I have never really used newsgroups before. I know they were an
absolutely huge deal for a long time, but when I was getting on the
internet as a tween/teen (circa 1999-2000) it passed me by for the most
part. I do remember occasionally looking at newsgroups but I was more
into IRC and games with friends. Plus it would have been a challenge
getting it all set up with the limited computer time I was allowed!

But this is awesome. I've always seen GNUS inside emacs and thought it
would be so cool to have newsgroups inside emacs... and now finally I
have a newsgroup to be a part of! Very excited about this!

I really hope this becomes more lively. I've subscribed to this group (tilde.club)... is there more activity in the other groups? Still
figuring out how this all works (and having some hiccups with gnus not
wanting to list the groups I've subscribed to properly).

Cheers!

-amr
--- Synchronet 3.18b-Linux NewsLink 1.113

Nice. I don’t think it’s overly busy on Any of the groups. Hopefully things will pick up as more users start using the service. :)

On 2021-03-28, Deepend <deepend@rdnetbbs.com.remove-12e8-this> wrote:

To: Alexander

Nice. I don’t think it’s overly busy on Any of the groups. Hopefully things will pick up as more users start using the service. :)
--- Synchronet 3.18b-Linux NewsLink 1.113
message from RetroDigtal BBS - telnet://rdnetbbs.com

The overall network isn't too busy, but if you just subscribe to
everything it adds up nicely. At this point I feel like we're getting a
handful of messages per week. Little by little it's picking up.
--- Synchronet 3.18b-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 27/03/2021 01:20, Alexander wrote:

I have never really used newsgroups before. I know they were an
absolutely huge deal for a long time, but when I was getting on the
internet as a tween/teen (circa 1999-2000) it passed me by for the most
part. I do remember occasionally looking at newsgroups but I was more
into IRC and games with friends. Plus it would have been a challenge
getting it all set up with the limited computer time I was allowed!

But this is awesome. I've always seen GNUS inside emacs and thought it
would be so cool to have newsgroups inside emacs... and now finally I
have a newsgroup to be a part of! Very excited about this!

I really hope this becomes more lively. I've subscribed to this group (tilde.club)... is there more activity in the other groups? Still
figuring out how this all works (and having some hiccups with gnus not wanting to list the groups I've subscribed to properly).

Cheers!

-amr

Hello!
I've just started lurking after not using newsgroups for at least 20
years.. Nice to see there are a few people about :)
~eld

--- Synchronet 3.18b-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On Fri, 26 Mar 2021, Alexander wrote:

I have never really used newsgroups before. I know they were an
absolutely huge deal for a long time, but when I was getting on the
internet as a tween/teen (circa 1999-2000) it passed me by for the most
part. I do remember occasionally looking at newsgroups but I was more
into IRC and games with friends. Plus it would have been a challenge
getting it all set up with the limited computer time I was allowed!

I have never got a chance to get on USENET, or even IRC
back in their heyday. Even in early 2000s, I had a very limited
access to software, so I was only able to use WWW and webmail.

While I have come to know of IRC and NNTP later on, protocol-wise;
I just simply didn't get the feel... "What's the deal with IRC netsplit?",
"How exactly could I connect to USENET today?", "How exactly news in
newsgroup propagated around the world?", and others, were unanswered
questions in my head with mystic air around them.

That is, until the road of vernacular web led me to the doorstep
of Tilde.club last year. From there, I ended up joining a rank of
people who started using IRC, Gopher, and NNTP in 2020; after living
through the age of WWW.

Even now, there is another old time mystery that I haven't got into yet:
the mesh of UUCP. Now it seems that some Tildezens have started making
some progress trekking into this old forgotten land. [1]

On Fri, 26 Mar 2021, Alexander wrote:

I really hope this becomes more lively. I've subscribed to this group (tilde.club)... is there more activity in the other groups? Still
figuring out how this all works (and having some hiccups with gnus not wanting to list the groups I've subscribed to properly).

Well, like ~deepend said; the whole Tildeverse Netnews network
is considered low-traffic-- I subscribe to all newsgroups here
to see what's going on around (and for debugging reasons).

Though, it had gone quite a long way from Tilde.club Netnews revival
September last year. [2] Back then, I would get around 1 post a week
on average, with complete silence in some weeks.

Fast forward to the present: I opened my newsreader this morning,
and I got 7 new posts... from a streak of single day.

Cheers for Netnews,
~xwindows

-----

[1] If you are into this kind of thing, see also #uucp IRC channel on
tilde.chat, together with bits and pieces on <news:tilde.projects>,
<news:tilde.services.uucp> newsgroup here, and probably
<https://tildegit.org/UUCP-Grassroots/incubator/wiki/--Home> too.

[2] Important milestone, as Tilde.club (a.k.a. news.tildeverse.org)
is a public gateway to Tildeverse Netnews; which allows Tildezens
on Tilde servers that don't officially participate in NNTP peering
to read and post.

