
2013, the year of Usenet - zafiro17
http://www.therandymon.com/index.php?/244-2013,-the-Year-of-Usenet.html
======
moreentropy
That bit about total anonymity is just not true. Usually you would use your
organization's news server (because every ISP/university had one), so you
could be easily located. Plus, it was part of the netiquette to post using
your real name / well known identity.

Thinking of the 90s internet makes me all sentimental.

~~~
na85
Things were better, then.

Yeah we had to contend with flash sites and low bandwidth, and didn't have
slick css3 and backnode.js but the web was more fun in those days.

~~~
Finster
Flash sites? If the content didn't load in lynx it wasn't worth viewing.

~~~
acheron
I still think this sometimes.

~~~
dredmorbius
I fall back on text-mode readers (usually w3m) for sites which are too broken
in GUI browsers. It works rather more often than you'd expect (in large part
because web crawlers need text).

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agentultra
Don't get me going about FidoNet[0] either... there are still good usenet
servers out there[1].

 _Update_ added a link for those who are unfamiliar with FidoNet

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet)

[1] [http://www.eternal-september.org/](http://www.eternal-september.org/)

~~~
buckbova
I've been on easynews on and off for quite some time. It's got some good web
tools.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easynews](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easynews)

~~~
greyone
Yep, check out my full review here: [http://www.greycoder.com/the-best-usenet-
providers-of-2012/](http://www.greycoder.com/the-best-usenet-providers-
of-2012/)

~~~
buckbova
greyone, they also have an android app. You can browse and download directly
to your tablet or phone.

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sasoon
As a fun project, I have created web interface to Usenet with standard 3 panes
like Thunderbird. It is free and without ads, has around 15,000 newsgroups,
can be used without creating an account.

[http://www.newswebreader.com](http://www.newswebreader.com)

------
zandorg
This is my search engine for Usenet, currently only for the 1980s but I hope
to have 2003 onwards searchable soon. I have about 2TB of news from 2003 which
just needs indexing and uploading.

[http://www.dejadejadeja.com/10years/](http://www.dejadejadeja.com/10years/)

My goal is to give people an alternative to 'Google Groups'.

It's built on PHP and MySQL.

~~~
acuozzo
For his query:
[http://www.dejadejadeja.com/10years/query.php?body=Star+Wars...](http://www.dejadejadeja.com/10years/query.php?body=Star+Wars&subject=&newsgroups=&email_from=&dateearly=&datelate=1983-01-01&minsize=&maxsize=&maxrows=100&orderby1=composeddate&orderby2=composedtime)

The top post is this:
[http://www.dejadejadeja.com/10years/getmsg.php?whichmsg=ixlp...](http://www.dejadejadeja.com/10years/getmsg.php?whichmsg=ixlpc.166)

It has a post date of: Wed Dec 15 10:30:01 1982, but is given as 1970-01-01 in
the search results.

I'm seeing lots of 1970-01-01 results. A bug, perhaps?

~~~
zandorg
Yes, it can't handle all date formats, so it defaults to 0 which is Jan 1st
1970.

It's easily fixable but I haven't got around to it yet.

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Havoc
>brief resurgence distributing binaries - images, video, warez - but even that
era faded

The author is clearly not sufficiently connected. Binaries are going stronger
than ever.

~~~
throwaway0094
The TV networks, MPAA, RIAA started issuing automated DMCA notices in early
2013, making it more or less useless for content. Have things changed?

~~~
Tomdarkness
Some uploads just use a random file name now making it impossible for MPAA,
RIAA, etc. to just simply search usenet posts for their content. If you don't
have the NZB then it's unlikely you'll find it. Also if you use the european
usenet providers they typically don't comply with DMCA notices and have more
complex take down procedures.

~~~
throwaway0094
They were already doing random names in early 2013 too ... but it seemed like
the enforcement groups were grabbing NZBs and issuing DMCAs rather quickly,
even for those. _shrug_

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dredmorbius
Usenet, or something very much like it, with a markup language (to allow for
rich content), a paired messaging protocol (to allow for directly contacting
individuals in chat / private message mode), and associated content
distribution (images, video) could, I've felt for years, displace virtually
all of existing social media.

The primary missing elements are filtering (as noted) and a distributed search
capability.

~~~
moreentropy
That paired messaging protocol we used was called email. Filtering was pretty
sophisticated using scorefiles and killfiles. You didn't have rich media
because the Usenet was about exchange of thoughts and knowledge, but people
were pretty opinionated about formatting to make reading your posts pleasant
for everyone.

~~~
dredmorbius
Oh, I was there, and I'm aware of this.

