• Re: Extending newsgroup message expiration; to 10-year time frame

    From xwindows@xwindows@tilde.club to tilde.meta on Mon Aug 15 06:51:33 2022
    I figured I would be replying here as well, for the matter
    of public record...

    Since 7-Aug-2022, the default articles expiration window
    on Tildeverse Netnews have been officially extended to 10 years (3653 days); applies to all current running Netnews servers in the network
    (tilde.club, cosmic.voyage, and tilde.team).

    As a full refresher, the current article expiration policy is as following:

    - 365 days (1 year) at minimum. If the article requested an expiry date
    earlier than this, it will be kept for least this time frame anyway.

    - 3653 days (10 years) by default. If the article does not come
    with specific expiry date, this time frame would apply.

    - No limit on maximum expiry range. If the article requested an expiry date
    that is beyond the default expiration time frame, permit it.

    The INN2 `/etc/news/expire.ctl` setting line which encoded this policy
    is as follows:

    *:A:365:3653:never

    ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
    | | | | |
    | | | | +- If the article requested an expiry date that is
    | | | | beyond the default keep time frame, the upper limit
    | | | | is infinite (never-expire).
    | | | +- Keep article for 3653 days (10 years) by default
    | | +- Keep article for at least 365 days (1 year) even if it requested
    | | earlier expiry
    | +- Applies to newsgroups regardless of its moderation policy
    +- Applies to every newsgroups

    Note that according to INN2 expire.ctl(5) manual, these time frames
    configured in server-side expiry policy counts from the moment
    that the article *arrived* at each server, not from the `Date:` header timestamp.

    (Had we lapsed into the expiration spree, this could be a saving grace
    for some later-rebuilt Netnews servers like tilde.club and tilde.team;
    which expiry time frame of their oldest tilde.* article would count
    from the date of suck-feeding or push-feeding, rather than the same day
    as the original post time itself like on cosmic.voyage)

    Side note: The article-specified expiry date (`Expires:` header) however,
    always come as a specific timestamp.

    The specific reason that a magic-number 3653-day default expiry window
    was chosen, was to account for leap years (occured in 2020, and will occurr
    in 2024 as well as 2028), so that the expiration line of the oldest
    on-spool article in tilde.* newgroups at cosmic.voyage [1] would be drawn exactly on its posting date (19 September) but in 2029; for ease of
    keeping tabs on this issue in the future.

    And the final note: this extension of expiry window was actually
    informed [2] by the actual growth rate projection of tilde.* namespace
    on cosmic.voyage news spool...

    - On 18-Sep-2020, all articles in tilde.* newsgroups totaled to
    306896 bytes (~300 KiB). [3]

    - On 3-Aug-2022, there were 23 tilde.* newsgroups, with 1587 articles
    in them; all articles totaled to 2561062 bytes (~2501 KiB).

    With 684 days passed between two measurements, the tilde.* namespace grew
    for 2254166 bytes; averaging to 1202881 bytes/365 days (~1175 KiB/year)
    growth rate. As you all probably already figured, this yearly amount
    is smaller than most single-page load on contemporary/modern web sites
    you'd randomly find today; and this led to an easy decision
    and administrators' consensus to extend the default expiry window
    from 3 years, not just to 5 years as I initially suggested, but to 10 years.

    Thanks ~tomasino, ~deepend, and ~ben for responding to my notice
    in a timely fashion.

    Wish you all a good old Netnews time,
    ~xwindows


    [1] "Re: News services" [2019-09-19T14:00:12Z]
    <news:slrnqo72fc.18n.tomasino@cosmic.voyage>
    <nntp://cosmic.voyage/tilde.services/16>
    <nntp://news.tilde.club/tilde.services/36>

    ^ Had we lapsed into expiration spree, this would be the first article
    in tilde.* that would disapear from cosmic.voyage's Netnews server.

    [2] People with keen eyes who also have logs of tilde.chat #netnews
    IRC channel might see that there are subtle differences in
    projected number between in my original notice in IRC and this post;
    that was due to an error in my part to assume that the post timestamp
    of the article "A copycat recipe for suck-feeding from Tildeverse
    NNTP newspool" [3] as the measurement date; the correct date of
    news spool retrieval was one week earlier, as I had noted myself
    in that very news article.

