[TUHS] [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[TUHS] [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[arnold]

Hi.

I've been using trn for decades to read a very few USENET groups. Until recently I've
been using aioe.org as my NNTP server but it seems to have gone dark. Before that
I used eternal-september.org, but when I try that I now get:

| $ NNTPSERVER=news.eternal-september.org trn
| Connecting to news.eternal-september.org...Done.
| 
| Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.sys.3b1
| 
| Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.sources.bugs
| 
| Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.misc
| 
| Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.compilers
| ....

And those all are (or were!) valid groups. If anyone has suggestions for a good
free NNTP server, please let me know. Privately is fine.  I'm at a bit of
a loss otherwise.

Thanks,

Arnold

[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[Lars Brinkhoff]

I use dotsrc.org (formerly sunsite.dk).

[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[Ron Natalie]

Nothing on it but spam and porn now unfortunately.   Such a shame.    
About the closest I’ve come to the sense of the old USENET is reddit.



------ Original Message ------
From "Lars Brinkhoff" <lars@nocrew.org>
To arnold@skeeve.com
Cc tuhs@tuhs.org
Date 1/27/2023 4:03:36 AM
Subject [TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

>I use dotsrc.org (formerly sunsite.dk).

[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[John Cowan]

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It depends on the newsgroup.  I read c.l.scheme and c.l.pl1 at Google, and
it's fine.

On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 4:24 AM Ron Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:

> Nothing on it but spam and porn now unfortunately.   Such a shame.
> About the closest I’ve come to the sense of the old USENET is reddit.
>
>
>
> ------ Original Message ------
> From "Lars Brinkhoff" <lars@nocrew.org>
> To arnold@skeeve.com
> Cc tuhs@tuhs.org
> Date 1/27/2023 4:03:36 AM
> Subject [TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?
>
> >I use dotsrc.org (formerly sunsite.dk).
>

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[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[parodper via TUHS]

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O 27/01/23 ás 09:53, arnold@skeeve.com escribiu:
> Hi.
> 
> I've been using trn for decades to read a very few USENET groups. Until recently I've
> been using aioe.org as my NNTP server but it seems to have gone dark.

According to a poster on eternal-september.support AIOE's RAID failed 
and they're trying to get it up again.

> Before that
> I used eternal-september.org, but when I try that I now get:
> 
> | $ NNTPSERVER=news.eternal-september.org trn
> | Connecting to news.eternal-september.org...Done.
> |
> | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.sys.3b1
> |
> | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.sources.bugs
> |
> | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.misc
> |
> | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.compilers
> | ....
> 
> And those all are (or were!) valid groups.

I just tried, and I can access those groups from eternal-september.org.


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[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Arnold,

> I've been using trn for decades

Very fond memories of trn(1).  In comparison, I've never seen a web
interface, e.g. for RSS reading, be so geared towards the user and his
likely actions whilst also allowing for powerful expression.

> to read a very few USENET groups.

Bringing it back to heritage, I was wondering about Usenet the other
day.  Deja News was excellent, Google Groups is pitiful.  A good search
of a comprehensive, historic Usenet archive would be useful from the
TUHS side, but I expect modern analysis means it would also be
interesting to those wanting cultural analysis of a subset of the public
in earlier decades.

Henry Spencer's UTZOO archive is available.  Sites like
https://www.usenetarchives.com have used it in the past, but none I know
of are well maintained.  In part, anything popular would attract legal
requests for posts to be taken down; IIRC that's why archive.org took
down their official copy of UTZOO.

But the data is so small by modern standards, perhaps a self-hosted
searcher is a way forward.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.

[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[Ron Natalie]

I also remember alt.2600.   Because of my work in security I was 
encouraged to keep tabs on such things (also had the government buy me a 
subscription to the printed 2600).
It was set up as a moderated group, but there was no moderator.   Your 
right to post was derived by the fact that you knew how to forge the 
approved line into the header to get it distributed.

[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[Ron Young via TUHS]

On January 27, 2023 6:45:52 AM PST, Ralph Corderoy <ralph@inputplus.co.uk> wrote:
>Hi Arnold,
>
>> I've been using trn for decades
>
>Very fond memories of trn(1).  In comparison, I've never seen a web
>interface, e.g. for RSS reading, be so geared towards the user and his
>likely actions whilst also allowing for powerful expression.
>
>> to read a very few USENET groups.
>

I'm still using trn4 and stunnel4 to  to read news from supernews... Works great.

