From Newsgroup: news.software.readers


99.9999% of usenet is troll farm, where "discussion" is almost entirely chatbots chatting/chattering coactively, filling active newsgroups with
their "nothing burger" some thirty-two years under trollfarm occupation, withal, some newsgroups (not many) still attract non-robot contributors:

(using Tor Browser 15.0.5)
https://downloads.isc.org/usenet/CONFIG/

Index of /usenet/CONFIG
[ICO] Name Last modified Size Description
[ ] Parent Directory
[TXT] HIERARCHY-NOTES 2010-01-18 03:50 27K
[DIR] LOGS/ 2026-02-01 01:00 -
[TXT] README 2019-01-07 02:58 14K
[ ] active 2026-02-02 13:00 2.0M >https://downloads.isc.org/usenet/CONFIG/active *
[ ] active.bz2 2026-02-02 13:00 264K
[ ] active.gz 2026-02-02 13:00 292K
[TXT] control.ctl 2023-08-05 15:57 104K
[ ] newsgroups 2026-02-02 13:00 2.3M
[ ] newsgroups.bz2 2026-02-02 13:00 620K
[ ] newsgroups.gz 2026-02-02 13:00 685K
...

*(45187 lines / 2172291 bytes / 2.17 megabytes) . . .

https://downloads.isc.org/usenet/CONFIG/active
aaa.inu-chan 0000000000 0000000001 m
...

<snipped 45185 lines>

...
zippo.spamhippo.top100 0000000000 0000000001 m

[end quoted plain text]

*.*
39370 y
5811 m
6 n
_______
45187 total


alt.binaries.*
2569 y
50 m
_______
2619 b

unmoderated usenet newsgroups are still useful as the public repository
for lurkers and researchers, to that extent kudos to nntp server admins
for collectively sustaining this internet-accessible plain text library,
but any conversation between non-robot participants is a million-to-one

--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.software.readers


D wrote:

99.9999% of usenet is troll farm, where "discussion" is almost
entirely chatbots chatting/chattering coactively, filling
active newsgroups with their "nothing burger" some thirty-two
years under trollfarm occupation, withal,

some newsgroups (not many) still attract non-robot
contributors:

I'd like to think that I am a non-robot contributor to the
newsgroups that I frequent...

Maybe we'll need the chat bots to keep Usenet alive when the
rest of us oldies 'pass'!
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.software.readers

Blueshirt <blueshirt@indigo.news> wrote:

D wrote:

99.9999% of usenet is troll farm, where "discussion" is almost
entirely chatbots chatting/chattering coactively, filling
active newsgroups with their "nothing burger" some thirty-two
years under trollfarm occupation, withal,

some newsgroups (not many) still attract non-robot
contributors:

I'd like to think that I am a non-robot contributor to the
newsgroups that I frequent...

Maybe we'll need the chat bots to keep Usenet alive when the
rest of us oldies 'pass'!

Some of us who were too young when Usenet was more popular have finally
made our way here. I wish I could have seen Usenet in its glory days but nothing can be done about it now.

If you donrCOt mind me asking, what keeps you coming back?

--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.software.readers

LiquidPhD wrote:

Blueshirt <blueshirt@indigo.news> wrote:

D wrote:

some newsgroups (not many) still attract non-robot
contributors:

I'd like to think that I am a non-robot contributor to the
newsgroups that I frequent...

Maybe we'll need the chat bots to keep Usenet alive when the
rest of us oldies 'pass'!

Some of us who were too young when Usenet was more popular
have finally made our way here. I wish I could have seen
Usenet in its glory days but nothing can be done about it
now.

If you donrCOt mind me asking, what keeps you coming back?

The quirkiness of the discussions.

Okay, maybe not in this actual group... but some of the other
newsgroups I visit can be 'entertaining' enough. They are like
a bunch of friends sitting around talking about absolutely
nothing important just to pass the time!

:)
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.software.readers

LiquidPhD wrote:

I wish I could have seen Usenet in its glory days but
nothing can be done about it now.

Not everything was glorious back then. Especially when the "Eternal
September" people joined, groups became really (over)crowded, and that's
when you noticed you needed kill filters not only for persons but also
for topics and other stuff that sped up your reading in a way that
Usenet still was manageable within a certain time frame.

If you donrCOt mind me asking, what keeps you coming back?

a) lack of interest
b) death: At 60 I'm one of the younger guys around here, so quite a
number of users have already died of are no longer able to take part
either/or physically or mentally.

-jw-
--
And now for something completely different...
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.software.readers

"Blueshirt" <blueshirt@indigo.news> spake the secret code <xn0pm5cfek1g64a000@news.eternal-september.org> thusly:

LiquidPhD wrote:

If you don't mind me asking, what keeps you coming back?

The quirkiness of the discussions.

:-)

Speaking for myself, I find that I can skim through a bunch of topics
way faster in usenet than I can in a web forum. Reading web forums
involves long delays between each message. Granted, there are much
fewer messages on usenet now than there used to be in the early 90s,
but the fact still applies.

