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Comment by yori | Hacker News Reader

Has Usenet really died? I still see many active newsgroups with posts appearing daily.

I'm surprised I had to scroll down this far to see this. Usenet is still very much alive. It's not what it once was, but I regularly participate on several technical newsgroups that are still fairly active. The signal-to-noise ratio is not great, but killfiles (filters) can help with that.

I use the https://www.eternal-september.org/ free NNTP server. There are others.

"Yes, Usenet still exists, technically. In terms of active use, outside a very few limited newsgroups (mostly peers of technical mailing lists), it's dead to today's Internet users."

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c3xyu/why_use...

(From one of the primary sources linked in TFA.)

Forgive my ignorance but how/where do you get to it? It's been so long since I even tried I'm not sure where to begin anymore.

Thanks!

Here is a long list of clients:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Usenet_newsreaders

And you can get free access to the text groups (no alt.binaries.*) from, at least, either of:

Eternal September:

https://www.eternal-september.org/

AIOE

https://www.aioe.org/

Thanks, after I posted this I had a look at eternal-september that another poster also mentioned in a different thread.

I decided I don't have time today but bookmarked it for some other time.

Checking the list of clients I was pleased to see Claws on there, that also took me back. Might have to give it another look, it's been a while.

thanks again, I appreciate the feedback!

I suspect just as many users get just as much value today out of Usenet as they did in the early 90s, it just seems failed by comparison to explosive growth of the web.

I still use it every day too.

I was a usenet user back in the day, but I don't actually know how I would access it now. Is there any other way than using a commercial provider? My ISP certainly doesn't provide access and haven't for I don't know how long.

I use the free server at Eternal September [1] It only carries the text groups, no binaries (so no pOrn).

[1] https://www.eternal-september.org/

Me too! Well, maybe not every day, but most days. Usenet rules.

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