I think, you don't get the full grasp of "early, friendly internet". Very few people do today. In my bubble - programming, for example, young people can't even imagine that there were times when you could focus on _things_ instead of writing layers of security code around them.

It makes me sad to think of all those simple little services we used to run on *NIX machines, like `finger` and `whois`. You'd never want to disclose that information now, but at the time it was quite nice to be able to see if a friend or colleague was around with a simple network query.

I remember when I could connect to nearly any server on the internet on port 25 and manually type the commands to send an email.

.

You can still submit mail to virtually any mail server using telnet. I just tried it on Gmail for curiosity, and it did work!

I dunno. Everyone fairly-publicly shares their entire friend network and what they had for lunch, now, usually under their real name.

It’s like how when I was a kid, nobody in our neighborhood locked their doors at night. There was no need. Until there was.

I think you make it sound as if that was good, but it was straight naive or irresponsible

The GP is saying "I miss the days where I could easily exploit people" and the response was "I miss the days where we respected each other enough to not exploit each other". It wasn't naive or irresponsible, but reflective of a time with more trust, cooperation, and good intentions.

Reminds me of a few years ago, when I accidentally exposed my Domoticz install to the internet without authentication. I've had missed something in my Nginx config with X-Forwarded-For headers. After about a week or something apparently a foreign visitor came by my install and decided to have some good fun. Turning my lights on/off at random times. It took me about 3 days to realize what have happened, but in the mean time he didn't just destroy my install and only mess with me. Which was really sweet, because nuking the system would be far easier than opening the webpage every night.

That was a good and fun security lesson though and now I always check outside security with a mobile hotspot.

I think this takes the crown as the least-charitable interpretation of a comment that I've ever seen on HN.

"There are villages on the countryside that are safe and friendly, everyone knows each other, people don't even lock their door."

- "Man, those idiots are naive and irresponsible."

1 I didnt call any1 "idiot"

2 it s not like other people cant go to those places, thus it is kinda irresponsible

Sure, in today’s world.

That’s like saying it would be naive and irresponsible for me to go outside without a life preserver today despite an unforeseen catastrophic global flood drowning the lands 10 years from now. It was a different world, with different expectations and frameworks.

That's like saying it's naive and irresponsible to gooutside without locking your front door when you live in a tiny remote village with 40 other people you've known for your whole life.

Not really, in your example theres no way any1 appears and even if he does, then your friends protect ur stuff

Meanwhile internet aint remote village

Point is it used to be

Do you know of any tiny remote internet villages left? There has to be a few

It was a different time

Some were open for uploads by design, in spirit of sharing things - essentially use the free space left after maib purpose to provide friendly mirrors for things like new projects etc. I recall using Archie to find copies of open source software at the ending edge of that era.

Some also were used as submissions for projects, long before sites like sourceforge started. Especially since plonking a bigger source dump on newsgroups wasn't exactly well received.

Sometimes people should be able to do nice things without it getting abused, no?

In The Netherlands, in the nicer neighborhoods we have something called a ‘buurtbieb’ aka a ‘neighborhood libraries’, which is a weatherproof cabinet where people can put surplus books that other people in the neighborhood can borrow.

Of course you could take all the books or use the cabinet to store candy, but why would you?

There’s actually coordination around these things: https://littlefreelibrary.org/

We have these throughout many neighborhoods in my city in central Florida, USA. We’re a college town so I just assumed it was somehow connected to that. Neat that it’s an international thing!

In the UK these are commonly set up inside old unused telephone boxes - you can find them in many villages/towns, e.g.: https://nothingintherulebook.com/2018/11/03/british-phone-bo...

Munich, Germany has them as well

Here in Baltimore, MD, too, although the focus is mostly on kids books

Here in Brazil we have those on bus stops.

We have them in Toronto, ON. We call them LLLs or Little Lending Libraries. There are actually quite a lot of them.

We have them out in the 905s too. I've seen quite a few of them here in Durham Region.

Usually called Little Free Libraries in the US.

(The name is a little weird, because regular libraries are also free...)

The word "public" in "public library" is load bearing, you can't replace it with "regular", hence your confusion.

Private libraries (mine for example) are not free, as in beer or otherwise.

True, though to be fair most people never get to use private libraries. Or they used a library at their University that was technically private, but that gave access to the public as well. Public libraries are ubiquitous and very normal, while private libraries are the exception.

In America, public schools all have private libraries, reserved for attending students. (Maybe some operate as public libraries, but I've never seen nor heard of it.)

Furthermore, public libraries are not necessarily free. In America they virtually are all; fees only for late returns. But this is not globally true; in some parts of the world, libraries open to the public charge a fee for checking out books, or even require a fee for entry.

It's a normal elision, yes, we all picture a public library when we say "library". But "free library" isn't redundant or weird, because "public" is a modifier of library, not a trait.

People tend to call their personal library a "book collection" or the like, but it's a library, in just the same way that a Little Free Library is.

So most people who read have at least a small private library, whether they think of it in those terms or not.

There are two libraries near me that aren’t free - they charge an annual “membership” fee. One even operates more like an old blockbuster when it comes to newly released books. They charge a daily rental fee! It’s 25¢ a day, I believe.

FWIW "Little Free Library" is a trademark and its owners have been aggressive in its defense. I don't know what folks should use as a generic name.

Buurtbieb - in English, roughly pronounced as b-eew-rt-beep.

It's a literal translation of "neighbourhood library", it alliterates, and it sounds cute. (Keep the "beep" part short for that).

Just keep using it as a generic name. They've already lost the generification war. Are they seriously going to track down and sue neighborhood libraries?

Good luck getting a jury to enforce the trademark.

It seems bizarre to me that someone could trademark such a straightforwardly descriptive name.

Yeah, but if you take a book from a LFL, you own it. With a public library, you merely borrowed it.

Obligatory "Free as in beer vs. free as in freedom" comment. I have pulled stuff out of small community bookshelves that would never have seen their chance in a "professional-run" public library, both bad and good.

I always took it to mean “no really this is free, take a book!”

In Puerto Rico there are quite a few of these on the sidewalk and despite the rains they are generally always stocked with books. There are bars on everyone's windows and doors, but books piled up on the street.

there's one down the street from me but instead of books it has canned food. It says "little free pantry" on it. It must have been around for a while because the neighborhood it's in has long sense been gentrified and is populated with very well-off residents vs the working poor that use to live there.

Great to hear these little neighborhood libraries are international. We have them here where I live in Colorado, US.

Indeed. The zoning code for my town specifically calls them out (as allowed, with no permits necessary).

I've also seen many of these at bus stations near Victoria, BC.

Can confirm neighborhood libraries are a thing in Pittsburgh (USA).