Usenet servers of choice ?

[boB]

Looks like my USENET server (Newscene) is going out of business soon.

Who do you like ? Besides Google Groups if that still even really
works.

Thanks,
boB

[Don Y]

Eternal September and AIOE seem to be the popular "free" services.

If you're interested in *paying*, you may find those servers
eventually struggling to find enough paying customers to stay
afloat (in the presence of free alternatives).

Do you have any "esoteric" groups that might constrain the
server choices available?

[Phil Hobbs]

Supernews has about the best retention, AFACT. The groups I look at go
back to 2003ish. Download speed is meh.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

[John Larkin]

Supernews seems good.

[Dean Hoffman]

Google groups still works. Most of the groups I frequented in the past have just died out. No one has anything to say even if it's about weather. I used AIOE with Thunderbird as the reader in the past.
There was a segment on one of the morning talk shows a few days ago. Supposedly, kids are discovering the advantages of flip phones. Smart phones are being put away or turned on much less often.
Will they discover usenet again and leave Facebook behind?

[Joe Gwinn]

On Sat, 28 Jan 2023 14:17:35 -0800 (PST), Dean Hoffman
<dean...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Saturday, January 28, 2023 at 2:35:41 PM UTC-6, boB wrote:
>> Looks like my USENET server (Newscene) is going out of business soon.
>>
>> Who do you like ? Besides Google Groups if that still even really
>> works.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> boB
>
> Google groups still works. Most of the groups I frequented in the past have just died out. No one has anything to say even if it's about weather. I used AIOE with Thunderbird as the reader in the past.

Google got a bit too grasping, and so Google Groups were mostly
abandoned. Most people went to groups.io.

Joe Gwinn

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 28 Jan 2023 14:17:35 -0800 (PST), Dean Hoffman
<dean...@gmail.com> wrote:

My smart phone is used like a POTS telephone (no texting, no email, no
games, no music) but it has a wonderful camera.

And the HP calculator emulator is handy sometimes.

[Don Y]

On 1/28/2023 3:17 PM, Dean Hoffman wrote:
> Google groups still works. Most of the groups I frequented in the past
> have just died out. No one has anything to say even if it's about weather.

> I used AIOE with Thunderbird as the reader in the past. There was a segment
> on one of the morning talk shows a few days ago. Supposedly, kids are
> discovering the advantages of flip phones. Smart phones are being put away
> or turned on much less often. Will they discover usenet again and leave
> Facebook behind?

I suspect they are just trying to be different ("Hey, look at me!").

Have they suddenly dropped their aversion to TALKING on the phone?
Given up on texting?

[boB]

Thanks guys. Free is good too.

I wonder if I could set up my own small NNTP server and pick up groups
? I have no idea how usenet works in that way.

The only esoteric-ish group I might go to is a.b.e-books.magazines I
suppose.

I use the HP 48 calculatoor on my Android all the time !

boB

[Don Y]

On 1/28/2023 10:13 PM, boB wrote:
> Thanks guys. Free is good too.
>
> I wonder if I could set up my own small NNTP server and pick up groups
> ? I have no idea how usenet works in that way.

Sure! But, you will need to get a feed from someone.
Or, slurp the groups of interest to you from a "regular"
server (as a normal client)

> The only esoteric-ish group I might go to is a.b.e-books.magazines I
> suppose.

The only real concern is if you wanted access to a group that isn't
part of the big eight hierarchies.

[Jasen Betts]

On 2023-01-29, boB <b...@K7IQ.com> wrote:
> I wonder if I could set up my own small NNTP server and pick up groups
> ? I have no idea how usenet works in that way.

NNTP servers are pretty easy, especially if all your users are
well-behaved. The problem is gettign a news feed. this is not a
problem I've tried hard to solve, opting instead to use something
like "suck" to convert a client subscription into a virtual feed.

--
Jasen.
pǝsɹǝʌǝɹ sʇɥƃᴉɹ ll∀

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Sat, 28 Jan 2023 13:35:33 -0700) it happened boB
<b...@K7IQ.com> wrote in <3l1bthp9j6bh5cumg...@4ax.com>:

Recently moved to news.solani.org
You need to subscribe and get a password,
its a free service

[Anthony William Sloman]

Google groups works fine for me. As far as I know I don't pay anything to use the service.

