On Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 01:05:53 UTC+1, Fred Bloggs wrote:
> They're already winding down, limiting posts to about 5/ hour. That's one way to reduce spam. People who won't miss google are the reason google has decided usenet is not worth pursuing.

What would be a good server to use going ahead?

On Wed Feb 21 01:46:28 2024 Klaus Kragelund wrote:
> On Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 01:05:53 UTC+1, Fred Bloggs wrote:
> > They're already winding down, limiting posts to about 5/ hour. That's one way to reduce spam. People who won't miss google are the reason google has decided usenet is not worth pursuing.
>
> What would be a good server to use going ahead?

All the free providers seem gone, but I'm reasonably happy with www.newshosting.com Works fine with thunderbird, but you have to use their free newsreading program if you want more search capability than thunderbird provides. Searches are definitely oriented towards binaries but text groups work ok.

--
Regards,
Carl

On Wednesday, February 21, 2024 at 12:11:49 PM UTC-6, Carl Ijames wrote:
> On Wed Feb 21 01:46:28 2024 Klaus Kragelund wrote:
> > On Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 01:05:53 UTC+1, Fred Bloggs wrote:
> > > They're already winding down, limiting posts to about 5/ hour. That's one way to reduce spam. People who won't miss google are the reason google has decided usenet is not worth pursuing.
> >
> > What would be a good server to use going ahead?
> All the free providers seem gone, but I'm reasonably happy with www.newshosting.com Works fine with thunderbird, but you have to use their free newsreading program if you want more search capability than thunderbird provides. Searches are definitely oriented towards binaries but text groups work ok.
>
> --
> Regards,
> Carl

Are aioe. or. eternal-september still going?

On Wed Feb 21 10:29:46 2024 Dean wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 21, 2024 at 12:11:49PM UTC-6, Carl Ijames wrote:
> > On Wed Feb 21 01:46:28 2024 Klaus Kragelund wrote:
> > > On Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 01:05:53 UTC+1, Fred Bloggs wrote:
> > > > They're already winding down, limiting posts to about 5/ hour. That's one way to reduce spam. People who won't miss google are the reason google has decided usenet is not worth pursuing.
> > >
> > > What would be a good server to use going ahead?
> > All the free providers seem gone, but I'm reasonably happy with www.newshosting.com Works fine with thunderbird, but you have to use their free newsreading program if you want more search capability than thunderbird provides. Searches are definitely oriented towards binaries but text groups work ok.
> >
> > --
> > Regards,
> > Carl
>
> Are aioe. or. eternal-september still going?

I get can't find site for aioe, but eternal-september.org looks like it's still there. I should have said that I wanted binary access and that's not been free for a long time, sigh . Sorry.

On Wednesday 21 February 2024 at 19:11:49 UTC+1, Carl Ijames wrote:
> On Wed Feb 21 01:46:28 2024 Klaus Kragelund wrote:
> > On Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 01:05:53 UTC+1, Fred Bloggs wrote:
> > > They're already winding down, limiting posts to about 5/ hour. That's one way to reduce spam. People who won't miss google are the reason google has decided usenet is not worth pursuing.
> >
> > What would be a good server to use going ahead?
> All the free providers seem gone, but I'm reasonably happy with www.newshosting.com Works fine with thunderbird, but you have to use their free newsreading program if you want more search capability than thunderbird provides. Searches are definitely oriented towards binaries but text groups work ok.
>
great, thanks for the suggestion

On 2/21/2024 1:11 PM, Carl Ijames wrote:
> On Wed Feb 21 01:46:28 2024 Klaus Kragelund wrote:
>> On Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 01:05:53 UTC+1, Fred Bloggs wrote:
>>> They're already winding down, limiting posts to about 5/ hour. That's one way to reduce spam. People who won't miss google are the reason google has decided usenet is not worth pursuing.
>>
>> What would be a good server to use going ahead?
>
> All the free providers seem gone, but I'm reasonably happy with www.newshosting.com Works fine with thunderbird, but you have to use their free newsreading program if you want more search capability than thunderbird provides. Searches are definitely oriented towards binaries but text groups work ok.
>
> --
> Regards,
> Carl

frugalusenet.com is very basic but the price is very reasonable, has
worked well for me for many years!

