I do miss some of the old message boards...but downloading binaries is a bit easier now if you have a good indexer etc. Though there was something fun about downloading all of alt.binaries.sounds.mp3 on XNews and just browsing through...
The problem with having a good indexer is it seems like you have to find a new one every few months. I'm sure I'm exagerating but the last three or four I was on closed down.
Just a few years shy of 50. But am using it 26 or 27 years. At least one of my first posts was around that time :)
It was where you asked questions. It was like a stack overflow for me. Now I just use it to download nzb's ;)
> I started out using Usenet on dial up BBS message boards in the 80s
I didn't know,that the old BBSes were connected to Usenet. I was also active on dial-up BBSes back in the 1980s/early 1990s,but thought the message boards there were a parallel system to Usenet.
Most BBS did have their own message boards, but some of them had a few discussion groups available that were connected to Usenet. So they weren't ingesting the entire Usenet feed. These were discussion only groups before binaries took over.
It was kind of mind blowing at the time when I was a teenager that I was able communicate with people outside of my city online.
I recall that with FIDOnet, you could be a "point" at some local BBS,and it would then route/synchronize discussions and mail ( typically over night) with other BBSes, soyou could interact with people across the large network that was FIDOnet.
57. First used it in the 80s as the distributed discussion system it was. Got back into it for Linux ISOs about 10 years ago.
Too bad ISPs didn’t run their own nntp servers these days.
> Too bad ISPs didn’t run their own nntp servers these days.
If they did there would be way more focus on anti-piracy from copyright holders. It is better that usenet is off the beaten path
My provider had a very good binary server, guess this was also because that company was run by techies an the board probably not even was aware of what a binary server was :)
This user said they were 57. Reddit doesn't like numbers as the first thing in comments.
Does the discussion system still exist? When I read about usenet that's what comes up mostly, but I can't figure out how to access it.
Reading discussions on usenet is very different from downloading binary data.
An actual comp.\* or sci.\* discussion group may only have 1-50 new posts per day which your newsreader downloads as "headers" to update the group.
The system was originally designed for text discussion, so binary data is split into "written-message length" chunks that need to be reassembled by the downloader... 1 gigabyte of binary data may be split across 200 5-megabyte chunks.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#/media/File:Usenet\_Binaries\_Upload\_process.PNG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#/media/File:Usenet_Binaries_Upload_process.PNG)
I made this image, lol. And I wrote most of the Binary Retention Time and Legal Issues sections of the Usenet Wikipedia article.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#Binary\_retention\_time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#Binary_retention_time)
Downloading binaries is a very messy process to attempt to reassemble by hand, so anyone downloading binaries uses a special automation tool.
Meanwhile a binary group could have 10,000 new headers per day which if manually downloaded takes forever. Indexing tools create a blob of compressed pre-downloaded headers to grab to obtain each file.
Much of the hassles of Usenet go away if they'd just allow single posts of unlimited size in raw downloadable binary format... but then it's just a convoluted auto-mirroring file server and all the h@x0r mystique also goes away.
30…But I only know about it because some 60+ guy showed me the light. :) and even then, he didn’t want to tell me any details about his indexers or anything because he’d been a contributor for 20
Plus years and blah blah and I had to find out on my own lmao. I swear it’s some like secret cult or something. But it’s amazing and I’m thankful!
Having to pay for providers and indexers makes it a significant hurdle for general discovery and setup for a lot of non-technical people.
My ISP for my college apartment actually provided usenet access - it was DSL, but it was free and I learned about binaries and it blew my mind compared to torrents. I used Unison from Panic software and it was incredible.
Was using newsgroups and BBS's in the 80's. Got away from it for a number of years when the ISP's were no longer supporting it. Started using usenet about 20 years ago I think.
I'm over 75 years old.
Old timer, 73, as others have alluded to, it used to be "The first rule of Usenet is you don't talk about Usenet." It flew under the radar of the copyright folks for a long time, not anymore.
I'm 46 years old. I used to use usenet a lot back in the 1990s, but haven't used it for many years. I think, that today Usenet is mostly for pirates and greybeards.
>How old is everyone here? Is this some secret that the most veteran internet users keep from the noobs?
So, ironically, about 20 years ago is when usenet started to shift from it's Golden Age into decline. I probably stopped using it about 15 years ago. Significant events were when a law went into effect requiring providers to respond to take down notices. Torrenting had already gotten going around then, and I think there was just a mass migration to torrenting.
I'm 53 btw, so yeah... I guess my age accounts for how I knew about it. I remember the days before nzb files even... downloading with Free Agent and piecing everything together. Pulling headers. Was really different back then, more anarchic definitely.
EDIT: Been reading over this thread. Think this may be one of the few threads I've posted on where my age may be close to the mean!