(UN) fortunately it is only for a small number of groups.

-ron

[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 09:24:03AM +0000, Ron Natalie wrote:
> Nothing on it but spam and porn now unfortunately.   Such a shame.    About
> the closest I???ve come to the sense of the old USENET is reddit.

Reddit is sort of a centralized Usenet with voting.  In the old days,
centralized would have never worked but it works now.  If you can live
with the fact that Reddit has a lot of echo chamber stuff going on,
it's quite pleasant.

Reddit is my primary news source these days and I wade through a lot of
random stuff there.  There is a lot of noise but once in a while some
cancer thing will come up, I take a look at the comments, there will be
an actual oncologist / cancer researcher in there who will say "yeah,
this is in the lab only, not tested on humans, not interesting for at
least 10-20 years" or, rarely, "this is very promising".  For the latter,
you go off and read the article.

[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[Angel M Alganza]

My lovely Sparc SS20, in which I used to do email and USENET news, broke 
down a few years ago and I haven't taken the time neither to bring it 
back to life nor to replicate my news set up (leafnode + tinn) somewhere 
else, so alas I haven't been checking the news for a (far too long) 
while now.

On 2023-01-27 17:05, Larry McVoy wrote:

> Reddit is sort of a centralized Usenet with voting.
> Reddit is my primary news source these days and I wade through a lot of
> random stuff there.  There is a lot of noise but once in a while some

I find the ratio signal/noise of Reddit far too low to use it as a 
regular news source for me. For technical news, there is Hacker News 
(HN), which in place of a voting system, has a tipping system which 
rewards with small amounts of money the more interesting/useful posts 
and comments.

In the same line, there is also Stacker News (SN), which uses Bitcoin on 
the Lightning Network for tips. Contents there are more focused about 
Bitcoin and economics, but more users are joining and proposing to widen 
the areas of focus on the site: technology, computing, etc.

Both, HN and SN are centralized, but we are having discussions on SN 
about the possibility for SN to be converted to a Nostr client, which 
would keep the great spirit and maintain the interface, but replace its 
back-end (currently a centralized database) with Nostr relays, making it 
truly decentralized, much more robust, fault tolerant, and censorship 
resistant. I'm using Nostr more and more everyday, and I think it's soon 
will be my primary news source.

If you have a look at SN and decide to join, please consider using my 
referral link: https://stacker.news/r/ama, so that when you stack your 
satoshi (Bitcoin tips), I get some little percentage, too, if you don't 
mind.  :-)

Hit me at Nostr at 
https://astral.ninja/npub1ttk90a6kkphe9h0dys9mqy38wxa7t4t7g39vys76f4cglqr49rgqh6xxpx
where I'd love for notes about the unix in general and its history in 
particular to start accumulating.

Cheers,
Ángel

[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 06:01:03PM +0100, Angel M Alganza wrote:
> I find the ratio signal/noise of Reddit far too low to use it as a regular
> news source for me. For technical news, there is Hacker News (HN), which in
> place of a voting system, has a tipping system which rewards with small
> amounts of money the more interesting/useful posts and comments.

I left hacker news a few years ago for two reasons:

A) the signal noise ratio, as a systems person, is awful.  They talk about
   trivial stuff like it is a big deal.  There is very little in the way
   of interesting stuff there.  It all sounds technical until you look 
   into it, it's 98% fluff.

B) There is some paid(?) schill there who stomps on anyone saying anything
   bad about Roundup.  Cancer got my dad, he got it from Roundup.
   Every time I tried point out I had personal data on the topic (and all
   you have to do is google Roundup and cancer and you get a bizillion
   law firms who want to represent you), this schill jumped on me.
   I complained to the admins and they did nothing, so I left.  They
   were getting more out of me than I was getting out of that site
   so sucks to be them.


On the signal/noise on reddit, /r/news is reasonable and not that
different than Google news other than it shows up on reddit first.

[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via TUHS]

arnold@skeeve.com writes:

> If anyone has suggestions for a good free NNTP server, please let me
> know.

Not free, but very cheap: I use news.individual.net, run by the Freie
Universität Berlin, where the subscription fee is a mere 10 euros/year.

-tih
-- 
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp.  Lisp is the most important idea in computer science.  --Alan Kay

[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[Henry Mensch]

I'd like to find solid Android and Windows clients so I could once again use USENET. The web interfaces I've seen have been pretty awful for the way I want to use it. 

