Re: does anyone even use usenet

On 8/14/2024 1:59 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 08:59:47 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com>
wrote:
 

Looks like you can still register it if you already had a key.
>
I apparently have it already installed, but I don't have a key (maybe I
do buried somewhere on an old backup, but not for the latest version.)
>
Also found that there's an issue with it that it won't be able to handle
posts on or after 19 January 2038, so mark your calendars, 13.3... years
from now you'll need to get a different newsreader.

  Sounds like Agent (or perhaps NNTP?) is calculating its time based on
2**32 seconds. This is a known issue with A LOT of software, and is
similar to the Y2K bug. Programs count how many seconds have passed
since 1 Jan 1970, an calculate the current date from there. The number
is stored in a 32-bit integer. But once that overflows (e.g., more
than 2,147,483,647 seconds have gone by since 1 Jan 1970), computers
will roll-over and think the date is 2 billion seconds (give or take)
BEFORE that date (sometime in 1910, I think).
 Like Y2K, the problem is solvable by increasing the size of the
integer being counted. Many modern programs 2**64 seconds (starting,
again, from 1 Jan 1970), which allows a total count numbering in the
BILLIONS of years. Perhaps our distant ancestors may curse us for our
short-sightedness, but that seems sufficient for now. ;-)

TIL

This Epochalypse has been known about for years and years (even as far
back as the late 90s, when people were fixing the Y2K issue, it came
up as the next potential snafu in calculating time). Many systems
(including Linux, MacOS and Windows*) have already been updated to
correct the problem but there are doubtlessly thousands of critical
systems that won't get fixed until only a few years before 2038. I
have faith, though, that both Agent and Usenet will see correction
long before that.

Forte' seems to be dead, their usenet service is down, it's not open source, you can't actually buy it anymore, not to mention it's last update was 10 years ago.  So I doubt it'll be updated.
I don't know if the other readers have the same issue, and the most popular ones last update is from 14+ years ago. At least those are open source and someone might update them.
At least Thunderbird is still being updated.  Though from what I've been reading those updates seem to be making it worse as a newsreader, and it isn't even as good as those 14+ year old ones.
I hadn't considered Usenet itself might be affected, but it makes sense.
--
-Justisaur
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