8 May
2018
8 May
'18
4:25 p.m.
Hi all,
Forgive this cross-post from cctalk, if you're seeing this message twice. TUHS seems
like a very appropriate list for this question.
I'm experimenting with setting up UUCP and Usenet on a cluster of 3B2/400s, and
I've quickly discovered that while it's trivial to find old source code for
Usenet (B News and C News), it's virtually impossible to find source code for old
news *readers*.
I'm looking especially for nn, which was my go-to at the time. The oldest version
I've found so far is nn 6.4, which is too big to compile on a 3B2/400. If I could get
my hands on 6.1 or earlier, I think I'd have a good chance.
I also found that trn 3.6 from 1994 works well enough, though it is fairly bloated.
Earlier versions of that might be better.
Does anyone have better Google-fu than I do? Or perhaps you've got earlier sources
squirreled away?
As an aside: If you were active on Usenet in 1989, what software were you using?
-Seth
--
Seth Morabito
web(a)loomcom.com
4:43 p.m.
http://ftp.fi.netbsd.org/pub/misc/archive/comp.sources.unix/volume23/trn/
might be a good place to start looking.
Warner
On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 10:36 AM, Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
As an aside:
If you were active on Usenet in 1989, what software were
you using?
rn
5:27 p.m.
On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 1:06 PM, <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
I also still use trn for the small number of groups that I can bring myself
to still read semi-regularly.
I was lamenting the (asymptotic) death of usenet to a colleague the other
day and asked, "where are all the cool kids these days?" I was only half
joking: back when news was the main nexus of interaction for technical
communities, it really was where you'd go to find things out and where you
could reasonably expect to interact with experts. For example, occasionally
the likes of Dennis Ritchie would even post in comp.lang.c; Ken Thompson's
MiG-29 flight story posted to rec.aviation is a classic. But those days are
long gone, so where do technical communities communicate electronically?
I'm told Reddit is the new hotness, but it's just not the same (if for no
other reason than that it's totally centralized under the control of a
single corporate organization).
- Dan C.
> As an aside: If you were active on Usenet in
1989, what software were
you using?
rn
trn. I *still* use it for the count-on-the-fingers-of-one-hand newgroups
that I follow. 
5:42 p.m.
On Tuesday, May 8, 2018, Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 1:06 PM,
<arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
The answer could be as simple as -- you are using one such medium at this
very moment. I honestly believe technical mailing lists are the last
bastion of information exchange in the way most of us still remember.
Although I am writing this on an iPhone (and it really sucks for writing) I
still love to read/write emails on an old school DEC terminal or DOS era
VGA monitor.
All those new fads like reddit or web based forums just don't feel "right"
to me.
--Andy
Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
I also still use trn for the small number of groups that I can bring
myself to still read semi-regularly.
I was lamenting the (asymptotic) death of usenet to a colleague the other
day and asked, "where are all the cool kids these days?" I was only half
joking: back when news was the main nexus of interaction for technical
communities, it really was where you'd go to find things out and where you
could reasonably expect to interact with experts. For example, occasionally
the likes of Dennis Ritchie would even post in comp.lang.c; Ken Thompson's
MiG-29 flight story posted to rec.aviation is a classic. But those days are
long gone, so where do technical communities communicate electronically?
> As an aside: If you were active on Usenet in
1989, what software were
you using?
rn
trn. I *still* use it for the count-on-the-fingers-of-one-hand newgroups
that I follow. 
9:27 p.m.
New subject: Old Usenet / local communitites
On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 1:06 PM,
<arnold(a)skeeve.com
<mailto:arnold@skeeve.com>> wrote:
I was lamenting the (asymptotic) death of usenet to a colleague the
other day and asked, "where are all the cool kids these days?" I was
only half joking: back when news was the main nexus of interaction
for technical communities, it really was where you'd go to find
things out and where you could reasonably expect to interact with
experts.
I also miss local news groups. My university had many and later my
employer, US Army Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), had some. They were
great, non-centralized places to, surprise, share news. No equivalent
seems to exist.
Mike Markowski
5:53 p.m.
On Tue, May 8, 2018, at 10:27 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
I was lamenting the (asymptotic) death of usenet to a
colleague the
other day and asked, "where are all the cool kids these days?" I was
only half joking: back when news was the main nexus of interaction for
technical communities, it really was where you'd go to find things out
and where you could reasonably expect to interact with experts. For
example, occasionally the likes of Dennis Ritchie would even post in
comp.lang.c; Ken Thompson's MiG-29 flight story posted to rec.aviation
is a classic. But those days are long gone, so where do technical
communities communicate electronically? I'm told Reddit is the new
hotness, but it's just not the same (if for no other reason than that
it's totally centralized under the control of a single corporate
organization).
I think a lot about the death of Usenet, the reasons for it, and what
we've learned. I don't know if I've come to any insightful conclusions,
but I do greatly miss it. In so many ways we've gone backward. We lost a
truly decentralized message board system where one log-in allowed you to
read anything about any topic, and replaced it with a mess of
incompatible systems. On one hand we've got phpBB forums scattered all
over the web that don't talk to each other, each of which requires its
own login and password. On the other hand we have walled gardens like
Reddit and Facebook that offer much of what Usenet did, but with clumsy
user interfaces and centralized control and massive privacy concerns.
