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Google Groups ending support for Usenet
- knight17 3y agoThis is one of the few times I can tell Google closing down a product / feature is good. Less spam in usenet groups.
- kazinator 3y agoFor values of "less spam" approaching "no spam".
- rilindo 3y agoIs still worth giving Usenet a try again? Are there any technology Usenet groups that are still active and worth subscribing to?
- kazinator 3y agoWhy yes. I follow comp.lang.c, comp.lang.awk, comp.unix.programmer, comp.unix.shell, comp.lang.lisp. Make an account on Ray Banana's "Eternal September" server (or any one of the others), connect a client and you're good to go.
- brightsize 3y agocomp.lang.python is one of the busier (programming) groups as well.
- dizzydwarf 3y agoGoogleGroups strips all leading whitespace.
- lproven 3y agonews:comp.lang.fortran has been helpful to me. news:alt.folklore.computers is active I enjoy the news:comp.sys.acorn hierarchy but then I was an Archimedes user.
- pklausler 3y agocomp.lang.fortran will be sorely missed; there is no good alternative anywhere else for discussions of the language.
- dizzydwarf 3y agocomp.sys.raspberry-pi is active and well worth subscribing to.
- jvolkman 3y agoMost importantly, > You can continue to view and search for historical Usenet content posted before February 22, 2024 on Google Groups.
- skyfaller 3y agoBut how long until this archive also joins the Google graveyard? If it were another company aside from Google, this might be more encouraging.
- beej71 3y agoSeems like this would be a great job for Internet Archive, but a cursory glance doesn't show it there. I get that the *.binaries could be too much and super illegal, but maybe the text ones.
- kristofferR 3y agohttps://archive.org/details/usenet https://archive.org/details/usenet
- stonogo 3y agoGoogle has a history of not living up to that particular claim: https://www.electricmonk.nl/log/2005/12/21/how-google-fucked-up-usenet/ https://www.electricmonk.nl/log/2005/12/21/how-google-fucked... https://thenextweb.com/news/google-groups-stopped-indexing-usenet-newsgroups-a-week-ago-and-barely-anyone-noticed https://thenextweb.com/news/google-groups-stopped-indexing-u... https://www.vice.com/en/article/jp5a77/google-a-search-company-has-made-its-internet-archive-impossible-to-search https://www.vice.com/en/article/jp5a77/google-a-search-compa... https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/3ggogo/google_has_lost_old_usenet_posts_where_can_i_find/ https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/3ggogo/google_has_l... https://groups.google.com/g/comp.arch.embedded/c/zKo883p9AJQ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.arch.embedded/c/zKo883p9AJQ
- tap-snap-or-nap 3y ago
- kazinator 3y agoPart of the background for this is that over the past month or more, Usenet has been under an unprecedented spam attack from Google Groups that Google isn't doing anything about. People have resorted to filtering everything coming from Google Groups, with a white list, and there are voices calling for de-peering of Google Groups from the Usenet federation.
- jart 3y agoSounds like the barbarians are sacking Rome. What happened to mighty Google's thirst for blood and will to dominate the Internet? It feels like they've just started accepting being helpless to stop all this spam.
- thfuran 3y agoHow much money is Google making from Usenet support?
- jart 3y agoIt doesn't matter how much money USENET makes one company, what matters is what it represents. Surrendering USENET entirely to abuse means we're losing one of the last vestiges of the ARPANET. It brings great shame and dishonor that Google won't fight for it.
- dotancohen 3y ago> we're losing I'm certainly not losing anything. Only people who need Google services to access Usenet are losing. And I make no apology for being elitist here - some clubs are better when they are mostly frequented by the elite.
- BirAdam 3y agoI agree that exclusivity to those most interested will provide better conversation, but I rather dislike the usage of “elite” in this context.
- kazinator 3y ago[flagged]
- terminous 3y ago> nobody gets kicked out by brownshirts for expressing their view. What about spam? Is the expectation that it's your obligation to filter it client-side?
