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Today I discovered Usenet. I'm blown away - Page 2
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Today I discovered Usenet. I'm blown away

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Comments

  • @emre said:
    I will not be surprised if OP finds IRC and XDCC tomorrow and "blown" by it :smiley:

    I used to use IRC back in the day but had to google XDCC :D

  • @emre said:
    I will not be surprised if OP finds IRC and XDCC tomorrow and "blown" by it :smiley:

    I just discovered fserving using mIRC and I was like whaaaaa....

    Thanked by 1Logano
  • @vitobotta said:

    @MeAtExampleDotCom said:

    @vitobotta said: but I must say I am impressed and worth the few bucks it costs

    Oh, sweet summer child!

    Us old timers remember when a good local Usenet cache was included in what you paid for a good ISP. If you had a bad ISP it was worth paying extra for access to a good cache elsewhere. There was a time, a longer time than many remember, even after the web became a thing, during which it was the best place by far to get information about most subjects, or interact with people with specific interests.

    Thus speaks an old regular of some groups in comp.lang.*, comp.os.*, alt.fan.*, ...

    I am not that young actually, I'm 42 so I have used computers since a while ago and I remember to have heard of usenet before, but sadly I never looked into it.

    Very similar age here. I started out using it on dial-up, using it as a disconnected resource (dial-up, pick up new info, disconnect, read & reply, dial-up to send replies and pickup new news, repeat as needed).

    Most people talking about it as an alternative to torrents, which I never much used it as. The vast majority of what I used it for was text based, only occasionally using binary groups for ahem adult pictographic interests. Before having always-on Internet access and most content being available via HTTP services it was a great resource, and with a good client (and a group full or users who knew how to reply properly!) the threaded behaviour was far better than any web based discussion forum has replicated IMO.

    @jar said: I remember it being packed with pedos back in the day, just right there in the open not even trying to hide

    I don't remember it being that packed with them, but on adult groups they were certainly there, and often bold as brass.

    @NoComment said: This is basically just warez isn't it? With some additional hoops

    I get the impression that is how it is generally used these days.

    @Nyr said: It is centralized

    Back in the day it was less centralised. ISPs and universities had their own cache and pulled/pushed information via multiple sources.

    It is a very different arrangement now, as the diagram posted above illustrates, and was already heading that way already as I stopped using it (in the early-to-mid 00s).

    Thanked by 2jar skorous
  • TeoMTeoM Member

    Usenet is one the beautiful thing on the world.

    Unlimited Storage for free for anyone. One time configured in SABnzbd the Usenet is very very cool.

  • oh u again...

  • risharderisharde Patron Provider, Veteran

    I haven't had much luck using it but that is because I have been looking for old stuff

  • TeoMTeoM Member

    @dedicados said:
    oh u again...

    I'm the man that host his backups in Usenet totally correct. :)

  • TeoMTeoM Member

    @risharde said:
    I haven't had much luck using it but that is because I have been looking for old stuff

    Old stuff like what ?

  • NekkiNekki Veteran

    But have you seen VHS tapes?

  • @TeoM said:

    @dedicados said:
    oh u again...

    I'm the man that host his backups in Usenet totally correct. :)

    lol not u, i mean the op xD

  • Daniel15Daniel15 Veteran
    edited March 2022

    @emre said:
    I will not be surprised if OP finds IRC and XDCC tomorrow and "blown" by it :smiley:

    This is how I used to download Gameboy Advance ROMs when I was younger and still used dialup. #gbatemp on... EFNet I think?

    You'd type something in a channel to search, and all these bots would reply if they have the file. You'd then ask a bot for the file and it'd send it to you via XDCC (which is peer-to-peer, bypassing the server) and you'd hope your internet didn't drop out.

    @vitobotta said:

    @jmaxwell said:
    Since it’s a paid service most likely, you may just subscribe to debrid services and get torrents in blazing fast speeds instead.

    Can you explain what you mean by this if it's a better setup?

    A debrid service (Real Debrid or Premiumize) caches torrents. They have a very large number of torrents downloaded onto their servers. You can then download the torrents from their CDN nodes via regular HTTPS, at full speeds. If they don't have the torrent cached, then they download it at their end, and Premiumize will also seed the torrent for three days after it finishes downloading.

    Premiumize includes Usenet access too - they have their own Usenet server you can use, or you can use their web UI. They don't cache as many torrents as and are much more expensive than Real Debrid.

    Most pirate TV/movie apps like Weyd, Syncler, CinemaHD, etc work best with a debrid account since you can immediately start streaming any video from a torrent, if it's cached. No waiting to download it.

  • @MeAtExampleDotCom said:

    @vitobotta said: but I must say I am impressed and worth the few bucks it costs

    Oh, sweet summer child!

    Us old timers remember when a good local Usenet cache was included in what you paid for a good ISP. If you had a bad ISP it was worth paying extra for access to a good cache elsewhere. There was a time, a longer time than many remember, even after the web became a thing, during which it was the best place by far to get information about most subjects, or interact with people with specific interests.

    Thus speaks an old regular of some groups in comp.lang.*, comp.os.*, alt.fan.*, ...

    Uh, alt.binaries.* I think you mean... ;)

    Thanked by 1skorous
  • @TeoM said:
    Usenet is one the beautiful thing on the world.

    Unlimited Storage for free for anyone. One time configured in SABnzbd the Usenet is very very cool.

    What are you talking about? Not only do they only hold so many days, but shit gets removed in hours and days.

  • Good torrent trackers >>>> usenet

  • @TimboJones said:

    @MeAtExampleDotCom said:

    @vitobotta said: but I must say I am impressed and worth the few bucks it costs

    Oh, sweet summer child!

    Us old timers remember when a good local Usenet cache was included in what you paid for a good ISP. If you had a bad ISP it was worth paying extra for access to a good cache elsewhere. There was a time, a longer time than many remember, even after the web became a thing, during which it was the best place by far to get information about most subjects, or interact with people with specific interests.

    Thus speaks an old regular of some groups in comp.lang.*, comp.os.*, alt.fan.*, ...

    Uh, alt.binaries.* I think you mean... ;)

    Occasionally, though if you are specifically meaning the adult content found there-in i never found usenet to be the best source for that. By the time connectivity was fast and cheap enough to get decent quality dirt other sources were more convenient, and before then the old paper & VHS methods offered better quality and were easy enough to hide if you were not greedy!

    @drizbo said: Good torrent trackers >>>> usenet

    If you are looking to obtain or distribute binaries of significant size, yes. It is a tool specifically designed for that job. Try using torrents for what usenet is best at though…

  • edited April 2022

    @bikegremlin said:

    @Logano said:
    I never got deep into them, but weren't Usenets newsgroups that were sort of like forums? I remember people discussing things. And I don't remember paying anything for downloads (talking late 90s~early 00s). Now it just looks like a big paid repository.

    That's how I used to know and use them.
    Parents of forums, grandparents of social networks. :)

    There were some very cool local and global groups.
    Then people moved over to forums.
    Now they're (almost) all on social networks.

    So sad that most forums died and still fighting that trend alongside Lowendtalk. It sucks when a few monopolistic companies own the repository of information to delete and censor at will (Facebook/Twitter). When these companies go bankrupt or have catastrophic failures (MySpace) all that information could be lost. An unimaginable amount of original music was lost when the MySpace database was accidentally deleted.

    Better to have the internet's information sources spread out among many providers so one catastrophic failure at Facebook doesn't hurt everyone (elite paid Russian hackers could cause havoc in the Facebook database & backup systems?)

    What advance in forum tech could make them relevant again? If they took on social network characteristics & became more instant/interactive like Discord?

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