What are /r/usenet's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

FYI:

Blocknews uses the Highwinds Backbone. Therefore service on Blocknews would be redundant with any of the following:

• Newsdemon
• Newshosting
• UsenetServer
• Newsgroup Ninja
• Astraweb
• Thundernews
• Frugal Usenet

See the providers wiki page for a complete list. I only mention these because they are the most frequently mentioned Highwinds providers/resellers on this sub.

Blue Monthly - Usenet Farm

Gold Monthly - Vipernews

All Access - UsenetFarm, Vipernews, and UsenetExpress (redundant with UsenetPrime).

No both of them don't its been quite sometime though.

Abavia themselves have only a month or so local retention after that they pull from Newshosting/HW Media upto 1250 days.

UsenetExpress has local retention of about 100-300 days and after they also pull from Newshosting/HW Media upto 1100 days.

Farm doesn't backfill from anyone anymore they are completely tier 1 backbone now like Vipernews and Altopia.

Let’s not forget that newsgroup ninja is a shadow company owned by omicron. There was the issue a while back about how ninja was dishonest about their ownership and even a situation where the mods had to remove a lot of the shill posts from some of the ninja related subjects. Everyone here can do better than to support a dishonest provider. WHO KNOWS what else they will be dishonest about?

If Omicron wants to offer $3 usenet, they should just offer it at Newshosting or usenetserver and be done with it.

Its complicated Eweka don't resell directly but they do via proxy through their sister site Newshosting.

Newshosting or any of their non NL based sister sites(eg Easynews,usenetserver,Ninja,xlned,pureusenet and Sunnyusenet)/resellers(eg Newsdemon,Newsgroupdirect,Thundernews,Blocknews etc) do have access to Eweka NL and DE(xlned,pureusenet and Sunnyusenet only have access to Eweka NL servers and not DE) servers but their access is limited by some coding configuration where if Newshosting receives a DMCA takedown(or any of its reseller or sister site does which are than forwarded to Newshosting as technically only Newshosting and Eweka manage the servers) request first it deletes the articles for US servers and than these are forwarded to Eweka who marks those articles as deleted and they are not accessible to any of the Newshosting customers be it retail or resellers but since they have not receive NTD for those articles so they are still available to Eweka direct retail customers so unless Eweka recieves direct NTD they don't delete articles as since they are NL based they don't follow US DMCA for their retail customers.

TL;DR if you want to access Eweka you need to purchase a subscription from them directly

New version is live! I named it 3.0.0, just because. You can find it at https://couchpota.to/ of course. But the auto-updater should do its magic.

Please let me know if you find any issues in the new GUI via Github Issues.

Full changelog: https://github.com/RuudBurger/CouchPotatoServer/compare/build/2.6.3...build/3.0.0 if you like that sort of thing.

Consolidation has harmful effects. You might not realize it or see it at first, but long term it does have consequences.

Effects of monopoly power (in usenet)

Omicron purchased and now controls

• Eweka
• Easynews
• Newshosting
• Readnews
• UsenetServer
• BaseIP (formerly EuroAccess)
  .... XLned
  .... PureUsenet
  .... SunnyUsenet
• Tweaknews (this arrangement is a little weird)

Records indicate that they picked up Newsgroup.ninja to add to their portfolio

A provider as large as Omicron holds a lot of power. They own and operate at least three systems (Ashburn, Amsterdam, Frankfurt) on two continents. They have the largest reach and control.

They can:

> 1) Not sell access to you
2) Not peer with you
3) Not share a binary feed
4) Apply pressure on those they peer and exchange binary feeds with, not to share with you
5) Engage in predatory pricing

The last item listed seems to be what is happening here, drive prices down to at a level unsustainable to competitors as well as their own resellers to push other businesses out of the market, then eventually raise prices. Predatory pricing can lead to further acquisitions and consolidation if the company or brand has potential value to the monopoly leader.

> UNLIMITED > > No Access Limits > > 50 Simultaneous Connections

Does this mean you won't penalize users who connect from more than one IP simultaneously -- i.e.: if a user has a VPS or Dedicated Server in one location, and also downloads from home?

> Huge Retention

Define "Huge retention". 2100 Days? 2400 Days? 2700 Days? 3600+ Days?

> Free SSL Encryption

Your site is secured by Let's Encrypt. While I have nothing against Let's Encrypt personally speaking, I have to question your certificate. Is it provided by yourself or by who you're reselling for (which would possibly cause problems).

> No Tracking, Logless Access

In these cases, we generally have to take providers at their word regarding this. Some providers have established a reputation where we can take them at their word. However, you are new. Can you provide any evidence that demonstrates this?

Uploading is relatively more unsafe then on torrents, because ip logs can be requested from your usenet provider. They need to save every upload data like ip, date to remain in business.