- kazinator 3y agoIf you see the spam it's already in your client, so yes. You don't see spam, if it was filtered upstream from you. The server admins try though. This latest Google assault kept people busy.
- terminous 3y agoSo there is upstream spam filtering. Thiss seems to contradict what you said: "There is no administrative ostracism. Nobody gets kicked out by brownshirts for expressing their view." Spam is an expression of views.
- kazinator 3y agoEven if this stupid idea were true, in fact nobody prevents Usenet spammers from reaching those who want to be reached. If you think that spam is a form of expression, and you're interested in it, all you have to do is post a few articles and use your real e-mail address in your From: header. Then no overbearing NNTP server admin will stand between you and your spammer friends.
- simlevesque 3y agoHow do you know that what was filtered was spam and not wrongthink ?
- floren 3y agoYou've sorta got to trust your admin. If you don't, it's really pretty trivial to put up your own server (you can do it from home, you don't need a VPS, you don't even need constant connectivity) and then you just peer with as many servers as you can -- odds are not ALL of them are filtering those critically important posts calling Biden a pedophile or whatever.
- zafiro17 3y agoThe 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 http://newsgroupreviews.com for a list of providers, some free, some paid.
- dataangel 3y agoIs 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 3y agoThese two wikipedia articles are a start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nntp 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/ https://greycoder.com/best-free-usenet-servers/
- blihp 3y agoIn 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.
- Fatnino 3y ago
- beej71 3y agoEternal October...?
- aaomidi 3y agoCan Google just fucking kill this? Literally all my recruiter spam is coming from groups. Even when I worked at Google internally I raised a ticket with full info of what’s going on and they still haven’t fixed it. (Yes I have the “can’t add me to groups” button on).
- hansvm 3y agoInternal Google tickets have <0 priority unless they get raised in a TGIF or All-Hands or equivalent. If you know anyone still there, just have a peek at all the internally opened tickets about bricked Android phones. Their processes are...messy.
- xxs 3y agofollowing linux process priority schema "negative" would mean elevated.
- danpalmer 3y agoA random ticket thrown into the abyss might not get any traction, but I find a well considered ticket with appropriate instructions typically results in help. Sometimes it takes a quick ping on chat or finding the right person, but people are generally helpful in routing bugs. I'm regularly pleasantly surprised when I file a bug for something on the other side of the company and get proper engagement on it.
- indymike 3y agoUsenet? No. Google Groups, sure.
- mock-possum 3y agoRecruiter spam - wait is Usenet an alternate route to finding a new job?
- pram 3y agoWhat’s the state of the art in Usenet clients these days? Last time I had a giganews account I was still using Mozilla lol
- brightsize 3y agoUse it again! Thunderbird has a built-in Usenet client and you can configure it to connect to any number of NNTP servers.
- thepostman0 3y agoDepends. I like text only, so slrn
- ThinkingGuy 3y agoPan works well for me when I'm on a desktop with a GUI. Otherwise, I still use tin. http://pan.rebelbase.com/ http://pan.rebelbase.com/ http://www.tin.org/ http://www.tin.org/
- 15457345234 3y agoWinVN was always my favourite in terms of UI, but you really needed a local cache server as it had zero offline support.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoThis was discussed in related talk recently when people thought support was going away because DejaNews wasn't working https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38238796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38238796 The usenet archive will remain.
- standardUser 3y agoThis post brought my down a rabbit hole of early internet technologies, leading to a search for the two PC newsmagazines I used to read for free as a teenager in my Bay Area suburb in the late 90's, which ended at this Usenet post hosted by... Google. https://groups.google.com/g/alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt/c/nr_FPyc22hE/m/Y7ixubMtWYkJ?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/g/alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt/c...