There's just nothing like Usenet.
I find more and more communities moving to Facebook, which worries me
greatly. I'm not a fan. Other than that, mailing lists seem to continue
to cling to life as the gold standard of technical communication.
- Dan C.
-Seth
--
Seth Morabito
web(a)loomcom.com
6:28 p.m.
On 05/08/2018 11:53 AM, Seth Morabito wrote:
I think a lot about the death of Usenet, the reasons
for it, and what
we've learned. I don't know if I've come to any insightful conclusions,
but I do greatly miss it. In so many ways we've gone backward. We lost a
truly decentralized message board system where one log-in allowed you to
read anything about any topic, and replaced it with a mess of
incompatible systems. On one hand we've got phpBB forums scattered all
over the web that don't talk to each other, each of which requires its
own login and password. On the other hand we have walled gardens like
Reddit and Facebook that offer much of what Usenet did, but with clumsy
user interfaces and centralized control and massive privacy concerns.
There's just nothing like Usenet.
I've seen multiple people in this thread talk as if Usenet is gone / dead.
As an active Usenet user (daily) I wonder why people say that. I still
see a number of good conversations take place in newsgroups.
I also participate in newsgroups hosted on an open to the public but not
peered news server daily.
I wonder how much of what is on the web could possibly benefit from a
good web interface to a (potentially moderated) newsgroup.
Why re-invent storing and exchanging messages when NNTP works. …well in
my opinion.
I find more and more communities moving to Facebook,
which worries me
greatly. I'm not a fan. Other than that, mailing lists seem to continue
to cling to life as the gold standard of technical communication.
I just saw this happen on NANOG. Someone asked about a group for DSL
Network Operators and subsequently someone else mentioned that they just
created a Facebook group, which got the obligatory "what about people
that don't use Facebook" follow up. Predictably there was yet another
follow up indicating that it was the fault of people not using Facebook
for not being able to access a public forum.
I am personally quite happy with (properly configured) mailing lists and
newsgroups.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
6:35 p.m.
USENET as an entity is still alive and well. The reason for it might be
sharing of warez and porn, but for example, alt.sys.pdp10 still exists :)
The problem is, many of us have stopped using it for whatever reason,
and certainly don't store/forward much.
Maybe it's time to take it back and get back to the original intention
of USENET.
On 5/8/2018 1:53 PM, Seth Morabito wrote:
I think a lot about the death of Usenet, the reasons
for it, and what
we've learned.
6:45 p.m.
On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 12:35 PM, Arthur Krewat <krewat(a)kilonet.net> wrote:
USENET as an entity is still alive and well. The
reason for it might be
sharing of warez and porn, but for example, alt.sys.pdp10 still exists :)
The problem is, many of us have stopped using it for whatever reason, and
certainly don't store/forward much.
Maybe it's time to take it back and get back to the original intention of
USENET.
The infrastructure is there, though in reduced form as a percent of "the
internet". However, the content has largely moved to other venues.
Warner
7 p.m.
The problem is, many of us have stopped using it for
whatever reason, and
certainly don't store/forward much.
Maybe it's time to take it back and get back to the original intention of
USENET.
So where on Earth does one get an NNTP feed from these days? Lord knows
I've tried. An no, I'm not talking about a pay-for-access NNRP host that
I have to pull things from.
7:09 p.m.
On 05/08/2018 01:00 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
So where on Earth does one get an NNTP feed from these
days? Lord knows
I've tried. An no, I'm not talking about a pay-for-access NNRP host
that I have to pull things from.
Most of the text only news servers that I've seen will happily peer with
you.
I'm peering with the following servers:
· CMPublishers
· ejre
· Eternal-September
· Gallaxial
· Mixmin
· Neva
· snarked
· UzoRetro
· Weretis
· Xanadu-BBS
· XMission
Drop me a line if you'd like to peer.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
7:11 p.m.
On 5/8/2018 3:00 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
That was going to be my next question ;) - Google has the entire archive
(minus binaries), and most commercial places have it going back only
3000 days or so.
Where's Deja News when you need 'em.
ak
The problem
is, many of us have stopped using it for whatever reason,
and certainly don't store/forward much.
Maybe it's time to take it back and get back to the original
intention of USENET.
So where on Earth does one get an NNTP feed from these days? Lord
knows I've tried. An no, I'm not talking about a pay-for-access NNRP
host that I have to pull things from.
9:50 p.m.
On 05/08/2018 01:11 PM, Arthur Krewat wrote:
Google has the entire archive
I've often thought about trying to import the old articles for specific
newsgroups into my server. (Particularly the newsgroups that I used to
/ do haunt.) But I suspect that they have been modified in some way
that I won't like.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
9:58 p.m.
On 05/08/2018 03:54 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
Is it searchable? THe old dejanews archive was
searchable back to the 80's.
