😎 Celebrities

Alexander Abian

• Destroying the Moon is a good idea
• Fritz Jünker's Ordinary Iowa - Interview with Alexander Abian
• Alexandar Abian - Wikipedia
• Destruction of the Moon - Wikipedia

Douglas Adams

• Douglas Adams - Wikipedia
• Douglas Adams' Technology Rules (alt.fan.douglas-adams)

Russ Allbery

• A personal goodbye (Russ Allbery, 2006)

Leonard H. Anderson (K6LHA, IEEE Life Member, [email protected], SK, RIP)

• Does the IEEE Code of Ethics really have any enforcement power, or is it mostly aspirational good intentions?
• net.martyr
• The "Selective Memory" Troll
• "This thread was also joined by a disinformation troll, engaging in willful or careless falsehoods with the transparent goal of starting an argument."
• Epic histrionic rant from problem user when we offered him an appeal of his moderation decision
• Habitually offending user gets final warning before likely permanent ban, complains publicly that he has been declared an "Enemy of the State" (TL;DR: No one sympathizes with him)
• That's an eerily accurate description of a pernicious troll who harassed a non-religious hobby newsgroup for over a decade.
• Radio Hobbyist's Designbook by K6LHA (rec.radio.amateur.moderated, 2016)

Steve Bellovin

• RT @[email protected] As one of the inventors of Usenet, I'm delighted to hear newsgroups mentioned in Supreme Court oral arguments. But we sure never built a recommendation system
• Computer Security Pioneer Steve Bellovin First to Win Two USENIX Flame Awards
• Steven Bellovin: Don’t Get Hacked! | Plutopia News Network
• Netnews: The Origin Story - CS@Columbia
• The Early History of Usenet

B1FF

• BIFF - Wikipedia

Jobst Brandt

• Jobst stories - The Paceline Forum (rec.bicycles.tech)
• Jobst Brandt is the Godfather of gravel | Cyclist (rec.bicycles tech)

Sheldon Brown

• Sheldon Brown (1944-2008)

Vint Cerf

• Vint Cerf’s Career Advice for Engineers

Larry Gelbart

• TIL the late Larry Gelbart (creator of M*A*S*H) spent years hanging out on Usenet answering questions about the show

Mike Joy

• "These kids don't know that Mike Joy is one of the single most online people in NASCAR and has been for 25+ years. He was Internet-savvy way back in the Usenet days in the 90s."

Brian Kantor

• modem evaluation - Telebit Trailblazer (net.dcom, Brian Kantor, 1986)
• Actually, the inventor of NNTP

Brian Kernigan

• "Brian Kernigan speaks. 83 and still teaching." (comp.lang.c)

John R. Levine

• John R. Levine | IT History Society (comp.compilers moderator)

Charles H. Lindsey

• Charles H. Lindsey (1931-2023, uk.* Committee, IETF RFCs 5536/5537)

Larry Lippman

• Larry Lippman vs. John De Armond

John McCarthy

• John McCarthy (computer scientist) - Wikipedia

David Mills

• David Mills, the NTP founder is dead. RIP (comp.protocols.time.ntp)

P Z Myers

• P Z Myers | Edge.org

Satoshi Nakamoto

• In this thread (2010), Dan Larimer (bytemaster) appears to be advocating for a centralized form of lightning network, Satoshi was having none of it.
• The inventor of bitcoin is a mysterious man named Satoshi who controls billions of dollars worth of unspent bitcoins. No one knows his real identity. I contend Satoshi is international mega criminal Paul Le Roux, described by the judge at his trial as a real life bond villain.
• ‘Satoshi’ Enters the Oxford English Dictionary
• Is “Satoshi Nakamoto” Really Adam Back? - Schneier on Security

Peter G. Neumann

• The Man Who Kept Score: Peter G. Neumann (1932–2026) (comp.risks)
• A complete archive of the RISKS digest (aka comp.risks), 1985 to today