1. Pay for usenet account with prepaid visa cards
2. Buy self vpn with no USA/UK base
3. Dont use gmail or any USA hosted email, check: https://www.privacytools.io/#email

I've made a PPA for those who want to skip compiling. Currently I have targets for trusty (14.04) and precise (12.04). Let me know if you need a different target.

https://launchpad.net/~modriscoll/+archive/ubuntu/nzbget

Hey fam you can still see how many times you've downloaded from DogNZB for Sonarr. Grab a DB browser like http://sqlitebrowser.org/ if you're on Windows. Navigate to nzbdrone.db C:\ProgramData\NzbDrone with DBbrower, open and Execute SQL tab.

SELECT SUBSTR(DATA, INSTR(DATA, '"indexer": ') + 12, INSTR(SUBSTR(DATA, INSTR(DATA, '"indexer": ') + 12), '",') - 1) AS IndexerName, COUNT(*) AS GrabCount FROM History WHERE DATA LIKE '%indexer%' GROUP BY IndexerName ORDER BY GrabCount DESC

And this db of mine was created on November ‎11, ‎2017. https://i.imgur.com/hSLTj4d.png

For additional discussion read here..

Indepedent providers

There are a number of independent providers not owned by Omicron.

You'll find them in the wiki

• Altopia
• Elbracht (only germans can buy this)
• UsenetExpress
• UsenetFarm
• Usenetnews
• Vipernews

Giganews/Supernews is also not owned by Omicron.

Abavia is also not owned by Omicron. Abavia has 15-25 days of local retention with the rest of advertised retention queried remotely on demand from Omicron. Ownership of XS News changed around 2014, with assets (hardware) being divested and put under a new company called Abavia. It's now operated by the Omniga Group, some unconscionable people that are also behind and (which lock people into contracts and sue if you cancel)

Omicron

If I need access to Omicron's systems I subscribe to resellers (not ninja) or buy a block. Some active Omicron resellers (small biz) of Reddit include:

• u/GregLyda ( NewsgroupDirect, NewsDemon)
• u/Swintec ( BlockNews, FrugalUsenet )
• u/nicholi3 ( Thundernews)

I mentioned it in a comment yesterday, but do not be surprised if blocks disappear entirely from Omicron in the future. When Omicron resellers disappear so will block options. Why? Because blocks are not a consistent stream of revenue to pay operating expenses.

These are the brands owned by Omicron Media (big corp)

> Omicron Media currently owns Easynews, Eweka, Newshosting, UsenetServer, Tweaknews, XLned, SunnyUsenet, PureUsenet, and Newsgroup.ninja

> EuroAccess (baseIP) and Readnews customers are also owned by Omicron Media.

This is utterly retarded. I have been using Giganews since the 90's through Rogers@Home and stayed on as a customer once Rogers got rid of their usenet access, all the way through to today.

This is simply what it appears to be: an insane ex-employee spreading bullshit. Sometimes you hire nutcases and it comes back to bite you.

EDIT: If you're wondering why they DMCA'd that shit, read through some of the comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8320487 Ask yourself, how would you like to be dox'd and painted as FBI for all the conspiracy nuts to come after you?

Thundernews is a Newshosting reseller and not an Eweka reseller so they follow DMCA via Newshosting and Eweka only follows NTD for its direct retail customers.

Resellers buy bandwidth in bulk from backbones like Newshosting so they can give more discount but the cons are they have soft caps on data or speed to counter abuse.

When you buy directly from Eweka you get the advantage of NTD which is alot slower and manual than DMCA though the con is speed is limited to 300mbps and when you buy directly from Newshosting you get direct support from backbone itself and there is no speed or data cap but you pay a higher cost for it than buying from resellers like Thundernews.

I originally wasn't going to post anything, but might as well. I sent my thoughts using the 'contact us' part of the site also. These are all personal pros & cons. Your thoughts will be different, of course.

Pros:

• Nice clean layout

• Fast and responsive

• Releases seemed to be all there, though nothing or dog didn't have.

Cons:

• Heavy reliance on google apis. Google gets to know when I visit your site. Yay. AFAIK dog is the only indexer that doesn't rely on any outside apis/javascript libraries.

• Recommends HideMyAss VPN. They are the joke of the VPN world.

• Can be somewhat expensive compared to others depending on what you sign up for. 10 EUR/yr is about average.

• I found the signup captcha to be annoying

Since I run script blockers, I had to allow the following in uMatrix in order for the site to allow me to sign up. This isn't a con since not everyone runs noscript or uMatrix. Just mainly showing how much the site pings/relies Google. also relies on google apis, for example. I guess it's a theme thing.

script allow (allow third party scripts to run from ) frame allow (allow third party frames from ) script allow (allow third party scripts to run from ) xhr allow (allow XMLHttpRequest to ) script allow (allow third party scripts to run from )

Also pulls fonts from: and

Info on independent providers and Omicron resellers

If you vote your wallet don't punish Omicron resellers. those guys are honest hard working small business owners. If I need access to Omicron or a block I buy through them. Some are active on Reddit, click link above.

