The owner of the site gave a talk at DEFCON 17, "That Awesome Time I Was Sued For Two Billion Dollars"<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSWqx8goqSY&ab_channel=Christiaan008" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSWqx8goqSY&ab_channel=Chris...</a>
All hail Jason Scott. As may have said, this guy has brought so much joy by preserving and highlighting all of this content.<p>I've known Jason for years from the old scene and was one of the old school original (uberspace) textfiles mirrors, which was hosted on a modified Cobalt Cube running NetBSD from my 22nd story apartment (Golden Gate Apartments) in SF, which at the time, happened to include free internet on a full T1 back in 2002!<p>@textfiles, thank you for continuing to bring joy to the world. Personally I've most recently enjoyed your MAME archives as I'be been building Retropie boxes from Arcade1Up cabs to play the classics with my daughter. Thanks for all you do.
If you're looking for gems on this site, just check the HN search results for it: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=textfiles.com" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=textfiles.com</a>
I learnt about coffee and how to brew it from the ancient coffeefaq.txt file, copied via sneakernet and usenet, back in the early 90s. The text is totally valuable, and of course still valid. It has found its permanent home on text files.com, and that is so great.<p><a href="http://cd.textfiles.com/group42/FAQS/ACAFFEIN.TXT" rel="nofollow">http://cd.textfiles.com/group42/FAQS/ACAFFEIN.TXT</a>
For those who remember or interested, there is a similar site that catalogs the ANSI BBS art scene at <a href="http://sixteencolors.net/" rel="nofollow">http://sixteencolors.net/</a>
I like the footer on one of the docs that apparently came from a BBS:<p>Full access for first-time callers. We don't want to know who you are,
where you live, or what your phone number is. We are not Big Brother.
Wow, I love this. Clicked on “Where are to files?” and discovered a treasure trove. I just dived into food files.<p>Although it is not the type of artificial intelligence work people usually pay me to do, my passion is knowledge representation and automatically extracting meaning from text. textfiles.com looks like a great resource. Thanks for posting this.
><i>Congress shall encourage the practice of Judeo-Christian religion by its own public exercise there of, and shall make no laws abridging the freedom of responsible speech (unless such speech is in a digital form or contains material that is copyrighted, classified, proprietary or offensive to non-Europeans, non-males, differently abled or alternativley prefferenced persons), or the right of people to peaceably assemble (unless such assembly takes place on corporate or military property or within an electronic environment), or to petition the government for redress of grievances (unless such grievances relate to national security).</i><p><a href="http://www.textfiles.com/100/billrights.fun" rel="nofollow">http://www.textfiles.com/100/billrights.fun</a>
The ones that are formatted to 40 columns in all caps because THATS WHAT THE ORIGINAL APPLE II COULD DO are charming to no end.<p><a href="http://www.textfiles.com/apple/wiztips4.txt" rel="nofollow">http://www.textfiles.com/apple/wiztips4.txt</a><p>I wish I was five years older and to have experienced the Apple II bbs era instead of getting an old hand me down //c in the early 90's and not having the cash for a modem.
I got my first 'email' address in the mid-80s, on CompuServe.<p>I remember this era. I wish I could transport all my younger friends to those days. They seemed more...humane, and mysterious. There was an optimism and exhilaration about computers that seems all but snuffed out.<p>And Jason Scott is a saint.
Love the anarchy section:<p><a href="http://www.textfiles.com/anarchy/" rel="nofollow">http://www.textfiles.com/anarchy/</a>
Reminds me of MadChat which was popular in France in the 90's.<p>Closed in 2006 but looks like it was archived it here :
<a href="http://ivanlef0u.fr/repo/madchat/" rel="nofollow">http://ivanlef0u.fr/repo/madchat/</a>
Could we have this over https?<p>My internet connection blocks most pages of the site as "Adult content", presumably because it has bomb making instructions on, and the UK government is tetchy about that kind of thing nowadays.
<a href="http://www.textfiles.com/internet/acronyms.txt" rel="nofollow">http://www.textfiles.com/internet/acronyms.txt</a><p>Interesting which early internet acronyms survived and which dropped out of use.<p>e.g. I haven't seen PMJI (Pardon My Jumping In) (at least not in a decade, if ever).<p>Notable absences from the early days: IANAL / IANAD
Whenever this site pops up I always end up going to <a href="http://textfiles.com/bbs/MINDVOX/voices.txt" rel="nofollow">http://textfiles.com/bbs/MINDVOX/voices.txt</a> - I recall Mindvox in Wired and that kind of thing but it was ever so slightly before my time..
"How not to be boring" - <a href="http://www.textfiles.com/fun/boring.txt" rel="nofollow">http://www.textfiles.com/fun/boring.txt</a><p>Love it. My wife gestures all the time. I'm going to show her how boring it is based on an ASCII document from the 90s :-P
An important piece of the early internet. I remember when my brief submission made it to the last issue of HOE (Hogs of Ecstasy) and felt like a small celebrity.
Reading Unix Use and Security From The Ground Up by The Prophet back in 1989 familiarized me with how to use Unix (anyone remember uucico?), launching my career into IT, initially as a Unix systems administrator (anyone remember when corporate IT racked their own servers?)
From <a href="http://www.textfiles.com/apple/iigsprob.hum" rel="nofollow">http://www.textfiles.com/apple/iigsprob.hum</a><p>> It can hardly be beleived that Apple would put out an overpriced product that works halfway and not be willing to fix it or at least offer our money back.<p>Ha, just you wait.<p>(Former IIGS owner, owner of many Apple devices before and since.)
I always loved this story of his: <a href="http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1127" rel="nofollow">http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1127</a><p>For some reason, the original is gone. That's his sequel.
I have a box of 3.25" disks from my BBS days. I need to take a look at those and see if I can get any text files from them.<p>This archive is an amazing glimpse at my youth.
Very cool. I recently got into ASCII art while building myself a new portfolio website. I decorated my resume with ASCII art, and even created ASCII art of the International Space Station, among others. <a href="https://iamlocaljo.com/experience/" rel="nofollow">https://iamlocaljo.com/experience/</a>
This is a good one, "Anatomy of a pirate":<p><a href="http://textfiles.com/piracy/anatomy.txt" rel="nofollow">http://textfiles.com/piracy/anatomy.txt</a>