- Henry

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> 
Sent: 27 January 2023 12:39
To: arnold@skeeve.com
Cc: TUHS@tuhs.org
Subject: [TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

arnold@skeeve.com writes:

> If anyone has suggestions for a good free NNTP server, please let me 
> know.

Not free, but very cheap: I use news.individual.net, run by the Freie Universität Berlin, where the subscription fee is a mere 10 euros/year.

-tih
--
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance of Lisp.  Lisp is the most important idea in computer science.  --Alan Kay

[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[Stuff Received]

On 2023-01-27 12:42, Henry Mensch wrote (in part):
> I'd like to find solid Android and Windows clients so I could once again use USENET.

I read USENET (at Newsdemon -- USD3 monthly) with Firefox (on MacOS) but 
presumably will also work on Windows.

N.

(We seem to have strayed into COFF territory...)

[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[Kevin Bowling]

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On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 1:54 AM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:

> Hi.
>
> I've been using trn for decades to read a very few USENET groups. Until
> recently I've
> been using aioe.org as my NNTP server but it seems to have gone dark.
> Before that
> I used eternal-september.org, but when I try that I now get:
>
> | $ NNTPSERVER=news.eternal-september.org trn
> | Connecting to news.eternal-september.org...Done.
> |
> | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.sys.3b1
> |
> | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.sources.bugs
> |
> | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.misc
> |
> | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.compilers
> | ....
>
> And those all are (or were!) valid groups. If anyone has suggestions for a
> good
> free NNTP server, please let me know. Privately is fine.  I'm at a bit of
> a loss otherwise.
>

I maintain inn and some related ports for FreeBSD.  I run a public server
at csiph.com and am happy to provide accounts or peering to interested
parties.  Read access is open.


> Thanks,
>
> Arnold
>

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[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[Andy Kosela]

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On Saturday, January 28, 2023, Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling@kev009.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 1:54 AM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi.
>>
>> I've been using trn for decades to read a very few USENET groups. Until
>> recently I've
>> been using aioe.org as my NNTP server but it seems to have gone dark.
>> Before that
>> I used eternal-september.org, but when I try that I now get:
>>
>> | $ NNTPSERVER=news.eternal-september.org trn
>> | Connecting to news.eternal-september.org...Done.
>> |
>> | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.sys.3b1
>> |
>> | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.sources.bugs
>> |
>> | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.misc
>> |
>> | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.compilers
>> | ....
>>
>> And those all are (or were!) valid groups. If anyone has suggestions for
>> a good
>> free NNTP server, please let me know. Privately is fine.  I'm at a bit of
>> a loss otherwise.
>>
>
> I maintain inn and some related ports for FreeBSD.  I run a public server
> at csiph.com and am happy to provide accounts or peering to interested
> parties.  Read access is open.
>
>>
>>
Great initiative and idea! While I am personally not interested in reading
USENET that much nowadays, the concept of providing free, public access to
classic Internet services (public USENET, FTP, IRC, finger, etc.) gets all
my praise. What happened to free, public services these days? Everything
appears to to be subscriber pay-as-you-go based. The commercialization
killed the free spirit of Internet we all loved in the 90s.

PS> And I also love the layout of your website. Plain HTML with no fancy
css, js bloat; classic colors with white background. I miss it on the
Internet. These modern color themes with dark backrounds is getting harder
and harder to read and is just awful if you ask me.

--Andy

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[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[John Cowan]

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>
>
>>> Great initiative and idea! While I am personally not interested in
> reading USENET that much nowadays, the concept of providing free, public
> access to classic Internet services (public USENET, FTP, IRC, finger, etc.)
> gets all my praise. What happened to free, public services these days?
> Everything appears to to be subscriber pay-as-you-go based. The
> commercialization killed the free spirit of Internet we all loved in the
> 90s.
>

See tildeverse.org.

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[TUHS] Re: [off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

[arnold]

Tom Ivar Helbekkmo <tih@hamartun.priv.no> wrote:

> arnold@skeeve.com writes:
>
> > If anyone has suggestions for a good free NNTP server, please let me
> > know.
>
> Not free, but very cheap: I use news.individual.net, run by the Freie
> Universität Berlin, where the subscription fee is a mere 10 euros/year.
>
> -tih
> -- 
> Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
> of Lisp.  Lisp is the most important idea in computer science.  --Alan Kay

Thanks for this, and thanks to everyone else who responded.

Arnold