Omicron has secretly been undercutting their own resellers (via Ninja) to push them out.

The brands below are directly owned and operated by Omicron. They also bought Readnews and EuroAccess (BaseIP) a few years ago.

Omicrons brands:

• Easynews
• Eweka
• Newshosting
• UsenetServer
• Tweaknews
• XLned
• PureUsenet
• SunnyUsenet
• Newsgroup.ninja (Omicron won't acknowledge they own it)

Reminder: Let’s not forget that newsgroup ninja is a shadow company owned by omicron. There was the issue a while back about how ninja was dishonest about their ownership and even a situation where the mods had to remove a lot of the shill posts from some of the ninja related subjects. Everyone here can do better than to support a dishonest provider. WHO KNOWS what else they will be dishonest about?

If Omicron wants to offer $2 usenet, they should just offer it at Newshosting or usenetserver and be done with it. Anyone paying full price at Newshosting or Usenetserver should feel dumb.

You're trying and mean well, but there are a lot of errors.

The wiki is fairly informative, but it isn't exactly accurate.

It's best not to list by nation as a business like Omicron owns and operates systems in the United States, Netherlands, and Germany

Omicron owns and operates EasyNews, Newshosting, UsenetServer, Eweka and BaseIP ( which includes XLned, SunnyUsenet, PureUsenet). Unless something changed XLned operations are out of the Netherlands from the old EuroAccess datacenter (now run as BaseIP). Omicron also have some agreement with Cambrium where they gained Tweaknews international customers and the ability to use Tweaknews branding. Those services are accessible through the old EuroAccess datacenter now run by Omicron as BaseIP.

Giganews owns Supernews and the listed "resellers" which are just subsidiaries acting as a discount portal for access to the same serves Technically Giganews does not resell to anyone.

There isn't much evidence that Novia/Newscene, Newsguy, Usenet-Node1, and Cheapnews are anything more than resellers. They might have limited spools on hand supplemented by Omicron, but I doubt it.

It's a "feature" of par2cmdline, where they skip blocks that might be shifted a bit in the data if you don't force it. In mega-rare cases those could cause a failure, but in practice it never happens. Luckily you can override this behavior, so it finds as many blocks as on Windows.

You need to set "-N" for Par2 Parameters, see here: https://sabnzbd.org/wiki/configuration/1.1/switches#par2cmdline

There is a post on the "other" usenet subreddit that contemplates that perhaps Newshosting is no longer a unique backbone but rather just a cache and Eweka is the backbone. If this is true, I could see your Newshosting oddities as glitches in the cache software / processes.

Need to consider who now owns Tweaknews.

I made a yesterday removed by mods that discussed some recent data that ksryn was looking at. u/PearsonFlyer said I could repost it in 14 to 30 days. Omicron seems to be up to something.

Omicron Media owns Eweka. Omicron also owns Tweaknews under Base Network Services B.V. (BaseIP). Base Network Services B.V. and Eweka are less than 10km apart.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to maintain two systems with 3000+ days retention in the amsterdam area. Latency at that distance would add less than 3ms. Deep retention for Eweka and Tweaknews could be shared and limited with ACL with each service having its own small cache and spools for under 100 days that would service the majority of customer hits.

Consolidation of infrastructure is what usually happens when one business buys out the competition. Customers get migrated from one system to another, but it's invisible to the outside.

That's exactly what happened after Highwinds bought Easynews, Newshosting, and UseNetServer. Each of those companies used to run their own infrastructure. Now all three provide access to the Omicron platform in Ashburn, Virginia (US) and the platform in Amsterdam (NL)

Edit: bad grammar.

In addition to what u/pelap said:

Retention for the big players is over 3,000 days (nearing 4,000 days for Newshosting). That means your stuff is available to the public for over 10 years and it gets worse if you re-upload everything every 3 years. Do you feel comfortable having your personal files publicly available for that long period with no means to delete it? Today's strong encryption might be crackable in a heartbeat in 10 years. I wouldn't want to take this chance.

My own thoughts, fwiw:

Ditch Newshosting, switch to Ninja or NGD (same backbone, half the price). Grab a Farm block and lose Astraweb. Those two will get you pretty much anything and everything in my experience. Pare down the indexes to Geek (lifetime sub?) and Dog, using a free DrunkenSlug account as backup for five hits a day. If needed you could even drop dog and rely on a (cheaper) Slug account.

You'll save a decent percentage on your current spend and not lose much if anything by way of end results.