    When I'm in the process of writing this article, I have come to notice
    this error, so I re-did the calculation with the correct date
    so the right result could be posted for posterity.
    (Original figure I mentioned in IRC could be calculated down to
    1215318 bytes/365 days, the corrected figure is even lower
    at 1202881 bytes/365 days, meaning 1.03% over-projection
    in my original estimate; which is not really significant)

    [3] This figure was from a measurement of tilde.* news spool pulled from
    cosmic.voyage on 18-Sep-2020 as mentioned in the introduction part of:

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

    which was clarified and error-adjusted (for 0.237%) in section 4 of:

    "Re: Size of tildeverse [Was: A copycat recipe for suck-feeding
    from Tildeverse NNTP newspool]" [2020-09-26T13:54:12Z]
    <news:alpine.LFD.2.23.451.2009262051270.3574854@tilde.club>
    <nntp://news.tilde.club/tilde.club/29>
    --
    xwindows' gallery of freely-licensed artworks
    https://tilde.club/~xwindows/ http://tilde.club/~xwindows/ gopher://tilde.club/1/~xwindows/
    %
    From: xwindows <xwindows@tilde.club>
    Newsgroups: tilde.art.ascii
    Subject: Re: ASCII Of? [Object] *correct*
    References: <b5618b23-9af8-400e-a520-950437c740d7@tilde.club>
    <tcqta5$v4j0$1@tilde.club>
    <02f86a26-2baf-26a5-ae4c-66ed9df757bc@tilde.club>
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

    On Mon, 8 Aug 2022, stern wrote:

    glcrjevgre

    Yep, that's right. (You also triple-posted this for some reason;
    two in Netnews, and one in my email. Trying out new client, I guess?)

    Cheers,
    ~xwindows

    --
    xwindows' gallery of freely-licensed artworks
    https://tilde.club/~xwindows/ http://tilde.club/~xwindows/
    %
    From: xwindows <xwindows@tilde.club>
    Newsgroups: tilde.art.ascii
    Subject: Re: ASCII Of? [Vehicle] *correct*
    References: <b5618b23-9af8-400e-a520-950437c740d7@tilde.club>
    <tcqu90$12csv$1@tilde.club>
    <tcs2rg$6bkf$1@tilde.club>
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

    On Mon, 8 Aug 2022, The Free Thinker wrote:

    FCNPRFUHGGYR

    Yes it is! Hadn't watched any launch in-person either.
    (To be honest, most spacecraft launches I've watched were either
    from news or from documentaries; hadn't watched any launch live,
    as far as I remembered)

    Cheers,
    ~xwindows

    --
    xwindows' gallery of freely-licensed artworks
    https://tilde.club/~xwindows/ http://tilde.club/~xwindows/
    %
    From: xwindows <xwindows@tilde.club>
    Newsgroups: tilde.art.ascii
    Subject: Re: ASCII Of? [Apparel] *correct*
    References: <b5618b23-9af8-400e-a520-950437c740d7@tilde.club>
    <t4o06k$1oqo1$1@tilde.club>
    <td8mql$1clf3$1@tilde.club>
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

    On Sat, 13 Aug 2022, ben wrote:

    objgvr

    Bullsye!

    Cheers,
    ~xwindows

    --
    xwindows' gallery of freely-licensed artworks
    https://tilde.club/~xwindows/ http://tilde.club/~xwindows/ gopher://tilde.club/1/~xwindows/
    %
    From: xwindows <xwindows@tilde.club>
    Newsgroups: tilde.art.ascii
    Subject: Re: ASCII Of? [Apparel] *incorrect* +hint
    References: <b5618b23-9af8-400e-a520-950437c740d7@tilde.club>
    <t4o06l$1oqog$1@tilde.club>
    <td8mrr$1clf3$2@tilde.club>
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

    On Sat, 13 Aug 2022, ben wrote:

    fcrpgnpyrf

    Wrong! There's no "P", "C" or "T" in the alphabet chips~

    Bwahahaha,
    ~xwindows

    P.S. The real answer is a word simpler than that.

