Hey guys. Been curious for years about diving into the newsgroup scene. But have never figured it out completely. I signed up for a free account at xsusenet. but have no idea how to search for anything. I understand there is like a provider and a search engine being 2 separate things that work independently from each other (Like your ISP and google). I understand free accounts have this "retention" where if after a certain amount of days free users have no access. If someone can point me to an up-to-date tutorial (something from this year or last) that can put me on the right path that ould be great. Happy to pay for a premium account, but would also like to try a free account and see if it is something I will find a use for. But if free accounts only allow you to get recently posted stuff, then that is not much good to me either. Thanks in advance guys :D
I've been using usenet since before the WWW (university). There was a purple patch before web discussion groups took over, then social media - I haven't even looked to see if there are any/many active discussion groups there anymore for over a decade. Also, the binary groups ruled open-access to pirated binary files outside of BB boards but that is also dead now for free open access, groups are dominated by obfuscated file names of password protected files and you need to join a membership-only web site, usually paid, to get the real file names and passwords. The binary groups are flooded with this stuff. I still subscribe to the music production software groups but they've been dead for many years, occasionally somebody posts a mini-flood hoping to restart the whole thing but then soon after, when nobody posts other new stuff, bitterly declares we had our chance and s/he is gone forever. These days I only use usenet to download magazines, there's one poster who has kept this up for many years, posting new magazines every day. alt.binaries.e-book.magazines If you want to test the waters the best way is to get a program like Grabit (I use Newsbin but you don't need the complexity to begin with, Grabit is simple): https://www.shemes.com/ ...and you can get a free 10Gb server account (with no sign-up needed) from here (scroll down the page): https://usenet.farm/ Start by searching through the group list in Grabit then subscribe to them based on how many posts are in the group, if it's healthy there will be several thousand. There are search engines, I use https://www.binsearch.info/ but rarely find it useful. Last edited: Jun 13, 2022
I was with xsusenet for several years until they changed the sign-up requirements to insist on real identity information a couple of months ago. If anybody is aware of a similar service I'd appreciate knowing about it.
Imho, the golden era of Usenet is over. I had a subscription with Eweka, huge retention, affordable. Don't know about their current identity policy. Searching: For audio stuff you'd like to visit the 'alt.binaries.sounds.utilities' - newsgroup. But in general you'll find lot's of posts with vague names on the Usenet, not revealing what's inside. So you'll need acces to an index site or community of spotters & posters that show what to find where. Problem is, these indexers & groups are targeted by authorities & industry, so they often go down, and resurface under other names. Still, you''ll run into lots of garbage. Connect with trusted communities & know your spotters is important. Below you''ll find a dutch community with lots of info - via Google Translate. Spoiler: links https://www-duken-nl.translate.goog...l=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www.eweka.nl/en/usenet_toegang/specificaties [/SPOILER
