Re: Note - ISP Screwed Up - Can WRITE But Not SEE

On 1/24/25 4:33 AM, D wrote:

  On Fri, 24 Jan 2025, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
 

On 1/23/25 4:05 PM, D wrote:

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On Thu, 23 Jan 2025, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
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On 23/01/2025 15:44, D wrote:

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On Wed, 22 Jan 2025, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
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On 1/22/25 3:00 PM, Marco Moock wrote:

On 22.01.2025 00:19 Uhr 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
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Well, I can see - by posting with my normal ISP and
then reading from NeoDome (but can't POST from Neo).

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Maybe they restrict posting to avoid abuse.
Ask the admin of it.

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 Yep, they don't allow posting anymore - too
 many spammers. None of the other freebies
 seem to work at all any more or want you
 to "register". Some ISPs block port 119.
 This is not good.
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 My provider finally did fix it. Alas they
 may only have one old guy who knows how
 the NNTP server works. Don't think they
 even offer it to newbies anymore.
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 By modern standards, usenet is kinda small
 data-wise - and mostly just text. Would not
 take a super-box. Maybe some people are
 worried about liability - lots of weird
 stuff here ? Perhaps someone in a kinda
 off-the-map country can start a new free
 service. (hmmm ... Belize maybe?)

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I think it should be entirely feasible, and fairly cheap, to start your own usenet provider on a few hetzner VM:s. The only thing you'd need is a few peers, inn (or equivalent) and off you go.
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I've toyed with the idea myself from time to time, but so far haven't had the time to do something about it since other projects have priority.

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Yep.
I have set up a few INN servers. The problem back in the day was the binary newsgroups - people uploading pirate images of massive size..

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Isn't it very easy to just not offer the binary crap? There are way better methods today to get your hands on binaries than trawling through newsgroups downloading and integrating small compressed files.
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It does take a bit of looking after. If you let everyone access it before you know it there is a huge amount of illegal shit being transferred on legitimate newsgroups, ratware is smashing against every door it can find and people are trying to DOS it just because someone called them out for being a doofus.

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It is very interesting! How long before someone would try and destroy your publicly available free news server? ;)
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On the other hand, one could always hope that the nr of people who even know what it is is so small that it could live happily unmoderated!
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On the other hand, if spam increases too much or the complaints keep piling up, maybe the peers will drop you?
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But technically its not hard to do for a small community of users

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A hobby project for you? =)

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 There must be something in-between usenet and 'X' - http
 rather than p119. Simple interface but hooks for better
 alternative reader apps.
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 Remember BBS's ? The trick was that there was usually only

 Yes! Those were the days!
 

 ONE server holding all the messages. Depending, this is not
 necessarily terrible. The spreads-it-around nature of usenet
 is interesting, good redundancy, but the number of feed servers
 seems to be decreasing, fewer and fewer sources for the articles.
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 As for binaries ... you just set a reasonable limit for msg size,
 and forbid .part's. A detector for ascii-encoded bin will work too.

 I imagine that existing, hobby usenet providers would be happy share their spam tools and lists which I am sure gets rid of a lot of stuff.
 

 As such, a modern BBS - prob with one or two fail-over servers -
 would be the middle path. Structure everything like usenet,
 just NOT usenet. Could even pipe in actual usenet articles,
 for as long as they last.

 If you want to go global you can always join Fidonet. Still around, kind of like a less known usenet. I do think it is more of a hassle to become a Fidonet member though. It seems to me that peering with a usenet provider is easier to setup than fidonet which is a bit more administrative and cumbersome.

   Ahh - I remember FIDOnet ! It's kinda like usenet ... keeps
   a local copy and then forwards to all peers. Haven't looked
   at it for ages though. Not even sure how to get at it ...

 Again though the "liability" issue for un-PC content. It's
 sort of a prob in the USA but a much bigger prob in the EU
 and beyond. As said, such a system needs to be located in
 a who-knows/cares-country where it's hard to get at legally.

 In europe I would not worry about it at all.

   Huh ??? LOOK at their pogroms against Musk and Goog
   and a bunch of others for "un-PC" material !!!
   The Thought Police have a comfy home and real police
   powers in the EU. You can be ARRESTED for wrong-thinking.
   You'd think Russia took over the whole place in 1945.
   It's a horrible embarrassment for the 'free world'.

First of all, no one in power even knows what usenet is, so no one will ever look. Second, most of the nasty stuff can easily be blocked or filtered. Third, the responsibility of the post is the posters and not yours (at least in my jurisdiction). At _worst_ your responsibility is to remove the content from your servers, if asked. Otherwise, nothing to worry about.

   "Survival through obscurity" sometimes works - but
   sometimes doesn't. Just takes ONE little witch-
   hunter looking for a promotion to expose a dreaded
   case of Unregulated Thoughts .......