Google makes things searchable:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.mail.sendmail
Replace comp.mail.sendmail to search the group(s) you're interested in.
(I haunt c.m.sendmail.)
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
10:22 p.m.
My father was the sysadmin for Deja News at the time they were bought by
Google. I was told that the "buyout" consisted of some Google folks
showing up with a rack of drives, dumping all of Deja News's data over a
weekend, and then flying back out to Mountain View.
-Henry
On 8 May 2018 at 15:11, Arthur Krewat <krewat(a)kilonet.net> wrote:
On 5/8/2018 3:00 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
The problem is, many of us have stopped using it
for whatever reason, and
(minus
binaries), and most commercial places have it going back only 3000
days or so.
Where's Deja News when you need 'em.
ak
certainly don't store/forward much.
Maybe it's time to take it back and get back to the original intention
of USENET.
So where on Earth does one get an NNTP feed from these days? Lord knows
I've tried. An no, I'm not talking about a pay-for-access NNRP host that I
have to pull things from.
That was going to be my next question ;) - Google has the entire archive
10:32 p.m.
On 5/8/2018 6:22 PM, Henry Bent wrote:
My father was the sysadmin for Deja News at the time
they were bought
by Google. I was told that the "buyout" consisted of some Google
folks showing up with a rack of drives, dumping all of Deja News's
data over a weekend, and then flying back out to Mountain View.
Where are the original drives? Or tapes? (insert devilish grin emoticon
here)
ak
10:59 p.m.
On 8 May 2018 at 18:32, Arthur Krewat <krewat(a)kilonet.net> wrote:
On 5/8/2018 6:22 PM, Henry Bent wrote:
I have no idea where they are now. At the time they were in Austin, TX. I
imagine that they probably just went to one of those many IT scrapyards,
the warehouses full of old parts that the owners sell on eBay.
About the same time - 2001? - when I was a student at Oberlin, an alumnus
who was working for mp3.com "donated" several full height racks of 2U
servers to the college. Apparently the tax writeoff for donating the
servers was better than what they were going to get from the scrap folks,
and it all looked good on paper. But the CS department had no idea what
to do with all of this hardware! Remember that we were a small liberal
arts college, and that the entire department at that time was served by a
single DEC Alpha box. So there was a free-for-all, everyone in the CS
department got to take as many machines as they had a use for (dual Pentium
III Intel boards, as I recall), which turned out to not make a significant
dent in the material we were given... The most astonishing part of the
whole experience was that mp3.com had not bothered to wipe the drives of
these machines, so they still booted to some variety of Linux (Red Hat?)
and were full of useless distributed data.
-Henry
My father was the sysadmin for Deja News at the
time they were bought by
Google. I was told that the "buyout" consisted of some Google folks
showing up with a rack of drives, dumping all of Deja News's data over a
weekend, and then flying back out to Mountain View.
Where are the original drives? Or tapes? (insert devilish grin emoticon
here)
ak
9 May
9 May
2:01 a.m.
On Tue, 8 May 2018, Henry Bent wrote:
On 8 May 2018 at 18:32, Arthur Krewat
<krewat(a)kilonet.net> wrote:
It was all auctioned off. I went to that auction... it was the dot-com
bust auction where I saw things turn from being able to get a good deal
to a lot of stupid going on. I bought two boxes full of SCSI hard
drives for $79/ea. Turns out, it was about 20 drives and they were
mostly 4 and 9 gig Seagate HD's that still had a year or two left on
their warranty. I turned around and re-sold them, untested, but with
a copy of the warranty status for each one with it, for something like
$5 or 10/gig.
--
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
KF5LGQ
On 5/8/2018 6:22 PM, Henry Bent wrote:
I have no idea where they are now. At the time they were in Austin,
TX. I imagine that they probably just went to one of those many IT
scrapyards, the warehouses full of old parts that the owners sell on
eBay. My father was the sysadmin for Deja News at the
time they were
bought by Google. I was told that the "buyout" consisted of some
Google folks showing up with a rack of drives, dumping all of Deja
News's data over a weekend, and then flying back out to Mountain
View.
Where are the original drives? Or tapes? (insert devilish grin
emoticon here)
ak
1:55 a.m.
On Tue, 8 May 2018, Henry Bent wrote:
My father was the sysadmin for Deja News at the time
they were bought by
Google. I was told that the "buyout" consisted of some Google folks
showing up with a rack of drives, dumping all of Deja News's data over a
weekend, and then flying back out to Mountain View.
Now that makes me feel old. I was the sysadmin for the datacenter
Deja's servers were in. Who is your dad, if I don't know him directly,
I probably know a few that do.
--
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
KF5LGQ
8 May
8 May
8:01 p.m.
On Tue, 08 May 2018 12:00:48 -0700 Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon(a)orthanc.ca> wrote:
Lyndon Nerenberg writes:
$ echo $NNTPSERVER
news.eternal-september.org
I think you have to register and authenticate when you connect.
I use tin now. Used to use nn in nn-6.4 days. Also used
thunderbird in between. May have used every other reader at
various times.
