"David Brooks" wrote:
> On 29/03/2023 11:45, Apd wrote:
>> He was going to close it but people wrote in and he kept it going.
>> <http://al.howardknight.net/>
>
> That's true! I had email discussion with him and persuaded him to maintain
> his service!

Yes, I remember, and he got off his "lazy butt" (as he put it) to get
it working again.

Grant Taylor wrote:

> I got a lot closer to the proper people than that. But, I'm not at
> liberty to go into details.
>
> Suffice it to say that I would not bet a gas station cup of coffee on
> Google continuing to support Usenet in any capacity.

Thanks for that information, Grant, which I greatly appreciate. I know a
bunch of the coders who work there, but that's it for my contacts.

BTW, I realized only belatedly that the narkive apparently removed the
search feature, which never worked well - but now it seems to be gone.

Going to <https://alt.comp.freeware.narkive.com>, if I click on "Display
Options", more stuff comes up, but not the search button and you can't
"Save" the options of making the list 10000 threads long without having
an account (which defeats the general-purpose nature of this solution).

Apparently we can "register an account" but that's not the point here.
<https://narkive.com/about>
<https://narkive.com/privacy>
<https://narkive.com/legalese>

I sent an email asking for what happened to the search button.
"Narkive was started in late 2009 by then 17-year-old me (Davide Cavion)
and has since then always been a one man operation (david @ narkive com).

Hacking, I guess we could add "site:narkive.com" to a search engine as
<https://duckduckgo.com/?va=u&t=hi&q=tutorial+site%253Anarkive.com>
<https://www.google.com/search?q=tutorial+site%253Anarkive.com>
<https://www.google.com/search?q=tutorial+alt.free.newsservers+site%253Anarkive.com>

Sigh. We're left with dejagoogle alone for a _direct_ free general purpose
registration free Usenet search engine then... unless folks have better
ideas (where I'm aware every nntp server provides their own private
archives of varying capabilities - but that's not a general purpose
solution).

I apologize for my mistake in not testing the narkive (mostly I use the
dejagoogle archives when I need to find & then link to a specific thread).
--
Posted out of the goodness of my heart to disseminate useful information
which, in this case, is to faithfully test out the narkive search finding.

On 30/03/2023 14:16, Andy Burnelli wrote:
> Grant Taylor wrote:
>
>> I got a lot closer to the proper people than that.  But, I'm not at
>> liberty to go into details.
>>
>> Suffice it to say that I would not bet a gas station cup of coffee on
>> Google continuing to support Usenet in any capacity.
>
> Thanks for that information, Grant, which I greatly appreciate. I know a
> bunch of the coders who work there, but that's it for my contacts.
>
> BTW, I realized only belatedly that the narkive apparently removed the
> search feature, which never worked well - but now it seems to be gone.
>
> Going to <https://alt.comp.freeware.narkive.com>, if I click on "Display
> Options", more stuff comes up, but not the search button and you can't
> "Save" the options of making the list 10000 threads long without having
> an account (which defeats the general-purpose nature of this solution).
>
> Apparently we can "register an account" but that's not the point here.
> <https://narkive.com/about>
> <https://narkive.com/privacy>
> <https://narkive.com/legalese>
>
> I sent an email asking for what happened to the search button.
> "Narkive was started in late 2009 by then 17-year-old me (Davide Cavion)
>  and has since then always been a one man operation (david @ narkive com).
>
> Hacking, I guess we could add "site:narkive.com" to a search engine as
> <https://duckduckgo.com/?va=u&t=hi&q=tutorial+site%253Anarkive.com>
> <https://www.google.com/search?q=tutorial+site%253Anarkive.com>
> <https://www.google.com/search?q=tutorial+alt.free.newsservers+site%253Anarkive.com>
>
> Sigh. We're left with dejagoogle alone for a _direct_ free general purpose
> registration free Usenet search engine then... unless folks have better
> ideas (where I'm aware every nntp server provides their own private
> archives of varying capabilities - but that's not a general purpose
> solution).
>
> I apologize for my mistake in not testing the narkive (mostly I use the
> dejagoogle archives when I need to find & then link to a specific thread).

NARKIVE.com

305,138,404 threads
987,040,828 messages

Sn!pe wrote:

> "alt.free.nntp does not exist on this server"

AFAICT, alt.free.nntp is listed in dejagoogle & in the narkive:
<https://groups.google.com/g/alt.free.nntp>
<https://alt.free.nntp.narkive.com/> (first post 20 years ago)

Aioe, Blueworld, Dizum, Mixmin, Neodome, Netfront, Paganini, Solani,
and XSUsenet all show that they served alt.free.nntp to their users.

I'm no expert though - I just use free newsservers that I know about.
I use them mainly for privacy (paying usually requires credit cards).

Is there anyone who knows more about why it's not in snipe's feed?