Usenet

[necturus]

When Speakeasy was taken over by Megapath, my Usenet service stopped working. As I was otherwise preoccupied, I didn't get around to calling them for a while, but after some persistence I managed to get an answer from someone who told me that it still worked, but the username and password had been changed. The only problem was that the new credentials don't work any better than the old ones did.

At that point a pack of work problems pounced on me and I got distracted. More months passed, until last week it occurred to me to see if there might be a news server somewhere out there I could use with my ancient text-mode newsreader, nn.

There is: 202.177.16.121. Tracerouting suggested it is in Japan, but it's actually in Hong Kong. So, at a time when I have people pressuring me to join F***book, I am back on Usenet.

Television is only a fad, Norm Ruby, a late colleague of mine at WUNR/WBOS, used to say thirty years ago.

Comments

[redbird]

What newsgroups are still worth dealing with? I gave up on my previous server and trying to make anything work on this Mac because while I could connect, there was far too much spam and too little I found worth reading.

[necturus]

I'm only reading alt.poly and misc.transport.rail.americas for now. Traffic on both is pretty low, so I may only check in once a week or so.