David Chmelik posted on Sun, 24 Aug 2025 09:17:30 -0000 (UTC) as excerpted:
> Some Usenet newsgroups, such as alt.culture.usenet alt.fan.usenet, are > discussing Usenet archives going back for text groups maybe to the > beginning. Maybe this is a little off-topic, but if I were to get some > such archives, how would I load just text groups I use into Pan? There > were a few discussions I started or were in some years/decades ago I > want to refer to or continue, but Eternal-September.org crashed and only > has a couple years. Would you suggest getting a commercial subscription > to Usenet and then just getting all those headers from a larger server, > and then continuing on Eternal-September.org? That'd be the simplest method, yes. It should be possible to wrestle the archives into pan format, and I might try it were I doing it, but it'd be more for the challenge/experience/ knowledge if so, and while I'm reasonably confident I could do it if suitably determined, I'm seriously skeptical about the chances of me being much help to anyone else trying it /without/ first doing it myself. So honestly, the commercial server method sounds /much/ more reasonable. [The below pushes block accounts strongly enough I'm adding this pre- apology as it's honestly more strongly than I'd normally be comfortable with. There are indeed some cases where time-based makes better sense. But seriously, do the math and see. Don't get stuck in the wrong type of account either way, as over a few years it could well be hundreds of dollars wasted, and/or lost opportunity due to an unnecessary cancel because you chose the wrong one and it's blowing your budget.] If you do go commercial server, since it seems you're reasonably low volume, I'd strongly suggest considering an unexpiring block account. Then set it to lower priority than your normal server in pan, so pan will only pull from it if it can't find the message on your higher priority servers. You can even set it to zero connections when you don't want to use it at all. That way you don't have to worry about a monthly fee, you can use it only when you want/need, and if you don't use it for awhile, no big deal, the block doesn't expire. I have a block from astraweb.com I bought years ago. Tho ATM their web site doesn't appear to be working for me in firefox (I get the initial html page but something with the scripting seems broken, even clearing everything, in safe mode, with ff's enhanced protections off; it loads a semi-broken page in links and lynx text-browsers, saying it needs javascript). Not sure if that's a normal thing (maybe it only works with chromium-based browsers?) or temporary as I've not been on the website in years, and probably haven't actually used any of my block in near as long. blocknews.net (not .com!!) is another option, web page working better for me ATM, block sizes from 5 GB for $2 (USD), to 3072 GB for $100. (usenetnow.net is the same folks as blocknews but with traditional time- based accounts not blocks, and both have been around for a long time. Comparing the longest/largest, usenetnow $20/quarter so the blocknews $100/3TB is five quarters worth. That's 15 months vs 3 TB, so if you'll average a TB in under 5 months (200GB/mo avg), do the time based, else do the block. Comparing shortest/smallest, $4/week vs. $2/5gig (so the breakover point is 10gig/wk). Middle is $8/mo vs. $9/100gig. Meanwhile, frugalusenet.com is apparently affiliated as well, tho that's a newer development (wasn't around when I was shopping for a block years ago). They're a bit cheaper with a $6/mo (vs $8/mo unesnetnow) monthly, with less retention, but if you get the $60 annual (saving $1/mo) they throw in a 300 gig blocknews block (which seems to be ~$20 value as it's between the $15 200 gig and the $25 500 gig) as well, usable for backup and the longer retention, which I guess makes them hybrid block/time-based.) For other time-based comparisons, newshosting.com is $10/mo 50-gig cap, $13/mo unlimited (with some additional extras like VPN), or $16/mo w/ easynews websearch thrown in. More expensive monthly, plus they hosted for my ISP (cox cable) for some years with horrible reliability, so personally I'd stay well away, but it's useful as a cost-comparison. The well-recognized long-term gold standard is of course giganews.com. I honestly don't know what their current reputation is, but back in the day they made a point of being the best connected (will a policy of peering with pretty much everyone to be sure they had all the posts and their reputation matched that), and they still claim that. I'd consider them worth a trial at least if you're in the time-based market or have propagation/reliability complaints about other providers. Cost-wise, $10/ mo monthly or $100/yr ($8.33 monthly). There's a 14-day free trial. But unlike newshosting, I'd say that $10/month $100/yr is likely to be worth it if you want/need propagation, reliability and support (they feature their actual humans to help and ten-minute response-time). If you're considering time-based, I'd definitely say do at least the free trial, then decide. But the time-based are mostly for comparison as I believe you'll be low enough usage that time-based is a waste given unexpiring block prices, making block the better choice for you as it was for me. (When I got my 1 TB block, the biggest astraweb offered at the time, I had the idea that if I never seriously got back into binaries it could well last my lifetime. And I've not gotten back into binaries and I've used I think 10-15% of it, years later, so that still stands. I'd have surely spent well over that $100 in that time on even a budget time-based, several hundred at the giganews $100/yr, but I'd have canceled time-based by now due to disuse and would not have continued access, while AFAIK tho I've not tried in awhile so I'm honestly not sure, I still have access to about 85% of that TB block. Even if they ended up killing it after years of non-use, if I ever do get back into binaries, I'll almost certainly go block again (unless I'm /so/ into them I'm averaging a couple hundred gig plus a month for months straight, at which point I'd use up an initial block fast enough and could change then). I guess you can see why I'm pushing it for low-volume users like me, tho for the one guy on this list that says he does multiple TV shows, yes, an unlimited monthly probably makes better sense, as believe he'd go thru that 1 TB in a couple months making it $50/mo based on what I paid, or $33/mo based on that $100/3TB blocknews account.) There may be other providers offering block accounts but astraweb and blocknews are the two I know, and they have been offering unexpiring blocks for many years which should mean less chance of taking your money for unexpiring blocks and then expiring themselves! > I'm also interested in > some binary ones like art/music, like art.binaries.sounds.mods--not the > illegal binaries--but Eternal-September didn't carry MOD music > newsgroups for some strange reason... Again, sounds like a block account could be reasonable. If you were doing movies or TV shows, that's high-volume enough a time-based account would probably work better, but individual short-audio or still-image series, block should work well for as long as you don't go overboard, and whole- album audio would probably be intermediate, with block more cost efficient at the low end and time-based better high-end. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
