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Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

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Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#31

Post by usenetthrowa »

benzinschleuder wrote: post #5

Usenet is also usable for backups. Normally you would upload a huge encrypted RAR. Some time ago i built a tool where you can store files/folders incrementally on Usenet with encryption, parity etc. I put much effort into this. It was possible to restore a directory tree by a unique ID (which you could write on some piece of paper) that securely resolves to a chain which links to meta/raw blocks via Message-IDs and y…

I wonder if you could convince cperciva (Tarsnap) to exploit Usenet as an encrypted block store (as a cheaper alternative to S3).

> I thought this would be a nice alternative use for binaries on Usenet instead of piracy stuff. But I never released it because I think that it would lead to pollution of the Usenet network.

> Is anyone interested in this? Or maybe somebody has an idea on how to use this without polluting the network?

No way around it, it's absolutely an abuse of the network. That being said, so is the piracy on the binary subgroups. I think the end use would be small enough to not materially affect the binary NNTP hosts anyway.

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#33

Post by [deleted] »

seibelj wrote: post #29

I was a loyal giganews user for 10+ years. Then the content creators started getting content pulled very quickly, sometimes within days of upload, and the whole thing started becoming a huge hassle. By this point I was making enough money that $30 a month split between a few streaming services and a few bucks occasionally for a movie on amazon prime wasn't a big deal. It feels good to pay for quality. But as a young…

[deleted]

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#34

Post by benzinschleuder »

usenetthrowa wrote: post #31
benzinschleuder wrote: post #5

Usenet is also usable for backups. Normally you would upload a huge encrypted RAR. Some time ago i built a tool where you can store files/folders incrementally on Usenet with encryption, parity etc. I put much effort into this. It was possible to restore a directory tree by a unique ID (which you could write on some piece of paper) that securely resolves to a chain which links to meta/raw blocks via Message-IDs and y…

I wonder if you could convince cperciva (Tarsnap) to exploit Usenet as an encrypted block store (as a cheaper alternative to S3). > I thought this would be a nice alternative use for binaries on Usenet instead of piracy stuff. But I never released it because I think that it would lead to pollution of the Usenet network. > Is anyone interested in this? Or maybe somebody has an idea on how to use this without polluting…

Not sure about being the middleman yet. What if the big Usenet providers decide to delete data or we violate their non-business-usage policies? But on the other hand it's really cheap indeed! We can cancel our Usenet subscription and renew it when the data is needed. So I thought it's maybe better to cut out the middleman by giving the software away.

About the abuse: I imagined that the method could be used like some unlimited-disk-space-providers which had to get rid of that plan because the users used it as advertised.

Of course, apart from that, anyone can write such software. So it's maybe just a matter of time? Though I couldn't find any other solutions besides RAR archives.

The Usenet can be used as a key-value store with handicaps. And stuff can be built on top of that.

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#35

Post by Dylan16807 »

na85 wrote: post #27
ljk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could you explain here?

A surprising number of people aren't able to separate the concepts of "the internet" and "the world wide web". When you try to explain that USENET is a whole separate entity from the web, running along side it on the Internet, their eyes tend to glaze over.

More than anything else, that's because most people don't care about the fussy details of the term "world wide web".

"It's online but not a web page" won't glaze over many eyes.

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#36

Post by gutnor »

brownbat wrote: post #8

> You get one thing – [release day availability] I'd bet it's not zero days, but one stop shopping. So the consumer saves the overhead of wondering, "wait, is this on Hulu? Netflix? Amazon? iPlayer?" The entire catalog is in one place. I think Netflix and Amazon are getting to the point where their catalogs are deeper than usenet. Of course, most film junkie's "essential 100" lists will still probably hit somewhere l…

> I think Netflix and Amazon are getting to the point where their catalogs are deeper than usenet.

In the US. Even in the UK, the offering is not even close, and in the rest of Europe, well though luck.

Then you have the choice of paying for a vpn and a netflix, and -maybe- you get lucky. Or you start wondering why would you send money to people that do not want you to see their stuff at any price.

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#39

Post by spamlord »

windlep wrote: post #3

In the past 3 years on usenet, something has changed though. Perhaps in response to this article and/or the others talking about it. Some studios are getting drastically faster at getting their content pulled within minutes of nzb's appearing on the index sites. It's not as if its difficult to scan the groups and topics and issue take-down's on posts to the NSP's.

I got 99 problems, but missing articles ain't one.

Get cheap block accounts from various providers, ideally one from each major reseller, configure them as backup/fill servers.

http://i.imgur.com/w8sklP2.png

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#40

Post by pjc50 »

bane wrote: post #15

So, today's desktops and high-speed internet connections are more than enough to just have personal Usenet servers instead of subscribing to somebody else's (or having your ISP shut down there's), anybody know what it would take to do this for real? (after all I remember having access to full Usenet servers being served off ancient computers hooked into a T-1)

Having the server is easy. Getting a peering feed is not, as that involves them sending you all the news.
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