I had a six digit ICQ, and I knew some people with 5 digits, so you could instantly tell how cool people were. Also, ICQ would say uh-oh when you got new messages, and AIM just dinged.
On a technical side, ICQ did offline messages forever and AIM didn't do offline until after AOL bought ICQ. ICQ also needed UDP to work and did peer to peer messaging when possible (coordinated through the central server) and I think you could send files sooner. Otoh, AIM servers responded on all tcp ports, so if you had a derpy corporate firewall that just looked at ports, and you had any ports open to the internet, you were golden; the java applet client was convenient too.
I think ICQ is still around, AOL sold it to some Russian company a decade ago, but AIM is dead; Verizon didn't want to keep it running, or Yahoo Messenger either.
Wow, as soon as I read that, I heard it in my head, exactly as it was. Since I wasn't sure it was a false memory, I looked it up[1], and yeah, it was exactly the same, except in my head it was in a slightly lower voice.
Amazing. Instant audio time-travel just by reading a comment.
Chat “stickers” aren’t quite as clever as they used to be - there’s a certain 90s whimsy missing from today’s apps and websites: https://youtu.be/pbturFbi-vc
I miss Slashdot, not the same after Malda left.
It turned out to belong to either an icq employee or a friend of one. Needless to say I found that I could no longer log in to any of my stolen and personal accounts.
And that's my story about finding out what karma was in my teens.
This takes me back. A decade ago I paid someone $5 on Fiverr to draw me as a Simpsons character. She was one of several people on the site doing this. I just checked and she's still at it, with over 8k reviews. A niche market but one that doesn't seem to have completely dried up yet.
a) He got Matt Groening to do it b) I'm not sure he realises that other people with Simpsons-style profile pics didn't
Living in Europe, I never saw the AIM client in use anywhere. I've never heard of anyone locally who used it. It was all ICQ, or later MSN / Skype.
Maybe "nested acronym" is a better term?
But here everyone was on ICQ, and then MSN Messenger. That's when I bailed.
My impression as a European was rather that AIM was not well know outside the US, while ICQ was. (It was the "America Online" instant messenger, no? So while AOL became available to other countries, I don't believe it reached the same market share and notoriety).
So I assume the rest of the world was adopting ICQ "from the beginning", and then maybe there was a phase in the US where, in the interest of international communication, they started to adopt ICQ as well? Just conjecture, I wasn't in the US at that time.
[0] https://blog.asana.com/2018/05/new-profile-setting-pronouns-...
Well, in the internet no one knows you're a dog. Some women used to answer using masculine conjugation as a default, to avoid their gender to distract from the things they did or had to say. Some men did the opposite to get attention or more eager responses.
I know it's inconvenient and to some may be considered even insulting as a suggestion, and I don't think it should be the norm. However, it's still a choice you're free to make.
As a result, for girls, getting misgendered under a pseudonymous account is seen as danger that comes with the territory. And of course they take it in stride, because that's just what women do all the time.
In mean eyes what is most important: grammatical correctness or kindness?
My comment was in response to someone indicating that certain European languages forced you to know the gender of the person you were speaking to. So, the "language game" is already ongoing. This is why people have constructed careful expansions to the grammar, to make language non-genderized.
What is the alternative? To assume everyone identifies as a male?
I'd also disagree that expanding a language carefully is what is being done here. It is unlikely towards the goal of expressing ourselves more clearly.
this is unfortunately one of those times where "I have no opinion" is an opinion
Forcing a change in language towards social agreeableness while using a lens of "there is only power" will have bad consequences.
Misgendering is a huge trigger for a lot of people, and considered a "micro agression" if you are familiar with that term. This is why most people go out of their way, just like if an ethnicity says that a certain word is a slur (i.e. c-word for Asians, or even worse for Black or African Americans) then people stop using that term.
Just like a racial minority, we must in my opinion - and most other people in the US - sit down a listen to their concerns. A male dominated society has for centuries built stigma and downplayed the significance of females and non-binary folks, such that it has even spread into the language itself.
Grammatical incorrectness is unkind to anyone who has to listen to you.
> Spanish communication is often conducted using -x ending
That’s true if by “Spanish communication” you mean NPR reporters sprinkling a couple of “Latinx”s into their English-language articles.
> even by the president
This does not make the case you might be hoping it makes.