Back in 1989 timeframe I used to get a pretty complete feed
via uucp and maintain locally with cnews. Recently I tried
using "fetchnews" recently for that purpose (for the groups I
want) since eternal-september is a bit slow but something went
wrong.
The problem
is, many of us have stopped using it for whatever reason, and
certainly don't store/forward much.
Maybe it's time to take it back and get back to the original intention of
USENET.
So where on Earth does one get an NNTP feed from these days? Lord knows
I've tried. An no, I'm not talking about a pay-for-access NNRP host that
I have to pull things from.
9:56 p.m.
On 05/08/2018 02:01 PM, Bakul Shah wrote:
Back in 1989 timeframe I used to get a pretty complete
feed via uucp and
maintain locally with cnews. Recently I tried using "fetchnews" recently
for that purpose (for the groups I want) since eternal-september is a
bit slow but something went wrong.
Do you want a UUCP (bag) feed again?
I provided UUCP "bag" feed to one of my peers on the first server I ran.
I'd be happy to do so again.
- UUCP "bag" files pushed / pulled via SCP / SFTP.
- Could probably be done over email too.
- UUCP over SSH
- UUCP over TCP port 540)
- Secure UUCP TCP port 4031)
Obviously:
- NNTP over TCP port 119
- Secure NNTP over TCP port 563
I'm also willing to hear about other creative options too.
- VPN
- IPSec
- SSL / TLS
- WireGuard
- OpenVPN
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
7:05 p.m.
On 05/08/2018 12:35 PM, Arthur Krewat wrote:
USENET as an entity is still alive and well.
Indeed. Some might argue that there's a resurgence of Usenet servers.
I'm just one example that's has decided to run a text only news server.
I see more of them every year.
The reason for it might be sharing of warez and porn,
I personally don't object to content leveraging the Usenet
infrastructure, *as* *long* *as* *it's* *legal*.
I can personally decide if I want to partake / consume in content or
not. — Obviously my text only news server does not partake in
non-textual content.
but for example, alt.sys.pdp10 still exists
Yep.
I'm showing 164 messages since October 10th 2017.
% ls -1 /var/spool/news/articles/alt/sys/pdp10 | wc -l
164
% ls -l /var/spool/news/articles/alt/sys/pdp10 | grep 2017
-rw-rw-r-- 1 news news 1463 Oct 10 2017 1
The problem is, many of us have stopped using it for
whatever reason,
and certainly don't store/forward much.
Fair.
I wonder how different things would be if various web applications
leveraged Usenet (NNTP) (or IMAP) as a back end storage for things like
blogs / forums.
Maybe it's time to take it back and get back to
the original intention
of USENET.
I question if there is really anything to take back. I was active in
comp.mail.sendmail for years and then stopped when I changed jobs. All
I had to do was subscribe my news reader and continue like nothing ever
changed. (Save for the smaller amount of content in said newsgroup
these days.)
I've personally run small news servers with ~10 peers twice. One time
years ago, and again now I have two news servers. One is on my VPS with
a bunch of peers and the other is in my house that only peers with my VPS.
If anyone wants to get back into the game, let me know and I'll happily
peer with you.
I think that "take back" really directly translates to "use again".
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
7:15 p.m.
On 5/8/2018 3:05 PM, Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote:
If anyone wants to get back into the game, let me know
and I'll
happily peer with you.
I think that "take back" really directly translates to "use again".
I'll take you up on that offer :) - I do have an account with one of
those commercial providers. Not sure how they'd take to pushing news
articles to them, but it's worth a shot.
And yes. Agreed. Most of this information is useless as it stands now,
but good for old times sake:
(https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.mail.maps/vHa2YT9Od_0)
#N kilowatt
#S Clone 80486DX2/66; Consensys SVR4.0.3
#O Kilowatt Computers
#C Arthur Krewat
#E kilowatt!krewat,krewat(a)kilonet.org
#T +1 516 253 2805
#P 51 Winnecomac Ave, Deer Park, NY, 11729
#L 40 47 N / 73 18 W
#R Public FREE UNIX system - providing news and email for UNIX
#R knowledgeable people. Free feeds available ...
#R Call (516) 667-6142 - Hayes Ultra 14.4 (V.32bis/...)
#R (516) 586-4743 - Telebit WorldBlazer (TurboPEP/V.32bis/...)
#R This system, is the main UUCP interface to irises.kilonet.org
<http://irises.kilonet.org>, the
#R real news workhorse.
#U src4src jaflrn areyes erixami dabeef
#U irises dfbbs
#W kilowatt!krewat (Arthur Krewat) ; Sun Feb 27 10:00:01 GMT 1994
#
kilowatt kilonet.org <http://kilonet.org>(LOCAL)
kilowatt = kilowatt.kilonet.org <http://kilowatt.kilonet.org>
kilowatt src4src(DIRECT), jaflrn(DEMAND+FAST),
areyes(EVENING+FAST), erixami(DIRECT+FAST), dabeef(DAILY+FAST),
irises(LOCAL), dfbbs(DAILY+FAST)
7:35 p.m.
