Pretty much the question. I heard about Usenet a while back but never managed to wrap my head around it.
Two long answers and yet neither of them answered how to get started. Sorry I don’t know how either.
Same, just stopping by to see if anyone has any answers. Like, there needs to be a “how to usenet for dummies” guide that sets you up with the best usenet stuff and explains what each thing does and why you care.
Edit: also, in the era of free services, why do you still have to pay for Usenet access?
Edit 2: apparently my question is too dumb for “no stupid questions” lol.
in the era of free services, why do you still have to pay for Usenet access?
Bandwidth costs money. And usenet isn’t collecting and selling your info to recoup those costs like most “free” services. A lot of ISPs do offer free usenet access to customers, albeit somewhat neutered. You can browse the bulletin boards but most of the file downloads are going to be filtered out. That’s the part you have to pay for.
Okay, but why the bandwidth costs? Is Usenet a separate network entirely? Do you have to use a VPN to connect to it? I’m honestly curious about it, it just seems alien compared to everything else. Why are there different usenet providers and not a single “Usenet” company?
Edit: someone else said that usenet is federated, which makes a lot more sense. I thought it was like a single host that the providers connected to, like isps.
Usenet used to be freely available through most ISPs. But now, even though there are still a lot of usenet groups active for discussion, it is also used for file “sharing”. So hosting Usenet groups can be very data intensive, and ISPs stopped hosting them.
Google hosts a free portal into usenet at groups.google.com , but I just went there and saw that even they decided it’s too much trouble and will be stopping soon.
There are a few subscription based usenet servers, they vary from $5 to $10 a month. Easynews.com , giganews.com are two that seem to still be open.
Yeah Google bought a really great thing and ran it for a very long time as their own version of stackoverflow. I bet stackoverflow was a response to Google’s monopoly on groups answering questions.
I think Stack Overflow was a response to Experts Exchange which teased you with a question but you had to buy a subscription for the answer. Subscribers would answer questions and pay for the privilege of providing that site with content.
Usenet is a decades-old distributed message sharing system. It’s like an old school message board. To access it, you need a newsreader. Mozilla Thunderbird is one such example.
I have not accessed newsgroups in several years, so I don’t know how active it is today. But it used to be the go-to source for “warez” and bootleg media and porn. Oh yeah, and discussions threads on myriad topics. :)
Slashdot, digg, Reddit, lemmy, 4chan, etc. are all spiritual descendents of usenet.
The software tech for usenet is old, slow, and has a learning curve. You might find it frustrating to navigate and use. However, modern newsreaders probably hide some of the complexity.
Usenet has its own protocol (NNTP) where digests of messages get passed from server to server, eventually making it out to all (or most) servers that host a particular group (like alt, sys, gov, etc.). In essence, it’s a federated digital bulletin board of bulletin boards. Many servers don’t participate in some groups such as alt.binary.*.
Usenet pre-dates the world wide web, and even pre-dates Gopher. It was designed such that a Usenet server could spend most of its time disconnected from the Internet and accumulate local posts that would then be federated in a digest when the server dialed up and connected to other servers.
The main NNTP network eventually made its way to a centralized web-accessible service and most places that used to provide an NNTP server (which was most ISPs in the 90s) eventually shut their servers down and only provided gateway and email services.
The protocol still exists though, and there’s still a small connected network.
In reality, Lemmy is the spiritual descendant of Usenet.
It was designed such that a Usenet server could spend most of its time disconnected from the Internet and accumulate local posts that would then be federated in a digest when the server dialed up and connected to other servers.
…Would this have been local posts of an individual, or sometimes a group in a LAN or something? The way you describe it here puts me in the mind of recent stuff like Scuttlebutt, albeit that’s more clearly individual-focused.
What’s scuttlebutt?
And no, not individual and not LAN. WAN. A Usenet server could easily service hundreds of folks if not thousands. It would collect all their posts and then aggregate upwards.
It’s an old federated message board system. Message boards are called “newsgroups “. It predates the web so it’s usually accessed via a special client app. To use it you’d need:
- A Usenet client app, called a newsreader. See Wikipedia. Many are probably abandoned by now.
- An account with a Usenet provider. A search engine will point you to several options. There used to be some free ones. If there still are, it would be a good way to try it out. But note that the free ones often don’t carry all of the newsgroups — they omit the binary groups, which are known to carry pirated software and, let’s say, diverse video content.
I’d add to this and say you need:
A Usenet client such as SabNZBD (like qbittorrent or similar downloading client, but for Usenet)
A Usenet provider such as Astraweb, Newshosting, UsenetServer, Easynews, etc (or a paid subscription giving you access to a number of servers, kind of like a private torrent site)
And a tracker or indexer such as NZBGeek, NZB Finder, omgwtfnzbs, DrunkenSlug, etc (similar to a library index that helps you find what you want in the sea of information)
You can set services like these up with programs that use these tools to pull what you want automatically, such as the Arrs (Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, etc) or you can manually search either the provider directly through their own search engine, or through an indexer’s refined search engine.
It’s federated? Okay, that makes a lot more sense. I thought usenet providers were like isps, connecting to a single, central host or something. I didn’t realize they were federated systems.
Heh. I used to run leafnode as my own, in house, single person server.
I’m quite surprised to find out it’s still alive and maintained.
It’s really neat to think of Usenet as ‘federated’ considering that’s a new term for most of us.
My preferred options are: Binsearch, astraweb, and newsbin
You get what you pay for, a bargain IMHO
If I recall correctly, ISPs were often running their own Usenet servers. This meant that traffic didn’t leave their networks and thus they paid less network interchange fees.
These days maybe only niche ISPs in some parts of the world might be running Usenet servers. Majority of them are run by specific companies created specifically for the purpose.
It’s funny seeing this thread with it’s descriptions written as if describing the traditions of some long-gone ancient civilization.
I mean it’s… checks math… over 30 years old. That is ancient in technology timeline.