Some languages have unfortunate misogynistic and transphobic/monogendered built-ins. This is problematic for a large minority of the LGBTQ+ population and many Native/Indigenous/First nations with different linguistic cultures. The USA is one of, if not the, most diverse country in the world with people from all over. It is to me beautiful that the country can embrace both the latinx/hispanic population and at the same time say to these marginalized groups "we hear you, we listen to you, and we understand you."
To me the fact that the WH and President Biden use these important ungenderizations is a very important step, just like the federal desegregation of schools. It demonstrates how far we have come in just two generations. I have though met many latinx people who prefer latin@ instead, while others say that it reduces the language for non-binary folks.
Just like the USA has been a front runner for racial equality and LBGTQ+ rights throughout the world, some people use the argument that "homosexuality is not allowed in Saudi Arabia, but that is THEIR culture" a good one. It is a universal human right!
Unfortunately, there are many places (which correlate with Spanish speaking or non-English) where non-binary and female presenting people are marginalized and do not dare speak up, while the Hispanic population of the USA does - the young generation at least. 10 years ago people used "gay" or "f*g" as an insult, but now-a-days they surely do not!
We have quickly changed as a society, and I hope that while today some people use the same arguments for the gendered language, I think in 10 years time the young generations in many Spanish speaking countries will help their friends to ungenderify - REALLY means to remove the patriarchic heritage of the lingo - Spanish and all other non-indigenous languages.
What would you propose other than latinx or latin@?
It is to me beautiful that the country can embrace both the latinx/hispanic population and at the same time say to these marginalized groups "we hear you, we listen to you, and we understand you."
To me the fact that the WH and President Biden use these important ungenderizations is a very important step, just like the federal desegregation of schools. It demonstrates how far we have come in just two generations. I have though met many latinx people who prefer latin@ instead, while others say that it reduces the language for non-binary folks.
given that may of that languages are used by white people, I would go with "woke imperialistic twitter supremacy" as description.
Please educate me I would like to know your opinion.
"Latino" is a gender-neutral word. Gendered languages do not involve all of what "gender" per se means in the English sense. English speakers not understanding or accepting these basic facts is not reflective of the Spanish language; it is reflective of the lack of understanding and acceptance of some English speakers.
And misunderstandings are fine, as is the case with Joe Biden and the Democrats who said something which offends 40% of Latino Americans. But preaching from the pulpit of ignorance is not.
This is imperialistic, annoying and misleading. male/female distinction is neither transphobic[1] nor misogynistic[2] nor misandrist.
[1] if you think here about referring to such people with not preferred gender - it is not something enforced by language
[2] why it would be?
It would require remaking significant part of language, it is not a minor tweak like singular they in English.
Demanding this is a runaway imperialism.
We're coming up on twenty years since Myspace, so, anyone guessing it was a fad was wrong.
I grew up with "don't use your real name online", "don't post pictures of yourself", etc. And I still believe that's how it should be.
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30943039 recently (also posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23732384 a couple years ago):
> ...[N]etworks like Friendster, MySpace, YouTube, and, later, Facebook and Twitter were dissolving the boundaries between social groups that had long shaped personal relations and identities. Before social media, you spoke to different “audiences” — family members, friends, colleagues, and so forth — in different ways. You modulated your tone of voice, your words, your behavior, and even your appearance to suit whatever social “context” you were in (workplace, home, school, nightclub, etc.) and then readjusted the presentation of yourself when you moved into another context.
> On a social network ... all those different contexts collapsed into a single context. Whenever you posted a message or a photograph or a video, it could be seen by your friends, your parents, your coworkers, your bosses, and your teachers, not to mention the amorphous mass known as the general public. And, because the post was recorded, it could be seen by future audiences as well as the immediate one. When people realized they could no longer present versions of themselves geared to different audiences — it was all one audience now — they had to grapple with a new sort of identity crisis.
perhaps by prefixing it with an honorific of some kind
Otherwise known as having a picture of yourself as your profile picture?
> or encode it in some aspect of how a user's name is displayed
And known as having a name. This reads like SV bubble nonsense or well written satire, can't decide which.
For 5 years, people were pestering you about giving them "your facebook".
Then came the photo era, with filters, emojis, morphing, animations, etc. With insta, and the likes.
Last years, you would have been a paria for not having a whatsapp account.
Now of course, you got the occasional signal, telegram, teams and zoom, thanks to covid.
But you know what was working in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020 and will work and 2025, with everybody, and everywhere ?
SMS and emails.