On 05/08/2018 01:15 PM, Arthur Krewat wrote:
I'll take you up on that offer :)
Cool. :-)
I'll reply directly this evening with details for you.
I do have an account with one of those commercial
providers. Not sure
how they'd take to pushing news articles to them, but it's worth a shot.
I don't know how they would respond.
I'd hope that they would just see a higher than expected volume, and
that you might be posting articles that they've already seen.
Effectively you're talking about a (reverse?) suck feed.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
7:23 p.m.
On Tue, 8 May 2018, Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote:
On 05/08/2018 12:35 PM, Arthur Krewat wrote:
:(
USENET as an entity is still alive and well.
Indeed. Some might argue that there's a resurgence of Usenet servers. I'm
just one example that's has decided to run a text only news server. I see
more of them every year.
The reason for it might be sharing of warez and
porn,
I personally don't object to content leveraging the Usenet infrastructure,
*as* *long* *as* *it's* *legal*.
I can personally decide if I want to partake / consume in content or not. —
Obviously my text only news server does not partake in non-textual content.
but for example, alt.sys.pdp10 still exists
Yep.
I'm showing 164 messages since October 10th 2017.
% ls -1 /var/spool/news/articles/alt/sys/pdp10 | wc -l
164
% ls -l /var/spool/news/articles/alt/sys/pdp10 | grep 2017
-rw-rw-r-- 1 news news 1463 Oct 10 2017 1
The problem is, many of us have stopped using it
for whatever reason, and
certainly don't store/forward much.
Fair.
I wonder how different things would be if various web applications leveraged
Usenet (NNTP) (or IMAP) as a back end storage for things like blogs / forums.
Maybe it's time to take it back and get back
to the original intention of
USENET.
I question if there is really anything to take back. I was active in
comp.mail.sendmail for years and then stopped when I changed jobs. All I had
to do was subscribe my news reader and continue like nothing ever changed.
(Save for the smaller amount of content in said newsgroup these days.) I've personally run small news servers with ~10
peers twice. One time years
ago, and again now I have two news servers. One is on my VPS with a bunch of
peers and the other is in my house that only peers with my VPS.
If anyone wants to get back into the game, let me know and I'll happily peer
with you.
I've thought of running a usenet server or servers - I've got a few
servers - but I don't even know about software to do so, let alone servers
to peer with.
I think that "take back" really directly
translates to "use again".
I've never really stopped. xD
-uso.
7:29 p.m.
On 05/08/2018 01:23 PM, Steve Nickolas wrote:
I've thought of running a usenet server or
servers - I've got a few
servers - but I don't even know about software to do so, let alone
servers to peer with.
I've always used INN. I'm happy enough, and it works for me.
There are a few other common news servers. It depends on the platform
that you want to run on.
I'm typically seeing < 100 MB of news a day. My VPS has < 4 GB news
spool going back 30 days. My private server has unchecked storage and
is using about 42 GB.
Peers can be found. Email if you want help.
I've never really stopped. xD
:-)
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
9 May
9 May
12:46 a.m.
On Tue, 8 May 2018, Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote:
I've always used INN. I'm happy enough, and
it works for me.
There are a few other common news servers. It depends on the platform that
you want to run on.
I'm typically seeing < 100 MB of news a day. My VPS has < 4 GB news spool
going back 30 days. My private server has unchecked storage and is using
about 42 GB.
Peers can be found. Email if you want help.
The servers I have are a Debian (Linux) VPS, a Debian (Linux) dedicated
server, a FreeBSD dedicated server and a Debian (FreeBSD) quasi-VPS - I
could probably use any or all of those. The straight FreeBSD box is my
mail server (Postfix).
-uso.
8 May
8 May
7:26 p.m.
I do as well. The old comp.lang.xxx was a real resource that no longer exists really.
I know what killed it, the lack of any real moderation (the moderation system was really
the honor system). Attempts at a cooperative social moderation and USENET death packets
didn’t really stem the ultimate swamping of the system by ne’er-do-wells.
From: TUHS [mailto:tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org] On Behalf Of Seth Morabito
On Tue, May 8, 2018, at 10:27 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
I was lamenting the (asymptotic) death of usenet to a colleague the other day and asked,
"
7:48 p.m.
On 05/08/2018 01:26 PM, Ron Natalie wrote:
I know what killed it, the lack of any real moderation
(the moderation
system was really the honor system).
Are you referring to 3rd party cancel messages and the likes?
I'd swear that I'm subscribed to some moderated newsgroups where posted
articles pass through moderators (algorithm) before being posted to the
newsgroup. — I've not looked at the technology under the hood.
The various mozilla.* newsgroups immediately come to mind.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
8:54 p.m.
Em ter, 8 de mai de 2018 16:26, Ron Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> escreveu:
I know what killed it, the lack of any real
moderation (the moderation
system was really the honor system).
I got in quite late in the game, in 2001, but as of today I still remember
it as the best way to discuss over the internet that I have experienced. I
agree on the lack of moderation being the weakness that made the noise
surpass the signal. All the web forum software that surfaced on the 00's
and beyond was mostly a response to that. If it weren't for this weakness,
people nowadays would probably be using web interfaces to nntp just like
they do to email, and we old farts could still be happily using our
preferred news clients.
