help Desk", featuring Ubersoft (guilty of Unholy Business | Practices). A mention here: | https://comics.fandom.com/wiki/Help_Desk And apparently still | online: | https://www.eviscerati.org/comics/hd/2022/02/unprofessional-... | | - Avalon High -- a very soap-opera-ish comic about students at a | Candian high school. Archive: | https://web.archive.org/web/20110707193859/http://www.avalon... | Flocular wrote: | Got announced 2 weeks ago | https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082910/http://ars.userfr... | shever73 wrote: | Pity. I used to read it regularly when I was starting in web dev | in the late 90s and it was genius (even with the Metafilter | thing). | | I browsed the archive last year during the Christmas break for a | nostalgia trip! | phamilton wrote: | One of my first bits of code I shared online was a scraper for | userfriendly.org that would download every comic since the | beginning of time. | | It was incredibly bad and inefficient (I didn't sleep between | calls and just brute forced the image name which led to 90% | 404s). Within a few days, UF announced that anyone doing wget | scraping would get IP banned. | | I was just a kid, but it was so jarring to see something I did | cause problems. I learned a ton about being a good netizen. | Thanks UF and sorry for the trouble! | tiernano wrote: | I must have re-read this site multiple times over... still go | back every now and again... looks like it is archived though. | First post: | https://web.archive.org/web/20220225094808/http://ars.userfr... | mattl wrote: | https://web.archive.org/web/20220225062754/http://ars.userfr... | tpmx wrote: | Announced the day of the Ukraine invasion... | mattl wrote: | Was the writer based in Ukraine? | danudey wrote: | Canada (and, since 2014, Vancouver specifically). | xtracto wrote: | Is there archive of the comics themselves? I remember them | fondly. | MandieD wrote: | The Wayback Machine has got your back: | https://web.archive.org/web/20220225092808/http://www.userfr... | donatj wrote: | I heard this was coming a couple weeks ago. I don't know why | you'd shut the entire website down, rather than just put it into | hibernation? | | I mean I don't know what is hosting situation is, but I can't | imagine there's a ton of traffic on a comic that hasn't had a new | post in years. Seems like it would be worth keeping it up just | for old time sake. | | It would be reasonable enough to host the entire thing for | probably a couple bucks a year on s3. | matt_heimer wrote: | Seems like it was a legacy mod_perl code base that was | difficult to maintain. | https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082909/http://ars.userfr... | mauvehaus wrote: | Because he's been posting reruns for approximately ever in | internet time and the community has been the soul of the site | for even longer. To be frank, it wasn't a webcomic you stuck | with for either the art or the humor. Every now and then, there | was a funny strip or storyline, but it's not something that | needs to be endlessly rehashed. | | It seems the community has moved to another forum, so there's | no real reason to keep posting reruns on some more-or-less | static hibernation mode site. | | I hung out there sporadically for a few years and moved on. It | was a small-ish community that was by and large friendly and | supportive (I mean, like almost 20 years ago, can't speak for | what it's like today). At that time, the regulars knew each | other, at least digitally, and sometimes IRL. | | People may have come for the comic, but those that stayed | stayed for the forum. | macintux wrote: | Anyone know when the last new comic was posted? | olliej wrote: | Per @oh_sigh it sounds like 12 years ago? | 1970-01-01 wrote: | HEADS UP: We're Going Dark by Illiad 2022-02-24 11:04:32 | | Hello all, long time. We'll be shutting down the website in the | coming days. It may be at the end of this month. If not, it won't | be much later than that. | | Many UF community members have moved over to Hedgehog, which is | run by Klaranth. You can find the site here. | | All the best, | | Illiad | | https://web.archive.org/web/20220225062754/http://ars.userfr... | tpoacher wrote: | I posted some random comment there a couple of weeks ago. And | then I went back to see if anyone replied and the site was down | :/ | MandieD wrote: | A webcomic that started back when mid-sized US/Canadian towns | really did have one-stop ISPs that employed both experienced | sysadmins, the new web designers doing sites for local | businesses, and students just getting started in IT - and were | places where all of the above could actually advance or at least | enjoy their careers, not just languish as call center drones. | | I was lucky enough to spend a couple of summers in high school | then after my freshman year of college working at a similar | outfit in my hometown. It had about 1500 subscribers paying about | $20-30/mo for dialup around 1997-99. | | Anyway, that's where I was introduced to User Friendly, and we'd | laugh together over the funnier ones. | | Go to "Storylines" to find the ones you remember: | https://web.archive.org/web/20220225091648/http://www.userfr... | kstrauser wrote: | I could've written every word of this. That launched a pretty | fun career for me. | jmclnx wrote: | Sad to see it go, I would read it daily even the repeats. | | I did buy one of the books years ago. Maybe other books were | release since :) Will have to look | RF_Savage wrote: | Sad day. One of the first webcomics I just binged in a few days. | zeruch wrote: | I recall meeting Illiad and his coterie at one of the LinuxWorlds | early on. A pretty affable lot they all were, and funny as hell. | techsupporter wrote: | I still have my "lifetime" User Friendly membership card signed | by Illiad and "Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell, a User Friendly Guide | to World Domination" from O'Reilly. I wish I had found a copy of | the first UF compilation book, and that my copy of "Ten Years of | UserFriendly.org" hadn't been destroyed in a move. | | For those of us who have been doing this for a very long time, | User Friendly was the salve to the dry business side of Dilbert. | Think the xkcd tech support cheat sheet (https://xkcd.com/627/) | but with far more snark and characters. | laumars wrote: | Dilbert was a lot more generic too. I think most companies | reflected Dilbert in one way or another. But User Friendly was | a lot more specialised. | | At least that's how I remembered them. | techsupporter wrote: | Agreed. Dilbert was for if you worked in an office building | doing pretty much anything. User Friendly was for a very | specific niche of people who either worked at mid-sized ISPs | (like MandieD wrote: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30593421) or who | supporter or empathized with people who worked at mid-sized | ISPs. | | "Thank you for calling Columbia Internet, this is Miranda." | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | It used to be a daily visit, for me. | | RIP, lil' Crud Puppy, and Great Old Ones... | [deleted] | zem wrote: | oh no :( i used to go back and read it every now and then. RIP. | pjmlp wrote: | Oh! During the .com wave they were part of my daily news round | before getting into the office. | teddyh wrote: | I posted a link to there just four months ago1: | https://web.archive.org/web/20220226164056/http://ars.userfr... | | 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29095031 | bbatchelder wrote: | Sad. Made me think of other sites I'd visit for similar content. | | The Bastard Operator from Hell (BOFH) is actually still around | and new content being written. | | https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/bofh/ ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-07 23:00 UTC)