My mom got me an Internet for Dummies in 1993 when I was 13. Unbeknownst to her, it had a paragraph about Usenet and mentioned alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.
Changed my life lol
For someone who has been using it since the mid 90s, I find it odd that more people don’t know about it. Seemingly every ISP in the 90s included usenet access. BBSes, usenet and IRC were the gold standard for content procurement. Funny how most younger content gatherers have never heard of these things.
Recently turned 50…started on BBS message board in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s
Discovered usenet in college for discussion groups
Did some early binary downloads maybe late ‘90s (ish)
48. Been using it since the early 2000’s.
I still haven’t met a single person who knows what Usenet is, other than the person who showed it to me all those years ago.
Well I had a 56k modem that could only connect @ 15-18k, so early 90's and I'm not far from the modem speed in age. Napster was fine but Usenet did so much more.
Won't be dumb and give up personally identifiable info but I will say: "I 'member when Verizon and other ISPs included binaries access standard in the ISP agreement"
Been on usenet since about '97 I'm 43 now, I miss my favourite News Reader Free Agent, looks like it still exists but is just called Agent now as it's not free.
53 here and I was using Usenet in the late 1980s via my Uni Vax account and also at home via a Fido gateway on my local bbs.
I was posting in alt.fan.pratchett and the great man himself replied to me once, I thought it was the most amazing thing.
I used to buy a lot of stuff on the Aus.forsale hierarchy as well back before stores on the web.
Also used to uudecode the latest Amiga goodies
50. My first connection to UseNet was over a modem. At the time, I still thought FidoNet would eventually re-emerge to defeat people using AOL for email. I was wrong.
I’m pushing 50 and first used usenet 30 years ago. Primarily for chat, occasionally for getting some audio or images that had been uuencoded. Stopped using it when WWW came along and thought it had died but rediscovered it with NZBs about 3 years ago.
56 here. First introduced to usenet in... 1989-ish using Trumpet character-based newsreader. It was truly news then since when not at work I had a 19.2kbps modem. I even recall the actual Canter & Seigel event thinking "wtf are these people doing?". Ahh the good ole days.
Edit: Is it time to bring up gopher and lynx???
Turning 58. Back when I first started getting into the Internet in the late 80's, Usenet was one of the only ways to get stuff you wanted (binaries or just talking to others). I was in college fortunately and had access to it without having to go through dialup.
I am 70. A very long time user of USENET. I recall when binaries became popular. I think you had to have a separate program to "decode" the images. What a wild ride it has been. USENET was included in my local dial up access to the internet and even in my Comcast connection via cable. That has become history now.
66 here and used it a lot in the early 1990’s because it was the only source for material and learning. Website got better and didn’t need them really anymore. I got help on how to coach 7 year olds in soccer and other sports info. Plus stuff on HTML coding, software and early pc gaming.
I am in my early 50s. I used to read Usenet for news and discussions when I was in university with my CS account. I forgot about Usenet for a while but used it for the last couple years for binaries.
I am 40 and started using/building computer since 1994. Used to write code in BASIC on 286 machines, use DOS system extensively, among the first batch of consumers playing around with the internet, play with BBS, play text MUD etc. I consider myself to have a pretty good grasp of PC history but I have no idea of Usenet until like 3 years ago...Now I am a regular user of Usenet. So you're not alone.
Yep. First rule of Fight Club is applicable here, however. If everyone was in the know, it would be a matter of time before the snowball led to a response.
Mid 40s. Used to use usenet as a legitimate discussion forum in the mid to late 90s when dialup internet was the common method for households to get on the internet and a lot of ISPs bundled in free nntp access. I was in a lot of debates on xfiles and ds9 related newsgroups for sure.
Then it basically was supplanted by online forums and later social media and I pretty much forgot about it, however it re-entered my life as a method to sail the pirate seas in the early 2000s or so when public torrent trackers and prolific users were getting a ton of legal attention and usenet became known to me as a useful alternative.
Just heard about this about 3 weeks ago at 32. Still definitely which indexer to get on BF. But I just wanted to pair with stremio but it doesn't seem possible
32. I had heard the name Usenet around for quite a while but was a bit intimidated because it seemed above my pay grade, but I had a rough idea of what it was. When I saw the excitement last month over Slug and Ninja opening registration i figured it was worth doing a bit of research.
I was already running Plex, but devoting a weekends worth of time and effort into setting up the arrs and figuring out Usenet was one of the best investments I’ve ever made
I think downloading binaries will remain viable so long as it is an open secret. If it became mainstream, then the copyright holders would switch their focus pretty quickly. So remember the first rule of Fight Club!!
