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Hi everyone. I'm creating a new zine called bike-zine, the named after Lain's toy dog. The zine is focused on a fast fixed release cycle. You can find more information on the gopher site. bike-zine.org:70 The site is accessible over HTTP or gopher on port 70. I hope you have time to submit.

If you aren't familiar with Gopher, you can find more information about it on here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) It's a much lighter web. One of the lainzines discussed it.

>>3131 Just checked via Gopher. The client seems to be failing because the directory links are pointing to "bike-zine.localdomain" instead "bike-zine.org" I don't know if it is the server or the client, to be fair.

>>3135 Apparently something was wrong with the /etc/hosts file. After fixing that and restarting the server it started working. Thank you!

I'll see if I can get a rough draft written up.

>>3141 I appreciate your effort!

Hey OP, I wanted to know if your still working on it? are you gonna keep us in the know?

>>3213 Yeah, I'm still working on this. I've been working on a few things of my own so I'll have something by the deadline. There really isn't much to say right now. The request is still open. Email server worked when I tested it from a remote account, so anything sent should go through alright.

I'm at work right now but when I get home I have a few ideas mainly: >history and introduction to usenet >unix minimalism >using IPFS as a filesystem on linux via fuse

>>3323 Sounds fun! I've got three articles now, not including yours, so it looks like we'll have a decent chunk of content.

>>3324 I sent the unix minimalism article. It's a bit rough and I'm not 100% sure on some licensing requirements but it's sent. I'm writing the other 2 from scratch so licensing issues won't be a problem.

>>3327 Thank you! I've sent a reply and prepared your article for submission. Looking forward to your other work!

>>3328 for some reason I'm not seeing your email... I've sent the other 2.

>>3329 Yeah, my email configuration was bad. I've fixed the configuration issue, test that I can send emails from the server, and resent yours. Let me know if you still don't see it.

Finishing up the release now. I'll have to release it a day early, since I'll be gone the 16th. There still isn't much art or photos, so if you want them to get published, please send them.

And it's up! Thanks to everyone who contributed!

>>3362 Congrats on the first release and props for delivering! Might write something up for December. Were there supposed to be any images in the Images/ directory? I'm not seeing any.

Well this is neat. But also why is gopher popular in nerd circles all of a sudden?

>>3364 >Might write something up for December. Awesome! The formal request doesn't come out for a while, but that's just so I can update it based on feedback. Feel free to start early. >Were there supposed to be any images in the Images/ directory? I'm not seeing any. There was supposed to be one, but I was out of town that weekend and wasn't able to strip the metadata. It's uploaded now.

>>3365 >But also why is gopher popular in nerd circles all of a sudden? I don't think the popularity is very sudden. Gopher has always had a strong cult following. https://sdf.org/?tutorials/gopher Gopher is popular for a number of reasons. Works on slow internet. Can't spy on you. Easy to use. Easy to implement. High signal to noise ratio. Easy to mirror for the web. Old school status. You should check out the gopher thread if you haven't already. https://www.lainchan.org/%CE%A9/res/15545.html

>>3362 nice I really like the hardware drm and responsible disclosure articles. Also I realized when I checked at work that the utf8 encoding for the UNIX, Usenet, and IPFS artices I sent gets a bit fuarrrked when using the flood gap gopher proxy but not when using sacc. Maybe a browser issue, eitherway I'll probably send ascii text for the next release. I might write on the glorious RISC architecture if I can get a few more specimines other than my one Sun Ultra II as a reference (likely since I know a guy *coughs*) and maybe something on circuit board etching once I get the things for that and fail through the process a few times. I also realized I had some lazy glitch art I made but it was too large to send... next release.

>>3369 RISC and circuit board etching both sound like great additions.

The second request for submissions is out! I look forward to seeing the new submissions. Sorry it's a day late. http://bike-zine.org:70/request/09_16_2019_v1.txt>>3616

Ah, I seem to have messed up my post and can't delete it, but yes, the second request for submissions is out. Here's the picture I wanted to use.

>>3367 >Can't spy on you. Oh please. Specification-compliant Gopher is strictly plaintext, no encryption. Encrypted Gopher is out-of-spec Gopher. I remember when my middle school got an internet connection, way back in the very early 1990s. I actually remember the pre-Mosaic days, when Gopher was the cutting edge of GUI information retrieval. And I don't miss it. There's a damn good reason why the web very quickly become dominant, and remained dominant. I'm over the retro-nostalgia thing.

>>3619 >Oh please. Specification-compliant Gopher is strictly plaintext, no encryption. Are you saying a Gopher hole can learn more about users than a website?

>>3620 I'm saying that every server at every hop involved in a gopher connection compliant with RFC1436 can see everything. There are some hacks to add TLS support to some servers and clients. But the key word there is "hacks". Both client and server need to be breaking the spec in the *exact same way*.

