[zafiro17]

The nightmare is over? I've used Usenet for years. Most serious users filter out any post originating from G2 to do away with Google posts. It's been a huge source of spam and annoyance.

Usenet gets better as it gets smaller, honestly. Most groups are carcasses these days, but several have regular use. comp.misc, misc.news.internet.discuss, and sci.misc are active. Several groups in the comp* hierarchy are active. Thunderbird, claws-mail, sylpheed, tin, slrn, alpine, neomutt all handle Usenet just fine. Visit http://newsgroupreviews.com for a list of providers, some free, some paid.

[skrause]

> Most groups are carcasses these days, but several have regular use. comp.misc, misc.news.internet.discuss, and sci.misc are active.

misc.news.internet.discuss and sci.misc are bascially a single person posting links without any discussion.

[dataangel]

Is there a broader tutorial for this, newsgroups mostly missed me, I don't really grok how they fit into the greater internet or how their hosting works or why you have to pay a separate provider

[pwg]

These two wikipedia articles are a start:

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

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

As for "why pay separate provider" -- that would be because circa 2000 most ISP's dropped offering Usenet access for their customers as part of the deal, which created a market for the paid providers.

But, you don't /have/ to pay:

https://greycoder.com/best-free-usenet-servers/

[blihp]

In the dark ages when internet access was limited and/or via dialup for most of us, there were several tools and protocols to work with what we had: email, ftp and usenet were some of the main ones. Usenet was basically a primordial set of distributed forums platform (and quasi-social network) where copies of the data were stored locally. It was how a lot of information got disseminated prior to the mid-90's when the web took off and then over.

[nvy]

>I don't really grok how they fit into the greater internet or how their hosting works or why you have to pay a separate provider

In much the same way that you need a specialized email client to use IMAP/SMTP, you need a specialized client that speaks NNTP to access usenet.

The providers are heterogeneous but usually are basically beefy servers connected to fat pipes to handle the massive volume of traffic, which is why you typically need to pay for access.

[ksherlock]

One way to think usenet/newsgroups is as a set of distributed peer-to-peer mailing lists.

You post a message to your (NNTP) server. Your server connects to other peer NNTP servers to transfer messages back and forth, so eventually your message will propagate throughout the usenet network. (40 years ago peering was through UUCP, etc, and done at night when phone calls were cheaper or only to other local numbers so it might take a week, now it doesn't take that long. See also, bang paths).

[bsder]

Is there a reason why you can't run your own Usenet server nowadays?

In the old days, the issues were that bandwidth and disk were expensive. That's no longer true.

Is there a techncial reason we can't have individuals running NNTP nodes?

[nijave]

I think you can run Leafnode if you want to host your own, small groups. Otherwise (my understanding) you need to peer with other providers and be able to consume something like 30-100TB/day if you want all groups on the network (unless you can find providers to peer with that let you limit groups)

Some discussion here https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/ziqdh2/become_my_ow...

[wolverine876]

If Usenet's requirements haven't increased in a 2-3 decades, and in its moribund state I expect they haven't, then it should be trivial to run Usenet servers on almost any device, at least in terms of resources.

[j16sdiz]

Guess it's hard to get others sync with you?

[throwawaaarrgh]

no. it's just a tcp client/server model like any other. your isp probably won't let you host services but that's been the case for decades

[Uptrenda]

You think it's worth getting into Usenet for new people?

[idiotsecant]

Its worth it in the same way that HAM radio is / is not worth it. You do it as a sort of lifestyle choice.

[lproven]

Properly threaded, low-bandwidth, decent signal:noise ratio, text-only discussion? Sounds good to me. Far too little of that around.

[layer8]

It's worth it in order to experience a more efficient discussion UI. The difficulty is in finding newgroups where actual worthwhile discussion is going on.

[Kye]

Gopher is the next big thing.