So while I applaud the ones who are trying to keep the system alive, this
weakness (and maybe others), if not addressed, will pose a natural limit to
Usenet growth and quality. If we start putting servers up and manage to
attract good contributors back, the spam will follow and then the noise
will drive them away again.
But yet, we are at such a point where bandwidth and storage is so cheap
that reviving Usenet could be accomplished by a bunch of hobbists spending
little money. If at least we could solve the moderation weakness. Does
someone have any idea if there were any attempts at cracking this problem
that were open source and effective?
10:55 p.m.
On 05/08/2018 02:54 PM, Daniel Camolês wrote:
I got in quite late in the game, in 2001, but as of
today I still
remember it as the best way to discuss over the internet that I have
experienced. I agree on the lack of moderation being the weakness that
made the noise surpass the signal. All the web forum software that
surfaced on the 00's and beyond was mostly a response to that. If it
weren't for this weakness, people nowadays would probably be using web
interfaces to nntp just like they do to email, and we old farts could
still be happily using our preferred news clients.
As much as I want to agree with you, I think that the stand alone
islands still would have gotten more popular than Usenet at least for
the following reason:
1) Web sites can control what the site looks like, thus the GUI people
can fiddle to their hearts content.
2) It's much simpler to build some random database to hold comments for
a web forum than it is to comply with / inter operate with / adhere to
(arguably simple) standards.
So while I applaud the ones who are trying to keep the
system alive,
this weakness (and maybe others), if not addressed, will pose a natural
limit to Usenet growth and quality. If we start putting servers up and
manage to attract good contributors back, the spam will follow and then
the noise will drive them away again.
I don't know how many people can be brought back to Usenet. Further, I
don't know how many people I want brought back to Usenet.
IMHO Usenet works for those that want it to work. It provides the
desired service and is IMHO just obscure enough that the mainstream is
not on it. I'm cool with that.
But yet, we are at such a point where bandwidth and
storage is so cheap
that reviving Usenet could be accomplished by a bunch of hobbists
spending little money. If at least we could solve the moderation
weakness. Does someone have any idea if there were any attempts at
cracking this problem that were open source and effective?
I think there are a number of people / hobbyists that run (text only)
news servers (like myself) doing exactly that.
I think there are some efforts at reducing spam and making moderation
work. I don't know any details about them.
I think that we need to hold server operators accountable for people
that post crap through them. I routinely see lots of crap posted to
specific Linux newsgroups, and almost all of it passes through a
specific server (network). Just about the time that I get motivated to
contact the abuse contact, the crap stops.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
11:16 p.m.
On May 8, 2018, at 3:55 PM, Grant Taylor via TUHS
<tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
I think there are a number of people / hobbyists that run (text only) news servers (like
myself) doing exactly that.
I don't understand what a "text only" news server is. A "news"
server schleps "news" around via NNTP. The protocol is "text," as is
SMTP for mail. Is there a "binary" variation?
11:18 p.m.
On 8 May 2018 at 19:16, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon(a)orthanc.ca> wrote:
I was curious about this too - do yo just detect encoded attachments and
delete them?
-Henry
On May 8, 2018, at 3:55 PM, Grant Taylor via TUHS
<tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org>
wrote:
I think there are a number of people / hobbyists that run (text only)
news servers
(like myself) doing exactly that.
I don't understand what a "text only" news server is. A "news"
server
schleps "news" around via NNTP. The protocol is "text," as is SMTP
for
mail. Is there a "binary" variation? 
11:21 p.m.
usenet became a primary channel for sharing music, pictures and
videos. files were split into chunks, and then refreshed as chunks.
Its like p2p before bittorrent with little or no in-band feedback.
(you would see people begging for fragment 101/1001 to be re-sent)
this reached the point where, by article count and bytecount, far more
of USENET was binary target mime attachments than discourse.
-G
On Wed, May 9, 2018 at 9:18 AM, Henry Bent <henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 8 May 2018 at 19:16, Lyndon Nerenberg
<lyndon(a)orthanc.ca> wrote:
I was curious about this too - do yo just detect encoded attachments and
delete them?
-Henry
On May 8, 2018, at 3:55 PM, Grant Taylor via TUHS
<tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org>
wrote:
I think there are a number of people / hobbyists that run (text only)
news servers (like myself) doing exactly that.
I don't understand what a "text only" news server is. A "news"
server
schleps "news" around via NNTP. The protocol is "text," as is SMTP
for
mail. Is there a "binary" variation?
11:25 p.m.
On 05/08/2018 05:18 PM, Henry Bent wrote:
I was curious about this too - do yo just detect
encoded attachments and
delete them?
Yes and / or no.
Yes in that there are things like CleanFeed that can be configured to
reject typical binary encoding methods (UUCP & MIME being most predominant).
No in that it is possible to exclude groups that have (some variant of)
".bin." in their name.
It is possible to use a combination of either of the above techniques.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
11:22 p.m.