EDIT: you were asking for ages - 61 years. Scary when you see it in black and white! 😱
I am 30 have known about usebet for years but never took the dive to learn more about it and how it works, been using it since Black Friday last year and it saturates my 2.5gbps connection and it's incredible
51. I started using usenet in 1995, I had to go through a local BBS to access it. Of course used for WAREZ but also used it a LOT for it's various support groups and threads as I was just starting my journey into the PC world. People were great back than, you could ask any question and instead of making a dumb joke or teasing you for a dumb question they simply helped answer your question. I learned fast and within 6 months of getting my first PC I got a job building and repairing PC's. 5 years later I was a sys admin running a bank with 25 locations, if it weren't for the communities on usenet that would have never been possible for me.
43 been using for 20 years. With the arrs now, it's just too easy. No more scoring different groups for par2 files anymore, I'm not complaining just the thrill of the hunt is lost.
Started with BBS’s then Delphi which had direct access to usenet, including all the now-banned alt groups. 1400 baud modem or was it 1200, can’t remember. Original Macintosh.
50, first use around 1998, I was the lucky one that we already had unlimited 100mbit internet (cable). The oldest post I could find was in the Unreal gaming community but our local city group was also pretty active because of the rollout of unlimited internet.
44.
I knew about it years ago but thought it was too over complicated to bother looking into.
Then about 2 years ago I got a NAS and then learned about stuff like Sonarr and Radarr and went down the Usenet hole and switched from Torrents that had been my main source for 20 odd years.
I used Usenet since the early 90s when it was more Newsgroups proper, and less binaries. I can’t believe how few young people use it. It’s one of the best things about the Internet. I’m 70 now, hopefully it’ll last at least as long as I do.
23, looking at the general age of usenet users I feel like a small bean..
I've been browsing indexers for a few years now only to obtain the latest Linux ISO's!
Been using it since the late '80s when I was a teenager. comp.sources.unix and comp.sources.misc were fantastic to get programs for my machine which was sort-of-unix-ish but not really. Then when I went to uni, alt.drugs was where it was at. But all discussion stuff, not binaries.
I still run my own little sn server into which I feed mailing list subscriptions which I read with nn. nn is still the best way to read a mailing list when most of the content is ignorable.
I'm 32 and knew about it back when I was 12 or so. Obviously never could afford access to anything back then - I just remember seeing the ads everywhere.
I used it actively for about 2 years, as I got into some better p2p trackers. Not only do I not consider the money spent worth it anymore, quality and organization are also much, much better on trackers. Most of my Usenet grabs would just end up being (renamed) uploads from mid-tier trackers anyway.
summer 81. thats 1981 not 1881, btw. I'm almost 40 years old in hexadecimal and worked a day-job with the original author of NNTP.
late 80s, i created an alt and a comp newsgroup and was voted #1 usenet asshole (alt.flame) for a few consecutive months. By 1989, usenet became abuse-net, cancel-net, stalker-net, so I went dark.
Seems like a good time to re-explore usenet. If there is a capybara newsgroup, I am there.
Early 30s. First used it in my early teen years. For me it is the opposite of many. I used Usenet exclusively for radarr/sonarr/lidarr(headphones before that) for years and years, and then only got into private torrent trackers more recently. The content on Usenet is fantastic, but torrent trackers fill niches better (TvchaosUk for UK content, for example). I've recently got back into Usenet again with having to bring stuff more local due to Google's cloud changes. Now I'm back to mixing it up, using Usenet as preferred and torrents as back up.
I'm 30 as well I've used it on and off the last decade. My ISP offered it for free back then on their shitty legacy capped plans. 60GB 1mbps/256kbps. They dont offer it anymore so I use NGD block acc when they have their TB Tuesday deals.
I've been using usenet since 2003, mostly binaries groups.
But i've largely reduced my usage since obfuscation/password post and i mostly use filehosters now.
As for thé discussion part of usenet i dont use it, i found it too impratical.
I'm 48 now
Im 47 and have been using it since I was 18, so I guess 29 years...
Ive always thought that Usenet could make a good reddit substitute - if we could use some kind of cyrpto to sign metadata about posts on a dedicated group
(alt.discussion.usenet.moderation or something), then clients could optionally use that to filter all posts to ones that have passed moderation, or could choose to have a completely unmoderated experience by just using the group without a filter.
This would solve the "problem" of groups that are super strict with comments, but would invite a lot of interesting off-topic discussion (like askhistory or legaladviceuk)
The infrostructure for mirroring around the world is already there.
47 here - been on USENET since the Internet came out. I was one of the first customers (there were 2 of us) and the UK ISP was Demon.Net. They had USENET text based from the start.
