traceroute:
...
15 213.136.2.6 35.049 ms 34.440 ms 34.338 ms
16 213.136.2.20 34.814 ms 33.359 ms 35.116 ms
17 213.154.229.42 33.837 ms 33.572 ms 34.794 ms
18 213.136.8.188 30.174 ms 28.810 ms 33.674 ms
tcptraceroute ... 23 :
...
15 213.136.2.6 28.626 ms 28.657 ms 28.849 ms
16 213.136.2.20 28.608 ms 28.483 ms 28.515 ms
17 213.154.229.42 27.989 ms 28.058 ms 29.336 ms
18 * * * My traceroute [v0.95]
t14 (2a0e:5700:xxxx) -> towel.blinkenl2026-01-27T13:33:52+0100
Keys: Help Display mode Restart statistics Order of fields quit
Packets Pings
Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1. 2a0e:5700:xxxxxx 0.0% 4 0.8 0.9 0.8 1.2 0.2
2. 2a02:f640:xxxxxx 0.0% 4 8.5 9.3 8.4 11.0 1.2
3. 2a02:f640::1 0.0% 4 8.2 8.8 8.2 9.2 0.5
4. amsix-501.xe-0-0-0.jun1.bit-1.ne 0.0% 4 12.9 13.1 11.7 15.3 1.6
5. e48.leaf-sw2.bit-1.network.bit.n 0.0% 4 10.7 11.2 10.7 11.8 0.5
6. lo0.leaf-sw3.bit-2b.network.bit. 0.0% 4 11.8 12.0 11.8 12.3 0.3
7. 2001:7b8::213:136:2:43 0.0% 4 12.8 12.0 11.2 12.8 0.7
8. deepthought.blinkenlights.nl 0.0% 4 12.4 11.8 11.4 12.4 0.4
9. towel.blinkenlights.nl 0.0% 3 11.6 11.8 11.5 12.2 0.4 ..... @@@@@ @@@@@ ...........
...... @ @ @ @ ..........
....... @@@ @ @ .........
........ @@ @ @ ........
........ @@@@@@@ @@@@@ th .......
....... ----------------------- ......
...... C E N T U R Y .....
..... ----------------------- ....
... @@@@@ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ ...
== @ @ @ @ @ ==
__||__ @ @@@@ @ @ __||__
| | @ @ @ @ @ | |
_________|______|_____ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ _____|______|_________
```There's something pure about text-based interfaces. No loading spinners, no JavaScript frameworks, no cookie banners. Just text.
I then made my first email client, then an RFC later, and after browsing the web through telnet for a while, made my first web server!
And sending an email without line editing felt much more exciting than a dedicated mail client. Just dig the remote MX, telnet to port 25 and do it by hand. Marvelous!
Telnet or Mudnet client needed :)
I’ve just poked my schoolmate - he almost didn’t graduate because of MUD.
Why do you regret it? People 40+ and juniors can't get jobs now anyways. Even with proper degrees.
I know things are brutal out there, but if I find myself unemployed, I’ll need every possible edge I can find. Homelessness is decidedly suboptimal.
I remember grex.org and arbornet.org . My first free Unix shel acccounts hehe. Made friends worldwide.
So, with the guy looking over my shoulder, I telnet to the email server, list his messages, and discover that there’s an email with an attachment that’s too big for Outlook to handle. Read some basic info from the message so he could confirm that deleting the message was fine - deleted the message, and Outlook worked again.
Dude was thrilled. Fun times.
It's our favorite way of demoing s2.dev, https://x.com/jrdi/status/2014318511120670859
[1] https://archive.org/details/unofficialguidet0000fadi_r0y3/pa...
ITs not obscure, not unknown or special - it's the most known talent site on earth.
It was made AFIR to show capabilities of ffmpg ASCII/ANSI renderer.
Real gems are SDF.ORG, TWENEX.ORG, or Cray 1 supercomputer Access, bbses and backdoors.