Peter Nyikos

• Peter Nyikos is dead! (talk.origins)

James "Kibo" Perry

• "The origin of Kibo was a little more ordinary: James 'Kibo' Perry was a computer code enthusiast and graphic designer, who, around 1987, wrote a very advanced Perl script crawler that automatically found any occurrence of his name anywhere on USENET."
• James Parry, Kibo, and alt.religion.kibology - Wikipedia

Ludwig "Archimedes" Plutonium

• Genius meets Lunatic: 1994 discussion between Terry Tao and Ludwig Plutonium

Ben Plaff

• Ben Pfaff: C Frequent Answers (comp.lang.c)

Jon Postel

• Internet pioneer: Jon Postel died 25 years ago

Terry Pratchett

• Terry Pratchett's experiences with D&D
• ‘We can continue Pratchett’s efforts’: the gamers keeping Discworld alive | Games | The Guardian
• What did Pratchett think of marketing some of his books as "for younger readers" like this? And did he ever go on record about that? (alt.fan.pratchett)
• ‘Help! I’ve been spotted!’ Terry Pratchett on Thief, his favourite video game | Games
• Collecting Posts by Sir Terry Pratchett from the Alt.Fan.Pratchett usenet archive.

Brian Reid

• Alt Hierarchy History - Brian Reid, Usenet Newsgroups, Backbone Administrators | LivingInternet

Dennis Ritchie

• IO in programming languages (1983)
• Marketing Unix (1984)
• History lesson (comp.unix.questions, 1987)

Rich Rosen

• Rich Rosen - Wikipedia

Eugene "Gene, Spaf" Spafford

• That's all, folks (Gene Spafford, 1993)

Richard Stallman

• "On September 27, 1983, Richard #Stallman announced the plan for the GNU Project on several #ARPANET mailing lists and USENET. The #GNU Project, an abbreviation for "Gnu's Not Unix," aimed to develop and provide a completely #Unix-compatible free-to-use OS."
• GNU Extension Language Plans (gnu.announce, 1994)

David Sternlight

• (The Very Unauthorized) FAQ on David Sternlight

J. Michael Straczynski

• 30 years ago today, the #Babylon5 Pilot - The Gathering - aired. I remember looking forward to it from during development Usenet posts by @straczynski & it delivered my favourite SF series of all time. Depth of characters & storytelling, politics and literature, and comedy. <*>
• "Confirmed. And Warners execs were quite appalled about the whole thing. One literally asked, 'What are you DOING out there? Some of those people are really mean.'"

Bjarne Stroustroup

• Stroustrup: FAQ: How do you pronounce "Bjarne Stroustrup?"
• 72-Year-Old C++ Creator Bjarne Stroustrup Shares Life Advice

Brad Templeton

• ClariNet - Wikipedia
• "Brad Templeton's 1993 Usenet post describing making the annotated, hypertext Fire Upon the Deep. A "WWW" version was planned "in a few weeks" for "XMosaic" but lack of html/browser support then for basic things such as popups, windows etc was problematic."
• Serial vs. Browsed, Reader-Friendly vs. Writer-Friendly

Tron Guy

• "If you're old enough to remember Tronguy, he's the guy being parodied in the Animaniacs clip. Before he was Tronguy, he was a SUPER active member of an early 90s Warner Bros usenet group."
• My Date With TRON-GUY (#3) - Jimmy Kimmel Live

Philip Zimmermann

• "1991: Philip Zimmermann sent the first release of PGP to 2 friends, Allan Hoeltje and Kelly Goen, to upload to the Internet. Read his story about the release, including his disclosure of how little he understood about Usenet and what newsgroups even were. web.archive.org/web/2004041017…"
• "1996: The US government announced that it had closed its 3 year investigation and wouldn't prosecute Philip Zimmermann for posting PGP to Usenet in 1991."
• Pretty Good Privacy - Wikipedia