On 05/08/2018 05:16 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
I don't understand what a "text only"
news server is. A "news" server
schleps "news" around via NNTP. The protocol is "text," as is SMTP
for mail.
"Test only" means no binary files. (UUCP or MIME encoded).
No images / no warz / no pr0n / etc.
I'm sure that something does occasionally slip through. But it should
be such a rarity that nobody notices.
It also means that a number of the *.bin.* (et al) newsgroups are omitted.
"Text only" is just a generic classification and way of saying that I'm
not going to provide binary content. Read: Go get that from one of the
big professional players. ;-)
Is there a "binary" variation?
There is the NNTPS variant of running NNTP over SSL (TLS), but that
binary component is just the transport, not the protocol that runs
through it.
That being said, I think there there may be a tiny bit of binary to
NNTP. Or at least every time I've looked at it with tcpdump /
Wirershark there was something about the replies from the receiving
server that make me think that ACKs / NAKs may be binary. But chances
are good that I'm not paying enough attention and misinterpreting something.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
11:37 p.m.
On May 8, 2018, at 5:22 PM, Grant Taylor <gtaylor(a)tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
"Test only" means no binary files. (UUCP or MIME encoded).
s/s/x/
It also usually implies that only smaller messages are accepted.
Where smaller is usually some power of 2 or 10 kB per message.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
9 May
9 May
12:54 a.m.
On Tue, 8 May 2018, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
There's a bunch of groups, like alt.binaries.*, that carry large volumes
of pirated material (software, videos, DVDISOs, etc.). A text-only server
excludes those groups.
-uso.
On May 8, 2018, at 3:55 PM, Grant Taylor via TUHS
<tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
I think there are a number of people / hobbyists that run (text only) news servers (like
myself) doing exactly that.
I don't understand what a "text only" news server is. A "news"
server schleps "news" around via NNTP. The protocol is "text," as is
SMTP for mail. Is there a "binary" variation? 
4:53 p.m.
On 5/8/2018 12:25 PM, Seth Morabito wrote:
I'm looking especially for nn, which was my go-to
at the time. The oldest version I've found so far is nn 6.4, which is too big to
compile on a 3B2/400. If I could get my hands on 6.1 or earlier, I think I'd have a
good chance.
From this:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NhNfJ21wtY8J:https://…
I assume that nn 6.4 was indeed able to run on 3B2 but maybe not a model
400?
5:01 p.m.
On Tue, May 8, 2018, at 9:53 AM, Arthur Krewat wrote:
On 5/8/2018 12:25 PM, Seth Morabito wrote:
Well now I have to laugh... loomcom.com is my own server. Apparently I had old versions of
trn and nn *right under my own nose*. That just goes to show how badly I need to curate
that big dump of 3B2 stuff I've been hoarding.
Thank you for finding that.
(By the way, I reorganized recently. Everything under
https://static.loomcom.com/3b2/software moved to
https://static.loomcom.com/3b2/software_archive/ so I could build a brand new repository
under the 'software' directory.)
-Seth
--
Seth Morabito
web(a)loomcom.com
I'm looking especially for nn, which was my
go-to at the time. The oldest version I've found so far is nn 6.4, which is too big
to compile on a 3B2/400. If I could get my hands on 6.1 or earlier, I think I'd have
a good chance.
From this:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NhNfJ21wtY8J:https://…
I assume that nn 6.4 was indeed able to run on 3B2 but maybe not a model
400? 
9:49 p.m.
On Tue, 8 May 2018, Seth Morabito wrote:
I'm experimenting with setting up UUCP and Usenet
on a cluster of
3B2/400s, and I've quickly discovered that while it's trivial to find
old source code for Usenet (B News and C News), it's virtually
impossible to find source code for old news *readers*.
I'm looking especially for nn, which was my go-to at the time. The
oldest version I've found so far is nn 6.4, which is too big to
compile on a 3B2/400. If I could get my hands on 6.1 or earlier, I
think I'd have a good chance.
rn was available for 4.3BSD
I don't find this code on TUHS, but I got mine from disk 2 of the
CSRG Archives. (You can find some old versions of it searching for
"/new/rn/ng.h".)
11:39 p.m.
On May 8, 2018, at 12:25 PM, Seth Morabito <web(a)loomcom.com> wrote:
As an aside: If you were active on Usenet in 1989,
what software were you using?
Maybe a bit earlier — 1985–1987? — but I always loved Kenneth Almquist’s ‘vnews’ as a
newsreader. There was something incredibly simple and graceful about it. It was
curses-based, but at the same time very Unix-y — no BBS-like prompts or extra noise.
Minimal and perfect. Many times I’ve tried to build a similar interface on modern systems,
and it’s harder than one would think.
A few years back I found a shar file of some late vnews distribution. (Sadly, I can’t find
a link now — but have the sources if anyone wants.) I was surprised how complicated the C
code was, not to mention the build system! No blame to Almquist at all — I’d simply
forgotten how difficult it was in the ‘80s to architect software that could work on more
than one Unix distribution.
I ran vnews, and I think C news, on a Parallel XR300 machine, which was (in theory) a
fault-tolerant box with Sun motherboards. That was in Maryland — I was psc!jsl.