Ps. Telnet can be run and it is DAILY inside of the telecoms and one of few ways to speak with BSC, RNC, RRUS and individual basebands(even ultra fresh with 5G). All over IP/SEC and isolated networks. You MUST know if you are serious about computer business hehe
AUDIT people also loves it - you can record entire session of Chinese or Swedish engineer doing some new shit to basebands. This or logging entire screen
Don't think it's dead.
And it definitely wasn't using ffmpeg, it was bespoke hand-typed ASCII
Then:
telnet SDF.org
get freeish forever Unix shell account.
That's a bit like connecting to IRC with netcat. It's easy to do, there's some kind of a retro hacker feel to it, but it's just not very practical.
> doom.w-graj.net 666
> Play Doom in the terminal (code and details)
Missed a trick not being able to “telnet telnet.org” though. :-)
#set signature="cat ~/.signature && telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl 666 | tail -n3|"
Maybe then we just go back to an oldschool text based way of communicating.
No google. No socials. Just text.
Do you know what the letters in LLM mean?
If we dont have any of the above the propaganda or AI slop is just not worth it.
This is why having small focused MODERATED communities is the only viable future.
~/work/...> telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
zsh: command not found: telnetThis is expected. Telnet is not encrypted and people are discouraged from using the client or the inetd daemon. It is assumed that if someone installs it manually it is more likely they have a reason to do so and hopefully understand the risks. It will always exist in repositories as there are still a myriad of enterprise appliances that use telnet for management and likely will be the case for the foreseeable future.
/edit front page of google did this and it worked for me. Need to do a pip install telnetlib3
import telnetlib3
import sys
def simple_telnet_client(host, port=23):
"""
Connects to a telnet server and prints incoming data.
Compliant with RFC 854 (via telnetlib handling of NVTs).
"""
try:
# Initialize connection
print(f"Connecting to {host}:{port}...")
tn = telnetlib3.Telnet(host, port)
# Read and display output indefinitely until connection closes
while True:
# read_eager() reads data already available without blocking
data = tn.read_eager()
if data:
sys.stdout.write(data.decode('ascii', errors='ignore'))
sys.stdout.flush()
# Check if socket is closed
if tn.get_socket() is None:
break
except ConnectionRefusedError:
print("Connection refused.")
except Exception as e:
print(f"An error occurred: {e}")
finally:
if 'tn' in locals():
tn.close()
print("\nConnection closed.")
if __name__ == "__main__":
# Example usage:
# simple_telnet_client("telehack.com", 23)
# Replace with desired host
host = input("Enter host: ")
simple_telnet_client(host)Are you being hyperbolic or do you seriously think the attack surface area of ANSI escape sequences is 'much more' than, say, Javascrpt?
I don't know the answer but if telnet can directly access the system that seems more dangerous irrespective of the attack surface.
The ANSI control characters wield power of a huge stack of not very robust code
And, telnet isn't installed by default on many systems. So...YMMV.
The best part was how the users moderated behaviour - bad actors were ejected swiftly but rarely permanently.
Not that it buys you anything other than being retro. :)
Captcha: Repeat the first spacecraft to land on another planet three times.
All my answers failed. I guess I must be a computer.
- Venera
- Venera 7
- the first spacecraft to land on another planet three times.
- the first spacecraft to land on another planet three times
- the first spacecraft to land on another planet the first spacecraft to land on another planet the first spacecraft to land on another planet
- Rosetta
...
Okay found it: Venera Venera Venera
The Wi-Fi password is "four words all uppercase, one word all lowercase".
People would sometimes flip out like they had gotten a virus or whatever
The one and only. Still online to my surprise.
WeatherUnderground shut its API down in 2018.
https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/underground/hacking/INTERN...
Too bad mobile killed the dialtone.
Hey all, site owner here. Thanks for the visits and all the fun stories! I really miss this era of computing. Feel free to let me know if you have something that should be added to the site.
Here's some site meta-history too:
Just fyi, towel.blinkenlights.nl:23 still works for me, though I think maybe that's an IPv6 version, there's a note about ipv6 at the start that I was too slow to read. Maybe it should be re-listed? :)
n0um3n4•1w ago
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