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoWish there was some way to give the data Google obtained in the Deja News acquisition back to the public, i.e., allow free public access to all of it as Deja News was doing at the time. (After the acqusitition, for a while Javascript was required to access comp.unix.* groups via Google Groups. Eventually, after years went by, this was fixed. But even then some of the data from these groups and other computing related groups is missing. Neither Google Groups, nor any of the well-known spools from individual archivists, contain _all_ of the data from what was available before the Google acquisition.)
- oasisbob 3y agoI remember being excited once upon a time when Google acquired Deja News. Will be really disappointed if the archive falls into an even worse state of disrepair.
- LanzVonL 3y agoArchive.org has it all. It's not in a usable format, it's like tar dumps. But it's on there.
- sumtechguy 3y agoThis is something archive really should put some resources towards. Its discoverability of items is really poor. Going thru archive to find things is like going to that one consignment shop where the owner bought all of the businesses around him going out of business for the past 30 years and he tossed it all in a warehouse. You know it is in there but finding anything is terrible.
- immibis 3y agoIf it's available for public download, then someone else can do it if they have the demand. I wouldn't ask archive.org to tie up their resources when they're already struggling with lawsuits.
- qingcharles 3y agoI'm working on this for magazines. Gotta just pick a niche and go for it...
- LanzVonL 3y agoOh thank God, this is the best news for Usenet in decades. 100% of Usenet spam now comes from Google.
- ofrzeta 3y agoGreat. Now let's revive Usenet and make it a bit complicated as having to use a specialized reader app like tin and make it a resort for people who are a bit sick of the New Internet.
- actaeon169 3y agoLong live the Scary Devil Monastery.
- lproven 3y agoThe Fesse Bouc group is... not dead.
- actaeon169 3y agoGood to know. I haven't looked in years.
- Karellen 3y agoSounds like a good complement for Project Gemini https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/faq.gmi https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/faq.gmi
- pdn1 3y ago[flagged]
- squarefoot 3y agoText-only Usenet shouldn't cost much to host and operate, and close to nothing if rethought to be distributed serverless p2p style, possibly encrypted. I was used in the past to wait ~3 days for my Fidonet post and their replies round trips, I don't think many people would mind waiting a few minutes for their local msg base to sync with the distributed cloud.
- jraph 3y agoCool, this means it the end of the occasional Google Groups link to Usenet posts. This also means many broken links, I hope a solution will be found for this.
- BixbyUsenet 3y agoI very recently have been accepted as the moderator of an abandoned, moderated group. As such, I needed to find a Usenet provider who would accept posting into moderated groups, from a moderator. I originally contacted Eternal September, and Wolfgang informed me my account had been configured to allow such posting, but it does not work ("account not authorized") and now he does not respond to email. I then contacted four commercial providers, all of whom did not know about moderated groups, and either failed to respond in a timely manner (a week) or failed to grasp the concept of moderated groups; 1. Giganews 2. Tweaknews 3. Eweka 4. Usenetserver Giganews first line support did not know about moderated news-groups. I explained, and once the support staffer understood, a support ticket was created. Giganews claim a few hours response time. When asked about this, they then say up to three days. After seven days, I cancelled the support ticket. Tweakness, Eweka and Usenetserver I think are in fact the same company. I could be completely wrong, but they all use the same support software, have the same options in the drop down lists on their sites, and so on. All did not know about moderated news-groups, and all were unable to grasp the concept, and all then went into that failure mode, where support is giving the wrong answers to questions, not paying attention to what is written, not reading the history of communication, and so finally going into a loop which consisted of them telling me "you need an account to post" (where they meant posting normally - not as a moderator), which they had said before, and which I had replied to before (explaining again about moderated news-groups, to which they explained Usenet is not moderated and anyone can post, etc, etc, etc). After two weeks, I gave up with them.
- sieve 3y agoContact Greg Lyda at UsenetExpress. You can also reach him on reddit (https://old.reddit.com/user/greglyda https://old.reddit.com/user/greglyda). UsenetExpress is the second-biggest provider of binary news (outside of Omicron, which owns Eweka, Newshosting, UsenetServer & Tweaknews)
- kevin_thibedeau 3y agoYou can always use the trick used to post into moderated alt.hackers. You don't need a server to manage approvals of your own postings.