On 2024/02/21 10:48 a.m., Carl Ijames wrote:
> On Wed Feb 21 01:46:28 2024 Klaus Kragelund wrote:
>> On Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 01:05:53 UTC+1, Fred Bloggs wrote:
>>> They're already winding down, limiting posts to about 5/ hour. That's one way to reduce spam. People who won't miss google are the reason google has decided usenet is not worth pursuing.
>>
>> What would be a good server to use going ahead?
>
> All the free providers seem gone, but I'm reasonably happy with www.newshosting.com Works fine with thunderbird, but you have to use their free newsreading program if you want more search capability than thunderbird provides. Searches are definitely oriented towards binaries but text groups work ok.
>
> --
> Regards,
> Carl

https://www.eternal-september.org is free - he has a guilt-ware paypal
button that I've used mind you...

John :-#)#
--
(Please post followups or tech inquiries to the USENET newsgroup)
John's Jukes Ltd.
#7 - 3979 Marine Way, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5J 5E3
(604)872-5757 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games)
www.flippers.com
"Old pinballers never die, they just flip out."

On 2/22/24 3:15 AM, John Robertson wrote:
> On 2024/02/21 10:48 a.m., Carl Ijames wrote:
>> On Wed Feb 21 01:46:28 2024 Klaus Kragelund  wrote:
>>> On Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 01:05:53 UTC+1, Fred Bloggs wrote:
>>>> They're already winding down, limiting posts to about 5/ hour.
>>>> That's one way to reduce spam. People who won't miss google are the
>>>> reason google has decided usenet is not worth pursuing.
>>>
>>> What would be a good server to use going ahead?
>>
>> All the free providers seem gone, but I'm reasonably happy with
>> www.newshosting.com Works fine with thunderbird, but you have to use
>> their free newsreading program if you want more search capability than
>> thunderbird provides. Searches are definitely oriented towards
>> binaries but text groups work ok.
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>> Carl
>
> https://www.eternal-september.org is free - he has a guilt-ware paypal
> button that I've used  mind you...
>
> John :-#)#

[May be a repeat, didn't see it come through yesterday.]
I get can't find site for aioe, but eternal-september is still there. I
should have said that I wanted binary access and that's not been free
for a long time, sigh 🙂. Sorry.

--
Regards,
Carl

Carl <carl.ijamesXX@YYverizon.net> wrote:
> On 2/22/24 3:15 AM, John Robertson wrote:
>> On 2024/02/21 10:48 a.m., Carl Ijames wrote:
>>> On Wed Feb 21 01:46:28 2024 Klaus Kragelund  wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 01:05:53 UTC+1, Fred Bloggs wrote:
>>>>> They're already winding down, limiting posts to about 5/ hour.
>>>>> That's one way to reduce spam. People who won't miss google are the
>>>>> reason google has decided usenet is not worth pursuing.
>>>>
>>>> What would be a good server to use going ahead?
>>>
>>> All the free providers seem gone, but I'm reasonably happy with
>>> www.newshosting.com Works fine with thunderbird, but you have to use
>>> their free newsreading program if you want more search capability than
>>> thunderbird provides. Searches are definitely oriented towards
>>> binaries but text groups work ok.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Regards,
>>> Carl
>>
>> https://www.eternal-september.org is free - he has a guilt-ware paypal
>> button that I've used  mind you...
>>
>> John :-#)#
>
> [May be a repeat, didn't see it come through yesterday.]
> I get can't find site for aioe, but eternal-september is still there. I
> should have said that I wanted binary access and that's not been free
> for a long time, sigh 🙂. Sorry.
>

Astraweb is pretty nearly free, and has binaries.