    --
    xwindows' gallery of freely-licensed artworks
    https://tilde.club/~xwindows/ http://tilde.club/~xwindows/ gopher://tilde.club/1/~xwindows/
    %
    From: xwindows <xwindows@tilde.club>
    Newsgroups: tilde.art.ascii
    Subject: Re: ASCII Of? [Object] *correct*
    References: <b5618b23-9af8-400e-a520-950437c740d7@tilde.club>
    <t4lqr7$osj6$1@tilde.club>
    <td8n0j$1clf3$3@tilde.club>
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

    On Sat, 13 Aug 2022, ben wrote:

    pbbyre

    Finally someone came around to answer this,
    and that answer is correct!

    Cheers,
    ~xwindows

    --
    xwindows' gallery of freely-licensed artworks
    https://tilde.club/~xwindows/ http://tilde.club/~xwindows/ gopher://tilde.club/1/~xwindows/
    %
    From: xwindows <xwindows@tilde.club>
    Newsgroups: tilde.art.ascii
    Subject: ASCII Of? [Software]
    References: <b5618b23-9af8-400e-a520-950437c740d7@tilde.club>
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

    The drawing is as follows:


    ,--.
    ||--||
    '1__1'
    ''


    Subject is a software, which its name has *7* letters.
    Pick alphabets from:

    D I L O F W M D N V A R P J

    What software is this?
    ~xwindows


    P.S. The correct answer in an ALL-UPPERCASE no-space no-newline ASCII form
    has following SHA-256 checksum:

    fb8e9c929bbc4ccaebcf8d68296c419464bdfaf01a69708a4d01a0d3159f3116

    --
    xwindows' gallery of freely-licensed artworks
    https://tilde.club/~xwindows/ http://tilde.club/~xwindows/ gopher://tilde.club/1/~xwindows/
    --- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113
  • From xwindows@xwindows@tilde.club to tilde.meta on Mon Aug 15 06:58:15 2022
    Note: Due to delimiter mishap in drafting my newsbatch on the previous try
    I have posted this article again as a correct version.

    I figured I would be replying here as well, for the matter
    of public record...

    Since 7-Aug-2022, the default articles expiration window
    on Tildeverse Netnews have been officially extended to 10 years (3653 days); applies to all current running Netnews servers in the network
    (tilde.club, cosmic.voyage, and tilde.team).

    As a full refresher, the current article expiration policy is as following:

    - 365 days (1 year) at minimum. If the article requested an expiry date
    earlier than this, it will be kept for least this time frame anyway.

    - 3653 days (10 years) by default. If the article does not come
    with specific expiry date, this time frame would apply.

    - No limit on maximum expiry range. If the article requested an expiry date
    that is beyond the default expiration time frame, permit it.

    The INN2 `/etc/news/expire.ctl` setting line which encoded this policy
    is as follows:

    *:A:365:3653:never

    ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
    | | | | |
    | | | | +- If the article requested an expiry date that is
    | | | | beyond the default keep time frame, the upper limit
    | | | | is infinite (never-expire).
    | | | +- Keep article for 3653 days (10 years) by default
    | | +- Keep article for at least 365 days (1 year) even if it requested
    | | earlier expiry
    | +- Applies to newsgroups regardless of its moderation policy
    +- Applies to every newsgroups

    Note that according to INN2 expire.ctl(5) manual, these time frames
    configured in server-side expiry policy counts from the moment
    that the article *arrived* at each server, not from the `Date:` header timestamp.

    (Had we lapsed into the expiration spree, this could be a saving grace
    for some later-rebuilt Netnews servers like tilde.club and tilde.team;
    which expiry time frame of their oldest tilde.* article would count
    from the date of suck-feeding or push-feeding, rather than the same day
    as the original post time itself like on cosmic.voyage)

    Side note: The article-specified expiry date (`Expires:` header) however,
    always come as a specific timestamp.