I genuinely can’t recall having had a single standard SMS conversation with anyone in the last ~10 years. It’s all WhatsApp, Line, Telegram, IG, or WeChat.
I realize my perception is skewed by living outside the US, but the only people who SMS me these days are delivery services and banks.
I too live outside the US, and never use SMS for communicating with another human. It's all WhatsApp/Signal etc. WhatsApp is ubiquitous.
I'm curious — do Americans use SMS a lot (as opposed to things like WhatsApp)?
I was in US a few years ago, and from what I gathered most people did not use WhatsApp. Don't know if the situation has changed.
In Korea I never used SMS, just Kakaotalk 99% of the time.
So they still work. If anybody would send you an sms, without you having to create any new account, they would reach you, and you could answer. No need to "add contact", no need to login. In fact, it this person will still be able to send you a text in 10 years.
But in 10 years, most people will have moved on from whatsapp, line or IG to the new sexy thing. Not WeChat I guess, because it's becoming the credit card for 1 billion chinese.
And yet, you will still have an email address.
Honestly, as a consumer I would prefer that this not be the case. I want to be able to control the ways in which people can contact me; I actually keep a separate number for WhatsApp specifically so that people who have my voice number can’t find me on there.
> In fact, it this person will still be able to send you a text in 10 years.
Assuming my number doesn’t change, which anecdotally feels way less common now. When I was a kid it was normal for eg my parents to have the same phone number for 30 years, but these days people seem to switch much more freely.
But agree emails still work as standard. SMS not for me. The number might change :)
Also, there's a gopher hn mirror:
And much, much quicker to load.
A bit wall-of-folders and distractingly laggy, but fun.
Unless of course, you are like some Hacker News commenters and you seemingly only use the internet to complain about Javascript, in which case that appears to be a circular and self-fulfilling requirement you've created for yourself.
John wants to visit a website of a business. John likes having Javascript turned off. John visits the website with Javascript turned off. The website requires Javascript. John finds the website doesn't work and gives up.
John wants to visit a website of a business. John likes Gopher. John visits the website with a Gopher browser. The website requires HTTP. John finds the website doesn't work and gives up.
John wants to read a blog over Gopher. John reads the blog. There is a reference to another piece of content. It is either made to work with the form or is self-contained, so as to be usable in the context of a Gopher browser. John is happy.
A platform's total capabilities matter, because there will be links to the edges of its capabilities. If you have a blog over Gopher, you probably aren't going to link to a JavaScript-heavy site, because an author posting over Gopher is more likely to be ideologically-opposed to JavaScript. If you have a blog over HTTP, you probably are.
A platform's intentions matter.
No I don't agree. If you have a HTTP blog where you go on tirades about how Javascript is bad, you probably won't post links to web sites that use Javascript either. I've seen people who actually do this. It's the same thing, there's no value added by using another platform which has nothing to do with it. You know you can also put HTTP links in a gopher site, and vice versa? They're just text. Either way you have no way of knowing what kind of links the blogger will share until you actually read the blog.
What you're more concerned about is actually the intention and motives of the blog operator, not the platform. If you believe Gopher is good at being an indicator of that because by this point it's become very insular and self-contained and all the users are bitter about outside things, I've also seen HTTP blog communities that are that way too. Gopher sites are not the only places where you can find blog rings. Hope that's helpful to your activities.
With Gopher, you don't have to worry about whether someone is ideologically-opposed to JavaScript, and you don't have to only read the works of people who write about being ideologically opposed to JavaScript.
Your solution isn't a solution at all.
No I'm not, please stop assuming bad faith. This is from my actual experience over decades. I'm sorry but there's nothing special about any particular choice of protocol. Many years ago I would have been making the same exact presumptions as you, but I can tell you they're wrong. Like, really just fundamentally wrong, and based on a set of nonsensical ideas about the structure and role of protocols within networks.
If you think I'm making an oversimplification about javascript, I think you've missed the point: that's exactly what I was responding to from a parent reply. I didn't apply that light. Please go read the full reply chain and the first reply I was commenting on, to see what I mean. I'm not joking around here, I've actually witnessed this several times with people going in on this stuff and then linking their alt blogs which end up being completely full of ranting about javascript or iphones or NFTs or systemd or something. My point is that it's actually wrong to assume you're going to get any particular content just because you used some network protocol.