>>3634 >I'm saying that every server at every hop involved in a gopher connection compliant with RFC1436 can see everything. "Everything" in this case, being the resource that was requested from the gopher server, and the response that was sent. You're both talking around each other. Yes, you're correct that gopher traffic is sent unencrypted and unauthenticated, and that any machine in the middle can see (and potentially modify) all of the traffic. Yes, he's correct that the gopher protocol involves much less metadata than a typical http(s) session and doesn't "spy on you" nearly as much as most websites do. http over tls protects you from adversaries in the middle, sure, but plenty of websites gather incredibly rich metadata about each of their users: user-agents, browser configurations and, if javascript is enabled, the sky's pretty much the limit, as they can gather things like how long you're on a page, what your mouse hovers over, what you type, then think twice about and backspace over (Facebook does this!). The gopher protocol can (and should) be served over Tor hidden services, if not solely, then at least as an addition to the clearnet version. That provides both end-to-end encryption and a level of anonymity. bike-zine articles are freely redistributable. Clone the site and host a copy over whatever encrypted protocol(s) you want if you're so butthurt over "retro" stuff.

>>3635 >bike-zine articles are freely redistributable. Clone the site and host a copy over whatever encrypted protocol(s) you want Hi, I'm the current bike-zine editor. I haven't written it out yet, but a condition for eligibility to take my place is going to be mirroring bike-zine. If an applicant wants to do a website rather than a gopher page, that's fine with me. All I ask is that they translate the content over to their new format.

The next release is December 10th! If you have anything you want published in the next edition, you should send it soon.

>>3131 How neat. I have a Gopher hole and don't use /lit/ much, so this is the first time I'm seeing this thread. There's a Gopher thread in /λ/ and there was one in /Ω/ and now I see this one as well. I may contribute, but I'll send an email for that. I want to discuss the layout of your Gopher hole. I avoid the use of the i item type in my Gopher hole and I think you should too. Here's what your release page currently looks like, with tabs replaced by spaces: iBIKE-ZINE -- RELEASE 1 fake (NULL) 0 i fake (NULL) 0 iThis is the first release of bike-zine. fake (NULL) 0 i fake (NULL) 0 iWe actually released! On time too! fake (NULL) 0 i fake (NULL) 0 iA tutorial on IPFS, the Interplanetary File System. fake (NULL) 0 0Mounting IPFS via fuse /release/1/ipfs.txt bike-zine.org 70 + i fake (NULL) 0 iThoughts on responsible disclosure. fake (NULL) 0 0Responsible Disclosure /release/1/disclosure.txt bike-zine.org 70 + i fake (NULL) 0 iPassionate opinion piece on Unix minimalism. fake (NULL) 0 0Unix Minimalism /release/1/unix-minimalism.txt bike-zine.org 70 + i fake (NULL) 0 iRipping images from a Visual Novel fake (NULL) 0 1Yandere /release/1/yandere bike-zine.org 70 + i fake (NULL) 0 iHardware DRM and Treacherous Computing fake (NULL) 0 0Hardware DRM /release/1/hardware-drm.txt bike-zine.org 70 + i fake (NULL) 0 iIntroduction to Usenet fake (NULL) 0 0Usenet /release/1/usenet.txt bike-zine.org 70 + i fake (NULL) 0 iDrawings and pictures, but only drawings because that's all we have. fake (NULL) 0 1Images /release/1/images bike-zine.org 70 + i fake (NULL) 0 i fake (NULL) 0 With how common the i item type is, people forget the point of the display strings. Here's a better way to express the same information: 0Thoughts on this first release /release/1/notes.txt bike-zine.org 70 0A tutorial on IPFS: Mounting IPFS via fuse /release/1/ipfs.txt bike-zine.org 70 0Thoughts on Responsible Disclosure /release/1/disclosure.txt bike-zine.org 70 0Passionate Opinions on Unix Minimalism /release/1/unix-minimalism.txt bike-zine.org 70 1Ripping images from a Visual Novel /release/1/yandere bike-zine.org 70 0Hardware DRM and Treacherous Computing /release/1/hardware-drm.txt bike-zine.org 70 0Introduction to Usenet /release/1/usenet.txt bike-zine.org 70 1Drawings and pictures, but only drawings because that's all we have. /release/1/images bike-zine.org 70 Using the empty i item type is particularly egregious. You're sending information solely to influence the display, making an assumption about the client. This isn't a webpage, so let the client display how it wants to. My client will by default filter out this case. The visual novel article has some images, I notice, but it goes about adding these precisely the wrong way. I hate seeing an entire article expressed as a menu with just a few real resources linked and sometimes even none. I thought it was obvious the proper way to do this was to represent an article as a menu, in which the text is a text resource and any other resources are linked just like that, which is an inversion compared to this, and yet I've been told my approach is clever and novel by others who have been using Gopher far longer than I've. If you'd like to see an example of what I mean, I can link to my Gopher hole, but I've avoided doing this since that may not be welcome. >>3365 I think it's the effect of learning of something or seeing it once and then seeing it everywhere. I've had a Gopher hole for less than a year so far, but I enjoy maintaining it; I don't browse other Gopher holes much, partly because I'm lazily writing my own client I would prefer to use, but I maintain my Gopher hole as first-class, even having things my corresponding website lacks. >>3619 Gopher lacks encryption sure, but as has been pointed out using it over Tor adds this easily. For what it's worth, I access plenty of unencrypted resources over Tor, including my own, and I've never noticed a modification. Meanwhile, ISPs are known to inject garbage into unencrypted streams. It's perhaps surprising you can trust perfect strangers more than a corporation you pay.