NZBGEEK

Hey Geeks,

We will be offering our Black Friday Deals from 5:00am on the 24th November GMT for a 24 hour period.

Please visit our subscription page here

https://nzbgeek.info/vigsubscription.php during this period to view the discounted subscriptions.

The deals on all our subscription offerings will only be available during the 24 hour period, please do not ask for discounts on subscriptions already purchased before the Black Friday Deal or after it is finished.

We always run discounted offerings for Black Friday and our Geek Birthday in December.

> and how much data remains given the plan you have.

If you have to worry about that you should get an unlimited plan. Newshosting usually sells unlimited plans for like 20 to 30 bucks annually.

If you download less then 50 GB per month you could just get a block from Blocknews. Sometimes they are selling a 500 GB block for as low as 75 cents. Thats about 75 cents annually ;-)

Tweakews is entirely different backbone as opposed to newshosting snd eweka.

As for Eweka NGD also have access to same servers but Eweka follows NTD and also doesn't have access US server whereas NGD resells Newshosting which follows DMCA.

Yes, I have Google Fiber.

I haven't tried Giganews or Astraweb yet but with Newshosting I'm averaging about 24MB/s or 192Mb/s. (The limit is disk speed on this server. So I did some testing on a computer with an SSD below.)

Newhosting screenshot at 55MB/s (52MB/s Average):

Second Try 68MB/s (68MB/s Average):

*Edited for clarity and second speed test.

If choosing between Dog and nzbsu I would choose nzbsu any day. The stats from my Hydra install show it's much better, and Dog's recent frequent "4 years for just $50 sales!" has me worried that they are going out of business. Do you think otherwise?

Also, OP should install NZB Hydra if he hasn't already.

Erm.. NZBGet has VideoSort and SABnzbd has Sorting, both of which can be configured to rename to folder name using %dn.%ext with no other programs required..

https://privacy.com/

Create a temporary CC# so if it gets stolen/hacked its no good to the thief. I've no relation to the company, just a guy who got in on the beta and been pretty happy with it:

NewsDemon is a highwinds reseller. That means that service with NewsDemon would be redundant with the following list of providers: - Thundernews - TheCube - Frugal (main server) - Blocknews - Newshosting - Usenet Server - Astraweb - Easynews - Newsgroup Ninja

This list is not exhaustive, but represents most of the more popular highwinds providers/resellers mentioned on this sub.

BTW, I love to see that old retro 2005 design on the website. Very cool to see a bit of history!

I agree on the general sentiment. But those things are to be considered:

1. First, there has to be a charge against you. This is easy to prove for P2P as you can track both up-and downloaders. But for a centralized system like usenet, I don't see the initial vector.
2. In order to be in line with European regulations, a provider is prohibited from storing any data apart from data needed for accounting, which for unlimited providers are name, account and payment details. Different rules apply as soon as you post and the provider does not just forward the information.
3. Private Internet Access has proven not to store any data, so there are providers that can uphold those claims.
4. I'd think that logging information about users' download behaviour would both create more work and more liability to the providers, so I'd expect them not to log that data. But true, you can never know for sure until there is official involvement.
5. NGD has nothing to win from such a lawsuit — either they just lose resources on the lawsuit when they lose, or they bring the issue that they're not really interested in into the spotlight.

Although it should be noted that as of 4 days ago, they have changed from being an Omicron/Newshosting reseller to an independent feed all their own, which brings major changes to what you've had for the last year, but also great.

if you like you can get Newshosting for $ 20 a year now you know better then me, how that one works, I am not using them, I do thnk you will need a new e-mail adr not sure

?promo=best-usenet-deal-ever

and I cant say any about NGD or Ninja

As I said in the previous thread Giganews/supernews are the last remaining indie backbone with most retention ie 600 days all other backbones not owned by Omicron(Newshosting,easynews(web),eweka,tweaknews and xlned) have either less than a year retention or they are backfilling from Newshosting.

If you want to have diversity drop Giganews instead get Supernews which is always running $72 pa promo.

I think that ship sailed the moment Omicron purchased Ninja and then started undercutting their own resellers last Fall (also via Tweaknews).

Churn and attrition is a slow death.

A wholesaler undercutting clients does not build trust, it does the opposite. Some of these guys have probably been living in fear the past year. Some might not realize the pot boiling at all (frog in a pot)

Omicron was probably smiling and locking resellers into long term contracts while plotting how to take them all out. It's not that different historically from how they took out competing providers.

Resellers watch as Ninja appears, a new self-proclaimed Omicron "reseller" with little customers, getting deep discounts they probably had to work years to get. Ninja getting free service by Omicron for 4-6 months between September 2017 - February 2018 while slinxj pretends he's paying for it.

If any of these guys were late on payment, I'd bet they wouldn't get the same treatment.

