
Sysop Chat - bemmu
http://www.bemmu.com/sysop-chat
======
chrissnell
I'm sure I've told this story here before but when I was in high school in
1992, we were allowed to go off-campus for lunch. Me and a buddy would each go
home to our respective houses and hop on a local multi-line BBS and chat with
each other just for the novelty of it. It's hard to explain just how amazing
real-time chat was in 1992.

~~~
xenophonf
I remember, in 1991 or 1992, chatting with some Navy guy on some Texan BBS,
dialed in from Chicago through my cousin's Tymnet account. While the technical
stuff was astounding, what really blew my mind was how the Navy guy treated
me—like an adult, a peer. I think that encounter really ignited my passion for
computing and networking tech.

------
allenu
I remember these so well. I remember logging into someone's BBS and
immediately getting social anxiety when the SysOp would randomly start
chatting with me. (The reason I'm using a BBS is so I don't have to directly
socialize with someone!) It also made me realize they could watch my every
movement on the BBS.

~~~
VectorLock
Watch people use your BBS was the best part about being a SysOp.

------
gus_massa
Are you connected now?

Add a blinking caret. Perhaps it's not historically accurate, but I was
expecting to see it before writing.

/help /exit /welcome to see the welcome message again (/help is obvious, /exit
because I want to /exit the current waiting step, and /welcome because I want
to to see the /welcome message again. Perhaps also /commands)

Perhaps after waiting for a minute, offer again to connect to eliza.

~~~
enneff
A blinking caret would be historically accurate, for me anyway (my terminal
had one; but everyone could configure theirs differently). Also the caret
would jump to the other person's window to draw their characters :-)

------
lxe
> when the other person typed you didn't need to wait for them to hit "send",
> rather you would see their typing immediately. When they pressed a key, I
> could see that key press happen right away.

Google Wave anyone?

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
Teens are now using Google Docs as a chat app:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/hotte...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/hottest-
chat-app-teens-google-docs/584857/)

~~~
AceJohnny2
I hear that, kind of in protest when Google announced Yet Another Chat Service
(Allo? Duo?), Googlers created a list of all the "chat" systems supported
across Google's ecosystem. It was in the high teens? More?

Stuff like Sheets chat, Youtube chat...

~~~
vageli
The students are probably motivated by network-level blocking of common chat
apps but not schoolwork necessities like Google docs.

------
ipython
Ahh. Fun memories of giving friends shell access and using ytalk to chat.
Apparently after all these years it has a web presence:
[http://ytalk.ourproject.org/](http://ytalk.ourproject.org/)

------
jascii
Nice, just gave it a try! We used to hang out on random unixen, often using
the "talk" command that had a similar split screen. I remember the "me" window
to be on the bottom though!

------
lowtolerance
I’m in touch to this day with a friend that I made through sysop chat. Kind of
hard to believe that was 25+ years ago!

------
jasonkester
Wow, that's way more advanced than anything I remember using back in the day.

In my 300 baud C64 days, chatting online was done in full duplex mode, where
everything either party typed would appear on both screens at once, at the end
of the current line. It's just a terminal, so there was only one place for the
caret to be.

You'd type your thing, then end with two carriage returns to signify that you
were finished. There was nothing to stop you from typing out of turn, except
that your characters would appear mixed in with the other guy's so that
neither of you could read what either had written.

It was just a social construct, typing into an input stream in turn. And it
worked nicely.

Fun times.

~~~
makach
yes, some chats you typed in the same stream

\--

indeed

\--

worked like a charm

------
gabeio
AOL AIM actually had a feature similar to this, in each chat you could enable
"RealTime-IM" and show what you were typing as you were typing to the other
person. Which ended up being nice that it was an optional feature.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_(software)#AIM_real-
time_I...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_\(software\)#AIM_real-time_IM)

------
filleokus
I also jumped in and tried it with /random. Was really neat! Awesome work!

The conversation felt really different compared to writing in a normal chat.

I think it would be an interesting "social experiment" (ugh...) to have a chat
feature like this in a dating app, perhaps with Snapchat-like message
deletion. It feels like it would remove some of that facade you can put up
when you have time to think and compose the message.

~~~
kingbirdy
That, or people would compose their messages separately in a notes app

~~~
vageli
> That, or people would compose their messages separately in a notes app

At least you can block paste on mobile platforms and make them write it in
letter by letter :)

------
wenbin
In early 2000, QQ [1] had a product feature like this - realtime typing &
chatting. It was mainly for two intimate people to use (两人世界). A few years
ago, Tencent sunset this feature.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_QQ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_QQ)

------
MrStonedOne
Needs a no-javascript fallback to remind us to whitelist the site.