In reality, I totally respect that you're an intelligent and reasonable adult so I'm not going to sugarcoat it: what you're saying is bunk and I think you should reconsider. That's me being honest and not trying to mess with you. I don't care if it makes me unpopular on some internet forum. I also don't care if you're personally invested in this or not. You deserve to have an honest and open discussion about the facts so you can make an informed choice about whether to get further invested in a possibly bad (or good) idea. I gain nothing from lying to you, I want you to find the truth that you seek. If you still disagree with me, great. Nothing wrong with that.
>With Gopher, you don't have to worry about whether someone is ideologically-opposed to JavaScript, and you don't have to only read the works of people who write about being ideologically opposed to JavaScript.
If you want to avoid people who link to HTTP and javascript sites and who only link to other things that "work with the form" then yes you still do. Was that not your original concern?
>Your solution isn't a solution at all.
I agree. My point is, neither is isolating yourself with another protocol that fundamentally can't even attempt to be a solution.
If you find it still doesn't make sense, then don't hesitate to ask for more information. I'm sure it can be explained to you, in time.
I think that lots of people still do that. At least from what I've been seeing
I think we're just getting older.
I suppose it's probably more fun than miserably judging everyone from the outside...
> So the vast majority of the time we get the same tools, the same frameworks, and the same ideas poorly reimplemented over and over.
I heard that at a talk by a salty tech OG. My experience doesn’t disagree with his observation, but I do have slightly more hope than he had.
Personally, I'm not sure it's a fad, and I still see it plenty in the wild.
Trans people are fucking badass. We’re damned lucky to have trans people.
I'm all for the rights of trans people, but saying we're lucky to have trans people is not very different from saying we're lucky to have depressed or bipolar people. Perhaps we're also lucky to have quadriplegic people?
(And yeah, obviously not all transgender people suffer from gender dysphoria)
I’m curious, why do you feel the need to hurt marginalized people? What do you gain?
>Did you actually just compare being transgendered to suffering from a spinal cord injury??
Both gender dysphoria and spinal cord injuries tend to be severely debilitating.
We're not lucky to have transgender people. Luck would be nobody suffering from gender dysphoria. The people who end up needing to correct their gender are absolutely not lucky. Why do you think their misfortune makes us lucky?
I'm all for trans rights, consequently I'm also disgusted by you making light of the suffering implied by gender dysphoria.
It seems like you view this as a political partisan issue and it's an important part of your identity. Which is fine, but it's not the logically-obvious thing you are claiming.
I've gone my entire life without be confused for a woman. So I would say that constitutes a good deal of empirical evidence.
>It seems like you view this as a political partisan issue and it's an important part of your identity.
Being a man is part of my identity, but I went my entire life without "being a man" being a political partisan issue. I didn't make this a partisan issue, a fringe group of leftist have. And if any part of this is "part of my identity" is that I have no desire to bend to some fringe activist groups demanding compliance for their latest "current thing".
>but it's not the logically-obvious thing you are claiming.
It's logically obvious to everyone who isn't on the fringe left. Is water wet?
Either trans people pass, in which case they, by definition, aren't singled out, or they don't pass in which case regardless of what's in your Twitter bio they will still be singled out. I heard about a situation where five or six women stood up to speak and said their pronouns and then a trans person stood up and shared theirs. The trans person said it felt awkward - like every person began by calling attention to the fact that some pronouns are obvious and others aren't.
To me it seems much more like signalling. In 99+% of instances I can guess the appropriate pronouns. When I can't then it makes sense to state them.
It also tends to then extend to things like pretending there are no sex differences and that everything is socially constructed (which I think is nonsense). I used to think this was a strawman, but the Lia Thomas story shows it isn’t imo: https://overcast.fm/+vpWbPtN0o
This is obviously a third rail internet topic and people can do what they like, but I won’t put pronouns in my bio and I won’t submit to pressure to do so in order to pass some sort of political morality test.
Only a small minority of people believe that.
> I won’t put pronouns in my bio and I won’t submit to pressure to do so in order to pass some sort of political morality test.
Literally no one is trying to force you to do that.
Not OP, but I had to do a conference talk on some or other live-stream platform and pronouns were 100% required for all speakers.
This is societal level, passive or "mild" bullying that the feminists have been complaining as a symptom of patriarchy for many years, yet here we are, reverse perpetuating things that we will most likely be judged on in coming generations.
I’m not sure how small it is and I don’t want to enable it.