Then the shoe drops and Ninja is exposed as being owned by Omicron since Oct 2017 which adds new context.

More and more "very enthusiastic" Ninja supporters appear promoting Ninja while talking badly about other resellers.

What would you think if you were a reseller?

The use of Ninja in a price war (instead of Newshosting, UNS, etc) appears to have been a calculated strategy to slowly peel away reseller customers without raising suspicion or losing reseller subscribers which could have happened with a sudden reseller mass exodus to another provider.

That assumes they were locked into long term contracts.

Yes,

Highwinds applies a set of global network management policies to all of its backends.
Takedowns can occur in as little as 90 minutes.

2014-12-11 , Highwinds holdings

If you use a provider that doesn't post an X-Trace header, they shouldn't be able to find out who posted what, at least in theory. If you want to post, get a more or less anonymous block account, then it won't hurt you very much if they should, for whatever reason, decide to close your account. I don't think the providers would actually go through the trouble of logging all uploads. Maybe for a short period of time, but that's really what the X-Trace is for, so they don't have to log.

If you're afraid of getting "busted" don't do it, it's not worth the sleep you will be losing.

My recommendations:

• anonymous block account
• no X-Trace
• get a decent VPN if you plan to upload on a regular basis, just to be on the safe side

And for your own sake, don't use the VPN your Usenet provider is trying to sell you, especially don't use the Giganews & VyprVPN combination, who knows what Giganews stores in the X-Trace header.

Juz zip/rar -it as everyone else does ...

Its theoretically possible - since there is no actual '"filename" property inside nzb and is derived from subject, You could put relative path in it. But this will cause problems for clients. Another problem is do you use forward (*UX) or backward (windows) slash for paths?

Just disable Direct Unpack.

I personally love this feature, it saves a lot of time and it makes it possible to watch videos while they download.

I'd go one of two routes.

Run a Plex Server and have your parents access that. But that only works so well if you have the upload speed for it. https://plex.tv/

Also your parents would need a Plex Player, but there are a lot of options for that.

Or setup BitTorrent Sync, that can easily and privately sync the data between two computers. http://www.bittorrent.com/sync

It's effectively Newshosting.

Omicron runs three systems and then sells access to those systems via various brands (Newshosting, Easynews, UNS, Eweka). You could cancel Newshosting, get this or ND which appears to be matching, and it would be the same.

You have made it confusing by separating Ninja and Newshosting with other resellers these should be all clubbed Newshosting,ninja,Newsdemon,Thundernews,thecubenet,blocknews(add their deal too ),Fastusenet(though specifically mention they don't have access to NL server).

Also separate Tweaknews with other XLned resellers as you have done with Eweka and FYI Tweaknews current retention has been increased to 3200 days.

Another correction to be made on UE retention as their local retention is 1 year.

Labour Day deals: Usenetserver US$3,95/mo:

Newshosting US$4,17/mo: ?promo=workersday&rate=163

EDIT: Thanks to /u/Max_Xevious for the links being switched. Fixed.

> At it says "Newshosting + Eweka plan is the best unlimited Usenet combination, as it lets you get the Message-IDs from four different locations"

Ignore the paid review sites. They make commissions off of steering uninformed people to specific services.

Next I would re-frame the question.

You're looking at completion issues that may or may not be caused by takedowns. It's not an absolute because discussing specific posts and content is usually not permitted in this sub. See rule #1.

These days DMCA / NTD usually hits all providers within a few days. Processing times can vary which is why something might temporarily be available on one platform that has been removed on other systems.

Personally I would not purchase multiple unlimited subscriptions. It's usually pointless and a waste of money. You're better off testing a few services and finding one that works well for you. After you've found an unlimited service you like, you might purchase non-expiring block accounts on other providers to supplement. This should reduce your cost to $4-10/month with the possibility of additional one time purchases for block accounts on other systems. If it turns out you're re-purchasing block accounts from one service frequently, then you might consider switching and making that service your primary unlimited.

FYI, and are not direct equivalents for XS News. Both operate small platforms with local retention between 30-60 days. Usenetexpress plans to expand up to 120 days. Beyond their own local retention they both query Abavia's system which permits access up to 1000 days.

So there could be some differentiation.

You don't really need a VPN, if your ISP were watching traffic and you use SSL, they wont see anything besides you establishing a connection to usenet, which is not illegal.

if you are really paranoid, I would suggest using Private Internet Access (PIA) VPN. Your choice of servers in the US and overseas and excellent speeds, also no logs.

> usually ignores the DMCA requests.

Just to be clear, the DMCA is a US law that does not apply to the Netherlands. There is a self-policing code called the Dutch NTD that is followed by network providers/hosts etc operating in the Netherlands.

This is laughable, so thanks for the laugh.

