Kid named finger:

Finger me for public key

Don’t mind if I do

I frequently saw people running their fingers down the WHO display saying things like “There’s Don and that’s Pattie but I don’t know when Tom was last seen.”

Yeah sure. Definitely not a sex joke.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import socket

class Finger:
    def __init__(self, host: str) -> None:
        self.__host = host

    def __getitem__(self, user: str) -> str:
        with socket.create_connection((self.__host, 79)) as sock:
            sock.send(user.encode('ascii') + b'\r\n')
            data = b''
            while incoming := sock.recv(1024):
                data += incoming
            return data.decode(encoding='utf-8', errors='replace')

    def __iter__(self):
        nxt = ['']
        while nxt:
            next_user = nxt.pop()
            msg = self[next_user]
            yield msg
            next_users = [
                handle.split()[-1][:-1]
                for handle in msg.split(self.__host)
                if handle.endswith('@')
            ]
            nxt.extend(next_users)
        yield '--EOF--'


def main():
    happy = Finger('happynetbox.com')
    feed = iter(happy)
    print(next(feed))
    while True:
        command = input()
        if command in ('exit', 'quit', 'stop', 'done'):
            break
        elif command:
            print(happy[command])
        else:
            print(next(feed))


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

I love how simple this protocol is. You can just rawdog a socket and jam bytes into it. This should let you doomscroll happynetbox lol.

Note: whitespace is allowed in usernames (technically any ASCII characters, it’s up to the server admin to limit them, and happynetbox doesn’t lol). So there’s no good way for me to detect a username with whitespace and you’ll just get bumped to a .plan that recommends another user which keeps the chain going.

neat

Finger is so cool.

Ooohhh! finger blast-game@happynetbox.com someone made a riddle game

You can use the script I posted to just type the next thing in the terminal without using the finger command