    The specific reason that a magic-number 3653-day default expiry window
    was chosen, was to account for leap years (occured in 2020, and will occurr
    in 2024 as well as 2028), so that the expiration line of the oldest
    on-spool article in tilde.* newgroups at cosmic.voyage [1] would be drawn exactly on its posting date (19 September) but in 2029; for ease of
    keeping tabs on this issue in the future.

    And the final note: this extension of expiry window was actually
    informed [2] by the actual growth rate projection of tilde.* namespace
    on cosmic.voyage news spool...

    - On 18-Sep-2020, all articles in tilde.* newsgroups totaled to
    306896 bytes (~300 KiB). [3]

    - On 3-Aug-2022, there were 23 tilde.* newsgroups, with 1587 articles
    in them; all articles totaled to 2561062 bytes (~2501 KiB).

    With 684 days passed between two measurements, the tilde.* namespace grew
    for 2254166 bytes; averaging to 1202881 bytes/365 days (~1175 KiB/year)
    growth rate. As you all probably already figured, this yearly amount
    is smaller than most single-page load on contemporary/modern web sites
    you'd randomly find today; and this led to an easy decision
    and administrators' consensus to extend the default expiry window
    from 3 years, not just to 5 years as I initially suggested, but to 10 years.

    Thanks ~tomasino, ~deepend, and ~ben for responding to my notice
    in a timely fashion.

    Wish you all a good old Netnews time,
    ~xwindows


    [1] "Re: News services" [2019-09-19T14:00:12Z]
    <news:slrnqo72fc.18n.tomasino@cosmic.voyage>
    <nntp://cosmic.voyage/tilde.services/16>
    <nntp://news.tilde.club/tilde.services/36>

    ^ Had we lapsed into expiration spree, this would be the first article
    in tilde.* that would disapear from cosmic.voyage's Netnews server.

    [2] People with keen eyes who also have logs of tilde.chat #netnews
    IRC channel might see that there are subtle differences in
    projected number between in my original notice in IRC and this post;
    that was due to an error in my part to assume that the post timestamp
    of the article "A copycat recipe for suck-feeding from Tildeverse
    NNTP newspool" [3] as the measurement date; the correct date of
    news spool retrieval was one week earlier, as I had noted myself
    in that very news article.

    When I'm in the process of writing this article, I have come to notice
    this error, so I re-did the calculation with the correct date
    so the right result could be posted for posterity.
    (Original figure I mentioned in IRC could be calculated down to
    1215318 bytes/365 days, the corrected figure is even lower
    at 1202881 bytes/365 days, meaning 1.03% over-projection
    in my original estimate; which is not really significant)

    [3] This figure was from a measurement of tilde.* news spool pulled from
    cosmic.voyage on 18-Sep-2020 as mentioned in the introduction part of:

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

    which was clarified and error-adjusted (for 0.237%) in section 4 of:

    "Re: Size of tildeverse [Was: A copycat recipe for suck-feeding
    from Tildeverse NNTP newspool]" [2020-09-26T13:54:12Z]
    <news:alpine.LFD.2.23.451.2009262051270.3574854@tilde.club>
    <nntp://news.tilde.club/tilde.club/29>
    --
    xwindows' gallery of freely-licensed artworks
    https://tilde.club/~xwindows/ http://tilde.club/~xwindows/ gopher://tilde.club/1/~xwindows/
    --- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113
  • From Dario Niedermann@dnied@tilde.institute to tilde.meta on Fri Sep 30 12:26:05 2022
    On 2022-08-15, xwindows <xwindows@tilde.club> wrote:

    [...]
    - 365 days (1 year) at minimum. If the article requested an expiry date
    earlier than this, it will be kept for least this time frame anyway.

    - 3653 days (10 years) by default. If the article does not come
    with specific expiry date, this time frame would apply.

    - No limit on maximum expiry range. If the article requested an expiry date
    that is beyond the default expiration time frame, permit it.

    Good news on the extended retention. Personally, I would probably exclude
    the test group(s) from the new policy, in order to save some disk space.
    --
    Dario Niedermann. Also on the Internet at:

    gopher://darioniedermann.it/ <> https://www.darioniedermann.it/
    --- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113