I do not work for any of the providers or upload, so I can only share what I have heard or read. Using anything on this subreddit for legal reasons would be pointless. A lot of the information here is just "hear say" and doesn't work in court.

Nothing here isn't anything that's already public and it's just in my own words (most of this information is on wikipedia and in a white page ). I find this funny that you spent all this time trying to make something out of nothing.

I think more of what you should be asking is this, does the OP want to make money? Sounds like the OP wants to upload to usenet to make money for him/her self. Not anything to do with all of this conspiracy theory. The user seems to know about torrents and must have found that there too, is no money for sharing data. So the OP is looking at usenet, but there is no way to make money either.

Or it's just a general question of wanting to know. Some people just want to learn about things, like myself. Not everyone wants to see the world burn. puts on tinfoil hat Or it's Highwinds trying to make issues for other providers so they can buy those ones too, LOL.

I get what you are trying to say here and thank you for looking at things with a different view. But I haven't seen any issue with this question, there are a lot of things I just don't reply too. And if anything this subreddit has had more issues with spammers, sysadmins trying to make issues for other indexers and just general drama, then anything that I'd point to as your conspiracy theory.

But I won't stop you from digging into it, if you got time to kill go for it.

Great answer and the one I would recommend for most people, but it is browser based and I actually prefer reading newsgroups in a client, and for reading I prefer command line clients as they are faster and easier to read . I use sln , because it was what I learned on in Linux, no other reason besides familiarity..

If you want to configure a newsreader there are free newsgroup providers that do not provide binaries. http://www.yottanews.com/contact.html and http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Usenet/Public_News_Servers/ should get you started.

I think you'll find more people recommending NZBGet over SABnzbd+, and more recommending NZBDrone over SickBeard these days. CouchPotato is still pretty much the standard for movies.

has to be selling at a loss.

I suspect something more insidious might be happening on Omicron's side.

Omicron controls the backend (usenet platforms) and provides resellers a front end through a "Weatherman Dash Board" with which resellers can provision user accounts. Omicron thus knows exactly how many customers each reseller has.

It was part of their "Blizzard", "Monsoon", and "Chinook" premium service packages before Omicron Media split off from Highwinds. This info is still online although people have to dig to find it.

Looking at a description of the Chinook service, Omicron would have access to pricing and service tier data of each reseller.

Omicron would know exactly what price data resellers had input into the system before sales went live and could undercut them. This explains a lot actually.

The front end provisioning system might share user account expiration data. Omicron could monitor reseller pricing as well as user data in a provisioning system and time sales just before peak times when user accounts expire.

Omicron is monitoring IP traffic of all users on Omicron systems including reseller customers and is apparently targeting reseller customers with winback offers.

See this post

> [–] u/criollitorenegau 9 points 3 hours ago

> I think they’re just sending (targeting) this to users who have accounts on their resellers. I have an active account at two of their resellers (I use different email for every account) and both emails got the discount offer. But my email address associated with newshosting did not. Must mean newshosting is logging the shit out of our usage patterns.

User shares different email address with two different resellers, does not share email addresses directly with Omicron, then receives targeted emails from Newshosting.

This is just the stuff that we know about.

> and also his website have no mentions of it

Are there ANY Newshosting resellers who actually have that on their websites? I feel like you're holding this dude up to a standard that no other resellers are meeting. I don't know why in particular, but I feel like he's been pretty open about everything.

1. Stop using Windows 7 and upgrade to Windows 10
2. Stop using the Newshosting App

Seriously, it's crap. If you insist on using a Win32 program to browse USENET: get NewsbinPro and subscribe to their search service. They have a 15 day trial, check it out.

Highwinds primary (Newshosting, NewsDemon, Thundernews, Frugal, etc) with blocks from Tweaknews, UsenetExpress and . Check the [promos wiki](/r/usenet/wiki/providerdeals) for best current deals.

I'm guessing anybody who is waiting for an Omicron backbone deal is still waiting but in the provider deals link, there are several Omicron servers still showing for 30-40 dollars a year. Tweaknews, Ninja, Frugal. I'm waiting to see if there are any better black friday specific deals or hoping to score a block from blocknews tomorrow but from what I've seen so far with Newshosting and Eweka the black friday deals aren't looking so good. There was better pricing just a few months back on both. But if others don't roll out any black friday specific deals, maybe pull the trigger on one of these deals instead. They aren't listed above because they aren't technically black friday deals (I believe).

You can find plenty of free usenet server software, the hardware is what will end up costing you.

Depending on which groups you want to get you're going to need a ton of storage space and your connection is might be constantly maxed out. There's little benefit for doing this unless you really want to archive all the posts in some particular group(s).

