11–20 of 81 posts
Not that I'm bitter...
Part of the problem with Usenet is that it isn't "free" like Twitter and Facebook are. (They're free because they host ads, and there are all sorts of problems with that, of course, but you don't pay a monthly subscription to them). Way back, it used to be you got an NNTP server bundled with your ISP which was ok, because you were the only customer who knew what that was and how to use it, so you weren't creating a l…
So if you want Usenet, right now, every $5/month minimal VM that I'm aware of has more than enough CPU, RAM, disk and I/O to support you and two dozen friends, as long as you don't take binaries froups.
Visiting Usenet today though will only lead to sadness, unless you're looking for something you shouldn't be or enjoy endless spam.
Part of the problem with Usenet is that it isn't "free" like Twitter and Facebook are. (They're free because they host ads, and there are all sorts of problems with that, of course, but you don't pay a monthly subscription to them). Way back, it used to be you got an NNTP server bundled with your ISP which was ok, because you were the only customer who knew what that was and how to use it, so you weren't creating a l…
These days, with reasonably cheap virtual servers and reduced Usenet traffic, you can just run your own server after finding one or two peers to exchange articles with. The Debian packaging of INN is quite good, I think. It's still a bit of work to set up things, but so is reading and writing articles.
All of this applies to the text-only Usenet. A lot of for-pay Usenet was actually about access to binary-only groups with content of questionable copyright status (or even legality, depending on country). I don't know if that's still a thing today. The bandwidth requirements for these binary-only groups could be significant.
Thanks for posting this. Everything old is new again. With buzz about moving to Mastodon, I was just thinking about why usenet couldn't be a viable social media platform as it represents so much of what people like about the fediverse, and then some. It would be fascinating to see the usenet protocol repurposed and new clients and newsgroups built upon lessons from the past decade.
Part of the problem with Usenet is that it isn't "free" like Twitter and Facebook are. (They're free because they host ads, and there are all sorts of problems with that, of course, but you don't pay a monthly subscription to them). Way back, it used to be you got an NNTP server bundled with your ISP which was ok, because you were the only customer who knew what that was and how to use it, so you weren't creating a l…
Back in the day I remember dreaming ways to optimize the NNTP server- surely there was a better way than storing each article in a separate file.. but actually it was a very convenient to have a shell account on the same system that ran the server. This is why I enjoyed TheWorld (Software Tool & Die). You could cat the articles if you wanted.
/usr/spool/news, C-News, innd (Rich $alz!), it's all coming back..
Part of the problem with Usenet is that it isn't "free" like Twitter and Facebook are. (They're free because they host ads, and there are all sorts of problems with that, of course, but you don't pay a monthly subscription to them). Way back, it used to be you got an NNTP server bundled with your ISP which was ok, because you were the only customer who knew what that was and how to use it, so you weren't creating a l…
You are right the decent high retention + SSL NNTP providers cost at least $6/mo [0]. There are some free ones [1] but I have never tried them. I've heard they are sometimes slow and lack SSL. I liked the speed of Giganews for binaries but had problems canceling my account and had to call someone. [0] - https://www.techradar.com/best/best-usenet-providers [1] - https://teddit.zaggy.nl/r/usenet/comments/6l8h82/free_us…
In addition to the `trn` and Gnus readers that the article mentions, another great one was `strn`. They were much more powerful than any other forum interface I've seen since. Though the very compact thread views like in `old.reddit.com` and HN are nice.
Anyone looking to create a new social network should certainly take cues from Usenet - of course, it was eventually over taken by forums on the web. Visiting Usenet today though will only lead to sadness, unless you're looking for something you shouldn't be or enjoy endless spam.
In addition to the `trn` and Gnus readers that the article mentions, another great one was `strn`. They were much more powerful than any other forum interface I've seen since. Though the very compact thread views like in `old.reddit.com` and HN are nice.
Uhm, do you mean slrn? Never heard of strn (but that doesn't mean anything).