------
a-dub
does it play a PC speaker rendition of "sweet child o' mine"?

------
mmccaff
Love it! Thanks for sharing.

I remember when split-screen chat started becoming popular in the BBS scene.
Being able to type at the same time as the other person was groundbreaking! :)
Prior to that, if you wanted to interrupt the other person or break in with a
thought, you'd just hit enter a bunch of times or 'fjskdfklsdhfjsd' until you
could take over the conversation. It was like if two people were chatting in a
text editor.

I also remember versions of chat where each character would cycle through
different sets of ansi colors.. harder to read and totally useless, but looked
cool..

As someone else said, a blinking cursor would be nice. I got a little lost for
the first few seconds without it.

Any comments on the tech that you used to build this?

------
h0l0cube
Really thank you for this. I'd forgotten the thrill of conversing with a
complete stranger, from anywhere in the world, sight unseen. I hope it catches
on.

A serious question though, do the actual conversations cross the server or are
they direct p2p?

~~~
bemmu
They cross the server, but I use encryption to send the keystrokes.
Public/private key pair is generated by collecting some randomness from the
client, and used to transmit characters. It's the last function in
[https://sysop.chat/net.js](https://sysop.chat/net.js)

~~~
h0l0cube
My knowledge of crypto might be completely backwards, but I think it's normal
to use the asymmetric pair to then communicate a symmetric key between both
parties. Also, I'm not sure what cryptico is doing under the hood, but if it's
not communicating a new IV/offset for each key stroke message, I imagine you
could compare two messages with the same keystroke and it would encrypt to
exactly the same cypher.

I really hope this project grows, and that I can visit it again... or even
chat to people I know in this format. I really enjoyed /random, it was fun
making friends with complete strangers. The last time I had that feeling was
in the golden age of ICQ, and when I used to visit actual BBSes in the 90s.

~~~
bemmu
I was also concerned that the messages would be the same for the same
keystrokes, but looking into it it seems it also contains a timestamp, so each
message is different.

I'm sure it's not bulletproof, but I think a huge improvement over plain text.
Also I don't store any logs of sent keystroke messages.

~~~
mikeash
You could brute force that fairly easily if you know approximately when the
message was sent. Still a lot better than being able to see it right in your
packet sniffer, of course.

------
bruceb
I couldn't stop hitting the phantom return key to send a msg.

I agree with others, maybe switch the order. Other person on top. But was fun.

also, you are going to expose my weak spelling.

------
rahkiin
This is great. Had a very nice chat with another dev from HN. Felt novel, for
me, to have it fully real time. No waiting for 'is typing...' wondering what
corrections are being made.

I expected to make a lot of errors in typing, but after a couple of lines I
started thinking more about what I type before I type it, which is not a habit
for me.

Thank you!

------
erikbye
The sysop interrupting your session to chat was the most frustrating thing
about using BBSes.

------
makach
haha, that was great! thanks for the implementation and the fun. Actually I
have exactly the same background as OP, and I have to say that I thoroughly
enjoyed this.

Now, is this a decent anonymous chat? Can this be used through TOR to
establish untraceable comms?

------
mescalito
This reminded me a lot of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BiModem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BiModem)
\- Fun times

------
grenoire
I just had someone narrate a text adventure to me, ultimately it didn't get
too far with respect to the story itself; but it was a very fond experience.
Thanks, Narrator!

------
microcolonel
Could use a way to return to the main menu without a mouse click. Seems great
until your fellow stranger drops out and you're reminded that this is a
webapp.

------
Aloha
This reminds me of unix talk. Particularly of ytalk

------
phil21
This was great. Had a quick chat with someone even more old school than I,
brought back quite a few memories of my early discovery days.

------
frenchie4111
This is really cool.

I wonder if chat like this would work for a dating platform. The live typing
seemed more intimate to me.

~~~
napsterbr
My social anxiety went through the roof and I had to leave the chat after the
first message.

Seems a nice feature for extroverts though.