>>3901 >i avoid the use of the i item type How weird. I don't have that added explicitly anywhere in my files. Maybe my server is converting things? >The visual novel article has some images, I notice, but it goes about adding these precisely the wrong way. What you mean is a menu that contains the text and images as resources within it?

December 10th bike-zine release! http://bike-zine.org:70/release/2 We didn't get any submissions this time around. Maybe December wasn't the best time to plan a release? Oh well, I wrote an article myself.

>>3918 Thank you for sharing! I hope you can find contributors for the next release

>>3918 Will there be a request anytime soon?

I forgot to contribute, it seems. >>3917 Try using a better server then. Gopher servers are simple. >What you mean is a menu that contains the text and images as resources within it? Yes. Rather than link to my Gopher hole to show you how I do it, I've taken the time to reorganize that article; here's a better menu representation for it: 0Article /release/1/yandere/article.txt bike-zine.org 70 Iback_load /release/1/yandere/back_load.png bike-zine.org 70 Ishifty2 /release/1/yandere/shifty2.png bike-zine.org 70 Ititle3 /release/1/yandere/title3.png bike-zine.org 70 Isuper_lewd4 /release/1/yandere/super_lewd4.png bike-zine.org 70 Icooking_fear5 /release/1/yandere/cooking_fear5.png bike-zine.org 70 Ifetus6 /release/1/yandere/fetus6.png bike-zine.org 70 This takes up much less space, doesn't disadvantage Gopher clients which don't bother with the i item type, uses Gopher properly, and is all around better, don't you agree?

>>3919 Thank you! >>3925 The charter states the next request will be released on March 16th, but it will probably be nearly identical to the other requests. http://bike-zine.org:70/request/03_16_2019_v2.txt >>3926 >Try using a better server then. Gopher servers are simple. Of course, maybe I'll write one as a project. >This takes up much less space, doesn't disadvantage Gopher clients which don't bother with the i item type, uses Gopher properly, and is all around better, don't you agree? I agree, but I'll need to rewrite the article without the images in a way that still makes sense before I can switch to this.

The third request for submissions is out! I look forward to seeing the new submissions. Sorry it's a few days late. /request/03_19_2020_v1.txt Also, I've changed the layout based on feedback. There's a lot less formatting.

>>4378 Is the third release delayed? I sent in a submission, if you have any questions/concerns/big edits feel free to email back.

>>4868 Yes, it's delayed. Sorry. I got in a rut where I didn't see any replies from the week before, forgot to do a last call for submissions, realized I'd need to come up with something, and put off doing just a timestamp and a ':('. And real life business. I'll have your email answered and the third release out within the next 24 hours. Sorry for the greatly delayed response.

ooo, interesting! I may type up a contribution now that I have lots of free time

You probably didn't get any submissions because you didn't put out a call for submissions. You should make a new thread for each new release with a link to the new edition and a call for submissions, and bump it one month before the release date. Also, it would be cool to release exactly on the solstaces. Just a thought :)

>>4881 You're definitely right. A new thread would help. I've been keeping it to one thread to avoid annoying mods, but I'll try another thread for the next call. See what happens. >>4881 >Also, it would be cool to release exactly on the solstaces. Just a thought :) That would be fun!

>>4879 Yay, glad to see it released! In general, I really like the "always release, no matter the quality/quantity" model. I don't think you need to beat yourself up over low submission count, especially in the early submissions. I think if you stay consistent and bring some activity to this thread, this could evolve to be a really cool part of the lainosphere. >>4880 Yes please! Write about anything, we'll be happy to read it. >>4881 >>4888 I'm not sure if I agree with making new threads per release, out of slow-board etiquette. Even the official lainzine has a single thread. I would definitely recommend (on topic) bumping of this thread. Maybe post the requests for submissions here, encourage conversations about articles in the newest release, ask lainons what they would like to see in future releases?

Will your zine be about bikes and bicycling?

I think that once an article is finished it should be put in the issue and so you can read it as its being added, and make it so that it goes onto the next issue by the number of articles added instead of the 3 months. For example, its on issue 4 now, after 6 articles added, it will be on issue 5. Now that I think about it the idea doesn't seem that great... Anyway, I look forward to seeing whats next

>>4894 It could be if you write something on the topic. >>4895 >Anyway, I look forward to seeing whats next Don't just look forward to it. Create it.

>>4911 >Don't just look forward to it. Create it. I'm planning on doing that! already had some ideas on what I could do. Putting it off a until later though

Can you add my post >>3312 to it

>>4923 I meant this post https://lainchan.org/zzz/res/3311.html#q3312

Looking at the calendar, looks like the request for the December issue is coming up! Is anylain already working on something? Preparing to write something based on the request? Excited to see what this next release will bring!

is this project dead? :(

>>5435 it was never alive. zines are notorious for flopping. look at lainzine...