HN.zip

Itter.sh – Micro-Blogging via Terminal

252 points by rrr_oh_man - 69 comments
ryan-c [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It didn't get much attention when I posted it earlier this week, but I made an SSH movie player:

ssh ansi.rya.nc

(currently shows Sneakers, complete with subtitles)

muppetman [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Usually I get really annoyed with people who hijack a thread to post their own thing, but ok, yea, this is pretty amazing. The quality is superb.

I do also love itter.sh

ews [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I was about to say 'please do not hijack the thread' but read your comment and ssh'ed into it. This is amazing.
kingforaday [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Agree. His Show HN post deserves the upvotes

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43916333

rrr_oh_man [3 hidden]5 mins ago
HOLY FUCK, WOW. Can we have a call?
IncreasePosts [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Just mplayer -vo caca myvideo.mp4
ryan-c [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It's _way_ higher quality than that.
ryan-c [3 hidden]5 mins ago
drop me an email
adamkochanowicz [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It looks completely garbled on my end
ryan-c [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It needs a terminal with 24 bit color support, and at least 80x24. In particular, gnu screen doesn't work.
ryan-c [3 hidden]5 mins ago
here's a screenshot with a terminal that works with it https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attach...
csomar [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The SSH keystroke lag makes it un-enjoyable especially that you need to type to move around the interface. Otherwise, I like the concept. I'd rather have a terminal feed of random shit that I can filter than having to navigate around web pages.
rrr_oh_man [3 hidden]5 mins ago
gotcha!
ramaro [3 hidden]5 mins ago
There's also https://pico.sh/
VVilhelmsen [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I absolutely love this. I really hope it stays active.
toshinoriyagi [3 hidden]5 mins ago
This is very cool. Feels a lot like old school internet. A refreshing experience compared to most social media.
0xDEAFBEAD [3 hidden]5 mins ago
What are the sociological factors that separate old school from new school?

To me, I'd summarize the situation something like: The modern internet is one of continuous popularity contests, engagement farming, and status wars. The old internet was one of authentic sharing, rambling, and candid conversations.

But what are the causes driving those effects?

I suspect one key dividing line is the importance of feedback metrics. Likes, upvotes, downvotes, shares, whatever.

Imagine going to a party where whenever you said something, everyone briefly did a thumbs-up or thumbs-down motion to indicate how much they liked it before the conversation continued. Obviously, that's a bastardized way to party. But it's our whole world online. We compete for popularity, and we copy popular behaviors, in search of an attention-farming fixed point.

I also think the size of the community matters a lot. I remember in the earliest days of reddit, noticing the same usernames over and over made it feel like more of a community.

Modern "social media" is not really "social"; it should really be called "DIY broadcast media" in my view. A key clue here is despite our brave "social" world, the concept of an "online friend" is considerably diminished relative to what it once was. You tend to be either smothered with attention, or totally ignored. I prefer chilling out over fighting to get a scrap of interaction.

BTW here's a fun old-school guide to internet culture: https://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/ (I don't think it describes the modern internet very well)

Claudiusseibt [3 hidden]5 mins ago
this is really cool but i would like to register more than one ssh key because i'm using hardware keys and if i physically loose the one key i wont be able to get in
thunkle [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I like the self depreciation here: > itter.sh is built with TONS of bugs on:
rrr_oh_man [3 hidden]5 mins ago
it's true, unfortunately...
solarized [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The most worrying thing about isolated places like this :

   Wayback Machine can't index my content.
flaviuspopan [3 hidden]5 mins ago
This is so good. I love the name, logo, and bugs section.

> exec request failed on channel 1

Well, guess it's time to scale

rrr_oh_man [3 hidden]5 mins ago
yeah, I screwed this up in all kinds of ways

thx for the love tho <3

tehlike [3 hidden]5 mins ago
This is timely.

For my side project (pricetracker.wtf) i was hoping to build a terminal app that you can connect with telnet or ssh - and do navigate the app through a super simplified but interactive ux...