Juicy details about the revival is available, in case anyone
is curious about it:

- "Tilde.club newspool now restored" [2020-09-18T11:59:59Z]
<nntp://news.tilde.club/tilde.club/9>
<news:alpine.LFD.2.23.451.2009181832080.2046475@tilde.club>

- "A copycat recipe for suck-feeding from Tildeverse NNTP newspool"
[2020-09-25T08:58:58Z]
<nntp://news.tilde.club/tilde.club/23>
<news:alpine.LFD.2.23.451.2009251556480.2030507@tilde.club>
--- Synchronet 3.18b-Linux NewsLink 1.113

xwindows <xwindows@tilde.club> writes:

Even now, there is another old time mystery that I haven't got into yet:
the mesh of UUCP. Now it seems that some Tildezens have started making
some progress trekking into this old forgotten land.

The current masters may be there:

https://www.rhizomatica.org/hermes/
https://github.com/DigitalHERMES

But there sure is lots of fun in UUCP with license free carriers or
tunnels too.

--
Take Back Control! — Mesh The Planet!
--- Synchronet 3.18b-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2021-03-27, Alexander <amrowsell@frozenelectronics.ca> wrote:

I have never really used newsgroups before. I know they were an
absolutely huge deal for a long time, but when I was getting on the
internet as a tween/teen (circa 1999-2000) it passed me by for the most
part. I do remember occasionally looking at newsgroups but I was more
into IRC and games with friends. Plus it would have been a challenge
getting it all set up with the limited computer time I was allowed!

GNUS is pretty spectacular, far more comprehensive than it looks at
first glance. I use it semi-regularly and never feel like i've more than scratched the surface.

I usually use SLRN with a rotating editor, going among emacs -nw, vim,
and joe (jstar). An embarrassment of riches.

Glad to see these newsgroups filling out and filling up. Small is good.
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

hi from Gnus en Emacs 27.2 in GNU Guix System!
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

Well USENET is alive. But X.25 is almost death. Switching packet was the thing, but is out of service right now. Unix to Unix CoPy shall return!
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 30/03/2021 12:59, yeti wrote:

xwindows <xwindows@tilde.club> writes:

Even now, there is another old time mystery that I haven't got into yet:
the mesh of UUCP. Now it seems that some Tildezens have started making
some progress trekking into this old forgotten land.

The current masters may be there:

https://www.rhizomatica.org/hermes/
https://github.com/DigitalHERMES

But there sure is lots of fun in UUCP with license free carriers or
tunnels too.

Just want to point out that there is a new protocol. It is to UUCP what
SSH is to telnet -- it's called NNCP (node to node copy) and it's pretty awesome. It's totally asynchronous, fully encrypted, and supports file transfer and command execution. It does take a bit of work to get set
up, but once it's up and running it's easy to copy stuff around. It does
need some ancillary software to do more than just copying files, but it
could easily be used for newsgroups/email/whatever.

The data is split into packets, and these can be transferred using
literally any method that comes to mind. The NNCP package comes with a built-in tcp "caller" that can transfer packets the old-fashioned way,
or you can output the encrypted packets to files and then transfer them
via sneakernet, scp, whatever. It also supports file requests (freqing)
and so my first thought was it could be used in areas with limited or no internet connectivity.

One person goes around town collecting USB drives that have freqs on
them. They can't see the contents of the packets, and so can't interfere
if they wanted (or snoop). They then "dial" into the mesh (all the NNCP
nodes can talk to each other, therefore the file request could go to any node). The file requests go out, and at some point in the future (it
depends entirely on how it's configured) they dial in again and get the responses (encrypted to the receiver now). They then deliver the USB
sticks back to everyone, who then decrypt the packets using their local
NNCP stack. This could be used for transferring uncensored news, books,
music, anything. The courier, if caught, has complete plausible
deniability. They can't possibly know what the people are requesting --
if anything at all. The only metadata that could be gleaned is on the
return trip, when the number and/or size of the packets might reveal
something (or nothing, depending on how things are encoded) about the
data. Also, when the recipient receives their requested files, it could
come with an updated list of what files are available for the next trip.

Or, you can just use it to upload files to your VPS, which is all I've
done with it so far. There's a public node called quux that is connected
to a bunch of other nodes. The only thing I dislike about it so far is
that you have to manually configure the nncp json file for each node. I
can connect to quux, but if any of the other nodes it connects to want
to talk to me, I have to add them all to my config, and they have to do
the same before any communication can take place at all. I can add them
to my config, and send files/requests/whatever but if they haven't added
me I'm not sure if their daemon would even accept them. I guess this is
also a bonus as it requires you to positively identify and confirm you
want to communicate with a node.

Anyway this turned into quite a ramble. Just been giving a lot of
thought to how a useful system could be built around NNCP.

Cheers,
amr

In terms of actually spreading data around, things like bittorrent and
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

Alexander <amr@tilde.club> writes:

Just want to point out that there is a new protocol. It is to UUCP
what SSH is to telnet -- it's called NNCP (node to node copy) and it's
pretty awesome. It's totally asynchronous, fully encrypted, and
supports file transfer and command execution.

Every time someone dares to mention UUCP, we get a reply with a NNCP avertisement.

Be assured, meanwhile everyone knows NNCP.
--
Take Back Control! — Mesh The Planet!
smtp/tor: yeti@anetphabw4n7gheupc7d2gla4m4yuec622f6qadfypd6lgnhipodbyqd.onion finger yeti@tilde.institute
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113