- phendrenad2 3y agoFor once Google is doing the right thing.
- fer 3y ago"You're not leaving me, I'm leaving you!" https://jfloren.net/b/2023/10/12/0 https://jfloren.net/b/2023/10/12/0
- mnd999 3y agoEmbrace, Extend, Extinguish.
- sgammon 3y agome: sundar i want firebase to work with bazel sundar: we are working on an amazing new ai sundar later:
- danpalmer 3y agoWhat doesn't work between Firebase and Bazel, out of interest? Bazel seems to be super generic?
- sgammon 3y agohttps://github.com/firebase/firebase-ios-sdk/issues/6115 https://github.com/firebase/firebase-ios-sdk/issues/6115 https://github.com/material-components/material-components-web/issues/4839 https://github.com/material-components/material-components-w... Two examples that come to mind but there are plenty
- danpalmer 3y agoUgh. Thanks for all your work on those issues though. It sounds like @cgrindel got somewhere with it. While I understand the frustration, I see package managers and Bazel as quite distinct approaches, and I'm not surprised that they are incompatible. There shouldn't be anything incompatible between Firebase itself and Bazel – I can assure you that Bazel is used to build wildly esoteric things at Google – but the Cocoapods/SPM layer is sort of fighting an uphill battle because Bazel is built on the assumption that it's building everything itself. I work on a very large mobile app that is built with Bazel, and can attest to how worth it the experience is at scale, but I realise it takes a lot of doing to make it work, and that doesn't pay off until a certain point.
- sgammon 3y agoBazel is not usable with Firebase as a non Googler. How is this statement incorrect? Cocoapods and SPM has nothing to do with it. You can’t blame packaging ecosystems for Bazel’s inability to consume a dynamic iOS framework properly. Yes, I’m aware it’s possible, as explained in that thread. The problem is that it’s only possible for people like you!
- supermatt 3y agoGoogle has seemingly reached the pinnacle of uselessness > To find a client, do a web search for "how do I find a usenet text client" Result: https://imgur.com/a/8VrfuPu https://imgur.com/a/8VrfuPu
- GTP 3y agoTry removing the quotes from the search query
- preisschild 3y agoTbf thats how its supposed to work. By quoting it you are explicitly searching for the text "how do I find a usenet text client". Remove the quotes.
- AlienRobot 3y agoThat's an awkward PEBCAK error. Happens to all of us. Bet whoever wrote that instruction never expected this.
- supermatt 3y agoIt was tongue in cheek, as that’s exactly what they said to search for. To be fair though, even without the quotes the first 4 links are the same! The query itself is also a poor representation of a good search query for Usenet clients.
- lannisterstark 3y agoThere are plenty of Usenet clients available though. You also have quotes around your query.
- DonHopkins 3y agoMaybe you don't "understand what's going on in the news". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdkkTV3pIa0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdkkTV3pIa0
- irrational 3y agoAnd here is DDG https://imgur.com/gallery/i9OU844 https://imgur.com/gallery/i9OU844 I've had so many people tell me that DDG is inferior to Google Search, but that has not been my experience, at all.
- bilekas 3y ago> Much of the content being disseminated via Usenet today is binary (non-text) file sharing, which Google Groups does not support, as well as spam I don't know why but I feel this was written by a young gun who doesn't know how usenet, irc etc works and just wants to push everyone to discord and slack.
- nixass 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35937637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35937637 Just a reminder that there was online Usenet discussion for the fall of Berlin wall, in real time. Amazing
- mkoryak 3y agoUsenet was good for file sharing back when newzbin indexing existed. Is there anything around like that today?
- lproven 3y agoThe file sharing is why most providers stopped hosting it and drove it into its niche. I wish it had never happened, and that the blasted fools responsible had been prosecuted. :-(
- immibis 3y agoyes, but more underground. see https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet for recommendations