There are people forcing/pressuring participation in the public display of pronouns/say your pronouns thing (you may just live somewhere insulated from it).
I’ve had it happen in Silicon Valley interviews and I know some groups at Stanford require it.
Anyways, I agree it probably was a fad and such but the way it was structured for renewals also makes me think lots of people just don't own their .eth handle anymore, so it wouldn't make any sense to share it. I'd have probably gotten one if it was one time cost for a permanent static address, but that wasn't what they were offering. I think it was something like $250 per year (in ETH at the time) to keep it active, I never opted into that because it seemed like something I would want to opt out of in the future - I'm not surprised ENS has some attrition, it's built into their business model.
I have no proof, but I doubt any of them were paying for it. I tried to figure out how some of them got their names by looking at the blockchain. There were some patterns where I thought it looked like someone bought up a bunch of popular names and transferred them to the influencers. I'm not very well versed in blockchain though, so I couldn't follow it well enough to do anything more than speculate.
I think it was nothing more than promotion. It would be interesting to know if anyone got paid because they should be disclosing it as paid promotion if they did. Having the domain given to you is a type of payment (if that happened).
> I think it was something like $250 per year (in ETH at the time) to keep it active
If you weren't looking at a 3 or 4 letter domain you were probably seeing super high transaction fees which made the initial transaction very expensive. The registration is supposed to cost about $5 per year. I bought one a few months ago and that's how it worked.
I paid $11 in transaction fees for the first transaction where you submit your order + secret. Then I paid $72 in transaction fees for the registration plus $55 for 10 years of registration. I also got about $5 transferred back to me by the ETH ENS registrar. So the cost of the domain registration was $5 / year, but the transaction fees were around $85.
I watched gas prices for a week and tried to time my order with low fees. The cost of the second transaction went up by $20 while I waited for the 1 minute delay required between transactions. It's crazy.
You also need to pay transaction fees every time you want to update the record. Now imagine a proof of stake system where the rich (ie: early adopters) get a cut of transaction fees just for holding a bunch of tokens. I think that's why enthusiasts are so excited. Imagine getting paid every time someone needs to update a record in a database.
I don't think blockchain domains have any benefits. In fact I think they're significantly worse than our current system. However, I did buy one to match my favorite / best .com domain because even if they're a terrible idea they could still get popular and I thought it was worth $135 USD to ensure I didn't have to worry about someone squatting on my name.
I mean, was there ever any evidence that it was natural or even legitimate?
Same goes with NFTs, the fee's are just crazy. + I don't think the average joe can make any money on it.
Other think to know you can use your .XYZ domain on ethereum as ENS.
2. It's sad the people who will be hit with this stuff the most are the newbies :(
Not making one crypto wallet and your net worth the same thing?
At least not in ETH itself; even privacy coins like ZEC may have a way to make your identity public and make your history transparent – and it works as designed when you do this, your transactions are public. (In this sense, neither does using a mixer really help at all. It would just show that you've received some money and sent it to a mixer as yourself, if the mixer is also a public known entity.)
I suppose one way to solve this, is to tell people to look up your ENS name, and then sign a message and share it with them – to present them securely with an address that they can use and verify that it belongs to you, only that it won't be tied to your original identity, except by that message (which you'd have to trust them not to share as well.)
you have plenty of options for this:
1) withdraw from an exchange directly to the virgin address and never send funds back to the ENS one (except when you want people to know something, like to pump an NFT or token, similar to how state mandated Elon Musk ownership disclosures pumped Twitter)
2) “launder” (obfuscate) once and never look back to the ENS address. Withdrawing from Tornado.cash doesnt expose one of your addresses expose to initiated the transaction, so Tornado Cash will do an internal transaction (smart contract moving Ether to an individual address) with no link to one of your funded addresses.
Or just reset Metamask and make a new recovery phrase with a whole new set of unlimited unique addresses. this reduces any temptation to accidentally send to your ENS address.
you still have access to the ENS name and address. so just use it when you want.
there is no reason to reuse addresses and its comical that being married to an address has become default behavior.
EDIT: Apologies - as pointed out below - not my intent to align the site with the TLD - I could have worded that better. I think the domain is more likely a product of the ENS team, but I don't know for certain.
It is though.
> Eth.xyz was created for the ENS community with love by the XYZ Registry, the company behind .xyz domain names. The project is open for contribution or feedback on GitHub. Send us a message @xyz on Twitter! [1]
It's kind of neat, but seems like a registry taking on a lot of extra liability that they typically don't have as a domain registry. Putting a disclaimer on the sites doesn't exempt them from the law.
