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The last time I looked at a binary usenet group was probably 3 years ago and at that time it was full of viruses and malware that was masquerading as software. It was such a mess. NZB files are a great way to bypass that but the NZB sites seem to come and go quickly and all the good ones required subscriptions.

The invite only ones stick around. But you are right without VIP accounts its useless for automation as the limits are so low. And none are a perfect source. That is why I have VIP accounts on eight different sites.
 
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The last time I looked at a binary usenet group was probably 3 years ago and at that time it was full of viruses and malware that was masquerading as software. It was such a mess. NZB files are a great way to bypass that but the NZB sites seem to come and go quickly and all the good ones required subscriptions.

Not all the good ones require subscriptions but most do.
 
In fact I was registered there before so maybe I can just change the settings in Agent and it will pull stuff down. I'm definitely going to do it.

Alt.home.repair used to be my favorite newsgroup. I started hanging out there in September 2000. I posted there many hundreds of times. A lot of great people hung out there including many contractors who would help people with all kinds of stuff. In more recent times it got weird and spammy and I saw a lot of off topic discussions of things I didn't want to get into. They kind of went astray, at least some of the people who posted there. I haven't checked it out for a long time. Last time I downloaded headers was May, 2012. I still have many thousands of posts saved in my Agent from that newsgroup including the message bodies, of course.

Come to think of it I think I remember seeing people complaining about people posting there from Google Groups!
Hey, never heard how it turned out. Did you get a chance to sign in on e-s?
 
Hey, never heard how it turned out. Did you get a chance to sign in on e-s?
Yes, I successfully set it up and it's working. I haven't been using it for the last couple of weeks, newsgroups is something I use occasionally. There are times when I definitely want access. E-S is the ticket now.
 
That's great. Glad you were able to log onto e-s servers. It's a nice service they offer for free. I donate when I can just to try and help out.

Hey I was going to ask ya if you had a chance to stop by alt.home.repair and check it out. I just posted a discussion a few days ago about thermostats. The guys there are so helpful you just gotta sort through the shit...reminds me of another place I hang out at.:sneaky:....😀
 
I haven't, but I'm right now downloading the headers for alt.home.repair. I used to hang out there a ton in the early 2000's. There were so many great people there, a lot of them very experienced contractors. In those days there wasn't the crap that came in later, spammers and OT discussions, just stuff about how to do stuff around the house and related. So many great threads, I haven't deleted them, I have them still in my email/NG client. A lot of that stuff doesn't really date.

Edit: Just stuck my nose into the new headers. A lot of crap in there, I have never been into killing certain posters, have maybe done it once or twice, but I may have to do that now if I'm going to hang out in NGs like that. I can do that and/or set up filters that will just grab all the posts from certain addresses and put them in my trash folder.

I see a lot of thermostat threads. The only one I have in my house AFAIK is the one in my gas oven!
 
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Oh ya you have too add certain posters too your ignore list. Some of them just try and spam the group. That's why I like Pan. You just right click on the header and choose ignore author and then choose forever. Click on add and rescore and you are good too go.
It cleans it up so nice.

Anyway I know you said you don't hang out in the groups much anymore but post every once in awhile if you can. The old ways like IRC and newsgroups(discussion based)are still pretty cool and active if you find the right place with the right people. That's why I still hit up the freenode network.
 
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Surely there must be good discussion forums for home repair that are better that some alt.usenet cesspool? Every usenet discussion group that I used to follow went into the crapper at least ten to fifteen years ago and has been supplanted by some moderated forum somewhere. The only reason for usenet to even exist today is the piracy of media and software.
 
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