~~~
autoexec
Yeah, between my horrific spelling and constant pauses to collect my thoughts
or check on other things, this would be difficult to use. Back when I would
dial into BBSs I didn't have 20+ other programs running or a browser with 50+
tabs open. It was a very different experience that doesn't translate well to a
modern world with a million things demanding our attention.

~~~
GrinningFool
They can demand all they want. Where you give your focus is up to you though.

------
mattbillenstein
I'll report it works pretty well from an airplane's wifi connection!

------
castis
well that was super cool.

i love that it feels older, i wasnt around for any of the BBS action back in
the day but getting involved with something similar would be cool.

any other places on the internet like this anyone know of?

------
cheez
Holy shit the memories are flooding back. Nice.

------
jmccarthy
WWIV F10, my fingers still remember

------
kazinator
Let me fix that for you:

> _Back in mid-##80s## before anyone I knew had an Internet connection, a few
> of us had modems and would use them to call bulletin board systems via the
> phone line._

Internet connections were common place in the middle 90's, though perhaps not
broadband, permanently connected ones. There was a lot of dial-up.

> _The chat wasn 't quite like chats are now. It was split-screen, and there
> were only two participants._

Sysop-only chat is squarely 1980's. I already used multi-participant chat
dial-up bulletin boards as far back as 1988. Didn't even have to call long-
distance; there was one in Vancouver. By the mid 1990's, that stuff was passé.

In the mid 1990's, you could PPP/SLIP to connect to the Internet over dial-up,
and use IRC to chat with people all over the world (either run your own local
client, or telnet/ssh into a provider's shell account). I compiled an IRC
client for the first time in 1994 and was just amazed: I'm talking with people
all over the flippin' world! This guy is in the Netherlands! Another one in
Australia... wow! Vast number of channels and users, whoa.

In 1995, I was running Linux 1.3.x, with SMP support: an ASUS motherboard with
two 100 MHz Pentiums. I had a 28.8 kbps modem, and had dial-up Internet access
(PPP).

~~~
autoexec
That was still an active BBS scene in the mid 90s. Even as Fidonet grew and
users left to spend more time connected to the web. The internet, especially
in those days, just couldn't deliver the same experience of connecting with a
bunch of other people (mostly) in your own area code. I met a lot of friends
in those days and being able to get together for outings and events was really
fun. I can't imagine meetups like that now. Maybe there are local facebook
groups that scratch that same itch?

~~~
kazinator
Everything in my comment is 100% historically accurate.

Yes, there was a BBS scene, but it was a fading retro thing.

That's besides the point; the blog describes technology that existed in the
middle 1980's, and claims that was the _state of the art_ in the middle
1990's. Nobody had Internet, chat was for two people, one of whom was the
sysop and so on. While those systems still existed, they were just retro
holdovers from the 80's.

I contracted for a pay-per-click subscription _website_ running on Linux, in
1994. This had customers. I know because I wrote the billing system to charge
authenticated users for the mining/prospecting-related info they accessed.
This business still exists today in some shape:
[http://infomine.com](http://infomine.com) In 1994 it employed some half dozen
full-time staff to do the research and keep the database updated.

I knew many people who were Internet connected. I communicated via e-mail.

In 1995, Windows 95 came out. It came with a TCP/IP stack: no more bolted-on
networking. And, in a follow up release, it bundled Internet Explorer. Those
pieces were there for a reason.

~~~
evanelias
> claims that was the state of the art in the middle 1990's

The blog does not claim this, full stop. The author says "before anyone _I
knew_ had an Internet connection", describing a personal experience,
presumably during his childhood or teenage years ("I just had it open during
the night, so that my parents could use the phone line during the day").

Why attack the author's _personal experience and anecdotes_?

fwiw, my own experience mirrors the author's exactly. In my area (Philly)
there were around two hundred single-line hobbyist boards in the mid 90s,
meaning ~1993-1997. It was not a "fading retro thing" quite yet, and as a
teenager I didn't personally know any frequent internet users until at least
1996.

For historical context, Yahoo wasn't incorporated until 1995. Internet
Explorer v1 was released in mid-1995 and wasn't even initially bundled with
Windows 95. Widespread home internet adoption took a couple years, and (at
least in my area) dial-up hobbyist BBS's only started to dwindle in the late
90s, while the commercial ones (many-line majorbbs/worldgroup systems)
transitioned to become dial-up ISPs.

For another data point, I developed a couple BBS doorgames from 1999-2003. The
BBS scene was definitely dying off at that point, but nonetheless I still sold
several hundred registrations for my games during that period.