Cheers

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC /
Hobbs ElectroOptics Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

On Thu, 22 Feb 2024 15:50:10 -0000 (UTC), Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

>Carl <carl.ijamesXX@YYverizon.net> wrote:
>> On 2/22/24 3:15 AM, John Robertson wrote:
>>> On 2024/02/21 10:48 a.m., Carl Ijames wrote:
>>>> On Wed Feb 21 01:46:28 2024 Klaus Kragelund  wrote:
>>>>> On Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 01:05:53 UTC+1, Fred Bloggs wrote:
>>>>>> They're already winding down, limiting posts to about 5/ hour.
>>>>>> That's one way to reduce spam. People who won't miss google are the
>>>>>> reason google has decided usenet is not worth pursuing.
>>>>>
>>>>> What would be a good server to use going ahead?
>>>>
>>>> All the free providers seem gone, but I'm reasonably happy with
>>>> www.newshosting.com Works fine with thunderbird, but you have to use
>>>> their free newsreading program if you want more search capability than
>>>> thunderbird provides. Searches are definitely oriented towards
>>>> binaries but text groups work ok.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Carl
>>>
>>> https://www.eternal-september.org is free - he has a guilt-ware paypal
>>> button that I've used  mind you...
>>>
>>> John :-#)#
>>
>> [May be a repeat, didn't see it come through yesterday.]
>> I get can't find site for aioe, but eternal-september is still there. I
>> should have said that I wanted binary access and that's not been free
>> for a long time, sigh ?. Sorry.
>>
>
>Astraweb is pretty nearly free, and has binaries.
>
>Cheers

I've been using Supernews for ages, but they seem flakey lately. They
seem to be down on weekends and I see a lot of followups to posts that
I never see, including my own.

I guess I'll try eternal-september.

On 2/22/24 10:50 AM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
> Carl <carl.ijamesXX@YYverizon.net> wrote:
>> On 2/22/24 3:15 AM, John Robertson wrote:
>>> On 2024/02/21 10:48 a.m., Carl Ijames wrote:
>>>> On Wed Feb 21 01:46:28 2024 Klaus Kragelund  wrote:
>>>>> On Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 01:05:53 UTC+1, Fred Bloggs wrote:
>>>>>> They're already winding down, limiting posts to about 5/ hour.
>>>>>> That's one way to reduce spam. People who won't miss google are the
>>>>>> reason google has decided usenet is not worth pursuing.
>>>>>
>>>>> What would be a good server to use going ahead?
>>>>
>>>> All the free providers seem gone, but I'm reasonably happy with
>>>> www.newshosting.com Works fine with thunderbird, but you have to use
>>>> their free newsreading program if you want more search capability than
>>>> thunderbird provides. Searches are definitely oriented towards
>>>> binaries but text groups work ok.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Carl
>>>
>>> https://www.eternal-september.org is free - he has a guilt-ware paypal
>>> button that I've used  mind you...
>>>
>>> John :-#)#
>>
>> [May be a repeat, didn't see it come through yesterday.]
>> I get can't find site for aioe, but eternal-september is still there. I
>> should have said that I wanted binary access and that's not been free
>> for a long time, sigh 🙂. Sorry.
>>
>
> Astraweb is pretty nearly free, and has binaries.
>
> Cheers
>
Astraweb looks good, and is about 40% cheaper than newshosting ($8 vs
$13/month). However, using newshosting's free newsreader you can do
searches of their entire archive. I don't see any way to do that with
astraweb with thunderbird. With thunderbird you have to download all
the headers as far back as you want to search, and then search, and it
slows to a crawl handling more than say 20,000 headers at a time. Then
you have to give up a lot of disk space to keep those headers around, or
spend many minutes deleting them just so you can download them the next
time you want to do a search 🙂. I used to use newsguy which was very
good and cheap, but they went under several years ago. At that time
newshosting was the best I could find, but if I'd seen astraweb it would
have been a hard choice. Yeah, I know I could use google groups to do
searches but my google-fu is very weak there and I never seem to get
anything useful.