Found a few libraries that seems to help with this...

joshcsimmons [3 hidden]5 mins ago
This is AWESOME. Love the idea of totally navigating around the ad-noise that the modern html/css/js web has become. This is how I first experienced the internet and I still maintain that it is one of the sanest ways to do so.

How is adoption so far?

rrr_oh_man [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> How is adoption so far?

300-ish sign-ups, 12k posts

solomonb [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Its neat but isn't it basically just `wall`?
zipping1549 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
https://github.com/bbj-dev/bbj comes to mind as well.
ilvez [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Curious how long it took to get it? Fun experiment. Missing readline support though :)

I was at first thinking I could use it from my commandline directly..

alexrsagen [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Aw, it doesn't work :(

> Error: User not found for posting eet.

IncreasePosts [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I bet you tried to register a short user name.
abhisek [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Wow. Reminds of the old BBS era.
keepamovin [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I'm also building a BBS era idea, called dialup.sh that uses a 100%-text-mode browser to reverse proxy locally hosted websites for people to run little servers for their pals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bs7BoQBoBA

I personally like the idea of a modern browser that works over SSH/terminals, on its own, but i think the BBS/social, friend-to-friend, small network idea can be the thing the indie-web (tilde, etc) have been zeroing in on the last few years.

It's good to see more people building in term/text interfaces. I think of it as a reaction to super saturation of attention-grabbing content all time, all places. Nice to have some quiet, some (visual? content?) noise cancellation for the web! Especially in the era of AI generated content now too. Overload, man. Get back to BBS days not a bad idea! :)

MajesticWombat [3 hidden]5 mins ago
what am i doing wrong??

Permission denied (publickey).

roskelld [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Presuming that you're on Windows, you might need to configure your ssh keys first.

https://4sysops.com/archives/powershell-remoting-with-ssh-pu...

rrr_oh_man [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Holy moly, wow. What would be the best way to turn this into a TL;DR man for Windows users?
Weetile [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Did you make sure to register first?
codingdave [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I like the idea of having different options for content creation, but I don't understand why "micro-blogging" is still a thing. It originated in message length limitations of texting back when texting was a new thing. Why inject an outdated constraint into a new tool?
chneu [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It's the same reason I still like sports: humans operating within constraints produce interesting outcomes.

It's why film photography is still popular. The constraints create unique ideas.

caprock [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Agreed! I have enjoyed how the constraints will prod me to refine and distill an initial thought into more crisp phrasing.
muppetman [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Because these days morons make a 10 minute video to explain something that could probably fit into 180 chars. Everyone is all "ME ME ME! LOOK AT ME!" and 180 chars doesn't really let you make it all about yourself. So it's enjoyable to read. It's the same reason Twitter started to suck a big one once threads and unrolling and all that bollox became common place.
AStonesThrow [3 hidden]5 mins ago
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=1eTSL2kopP4&si=6g5MeMOmKoM...

Well I dreamed there was an island, that rose up from the sea.

And everyone on the island was somebody from T.V.

And there was a beautiful view, but nobody could see

'Cuz everybody on the island was screaming,

"Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!"

zwnow [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Because ain't nobody gonna read a 20000 word manifest
nathan_douglas [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Can verify, I'm somewhere on the hypergraphic spectrum and one of the reasons I like computers in general and LLMs in particular is that they're literally forced to read what I write.
antonvs [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Kinda. The large context windows that recent LLMs have tends to imply that their attention to your input is selective. They're just humoring you really.
chairmansteve [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Yep. You can link to manifest in your tweet.
import [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The same reason why people posting stories instead of actual posts. Or you really don’t want to write masterpiece everyday.
konart [3 hidden]5 mins ago
You can write a 180 characters post\tweet\toot even when there is virtually no limitation.

I think this is what was asked by a parent commenter: why enforce any limit (except for a sane ones) at all?

soap- [3 hidden]5 mins ago
IMO it makes for better content. I'm not logging in to a microblogging app so I can read thoughtful, longform content, actually it's exactly the opposite.