Speaking of quirky people, I notice that comp.lang.c++ still attracts
the same crazy people ("I've solved the halting problem!") as it did
in the past, only the high quality posters have mostly disappeared.
It's a shame, really.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline>
The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals-wiki.org>
The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org>
Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.software.readers

Richard wrote or quoted:

Speaking for myself, I find that I can skim through a bunch of topics
way faster in usenet than I can in a web forum. Reading web forums
involves long delays between each message.

I read some web forums where all postings of a thread are on one
single page, following each other, like:

Jack: . . .

Jill: . . .

. Couldn't be faster than this. Of course, not all forums are like
that!


--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.software.readers

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) posted:

Richard wrote or quoted:

Speaking for myself, I find that I can skim through a bunch of topics
way faster in usenet than I can in a web forum. Reading web forums >involves long delays between each message.

I read some web forums where all postings of a thread are on one
single page, following each other, like:

Jack: . . .

Jill: . . .

. Couldn't be faster than this. Of course, not all forums are like
that!

Yes but many such forums (Reddit, Hacker News,...) have no way to see which posts are new since your last visit, which any decent usenet client will do. That drives me round the bend! Efn4
--
Colin Macleod ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ https://cmacleod.me.uk

FEED HOUSE SAVE FEED HOUSE SAVE FEED HOUSE SAVE
GAZA GAZA GAZA GAZA GAZA GAZA GAZA GAZA GAZA
NOW! NOW! NOW! NOW! NOW! NOW! NOW! NOW! NOW!
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.software.readers

[in reply to ReK2 Hispagatos <rek2@usenet_reborn.tui>]

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) posted:

Richard wrote or quoted:

Speaking for myself, I find that I can skim through a bunch of topics
way faster in usenet than I can in a web forum. Reading web forums >involves long delays between each message.

I read some web forums where all postings of a thread are on one
single page, following each other, like:

Jack: . . .

Jill: . . .

. Couldn't be faster than this. Of course, not all forums are like
that!

Yes but many such forums (Reddit, Hacker News,...) have no way to see which posts are new since your last visit, which any decent usenet client will do. That drives me round the bend! Efn4

Yeah def usenet is for me the best, came back to it 3-4 years a go during covid
and I cant leave now, have moved all our collective to it "hispagatos" in our own
inn2 instance, have some new groups and helped with comp.lang.go and others but as a side note, I am just tired of all the WEB bloobs I only visit
some times lemmy(a free/decentralized reddit) and mastodon(a free decentralized twitter)
for videos freetube and odysee I avoid youtube as the plague and when I have to I use
invidious.
But at the end... Usenet, I am so back in love with usenet wrote a lite client https://sr.ht/~rek2/Usenet_Reborn/ and a lot of people I know that came back to usenet are helping me with QA and using it.
In short Usenet FTW!

Happy Hacking
ReK2
--
EfA|rCiryaN+AEfA|EfuNN+AEfA+N+Ari?N+AEfna {gemini,https}://{,rek2.}hispagatos.org - mastodon: @rek2@hispagatos.space [https|gemini]://2600.Madrid - https://hispagatos.space/@rek2
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.software.readers

Colin Macleod <user7@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote or quoted:

Yes but many such forums (Reddit, Hacker News,...) have no way to see which >posts are new since your last visit, which any decent usenet client will do. >That drives me round the bend! Efn4

I read some news sources on the web. Essentially, a news source
is a list of links to news reports. I wrote a Python script
that scans those lists and creates a digest list for me, which
itself is a link list in HTML shown to me in my browser.

This digest only contains articles not shown in a previous digest,
which is implemented using a log file of all articles shown so far.

If anyone wants to build something like this himself:

Here is some pseudocode I wrote to illustrate my script, which is
much larger. That pseudocode was never executed and will still
contain errors, but is close enough to executable Python that
people with experience in Python should be able to make it run.

This approach will only work with web pages that do not require
JavaScript for access control or filling the page with content.

import re
import urllib.request
import webbrowser

# input, news source(s):
article_list = \
r"http://example.com/article_list-20260219184720-TMP-DML.html"

# output:
digest_file_name = r"output-file-20260219184720-TMP-DML.html"
log_file_name = r"log-file-20260219184720-TMP-DML.html"

# procedure:
with open( digest_file_name, "w", errors='ignore' )as digest:
request = urllib.request.Request( article_list )
resource = urllib.request.urlopen( request )
cs = resource.headers.get_content_charset()
content = resource.read().decode( cs, errors="ignore" )
# assuming each article link is in an element of type "p"
# and each p element is a link to an article:
# (This needs to be adapted to each news source!)
for p in re.finditer\
( r'''<p[^\001]*?</p>''', content, flags=re.DOTALL ):
text = p.group( 0 )
# was this already seen? check with log file:
with open(log_file_name, 'r', encoding='utf-8') as log_file:
log_file_content = log_file.read()
already_seen = text in log_file_content
if not already_seen: # <==== ### DUPES ARE SKIPPED HERE ###
# add to log file:
with open( log_file_name, 'a', encoding='utf-8') as log_file:
log_file.write(text + '\n')
# exclude unwanted topics:
if "Prince Harry" not in text:
# add to article_list
print( text, file=article_list ) webbrowser.open(digest_file_name)


--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2