1y ago

What’s Usenet and how can I access it with modern hardware (phones/laptops)?

Pretty much the question. I heard about Usenet a while back but never managed to wrap my head around it.

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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.
- 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.
  
  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
  
  Check out FidoNet for another example of federation.
  
  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.
  
  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.
- 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.

57 comments