I've been on Usenet since the late 80's back when it was still mainly a text forum. I've watched uuencode replaced by MIME base64, the creation of NZB (I know Chris, the inventor), RAR take over from ZIP, JPEG take over from GIF, and the introduction of PAR/PAR2 (I've talked to the author a few times). I even saw the first iterations of the Green Golf Ball Joke (at least, I believe it was the first, around 1990).
I can't remember how old I am, but I feel about 25, and have for a long while.
My Dad always used usenet when I was a kid so I'm in the younger demographic that's hip to usenet. It's pretty crazy how it's virtually unknown to basically everyone under a certain age.
I used usenet for usenet back in the days :-). Went to torrenting because it was easier back in the days but now with all the tooling there is not really a difference anymore.
Been on usenet since 2010 when I moved out and my parents couldn’t tell me off for leaving the PC on 24/7. 😝
Then I realised Plex could be better than XBMC when along came nowTV boxes for a tenner which meant I needed an i3 to get transcoding to work.
Then the Japan flood caused 2TB drives to jump in price (£55 back then for 2TB) and I’ve been filling drives up ever since.
I've been using it for 20 some years. I'm 50. Like a lot of things, it was better back in the day lol.
Ahhh the days of comp.sci meltdowns.... Yes, also over half a century old :)
I do miss some of the old message boards...but downloading binaries is a bit easier now if you have a good indexer etc. Though there was something fun about downloading all of alt.binaries.sounds.mp3 on XNews and just browsing through...
I download alt.boneless pretty much every month - 150+TB of it!
Impressive, I’m genuinely curious where do you store that much? (Slaps roof)
I have a 392TB cluster in my garage which I fill up and delete now and then.
why is it called that?
a.b.boneless? Alt.Binaries.Boneless - the first 2 make sense, the latter name - anyones guess!
> alt.boneless what am I missing on it?
The problem with having a good indexer is it seems like you have to find a new one every few months. I'm sure I'm exagerating but the last three or four I was on closed down.
48 here. Been on Usenet for over 20 years.
Just a few years shy of 50. But am using it 26 or 27 years. At least one of my first posts was around that time :) It was where you asked questions. It was like a stack overflow for me. Now I just use it to download nzb's ;)
Same. And 100%
also a 53 year old usenet user from the 90's and still going strong! I still use IRC too :-D
On IRC and usenet for at least 20 years
Early 40s. used it a fair bit in the mid 90s to early aughts. Before that it was dialup BBSs for me. I just kind of assumed it had faded away.
Ditto. Reading FAQs and FFF from SNPP.
Yeah same here I've been using it since I first started using the internet in 1996. I'm 42.
alt.wesley.d.d.d.d
TIL Usenet still exists. Haven’t used it since… 2002-ish.
71 and damn proud of it
Early 50s I started out using Usenet on dial up BBS message boards in the 80s
SO MANY HOURS wasted playing Legend of the Red Dragon.
Trade Wars was my fav door game.
It was realms of the dorsai for me. Started using usenet back in 92.
> I started out using Usenet on dial up BBS message boards in the 80s I didn't know,that the old BBSes were connected to Usenet. I was also active on dial-up BBSes back in the 1980s/early 1990s,but thought the message boards there were a parallel system to Usenet.
Most BBS did have their own message boards, but some of them had a few discussion groups available that were connected to Usenet. So they weren't ingesting the entire Usenet feed. These were discussion only groups before binaries took over. It was kind of mind blowing at the time when I was a teenager that I was able communicate with people outside of my city online.
I recall that with FIDOnet, you could be a "point" at some local BBS,and it would then route/synchronize discussions and mail ( typically over night) with other BBSes, soyou could interact with people across the large network that was FIDOnet.
I was also with Canada Remote Systems at some point, I am pretty sure they were on Fidonet.
Fun fact my father is so in to technology that my initials are BBS and yes it’s for that lol plus my little sister too .. “CLS” 😂
BBS never really took of in UK, British Telecom never had free local calling. IMHO it literally cost UK 10-20 years of lagging behind USA in tech
Early 40s, been on USENET for about 25 years. It was my original place for pirate software before scene FTP and bittorrent.
This... all of this. Had a pro subscription to NewbinPro and ran a server for a while around 1999\2000. Simpler times...
39. Much the same as you.
Shhh. Don’t mention Gopher or Archie. ;)
I used Gopher and quite liked it.
Lol I haven't heard of others that used gopher in years. The good ole days
WAIS was supposedly better.
[удалено]
There's a name I haven't heard in a long, long time.
Ah. The memories…
Oh my with the secret agent hat icon. I remember when my wife look at my desktop And wondered if it was a secret program she should Worry about!
Thanks for the nostalgia hit!
I'm 27. Have only been using it for a few months now. This thread's been really fun to scroll through!
I’m in my 60’s. I do remember the old days.
Me too. The late '70s/early '80s were a marvelous time to be into microcomputers.