Here's a list of usenet server software: http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Internet/Servers/Usenet/

There are lots of really good indexes out there but if your looking for the best then, at least in my opinion, that would be DOGnzb or NZBgeek. Both offer premium content and features. DOGnzb is a one time fee for access but some of their premium features are only unlocked by purchasing a yearly DOGpass membership in addition to your initial membership fee. NZBgeek is a yearly membership (unless you can get in on their lifetime pass offerings that come up every once in a while) but everything is included for a single price. DOG limits API calls even for DOGpass members, NZBgeek has unlimited API calls. DOG's web UI is faster than NZBgeek. Both have excellent and supportive communities. Both accept bitcoin for payment.

If this then that

It's a website/app you can use to alert you when things change.

If someone puts a bike up for sale on craigslist, text me.

In this case if someone makes a post in r/usenet with the words dognzb and open, text me.

Try this IFTTT Recipe: Get a text message when dognzb opens

And then there is this

> [–] u/criollitorenegau 9 points 3 hours ago

> I think they’re just sending (targeting) this to users who have accounts on their resellers. I have an active account at two of their resellers (I use different email for every account) and both emails got the discount offer. But my email address associated with newshosting did not. Must mean newshosting is logging the shit out of our usage patterns.

u/criollitorenegau claims he never disclosed or shared two email addresses to Newshosting.

How did Omicron acquire that data?

> No they don't and here's why: Omicron is the puppet master. You cut Ninja's strings so what? They'll make Newshosting dance by posting a deal below cost. They'll make UsenetServer do the same jig too. Clearly.

It's not this simple.

Omicron does not want to translate all of their $10/month customers to $2/month customers. They would lose substantial revenue.

I discussed this in an old thread.

They are trying to do two things.

• Target the value market on Reddit
• Target customers of resellers privately (using shady methods)

It seems Omicron was monitoring and logging IP traffic of their resellers, and might have gained access to customer email addresses provided to resellers.

> I'm glad we finally got to this nonsense.

You and PearsonFlyer are not listening one bit. Read more carefully.

When the mods banned a provider I mentioned in the original they added the name to the auto-mod for removal. Any time that name is mentioned the comment is removed. See? select removal. The only way that name is visible is if a mod approves the comment or post. Mods have selectively banned providers in the past.

I suggested select banning. starting with Ninja which is owned by Omicron. This can be proven. Omicron's brands include Easynews, Eweka, Newshosting, UsenetServer, Tweaknews, XLned, PureUsenet, SunnyUsenet, and Newsgroup.ninja

Mods could add filters to the auto-mod targeting any one of the listed brands as they have similarly banned certain providers in the past.

I did not suggest banning Omicron resellers who have done nothing wrong.

From what I have learned:

If you want "true" Eweka, ONLY option is buying directly from Eweka (and with true Eweka, I mean NTD policy instead of DMCA).

So to answer your question: No, Thundernews wouldn't make sense. Thundernews=DMCA (Newsdemon=DMCA). So basically exact same Newshosting providers/services following same DMCA policy.

First of all peep here have been spoiled by Newshosting resellers low prices so they will be comparing your service to them but even by comparing to or newsxs all your services are too expensive also this 1200 days retention is misinformation when XSnews itself has only 1100 days.

I paid around 30 euro last Black Friday for one year of service from a competitor.

u/giganews is out of touch.

Giganews has not listened to feedback from their last thread over three years ago.
The knowledge barrier has lessened significantly.

Usenet is effectively a commodity product. Consumers are more price conscious and realize they can get the same articles (product) from any number of providers and resellers. Businesses in turn primarily compete on bandwidth, retention, and price.

$22/month is not a value.

VyprVPN is known to keep logs on users and hand info over. That isn't some new revelation.

The easiest thing to do would be to switch Astraweb to a block, which won't save you any money today, but will start saving you money in like 6 months.

If you only ever download new content, then you could switch Newshosting to an annual Frugal account for $50.

If you sometimes download old content then you could still switch to Frugal and then just augment your Highwinds backend with another block account from someone else.

I pulled down close to 200TB via Usenet (with TLS, of course) over the course of the past year in the dorms at my University. I've gotten emails from campus IT about my data usage (unsurprisingly enough, I used more bandwidth than most departments on campus… combined.) but they didn't really do anything.

The best thing you can do for yourself is get a decent VPN (I use AirVPN, but there are many solutions out there) for like $6/month and just running Usenet through that.

This is legit.

It's the old owner of Newshosting

Only complaint is the pricing, he could be a little more competitive and it would definitely help him more long term. He needs customers to join at the beginning to break even and sustain growth.

If you're listening:

• please get off cloudflare, your customers value privacy
• offer block accounts
• offer diversified products:
  - a discount tier that is rate limited (3-5MB/s) with a generous data cap similar to
  - a discount tier that is soft limited on retention similar to frugal usenet's 600 day access.