I find it the easiest user interface to work with. You have to rely on the header information to find out where you are in the thread and some posters snip that - I check on eternal september if I feel the need to know (which doesn't happen often).

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[Carlos E.R.]

They already left out Facebook long ago. Only old people use Facebook,
like their parents :-P

--
Cheers, Carlos.

[Carlos E.R.]

Notice that there are users that filter out any post coming from Google
Groups.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-01-29 06:13, boB wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Jan 2023 16:13:07 -0800, John Larkin
> <jla...@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:



>> My smart phone is used like a POTS telephone (no texting, no email, no
>> games, no music) but it has a wonderful camera.
>>
>> And the HP calculator emulator is handy sometimes.
>
> Thanks guys. Free is good too.
>
> I wonder if I could set up my own small NNTP server and pick up groups
> ? I have no idea how usenet works in that way.

If you are on Linux it is very easy to setup an nntp proxy server
(Leafnode).

--
Cheers, Carlos.

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Sun, 29 Jan 2023 13:31:24 +0100) it happened "Carlos E.R."
<robin_...@es.invalid> wrote in <sh5iajx...@Telcontar.valinor>:

Long time ago I had the webserver and ftp server running at home,
doing that needs a fixed IP address.
I considered running a Usenet server, after all I wrote NewsFleX news reader and am still using it now:
http://panteltje.com/panteltje/newsflex/index.html
but maintaining a Usenet server is a LOT of work, especially with all those spammers hitting it every minute.
And now I am on 4G portable with no fixed IP...
Much better than cable or fiber, works everywhere,
For the media I have a satellite dish with more free to air stations then even fiber even can supply,
and more reliable too.

[Phil Hobbs]

Jan Panteltje wrote:
> On a sunny day (Sun, 29 Jan 2023 13:31:24 +0100) it happened "Carlos E.R."
> <robin_...@es.invalid> wrote in <sh5iajx...@Telcontar.valinor>:
>
>> On 2023-01-29 06:13, boB wrote:
>>> On Sat, 28 Jan 2023 16:13:07 -0800, John Larkin
>>> <jla...@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>> My smart phone is used like a POTS telephone (no texting, no email, no
>>>> games, no music) but it has a wonderful camera.
>>>>
>>>> And the HP calculator emulator is handy sometimes.
>>>
>>> Thanks guys. Free is good too.
>>>
>>> I wonder if I could set up my own small NNTP server and pick up groups
>>> ? I have no idea how usenet works in that way.
>>
>> If you are on Linux it is very easy to setup an nntp proxy server
>> (Leafnode).
>
> Long time ago I had the webserver and ftp server running at home,
> doing that needs a fixed IP address.

You can do it over dynamic DNS too.

[Anthony William Sloman]

Not Flyguy.,unfortunately.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[boB]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2023 19:50:08 -0500, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamM...@electrooptical.net> wrote:

>Jan Panteltje wrote:
>> On a sunny day (Sun, 29 Jan 2023 13:31:24 +0100) it happened "Carlos E.R."
>> <robin_...@es.invalid> wrote in <sh5iajx...@Telcontar.valinor>:
>>
>>> On 2023-01-29 06:13, boB wrote:
>>>> On Sat, 28 Jan 2023 16:13:07 -0800, John Larkin
>>>> <jla...@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>> My smart phone is used like a POTS telephone (no texting, no email, no
>>>>> games, no music) but it has a wonderful camera.
>>>>>
>>>>> And the HP calculator emulator is handy sometimes.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks guys. Free is good too.
>>>>
>>>> I wonder if I could set up my own small NNTP server and pick up groups
>>>> ? I have no idea how usenet works in that way.
>>>
>>> If you are on Linux it is very easy to setup an nntp proxy server
>>> (Leafnode).
>>
>> Long time ago I had the webserver and ftp server running at home,
>> doing that needs a fixed IP address.
>
>You can do it over dynamic DNS too.
>
>Cheers
>
>Phil Hobbs