The rich media thing: it's useful. A minimal markup (such as markdown) would
likely be sufficient. The ability to be able to emphasize and strongly
emphasize text, create bullets and numbered lists, indicate (multiple levels)
of quotes, hyperlinks. There's not much that Markdown itself doesn't provide.

A small amount of chrome for the masses would be nice. For the most part my
feeling is that existing HTML markup goes too far, generally in the direction
of _unusability_ for far too many websites.

Another feature which is quite useful is indicating followups and actions.
Here I find Reddit has one of the best models around, though the UI/UX
lightweight nature of G+'s Notifications widget is also nice (the absolute
uselessness of most of the actual notifications, and the inability to filter /
set precedence / classify types of notifications is a major failure of the
site). G+ also suffers from one of the largest DOMs I've seen in any major
website -- I've backed off using it pretty much at all, and find my browser
memory footprint is vastly more bearable.

~~~
riffraff
haven't newsreaders supported highlights of stuff like _underline_ /italics/,
_bold_ , multiple level of quoted stuff, bullet points etc since about
forever?

I remember forté agent and thunderbird doing it about ten years ago, and I
recall being annoyed that markdown differed :)

~~~
dredmorbius
There were conventions, and a lot of (graphical) newsreaders did support
automatically presenting text according to those, but ... implementations
varied.

Formalizing a _basic_ level such as markdown would be a big win.

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InclinedPlane
Usenet isn't going to make a comeback, it's a relic of a different sort of
internet than the one that exists today. Though something similar may end up
existing in the future, it will likely have a lot of new features (like karma
or trust networking or some such) that make the spam and trolling problems
tractable.

For reference, I spent a lot of time on usenet back in the '90s, using "tin"
as my newsreader. I even helped created a newsgroup in the "big 8" heirarchy.
There were a lot of fantastic things about those days but I don't think we can
ever get them back easily, too much was dependent on the community being
small.

~~~
infectoid
I kind of have to agree with you. But I also don't think this is a bad thing.
I'm glad I was there to see it all happen and despite the groans I may receive
I think reddit (as mentioned by other commenters) is a perfect evolution of
what was. It encourages small communities to exist in the form of sub-reddits
which has allowed it to survive the several massive growth phases in the last
several years.

Part of the reason that places like reddit and HN are still working is
because, I believe, they follow that same attitude from the usenet days. It's
more about the discussions and cross-pollination of thoughts (whether you
agree or not). Most importantly, it helps to break through that filter bubble
that looms over us all.

While I feel privileged to have seen the world pre and post internet, I'm
excited to see how we will be communicating in the next 20 years.

As I get older it seems harder to keep an open mind (yes, I can be very
sentimental when it comes to old computer tech, BBS The Documentary is my
ideal nerd porn) but I have to keep reminding myself that many great things
aren't recognized as such until after the fact.

If I'm honest with myself, I think I've read and participated in some of the
most thought provoking and hilarious on-line discussion from the early 2000's
onwards.

I'll stop blabbering now.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Reddit and HN can be alright, but they are a shadow of what was normal back in
usenet's glory days. Some sub-reddits can be quite good, especially with heavy
moderation, but they have all of the problems of usenet except worse.

Most discussions on HN/reddit have a 48-hour time horizon, if that, whereas
usenet could easily support threads lasting for weeks or months, with obvious
effects on the quality of discussion. Also, web-based discussion makes it
difficult to get rid of the clutter of read messages and manages threading
poorly so discussions that were perfectly fine when everyone was using
newsreaders would today be unwieldy.

------
27182818284
I've always felt that Reddit is Usenet 2.0. Calling it "the frontpage of the
Internet" is a way better slogan, though. (Alexis said Paul Graham used that
term on the WTP book tour during his lecture.)

------
Zoomla
I would be curious to know if an IRC log from the 90s exist at all (major
networks), even if it's only behind a "Google-wall"

------
kin
I had no idea Usenet was like a community or something. I primarily use it to
download stuff.

~~~
Steuard
Oh, god, it was glorious. Or at least, a lot of parts of it were. I made good
friends on the Tolkien newsgroups there, back when they were _the_ place for
discussions of his work (with multiple world-famous scholars taking part, and
intense debates between many deeply knowledgeable people that could last for
weeks). Nothing I've found today can compare. Heck, even the huge, high
traffic groups like rec.humor had a real sense of community if you watched for
a while and got to know the regulars. I still miss it (obviously).

------
elktea
Are you releasing the source to your NNTP web forum?

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kbar13
What's the first rule of usenet?

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jondiggsit
sigh.... The first rule of Usenet: You do not talk about usenet. Didn't he get
the memo?

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nichochar
Don't talk about it, stop upvoting god dammnit

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diegoarmando
What is this usenet?

~~~
mwfunk
[http://lmgtfy.com/?q=usenet](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=usenet)