--
Regards,
Carl

On 2024-02-22 15:32, Carl wrote:
> On 2/22/24 10:50 AM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
>> Carl <carl.ijamesXX@YYverizon.net> wrote:
>>> On 2/22/24 3:15 AM, John Robertson wrote:
>>>> On 2024/02/21 10:48 a.m., Carl Ijames wrote:
>>>>> On Wed Feb 21 01:46:28 2024 Klaus Kragelund  wrote:
>>>>>> On Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 01:05:53 UTC+1, Fred Bloggs wrote:
>>>>>>> They're already winding down, limiting posts to about 5/ hour.
>>>>>>> That's one way to reduce spam. People who won't miss google are the
>>>>>>> reason google has decided usenet is not worth pursuing.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What would be a good server to use going ahead?
>>>>>
>>>>> All the free providers seem gone, but I'm reasonably happy with
>>>>> www.newshosting.com Works fine with thunderbird, but you have to use
>>>>> their free newsreading program if you want more search capability than
>>>>> thunderbird provides. Searches are definitely oriented towards
>>>>> binaries but text groups work ok.
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Regards,
>>>>> Carl
>>>>
>>>> https://www.eternal-september.org is free - he has a guilt-ware paypal
>>>> button that I've used  mind you...
>>>>
>>>> John :-#)#
>>>
>>> [May be a repeat, didn't see it come through yesterday.]
>>> I get can't find site for aioe, but eternal-september is still there.  I
>>> should have said that I wanted binary access and that's not been free
>>> for a long time, sigh 🙂.  Sorry.
>>>
>>
>> Astraweb is pretty nearly free, and has binaries.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
> Astraweb looks good, and is about 40% cheaper than newshosting ($8 vs
> $13/month).  However, using newshosting's free newsreader you can do
> searches of their entire archive.  I don't see any way to do that with
> astraweb with thunderbird.  With thunderbird you have to download all
> the headers as far back as you want to search, and then search, and it
> slows to a crawl handling more than say 20,000 headers at a time.  Then
> you have to give up a lot of disk space to keep those headers around, or
> spend many minutes deleting them just so you can download them the next
> time you want to do a search 🙂.  I used to use newsguy which was very
> good and cheap, but they went under several years ago.  At that time
> newshosting was the best I could find, but if I'd seen astraweb it would
> have been a hard choice.  Yeah, I know I could use google groups to do
> searches but my google-fu is very weak there and I never seem to get
> anything useful.
>

Their nonrecurring plans ($x per GB) are pretty cheap. I paid them $40
or so, once, for enough downloaded data to last me till about 2550 AD.

I can't actually post on Astraweb from Seamonkey for some reason.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

On Thu, 22 Feb 2024 08:26:48 -0800, John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com>
wrote:
>I've been using Supernews for ages, but they seem flakey lately. They
>seem to be down on weekends and I see a lot of followups to posts that
>I never see, including my own.
>
>I guess I'll try eternal-september.

I've been having similar problems with Supernews. I've been using
Supernews almost since they were founded about 30 years ago. My
requirements are minimal (about 12 newsgroups) and no binary groups.
Service has been generally good and reliable until about 3 months ago,
when things began to deteriorate.

In the past, SED was collecting large amount of spam that I had to
remove manually. Other groups with less traffic had less spam. A
dialog with tech support was mostly useless boiler plate and promise
to fix things I never mentioned. I gave up and eventually the spam
problem was reduced, but not eliminated.

A few days ago, I noticed that there were a growing number of missing
messages with followups. The missing messages were consistently on
Google Groups, but not on the Supernews servers. Several of my own
postings failed to appear on Supernews, but did appear on Google
Groups. I sent another support request, which resulted in another
boiler plate reply which mentioned that they are working on the spam
problem, which was not was not my complaint. I suspect someone had
looked up my previous support messages and intentionally ignored my
complaint.

Joerg posted a recommendation to try individual.net. 10 euros per
year and they accept Paypal payment. I tested it for a day. About
200 formerly missing messages magically arrived. My conclusion is
that the missing messages problem is likely within the Supernews
system. With only 1 weeks of experience with individual.net, I don't
think I'm qualified for offering a recommendation quite yet. As long
as Google maintains the Google Groups archives, which go back to about
1984, the >1000 day retention at individual.net is more than adequate:
<https://news.individual.net/hierarchies.php>