> The profile content on this page is automatically generated from publicly available information provided through ENS and is ultimately controlled by the relevant ENS user. Nothing on this page implies any endorsement or affiliation between XYZ or ENS and the person or organization whose profile information appears on this page.
So what gain does the blockchain get you? XYZ isn't judgement proof like the blockchain, so they'll have to follow the current laws for trademarks, copyrights, etc.. If the blockchain isn't adding any revolutionary tech, is slower, is expensive, and is only accessible using gateways that are subjected to current laws, what's the appeal?
It's probably well intentioned and I like seeing XYZ making an effort to do more than maintain the status quo, but there are better ways to promote domains than jumping on the blockchain bandwagon in my opinion.
There's not really any advantage to this, because you have to trust `eth.limo`, but ENS names are in theory technically superior to traditional domain names, so I'm excited about this development. For instance, in theory ENS names have no need for certificate authorities for instance, or centralized registrars that we have to socially pressure every few years not to sell .org to a private company or whatever.
As for ENS itself, it is the only working valid use case for NFTs. Too bad it is implemented on something that is sluggish and expensive for users to use, which is Ethereum.
It is a URL, it’s just not ICANN/DNS.
In practice you can go to example.eth directly in web3 browsers (most mobile wallets have built in browsers). For browsers like Chrome or safari you can access them through gateways, for example, Cloudflare has a .link gateway so on chrome you can use example.eth.link (my preferred gateway is eth.limo).
It looked horribly tacky and a few years later everyone quietly disappeared the TLDs.
> ... it was just a fad.
These are equivalent statements. Cryptocurrency has very little real utility, so when the fad ends, it is dead.
shaq.eth probably is not hosting any IPFS content.
Here's Vitalik's blog hosted on IPFS and linked to his ENS: https://vitalik.eth.link/
(PS - appending .link would resolve any ENS domain which is hosting IPFS static sites)
How does that even make sense? ETH is valued based on tokens in circulation. Visa is valued based on money made from transactions. They aren't really related at all.
It's not like ETH is doing proof-of-stake, owning ETH doesn't in any way entitle you to ongoing dividends like VISA stock would.
This is not really a meaningful statement. Thiel is talking about Ethereum's market cap, which is not related to the number of tokens in circulation. Owning ETH doesn't (and most likely will never, even after the PoS merge) pay anything like dividends.
The demand for ETH comes from the fact that it's necessary to pay some every time you want to interact with the ethereum blockchain. The demand for Visa stock comes from the fact that Visa will probably pay dividends or do buybacks in the future. You're right that that makes it not obvious how to compare the two.
But you can still try and do the comparison Thiel might be doing. What "should" the price of ETH be? The supply of ETH is mostly fixed, so the question is "what price for ethereum equalizes the amount of ETH people are willing to buy at that price and the supply of ETH". If you assume that the demand is "whatever people are willing to do on VISA, they're willing to do on Ethereum assuming they can for cheaper" (an assumption some here will probably find dubious, but let's go with it), and that Ethereum is capable of that (which it isn't, not yet anyway), the value of the amount of Ethereum needed to do a transaction is the same as the cost of doing a transaction through VISA (since we're assuming they're perfect substitutes). Then we have to consider their costs – VISA's costs are whatever they spend on hiring programmers and servers and little cards, and Ethereum's cost is what they pay to validators to incentivize them to keep the chain secure. If we make a third assumption that these costs are similar, the market cap of Ethereum should be the same as Visa's.
The market caps are actually very similar, so that's some evidence that the market believes that these assumptions are true.
There was an idea that the telephone-switching address space and public Internet could be combined, because the devices were converging towards each other. So an address in .tel would be a phone number, and also all active telephone numbers in the ISO numbering scheme would be valid addresses under .tel. You'd be able to put in DNS records to forward "friendly" names to phone numbers, and also set SIP endpoints for PSTN numbers.
It was never really clear who was going to run all this, i.e. would it be the phone company, or some outfit like Network Solutions / Verisign... and I think that's part of why it never really happened. And phone numbers and DNS remain separate address spaces.
Probably just a rogue thought bumping into a misremember :)
The implication of this post is that ETH/ENS is dying or people are caring less. In think in reality, it's probably less exciting... it was just a fad.