—John
9 May
9 May
12:08 a.m.
On Tue, 8 May 2018, John Labovitz wrote:
Maybe a bit earlier ? 1985?1987? ? but I always loved
Kenneth
Almquist?s ?vnews? as a newsreader. There was something incredibly
This was also available with 4.2BSD. I also don't see on TUHS, but a
search for 43bsd news/src/readnews.c should find it on the web. I got my
copy from disk 2 from the CSRG Archives. Well I see readnews there on
disk 1 for 4.2BSD too (without the visual interface).
12:11 a.m.
On Tue, 8 May 2018, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
On Tue, 8 May 2018, John Labovitz wrote:
Seth that old 1983 code is at
https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.2BSD//usr/src/new/new/news/src
(See the Makefile about readnews.)
(Hey why does that TUHS view say 1970-01-01?)
Maybe a bit earlier ? 1985?1987? ? but I always
loved Kenneth
Almquist?s ?vnews? as a newsreader. There was something incredibly
This was also available with 4.2BSD. I also don't see on TUHS, but a
search for 43bsd news/src/readnews.c should find it on the web. I got my
copy from disk 2 from the CSRG Archives. Well I see readnews there on
disk 1 for 4.2BSD too (without the visual interface). 
12:42 a.m.
On Tue, May 08, 2018 at 07:11:36PM -0500, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
Seth that old 1983 code is at
https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.2BSD//usr/src/new/new/news/src
(See the Makefile about readnews.)
(Hey why does that TUHS view say 1970-01-01?)
That must have been the timestamps on the files when I added them :)
Cheers, Warren
12:31 a.m.
On May 8, 2018, at 4:39 PM, John Labovitz <johnl(a)johnlabovitz.com> wrote:
Maybe a bit earlier — 1985–1987? — but I always loved Kenneth Almquist’s ‘vnews’ as a
newsreader. There was something incredibly simple and graceful about it. It was
curses-based, but at the same time very Unix-y — no BBS-like prompts or extra noise.
Minimal and perfect. Many times I’ve tried to build a similar interface on modern systems,
and it’s harder than one would think.
A few years back I found a shar file of some late vnews distribution. (Sadly, I can’t
find a link now — but have the sources if anyone wants.) I was surprised how complicated
the C code was, not to mention the build system! No blame to Almquist at all — I’d simply
forgotten how difficult it was in the ‘80s to architect software that could work on more
than one Unix distribution.
I ran vnews, and I think C news, on a Parallel XR300 machine, which was (in theory) a
fault-tolerant box with Sun motherboards. That was in Maryland — I was psc!jsl.
I had stashed away comp.sources.unix archives in 2002.
Volumes 1 through 29. I find the below news related items.
Both vnews (Jan 1985) and rn (May 1985) are in volume 1.
[Now it all seems more complicated than needed.]
$ grep news comp.sources.unix/index
newshar The Connoisseur's Shar, version 2
newsweed Newsweed: a program to delete unwanted news articles
readnews.1 Manual page for 2.10.2 readnews(1)
vnews.1 Manual page for 2.10.2 vnews(1)
vnews/part[1-7] Vnews part 1
xfernews xfernews software
pnews.patch Patch to Pnews to save article
newspace newspace - determine newsgroup disk usage
newbatcha Usenet news batcher control program
newbatchb Usenet news batcher control program
newscnt Count unread news articles
2.11news/part[01-08] 2.11 News Documentation and Conversion
2.11news/part[09-10] 2.11 News Miscellaneous Files
2.11news/part[11-19] 2.11 News Source
2.11news/part20 News change log and makefile
2.11news/patch[01-08] Patch #1 for news 2.11 source
multi-feed.c++ Simultaneous multi-site news feeder in C++
vn/part[01-03] The VN news reader
cnews/part[01-14] C News alpha release
vn.jan.88/part[01-05] VN newsreader, 1/88 version
nntp1.5/part[01-09] Network News Transfer Protocol, version 1.5
headers Selectively retrieve news article headers
cnews2/part[01]19] Cnews production release
cnews1/patch1 Cnews production release, Patch1
nn/part[01-15] NN, a Usenet news reader
nn/patch1 NN, a Usenet news reader, Patch1
snefru/part[01-04] Snefru hash and netnews validation ...
nn6.4/part[01-22] NN Newsreader, release 6.4
nn6.4/patch[1-4] NN newsreader, release 6.4
newsxd/part[01-03] Netnews transmission daemon
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51 comments
22 participants
participants (22)
-
Andy Kosela -
arnold＠skeeve.com -
Arthur Krewat -
Bakul Shah -
Clem Cole -
Dan Cross -
Daniel Camolês -
Dave Horsfall -
George Michaelson -
Grant Taylor -
Henry Bent -
Jeremy C. Reed -
John Labovitz -
Larry McVoy -
Lyndon Nerenberg -
Michael Parson -
Mike Markowski -
Ron Natalie -
Seth Morabito -
Steve Nickolas -
Warner Losh -
Warren Toomey