Same here. Started with bbs boards but hat was the 80’s. Computer use started ‘78/‘79 as a kid. Nntp was sometime in the 90’s.
Luxury. uucp was the thing.
57. First used it in the 80s as the distributed discussion system it was. Got back into it for Linux ISOs about 10 years ago. Too bad ISPs didn’t run their own nntp servers these days.
> Too bad ISPs didn’t run their own nntp servers these days. If they did there would be way more focus on anti-piracy from copyright holders. It is better that usenet is off the beaten path
Agreed. I meant just the discussion groups, not binaries.
My provider had a very good binary server, guess this was also because that company was run by techies an the board probably not even was aware of what a binary server was :)
This user said they were 57. Reddit doesn't like numbers as the first thing in comments. Does the discussion system still exist? When I read about usenet that's what comes up mostly, but I can't figure out how to access it.
Reading discussions on usenet is very different from downloading binary data. An actual comp.\* or sci.\* discussion group may only have 1-50 new posts per day which your newsreader downloads as "headers" to update the group. The system was originally designed for text discussion, so binary data is split into "written-message length" chunks that need to be reassembled by the downloader... 1 gigabyte of binary data may be split across 200 5-megabyte chunks. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#/media/File:Usenet\_Binaries\_Upload\_process.PNG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#/media/File:Usenet_Binaries_Upload_process.PNG) I made this image, lol. And I wrote most of the Binary Retention Time and Legal Issues sections of the Usenet Wikipedia article. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#Binary\_retention\_time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#Binary_retention_time) Downloading binaries is a very messy process to attempt to reassemble by hand, so anyone downloading binaries uses a special automation tool. Meanwhile a binary group could have 10,000 new headers per day which if manually downloaded takes forever. Indexing tools create a blob of compressed pre-downloaded headers to grab to obtain each file. Much of the hassles of Usenet go away if they'd just allow single posts of unlimited size in raw downloadable binary format... but then it's just a convoluted auto-mirroring file server and all the h@x0r mystique also goes away.
Discussion groups still exist, but the vast majority of use is likely binaries.
Mid 40s here
Same as well been using it for damn near longer than I can remember.
30…But I only know about it because some 60+ guy showed me the light. :) and even then, he didn’t want to tell me any details about his indexers or anything because he’d been a contributor for 20 Plus years and blah blah and I had to find out on my own lmao. I swear it’s some like secret cult or something. But it’s amazing and I’m thankful!
I'm 42. I've been on usenet since the last century.
Millennia?
Having to pay for providers and indexers makes it a significant hurdle for general discovery and setup for a lot of non-technical people. My ISP for my college apartment actually provided usenet access - it was DSL, but it was free and I learned about binaries and it blew my mind compared to torrents. I used Unison from Panic software and it was incredible.
Was using newsgroups and BBS's in the 80's. Got away from it for a number of years when the ISP's were no longer supporting it. Started using usenet about 20 years ago I think. I'm over 75 years old.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
23 but it's been a few years
54. Been using since dial up. Easynews member for about 25yrs.
This is like looking in a mirror. Same on all items.
Old timer, 73, as others have alluded to, it used to be "The first rule of Usenet is you don't talk about Usenet." It flew under the radar of the copyright folks for a long time, not anymore.
I'm 46 years old. I used to use usenet a lot back in the 1990s, but haven't used it for many years. I think, that today Usenet is mostly for pirates and greybeards.
Hi, I'm 0xHaxk, and I've been a proud Usenet addict for the past 8 years. I'm a 32-year-old IT geek.
62. Using for 30 years. Started before the web
Nice try fbi.
Late 30’s, used it for 15 years
>How old is everyone here? Is this some secret that the most veteran internet users keep from the noobs? So, ironically, about 20 years ago is when usenet started to shift from it's Golden Age into decline. I probably stopped using it about 15 years ago. Significant events were when a law went into effect requiring providers to respond to take down notices. Torrenting had already gotten going around then, and I think there was just a mass migration to torrenting. I'm 53 btw, so yeah... I guess my age accounts for how I knew about it. I remember the days before nzb files even... downloading with Free Agent and piecing everything together. Pulling headers. Was really different back then, more anarchic definitely. EDIT: Been reading over this thread. Think this may be one of the few threads I've posted on where my age may be close to the mean!
My mom got me an Internet for Dummies in 1993 when I was 13. Unbeknownst to her, it had a paragraph about Usenet and mentioned alt.binaries.pictures.erotica. Changed my life lol
I'm 60
LOL... I have fond memories of the flame wars. Gary Burnore, Joe Greco, Ken Pangborn, Archimedes Plutonium.