Checking traceroute to news.individual.net from California:
<https://traceroute-online.com>
my traffic goes from the US west coast to:
New York -> Sweden -> Netherlands -> Germany
About 160 msec latency.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
PO Box 272 http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 22 Feb 2024 08:26:48 -0800, John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com>
> wrote:
> >I've been using Supernews for ages, but they seem flakey lately. They
> >seem to be down on weekends and I see a lot of followups to posts that
> >I never see, including my own.
> >
> >I guess I'll try eternal-september.
>
> I've been having similar problems with Supernews. I've been using
> Supernews almost since they were founded about 30 years ago. My
> requirements are minimal (about 12 newsgroups) and no binary groups.
> Service has been generally good and reliable until about 3 months ago,
> when things began to deteriorate.
>
> In the past, SED was collecting large amount of spam that I had to
> remove manually. Other groups with less traffic had less spam. A
> dialog with tech support was mostly useless boiler plate and promise
> to fix things I never mentioned. I gave up and eventually the spam
> problem was reduced, but not eliminated.
>
> A few days ago, I noticed that there were a growing number of missing
> messages with followups. The missing messages were consistently on
> Google Groups, but not on the Supernews servers. Several of my own
> postings failed to appear on Supernews, but did appear on Google
> Groups. I sent another support request, which resulted in another
> boiler plate reply which mentioned that they are working on the spam
> problem, which was not was not my complaint. I suspect someone had
> looked up my previous support messages and intentionally ignored my
> complaint.
>
> Joerg posted a recommendation to try individual.net. 10 euros per
> year and they accept Paypal payment. I tested it for a day. About
> 200 formerly missing messages magically arrived. My conclusion is
> that the missing messages problem is likely within the Supernews
> system. With only 1 weeks of experience with individual.net, I don't
> think I'm qualified for offering a recommendation quite yet. As long
> as Google maintains the Google Groups archives, which go back to about
> 1984, the >1000 day retention at individual.net is more than adequate:
> <https://news.individual.net/hierarchies.php>
>
> Checking traceroute to news.individual.net from California:
> <https://traceroute-online.com>
> my traffic goes from the US west coast to:
> New York -> Sweden -> Netherlands -> Germany
> About 160 msec latency.

I've been with <news.individual.net> over 20 years and always found them
excellent. The MacSOUP newsreader has a good killfile system that
removes most of the spam and had an excellent 'London Underground' map
display of posts, so you know who is replying to whom.

--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

On 2024-02-22, Carl <carl.ijamesXX@YYverizon.net> wrote:
> On 2/22/24 10:50 AM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
>> Carl <carl.ijamesXX@YYverizon.net> wrote:
>>> On 2/22/24 3:15 AM, John Robertson wrote:
>>>> On 2024/02/21 10:48 a.m., Carl Ijames wrote:
>>>>> On Wed Feb 21 01:46:28 2024 Klaus Kragelund  wrote:
>>>>>> On Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 01:05:53 UTC+1, Fred Bloggs wrote:
>>>>>>> They're already winding down, limiting posts to about 5/ hour.
>>>>>>> That's one way to reduce spam. People who won't miss google are the
>>>>>>> reason google has decided usenet is not worth pursuing.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What would be a good server to use going ahead?
>>>>>
>>>>> All the free providers seem gone, but I'm reasonably happy with
>>>>> www.newshosting.com Works fine with thunderbird, but you have to use
>>>>> their free newsreading program if you want more search capability than
>>>>> thunderbird provides. Searches are definitely oriented towards
>>>>> binaries but text groups work ok.
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Regards,
>>>>> Carl
>>>>
>>>> https://www.eternal-september.org is free - he has a guilt-ware paypal
>>>> button that I've used  mind you...
>>>>
>>>> John :-#)#
>>>
>>> [May be a repeat, didn't see it come through yesterday.]
>>> I get can't find site for aioe, but eternal-september is still there. I
>>> should have said that I wanted binary access and that's not been free
>>> for a long time, sigh 🙂. Sorry.
>>>
>>
>> Astraweb is pretty nearly free, and has binaries.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
> Astraweb looks good, and is about 40% cheaper than newshosting ($8 vs
> $13/month).

If you buy a block data plan data it's even cheaper.

--
Jasen.
🇺🇦 Слава Україні