Not just a new server, a news server, although ironically I think only the olds use the news now. It was really just an experiment in why not. It took me about three hours from opening a blank main.go to mostly done, which was good to cover the Becket joins Dr. Cuddy at the FBI arc on Castle. Then an afternoon faffing about making scripts to load up some content.

The first and most important thing to discuss is the name, nuset. It’s got all the same pheromones as Usenet, subliminally exerting mind control over the reader. In the local dialect, it’s pronounced more like newsd, rhymes with used, as if it’s used news. About right. I was thinking of telling people it’s named after the Assyrian god of information, and could probably get someone to believe that. Or maybe it’s nu-Set, the reincarnation of Set.

The NNTP protocol is specified by RFC 3977. It’s a pretty easy read, and filled with lots of examples, which I found very helpful. Read a section, then copy the client line into the parser and copy the server line into the output. There’s words, too, but it’s much less ambiguous to always see exactly the format of commands and results.

In hindsight, this would have been a good project to experiment with a new language. But I was lazy and already know where go keeps the textproto.DotWriter.

I’m not super into Gemini, the tiny web alike, in part because I think it’s fun to interact with people. But a tiny usenet, without all the spams and trolls, I could get into. Although I’m not there yet. I’ve only got enough commands working to allow local posting, not federation. A little more effort, and we could get there, though.

For now, I’m just mirroring content. You can check it out at nntp://flak.tedunangst.com. Subscriber exclusive: see the behind the scenes markdown I use to write posts!