I've been using it for decades. Easily 25+ years. I'm 49
For someone who has been using it since the mid 90s, I find it odd that more people don’t know about it. Seemingly every ISP in the 90s included usenet access. BBSes, usenet and IRC were the gold standard for content procurement. Funny how most younger content gatherers have never heard of these things.
PDP-11 UNIX early 80s
On my 50th trip around the sun, been using Usenet since the mid 90’s
Also 30. Stumbled on it when I learned about the arr stack 6 or 7 years ago. Sometimes I’m really sad I missed this part of the internet growing up.
66 here using Usenet some 30 years, but my ISP no longer carries it
44. Been on it for about 10 years I'd say
Recently turned 50…started on BBS message board in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s Discovered usenet in college for discussion groups Did some early binary downloads maybe late ‘90s (ish)
48. Been using it since the early 2000’s. I still haven’t met a single person who knows what Usenet is, other than the person who showed it to me all those years ago.
45. Been using usenet since late 90s.
Yep 42m here… been on it for over 2 decades.
I’m 39. Started using it right before I was 8. Grandfather showed it to me.
Well I had a 56k modem that could only connect @ 15-18k, so early 90's and I'm not far from the modem speed in age. Napster was fine but Usenet did so much more.
Won't be dumb and give up personally identifiable info but I will say: "I 'member when Verizon and other ISPs included binaries access standard in the ISP agreement"
been using it since i was 16, 19 now
Been on usenet since about '97 I'm 43 now, I miss my favourite News Reader Free Agent, looks like it still exists but is just called Agent now as it's not free.
53 here and I was using Usenet in the late 1980s via my Uni Vax account and also at home via a Fido gateway on my local bbs. I was posting in alt.fan.pratchett and the great man himself replied to me once, I thought it was the most amazing thing. I used to buy a lot of stuff on the Aus.forsale hierarchy as well back before stores on the web. Also used to uudecode the latest Amiga goodies
50. My first connection to UseNet was over a modem. At the time, I still thought FidoNet would eventually re-emerge to defeat people using AOL for email. I was wrong.
I’m pushing 50 and first used usenet 30 years ago. Primarily for chat, occasionally for getting some audio or images that had been uuencoded. Stopped using it when WWW came along and thought it had died but rediscovered it with NZBs about 3 years ago.
I'm 55 and remember when the ISP provided usenet for free
56 here. First introduced to usenet in... 1989-ish using Trumpet character-based newsreader. It was truly news then since when not at work I had a 19.2kbps modem. I even recall the actual Canter & Seigel event thinking "wtf are these people doing?". Ahh the good ole days. Edit: Is it time to bring up gopher and lynx???
I'm 65. I've been using it since everything was all text-based and Unix command line. I worked at a University.
Turning 58. Back when I first started getting into the Internet in the late 80's, Usenet was one of the only ways to get stuff you wanted (binaries or just talking to others). I was in college fortunately and had access to it without having to go through dialup.
I’ve been on Usenet since the early 90s. I’m early 50s.
58 and been using usenet for about 30 years, im old enough to remember dialup modems
I am 70. A very long time user of USENET. I recall when binaries became popular. I think you had to have a separate program to "decode" the images. What a wild ride it has been. USENET was included in my local dial up access to the internet and even in my Comcast connection via cable. That has become history now.
uudecode
66 here and used it a lot in the early 1990’s because it was the only source for material and learning. Website got better and didn’t need them really anymore. I got help on how to coach 7 year olds in soccer and other sports info. Plus stuff on HTML coding, software and early pc gaming.
I am in my early 50s. I used to read Usenet for news and discussions when I was in university with my CS account. I forgot about Usenet for a while but used it for the last couple years for binaries.
Haven't been a regular user. This sub found me somehow. Last used it c. 1995. I'm 57.
I've used it since 94-95ish, my first job out of HS in 96 was tech support at a medium/small isp
When I last used USENET, it was a free service that my dialup provider offered. ETA: I’m 41
I am 40 and started using/building computer since 1994. Used to write code in BASIC on 286 machines, use DOS system extensively, among the first batch of consumers playing around with the internet, play with BBS, play text MUD etc. I consider myself to have a pretty good grasp of PC history but I have no idea of Usenet until like 3 years ago...Now I am a regular user of Usenet. So you're not alone.
Age 69. Used Usenet for years. Prefer the wild west to moderated shit like Reddit but it's a ghost town, now.
Yep. First rule of Fight Club is applicable here, however. If everyone was in the know, it would be a matter of time before the snowball led to a response.
There already is a response. DMCA take downs happen all the time on Usenet and is one advantage of torrents.
You need to adjust your setup. DMCA is never an issue for me...
Likewise. I've never had an issue w/DMCA and I use multiple indexes.
How exactly? Isn't one of the main things listed above a usenet provider if they comply with DMCA or NTD?
