just reading gnutella triggered a really old memory of times when Ares, Limewire and eMule where places to try your luck getting mp3s and software

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felooboolooomba 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Back in the day as a teenager. Downloaded mp3 that was labelled with title and artist and .mp3 extension. It wasn't. What it was caused me to wipe my hard drive and reinstall everything. Fkuc that shit. Apart from that, many good stuff was had.

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leeoniya 4 hours ago | parent [-]

or was it Windows hiding file extensions by default and you downloaded a .mp3.exe file?

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netsharc 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Isn't it just great how a decision made by some genius in Microsoft decades ago caused so much confusion and mess. Even on Windows 11 the default is to hide extensions, because, geez, wouldn't want to confuse people with change after decades of it being like that.

Although, was the hiding something that the Mac introduced?

The idea of the last part of the filename (after the period) determining what program is launched to handle the file is odd anyway...

I wonder if the Windows spyware infrastructure measures what % of people turn off extension hiding..

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chuckadams 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The mac started out without using extensions at all, the type was embedded in the metadata. That's still possible now, but it's largely derived from extensions first. I believe Finder shows all extensions by default. It certainly does in details mode.

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throwawaysoxjje 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Macs originally didn’t have filename extensions because the file type was stored as metadata in the file system

	▲	hnlmorg 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That really is a superior way of doing things too. Or at least it would have been if that metadata were transferred with the file itself in all protocols.

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felooboolooomba 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nope. It had been renamed from .avi. CP.

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cwnyth 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

BearShare, too, which also included pictures and video. I don't remember ever getting a virus from it, but I also kept extensions visible.

	▲	suzzer99 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I still get spam emails on the one-off email address I used to sign up for Bearshare.

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culi 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Docuwiki (not to be confused with DokuWiki) is still the most thorough source I've seen for niche documentaries.

https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Category:Name

It is all ed2k links. Unfortunately modern clients for ed2k are quite lacking

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ck45 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

ed2k, nice! That reminds me of this superb piece of software: MLDonkey (https://github.com/ygrek/mldonkey), written in OCaml.

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msm_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And yet it doesn't work without JS (I think it's because cloudflare WAF, but still)

	▲	cwnyth 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Once you get past Cloudfare, you can use it without JS.

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rrgok 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Shareaza was the goat. It had 4 or 5 protocols.

	▲	rickcarlino 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It is still around! I see network traffic from it on major GWebCache instances.