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Binary Newsgroups

  1. 2018-10-13 at 11:32 PM UTC
    #1
    Speedy Parker Black Hole [my absentmindedly lachrymatory gazania]
    Does anyone here still use usenet for access to the binary newsgroups? I subscribed to giganews up until about 2007. I quit because I got tired of buying HDDs to store all the movies, software, games, ebooks and other goodies that were available.

    For those not familiar with usenet or the binary newsgroups this guide is pretty good, pretty simple to understand, and has been around for quite some time.


    http://www.slyck.com/Newsgroups_Guide
  2. 2018-10-14 at 2:12 AM UTC
    #2
    Speedy Parker Black Hole [my absentmindedly lachrymatory gazania]
    Bump
  3. 2018-10-14 at 6:29 AM UTC
    #3
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    Keep it on topic guys, this is a topical forum. I deleted posts which were not OK, don't keep posting that kind of shit.

    Re: bin groups, I maintained a subscription for about a year when I was in college. It was a good way to pirate stuff when the dorm network tried to block torrenting or would cave on BS DMCA notices but with private trackers being where they are today I don't see a lot of reason to continue to pay for it.

    Usenet is weird in general, it's a fairly centralized technology (I mean it's federated but the cost to enter the federation is prohibitively high) but still has a kind of wild west vibe to it.
    The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
  4. 2018-10-14 at 10:45 AM UTC
    #4
    Speedy Parker Black Hole [my absentmindedly lachrymatory gazania]
    Originally posted by Lanny
    Keep it on topic guys, this is a topical forum. I deleted posts which were not OK, don't keep posting that kind of shit.

    Re: bin groups, I maintained a subscription for about a year when I was in college. It was a good way to pirate stuff when the dorm network tried to block torrenting or would cave on BS DMCA notices but with private trackers being where they are today I don't see a lot of reason to continue to pay for it.

    Usenet is weird in general, it's a fairly centralized technology (I mean it's federated but the cost to enter the federation is prohibitively high) but still has a kind of wild west vibe to it.
    Do you recall which news service you used?
  5. 2018-10-14 at 8:38 PM UTC
    #5
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    Originally posted by Speedy Parker Do you recall which news service you used?

    I was using astraweb. I think I shopped around a bit and picked the cheapest service without a quota at the time, since economy was key, but I didn't have any complaints about it.
  6. 2018-10-14 at 9:40 PM UTC
    #6
    Speedy Parker Black Hole [my absentmindedly lachrymatory gazania]
    Originally posted by Lanny
    I was using astraweb. I think I shopped around a bit and picked the cheapest service without a quota at the time, since economy was key, but I didn't have any complaints about it.

    I used giganews. They had no limits for data or speed at $25 a month which wasn't bad. But the retention was insane. Something like 900 plus days if I recall.
  7. 2018-10-15 at 1:02 AM UTC
    #7
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    astraweb was $5/mo when I was using it but up to $10 now, don't remember what retention was, probably not great given the price but I never had trouble finding things in any case. Oh, and it was rate limited, I think like 10 mbits/s or something. I guess that is kidna shitty these days but it didn't seem like a problem back when I was using crappier internet connections.
    The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
  8. 2018-10-15 at 1:13 AM UTC
    #8
    Speedy Parker Black Hole [my absentmindedly lachrymatory gazania]
    I remember astraweb.
  9. 2021-12-07 at 5:02 PM UTC
    #9
    STER0S Space Nigga [the disappointingly unanticipated slab]
    i miss newsgroups

    i used outlook back in 1999 to browse through them

    i was 12 years old at the time
  10. 2021-12-07 at 5:20 PM UTC
    #10
    Jiggaboo_Johnson Black Hole
    Originally posted by Speedy Parker Does anyone here still use usenet for access to the binary newsgroups? I subscribed to giganews up until about 2007. I quit because I got tired of buying HDDs to store all the movies, software, games, ebooks and other goodies that were available.

    For those not familiar with usenet or the binary newsgroups this guide is pretty good, pretty simple to understand, and has been around for quite some time.


    http://www.slyck.com/Newsgroups_Guide

    No, I probably stopped using them around ummm 95/96 or so I shifted to warez FTP sites rather than pissing around downloading from the binary newsgroups and then having to "stitch" the files together etc...was a bit of a pain in the ass when you could go on IRC and get a list of FTP servers full of warez. Of course that had it's ups and downs (pun intended) too...like the system admin of the FTP site...which was often some university somewhere, finding the warez folder someone had created and deleting it while you were halfway through getting it at 2.2k download speed.

    I guess I may have continued to check them out infrequently for the odd porn gif here and there.

    ETA: I didn't have subscription...no need, my ISP at the time had them for free (the newsgroups).
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