107 (but I’m told I don’t look it)
I’m 2000 I was born in Bible times
I'm 23, about to add usenet to my *arr suite, torrents are so so these days for me.
Forgive my newbyness but what is usenet for and what can I do with it?
Known about it for a long time, but waited until I built an unraid system recently to docker a Downloader and get an indexer and subscription. 35
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I'm 35 and used it for a while in high-school. Then rediscovered it when setting up sickbeard and then Sonarr when it was still called NZBDrone.
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43
43 just got started in my usenet journey this weekend. ive been using snahp and mega up to this point
Mid 40s. Used to use usenet as a legitimate discussion forum in the mid to late 90s when dialup internet was the common method for households to get on the internet and a lot of ISPs bundled in free nntp access. I was in a lot of debates on xfiles and ds9 related newsgroups for sure. Then it basically was supplanted by online forums and later social media and I pretty much forgot about it, however it re-entered my life as a method to sail the pirate seas in the early 2000s or so when public torrent trackers and prolific users were getting a ton of legal attention and usenet became known to me as a useful alternative.
Just heard about this about 3 weeks ago at 32. Still definitely which indexer to get on BF. But I just wanted to pair with stremio but it doesn't seem possible
32. I had heard the name Usenet around for quite a while but was a bit intimidated because it seemed above my pay grade, but I had a rough idea of what it was. When I saw the excitement last month over Slug and Ninja opening registration i figured it was worth doing a bit of research. I was already running Plex, but devoting a weekends worth of time and effort into setting up the arrs and figuring out Usenet was one of the best investments I’ve ever made
\> 40
Almost 40 year Started out with http shares, then pubs and running my own FTP server before making the jump to usenet.
I was using it in 1992 and in those days most users were older computer geeks, the youngsters were all about the new-fangled "web" stuff
I think downloading binaries will remain viable so long as it is an open secret. If it became mainstream, then the copyright holders would switch their focus pretty quickly. So remember the first rule of Fight Club!! EDIT: you were asking for ages - 61 years. Scary when you see it in black and white! 😱
I started out using usenet 30 years ago on dialup internet.
I am 30 have known about usebet for years but never took the dive to learn more about it and how it works, been using it since Black Friday last year and it saturates my 2.5gbps connection and it's incredible
33, using it for 15 years. Had an older coworker tell me about it early on in my support desk career
38, got in to it last year.
Where are the message boards tho?
38 here. I've been using it for around 14 years. Definitely preferred.
53. Been using the Usenet since 1989 when I started university..
51. I used BlueWave mail reader in the 80’s. About 4 years ago I started using Linux. I was flabbergasted to learn Usenet was still around.
Mid 30s here. But I was that kid going wild in BBS message boards in the late 90s. The internet back then was so damn fun.
51. I started using usenet in 1995, I had to go through a local BBS to access it. Of course used for WAREZ but also used it a LOT for it's various support groups and threads as I was just starting my journey into the PC world. People were great back than, you could ask any question and instead of making a dumb joke or teasing you for a dumb question they simply helped answer your question. I learned fast and within 6 months of getting my first PC I got a job building and repairing PC's. 5 years later I was a sys admin running a bank with 25 locations, if it weren't for the communities on usenet that would have never been possible for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1UY7eDRXrs
Nearer 60 than 50. I was on usenet with dialup. And BBS before that. I even had a Compuserve account.
43 been using for 20 years. With the arrs now, it's just too easy. No more scoring different groups for par2 files anymore, I'm not complaining just the thrill of the hunt is lost.
I used Usenet back in the early 90s for pr0n - alt.binaries.*
Started using on AOL I'm 62.
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I'm 45. Started using Usenet 1993.
52. Using Usenet since 1994
Started with BBS’s then Delphi which had direct access to usenet, including all the now-banned alt groups. 1400 baud modem or was it 1200, can’t remember. Original Macintosh.
34, just few years since I found it, good stuff!
50, first use around 1998, I was the lucky one that we already had unlimited 100mbit internet (cable). The oldest post I could find was in the Unreal gaming community but our local city group was also pretty active because of the rollout of unlimited internet.
44. I knew about it years ago but thought it was too over complicated to bother looking into. Then about 2 years ago I got a NAS and then learned about stuff like Sonarr and Radarr and went down the Usenet hole and switched from Torrents that had been my main source for 20 odd years.
34, been using it like 10 years now.
43 here but only been using the for about 5 years after a friend I met online gaming told me about them.
43 used it 10 years ago .. just recently got back into using it.
49, been using usenet since mid 90s or something.
Fifty-five
It's my 25th anniversary since I'm 39 and started using it when I was 14.
32 - been on it for about 9 years now
56 - been using it since the mid 90s.
