I think it's very interesting that this person found the AMPRnet largely unused. I wonder how much of that is ham projects that don't traverse the Internet, how much is hams not knowing they can receive allocations from this subnet, or how much is the difficulty in actually getting an allocation.

Just my anecdotal experience in the U.S. but about a year ago I tried (again, after many years) to get a /24 from AMPRnet to announce via BGP. After not hearing back for two months, I was told that my request wasn't correctly submitted and to try again. So I did, and never heard back. Yes, the AMPRnet people go to great lengths to say that this is an all-volunteer effort and coordinators have many other things they'd rather be doing than processing request for addresses, but on the other hand the ARDC did manage to, uh, "acquire" nine figures of money from a large company by selling off a shared resource with minimal notice or community involvement so maybe paying a couple of staffers could be on the roadmap?

I was also wondering how this person managed to get a /24 in short order to do their "Easter egg," which definitely isn't a valid use according to ARDC's rules:

> But by only using a /24 (or almost $8,000 today) and more hours than you should, you can write your own callsign on the IPv4 map! Here you can see my own callsign, SV2OIY, written on the image, by carefully calculating the exact IPv4 addresses that need to be online and then making sure that they respond to pings.

And then...

> The reason I analyzed the 44/8 space was due to my role as a member of the ARDC TAC, and my duties of managing the IPv4 Address Space, planning for the future, and improving the processes under which it is being operated and allocated

So as with everything in life, it's not the rules you read, it's who you know.