By enforcing a character limit you only allow a certain type of post to be made

flutetornado [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I prefer it because it forces distillation to core ideas, consumable quickly. Busy people have too little time to read too much verbiage.
lynndotpy [3 hidden]5 mins ago
And there is a mutually understood degree of nuance. There is no space to consider every route of uncertainty or qualify every statement. You can say "the Earth is round" instead of "most of us agree that the Earth very very likely exists and is very likely to be round".
badsectoracula [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> By enforcing a character limit you only allow a certain type of post to be made

Yes, the one where all nuance and detail is lost after being trimmed to death so it can exist under the arbitrary limit and is much easier to misunderstand because the author couldn't put all of their thoughts in writing.

It does help with engagement though.

bigstrat2003 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I think that the breakdown of public discourse in the US in the last 15ish years is directly attributable to Twitter. When the main mode of engagement with others in politics is to drop 140-char hot takes, it shouldn't be surprising people hate each other. The world would genuinely be a much better place, in my opinion, if Twitter or its like had never existed.
konart [3 hidden]5 mins ago
On a side note: a platform can (potentially) provide a filter that will show user only posts shorter than length L1. Or longer than L1.
konart [3 hidden]5 mins ago
>IMO it makes for better content.

Sorry but this even sounds wrong. You can write an eternal masterpiece in any form. Short story, a poem, a novel, an anecdote even.

In fact shorter form is more challenging. You have less room for a mistake. And lets be honest: most people are terrible writers|composers|painters etc.

This is one of the reasons you see threads and services that can present you threads in a more convenient form.

rrr_oh_man [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> why enforce any limit (except for a sane ones) at all

Some say Shakespeare was his (their?) best when he was limited to the fixed form of the sonnet.

DyslexicAtheist [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Actually it's "his". Also Redditors at the time rated him merely as "one among many talented playwrights and poets". It wasn't until the 17th century that he's been been considered _the_ supreme playwright.

... is this^^ the type of content you want on Itter? Because that's what you get from this crowd.

thenthenthen [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Not sure, but stories, threads, etc seem to be a rather top down/dark pattern thats shoved down our throats one doom scroll at a time
ravenstine [3 hidden]5 mins ago
People today don't read, they skim. If the text is too long, they won't even do that. Nevertheless, I'm surprised text hasn't completely died in favor of TikTok style videos, butaybe we are still on our way to that.
sundarurfriend [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> I'm surprised text hasn't completely died in favor of TikTok style videos

You gave the answer yourself - TikTok style videos, short as they are, aren't as easy to skim through as microblogging sites.

ravenstine [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Not quite, I think. Bite sized videos provide the illusion of promise that one won't miss any information, whereas I would think that promise isn't there when skimming over text.
deadbabe [3 hidden]5 mins ago
you can get really good at skimming massive amounts of text such that you don’t miss anything, or at least feel like you didn’t miss anything, but most UI on bite size video platforms simply can’t provide that kind of experience very well.
_Algernon_ [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The medium is the message. Presumably the creators felt that it is such a fundamental part of the medium they want to recreate that they keep the constraint.
rrr_oh_man [3 hidden]5 mins ago
<3
bee_rider [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Something like 2-5 rows at some reasonable width (40? 80?) could be nice for a sort of live feed to put over to the side in a terminal maybe.
rrr_oh_man [3 hidden]5 mins ago
that's a really cool thought, thank you!
sneak [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Do you know why Formula 1 is called Formula 1? The formula refers to a specific set of constraints to which all of the participants must adhere.

The cars could be totally different; more tech, features, etc. The whole sport and culture is defined around the system of shared constraints.

add-sub-mul-div [3 hidden]5 mins ago
For the same reason that some of the things I say to people are single sentences while others are multiple full paragraphs.
MajesticWombat [3 hidden]5 mins ago
sounds cool