TLDR: I miss the genuine human connection I used to get from the internet, and I’ve grown weary of all the modern social media BS. I wrote more in depth about my inspiration for making this here: https://quxnet.net/about. quxnet is more of an art project than anything.

My latest passion project is building a network around the idea of the old web. I took inspiration from systems like BBSes, Usenet, pubnix hosts, and especially early internet message boards. The UI is less BBS and more forum based, I’d say. The inspiration from BBSes, Usenet, etc. is mostly philosophical. The UI's pretty plain but that's the way I like it, and it's focused on text content. I named it quxnet (pronounced "kwucks") because "qux" is a metasyntactic variable in programming and I liked it. I also thought it was kind of funny.

It has sealed mail, boards, docs, profiles with log entries and status lines, picons (user profile images that get dithered by the network on upload), a links directory with random browsing in the spirit of StumbleUpon, an RSS reader, and pages that let you put a website online for free at `yourhandle.quxnet.pub`. I even added a dialer on login if you want a little nostalgia hit and don’t mind the gimmick. It can be disabled in settings if you do. Oh, and it’s scriptable, has a macro system and API, and exporting your data is a first-class feature.

The tech stack is simple. It’s all SSR, written in a programming language I’ve been working on since the pandemic. Well, it’s actually more than a language, but that’s outside the scope of this post. The DB is SQLite, backing up with Litestream to Cloudflare R2. All of this runs on an $8 Hetzner VPS, which handles it just fine.

Last thing I’ll say is, the hardest part about all of this hasn’t been the software. I’m sure those of you with experience launching things already know this. The hard part is getting people to participate. Funny how this still applies even to something free xD

We have a nice little cohort of folks on there now, with some interesting threads forming around IBM 360/135 mainframes running DOS/VS, early personal computer collections (Sinclair ZX80, ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, Atari ST), riding motorcycles, drinking kava, and talking philosophy. We have some musicians and authors. A mix of young and old it seems. We have a few old school BBS operators and some of the younger posters are talking about their dumbphones and running DOSBox, VICE, and WinUAE to run old demos from the demoscene. It’s fun seeing real, meaningful conversations unfold but overcoming the cold start is harder than I expected. :/

If any of this sounds like your bag, you should drop by. I know HN hates signing up for things just to try them. I really grappled with this before posting, but in this case, I’d argue that’s one of the value props of a network like this. I strongly considered adding a guest mode to make looking around easier, but was worried it would violate the trust contract with the community. Instead I opened registration and temporarily removed the invite requirement to bring the friction down a bit. I know I'll probably get less feedback as a result but it's the only way I could think to do it without pulling a bait and switch on the existing members. There’s nothing for sale here, so hopefully that offsets some of the irk of having to give an email. Just use a throwaway or Proton address. :]

Hope to see you on the boards.

-- sysop

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