All very interesting !

boB

[boB]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2023 08:01:50 GMT, Jan Panteltje <al...@comet.invalid>
wrote:

Excellent ! Thanks !

boB

[boB]

On 30 Jan 2023 21:31:55 +1000, noel <delet...@invalid.lan> wrote:

>On Sun, 29 Jan 2023 14:01:42 +0000, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>
>>
>> but maintaining a Usenet server is a LOT of work, especially with all
>> those spammers hitting it every minute.
>

>It's not that hard actually, I only allow access to my country, oncve
>every few months I check the BGP tables and modif access lists as
>required, it really takes little time, and the filtering rules set up
>years ago do a pretty good job of stopping the crud entering from peers,
>I also block html wankers and the free.* groups, our news server is
>pretty much self maintained.


How do you get your feed ? How is that usually done ?

boB

[Wanderer]

I have no reason do anything like this, but I wonder what it would cost to run something like the google groups web page for just sci.electronics.design. Electronics vendors like Electronics Goldmine, Jameco, Digikey, Mouser, etc. could have a web page on their site and use it for advertising.
I wonder if it would be cost effective.

[Don Y]

On 1/31/2023 4:50 AM, noel wrote:
> If you do not want a full feed, you're better off using the SUCK method,
> bascically. the exact same method a news reader (pan/thunderbird etc)
> uses.

+1

I have my NNTP server masquerade as a client (which, technically, makes it
an AGENT). In this way, it doesn't need the blessing or cooperation of
the service from which I pull down articles.

It lets me pull down just the groups (not even full hierarchies)
that I want and, in my case, just the posts within those groups.
And, to do this at MY concenience (relying on the fact that the
server(s) tend to be "available" more than I'd need to be!)

In this way, the cost (to me) is very small -- I only have to store
the articles that I'd want to read (and only have to store them
for as long as I want to be able to access them).

[boB]

Thanks guys ! I have wondered how this all works.

Still a bit fuzzy on what happens exactly.

Of course, there is this...

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc977

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_News_Transfer_Protocol

boB

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2023-01-30 09:30, Wanderer wrote:
> I have no reason do anything like this, but I wonder what it would cost to run something like the google groups web page for just sci.electronics.design. Electronics vendors like Electronics Goldmine, Jameco, Digikey, Mouser, etc. could have a web page on their site and use it for advertising.
> I wonder if it would be cost effective.
>

https://www.electronics-related.com/groups/sci.electronics.design/1.php
https://www.narkive.com

[Don Y]

For a real peer feed, the two machines (both being servers)
essentially tell each other what they have and ask for what
they want. In theory, (over time) each ends up with everything.

Most of the internet protocols are relatively simple to grok.
If you read through them, you can understand why certain error
messages (result codes) may be necessary in certain cases.

Things get a bit funky as most services have to retain forward
and backwards compatibility, to some extent. So, will have to
be able to indicate what sorts of capabilities they have and
then adapt to the capabilities of the current peer. Some
other peer may have a different set of capabilities so the
"dialog" with that peer will differ.

If you are just trying to emulate a client, then things
are simpler; you query *the* server for the articles that
you want. Typically, you fetch the HEADERs for them
to present to your human user. When he indicates an
interest in a particular article, you fetch the BODY
to present to the user. This is why you will often see
a pause when entering a newsgroup (as the newest headers
are retrieved) and then a separate pause-per-message
as you *initially* examine each message (once you've looked
at a message, its BODY is likely cached on your client).

This HEADER then BODY allows filters to be applied to
HEADERs to economize on the BODYs that the user likely
won't want to see.

[If you want to filter on the content of BODYs, then you
have to fetch the bodies in order to apply those filters.
E.g., I filter based on things like "is this a top post?"
"does this have a high proportion of quoted material
and relatively little NEW content?" "does this contain
profanity?", etc. So, I can decide which headers to
expose to the user and, thus, which bodies he will possibly
want (and which he *won't*!)]