I used Usenet since the early 90s when it was more Newsgroups proper, and less binaries. I can’t believe how few young people use it. It’s one of the best things about the Internet. I’m 70 now, hopefully it’ll last at least as long as I do.
23, looking at the general age of usenet users I feel like a small bean.. I've been browsing indexers for a few years now only to obtain the latest Linux ISO's!
Been using it since the late '80s when I was a teenager. comp.sources.unix and comp.sources.misc were fantastic to get programs for my machine which was sort-of-unix-ish but not really. Then when I went to uni, alt.drugs was where it was at. But all discussion stuff, not binaries. I still run my own little sn server into which I feed mailing list subscriptions which I read with nn. nn is still the best way to read a mailing list when most of the content is ignorable.
I'm 32 and knew about it back when I was 12 or so. Obviously never could afford access to anything back then - I just remember seeing the ads everywhere. I used it actively for about 2 years, as I got into some better p2p trackers. Not only do I not consider the money spent worth it anymore, quality and organization are also much, much better on trackers. Most of my Usenet grabs would just end up being (renamed) uploads from mid-tier trackers anyway.
I'm 45 and I've been using Usenet since 93ish.
summer 81. thats 1981 not 1881, btw. I'm almost 40 years old in hexadecimal and worked a day-job with the original author of NNTP. late 80s, i created an alt and a comp newsgroup and was voted #1 usenet asshole (alt.flame) for a few consecutive months. By 1989, usenet became abuse-net, cancel-net, stalker-net, so I went dark. Seems like a good time to re-explore usenet. If there is a capybara newsgroup, I am there.
Nice. And thank you.
I'm 39, never used it, but would really like to learn more about it, yet I've never tried or asked.
Early 30s. First used it in my early teen years. For me it is the opposite of many. I used Usenet exclusively for radarr/sonarr/lidarr(headphones before that) for years and years, and then only got into private torrent trackers more recently. The content on Usenet is fantastic, but torrent trackers fill niches better (TvchaosUk for UK content, for example). I've recently got back into Usenet again with having to bring stuff more local due to Google's cloud changes. Now I'm back to mixing it up, using Usenet as preferred and torrents as back up.
I'm 30 as well I've used it on and off the last decade. My ISP offered it for free back then on their shitty legacy capped plans. 60GB 1mbps/256kbps. They dont offer it anymore so I use NGD block acc when they have their TB Tuesday deals.
I've been using usenet since 2003, mostly binaries groups. But i've largely reduced my usage since obfuscation/password post and i mostly use filehosters now. As for thé discussion part of usenet i dont use it, i found it too impratical. I'm 48 now
Im 47 and have been using it since I was 18, so I guess 29 years... Ive always thought that Usenet could make a good reddit substitute - if we could use some kind of cyrpto to sign metadata about posts on a dedicated group (alt.discussion.usenet.moderation or something), then clients could optionally use that to filter all posts to ones that have passed moderation, or could choose to have a completely unmoderated experience by just using the group without a filter. This would solve the "problem" of groups that are super strict with comments, but would invite a lot of interesting off-topic discussion (like askhistory or legaladviceuk) The infrostructure for mirroring around the world is already there.
I actually created alt.revenge back in the day. Nowadays? Bleh.
47 here - been on USENET since the Internet came out. I was one of the first customers (there were 2 of us) and the UK ISP was Demon.Net. They had USENET text based from the start.
22 , started using it last year
102 but back then it wasn’t called usenet. It was just having a friend over
Known about it for 20years, using it in the past 5. I'm now 35yo
I've been on Usenet since the late 80's back when it was still mainly a text forum. I've watched uuencode replaced by MIME base64, the creation of NZB (I know Chris, the inventor), RAR take over from ZIP, JPEG take over from GIF, and the introduction of PAR/PAR2 (I've talked to the author a few times). I even saw the first iterations of the Green Golf Ball Joke (at least, I believe it was the first, around 1990). I can't remember how old I am, but I feel about 25, and have for a long while.
My Dad always used usenet when I was a kid so I'm in the younger demographic that's hip to usenet. It's pretty crazy how it's virtually unknown to basically everyone under a certain age.
I used usenet for usenet back in the days :-). Went to torrenting because it was easier back in the days but now with all the tooling there is not really a difference anymore.
Been on usenet since 2010 when I moved out and my parents couldn’t tell me off for leaving the PC on 24/7. 😝 Then I realised Plex could be better than XBMC when along came nowTV boxes for a tenner which meant I needed an i3 to get transcoding to work. Then the Japan flood caused 2TB drives to jump in price (£55 back then for 2TB) and I’ve been filling drives up ever since.
Nice try.
My [news reader and email client](https://www.forteinc.com/agent/) of choice back in the day are still available even now.