Get the milk from the cow. Astraweb, Easynews, Eweka, Giganews, Newshosting, Supernews, TweakNews, UsenetServer or XS News are all providers that are owned by the backbone supplier and sell direct to the consumer. This is the most reliable path to truly unlimited usenet access. To my recollection none of the above listed services has ever had a "false unlimited" complaint levied against them.

Resellers are great for blocks and average downloaders but if you consume TB's of bandwidth monthly then you shouldn't be with a reseller.

its an obfuscated post.... it's nothing out of the ordinary. If you have automatic renaming and sorting turned on your stuff will be renamed and put in the correct location via dnzb header information that came along with the nzb when you downloaded, or through meta-tag information that is in the *.nzb itself. if Newshosting 2.1.1 isn't meeting your expectations, use sab or nzbget

1) Your VyprVPN is useless:

• You disable accounts for torrenting because of auto DMCA complaints which none of the popular and respected vpn providers do and

• they don't keep logs, well, at least at the level you do.

2)Your usenet access is useless

• for uploaders, people who actually,let's be honest here, MAKE YOU MONEY, because you get them banned due to auto DMCA complaints unlike other proper and popular usenet you keep extensive logs as well

3) When people complain that your servers have lots and lots of missing articles

• you claim it's because of DMCA and you can do nothing about it but it's not true. DMCA'ed stuff gets totally removed from servers but what we see on your servers is totally random missing articles chaos usually within a certain retention range.
• and you have the audacity to claim that you've got "100% Newsgroup Completion"

3) All things considered your price is a joke. (giganews). Supernews is a bit better but still a dubious choice

newsgroupdirect and newshosting are all highwiinds. In addition Blocknews has its DMCA managed by Highwinds so in effect 3 of your providers are the same server farm. I am assuming that your NGD account is a block so you might want to keep that and cancel Newshosting as your primary.

If from the US look to Supernews as a primary feed. Its the same network as Giganews but you can get an unlimited account for $9.99 a month. Tweaknews works good as a block or primary and is Dutch but your speeds my vary depending on your network and location.

You take the file you want to post and shove it into winrar/7zip. You set it to split to 15mb sizes. Winrar does its thing and then you post the parts using Powerpost (you can also run it through a Par2 program for some parity files).

Powerpost generates an nzb (or you can get it from a search engine) and you use that later to download it.

Now, retention. The big boys of the Usenet firms are always adding more and more retention and don't appear to be stopping. So, theoretically, your data should be safe and sound on Usenet as long as the retention keeps increasing.

With Usenet providers coming under safe harbour regulations, they will probably be around a lot longer than your average cyberlocker/cloud service. They also have the added advantage of being transferrable. So, if say you were with Newshosting and they went bankrupt, then you could just join another Usenet provider that offered similar retention and have access to your data again.

1) If an indexer has the option to search a particular category for a string such as "MLB <year>" for instance, you could create an RSS feed off that and then feed it to NZBGet/Sabnzd+ every 30 min or so to grab any match

2) Use NZBGet to filter out "MLB <year>" from an indexer's TV > Sport RSS feed, and then poll that every 30 minutes. Get has a pretty powerful parser that can do a lot. There is a link to the documentation here: http://nzbget.net/RSS. I believe Sabnzbd has RSS filtering as well, but I don't know much about it since I don't use it. Link here: http://wiki.sabnzbd.org/configure-rss

With both methods you can automate sport events/shows using a NewzNab (or even nzedb) indexer without a 3rd party program

Edit: Added NZBGet/Sabnzbd RSS link

No, SABnzbd isn't connecting, it is being contacted by a wrong hostname from an external source.

In any case, it is being blocked by the new security feature https://sabnzbd.org/wiki/extra/hostname-check.html

/u/TehJonny It seems you setup is exposed to the outside internet and you maybe don't have username password setup?

Maybe the first really application of this kind of attack?! Do you recognize the IP address?

NzbGet for the win. It's matter of the programming limitations in sab that slows it down. I would think you could get more than what you are with it currently though. What you want to tinker with is cache amounts in the settings within sab. See: https://sabnzbd.org/wiki/advanced/highspeed-downloading

Btw we only download Linux iso's round here.

Hello xxxxxxxxx,

Thank you for contacting Synology support.

From the current investigation, they are still using the old security hole to hack the DiskStation with old DSM:

http://www.synology.com/company/news/article/437

As you are in DSM5.0, this kind of hack can't work. But it's also recommended for securing the log on over Internet by this way:

http://www.synology.com/en-global/support/tutorials/478

Hope this helps.

Best Regards,

I think that most customers from Newshosting, Easynews and other Omicron brands aren't even aware of Reddit and the super cheap deals available here. Most people just go to their website and purchase a regular plan there. The customers who have been with them for a long time will also pay the regular prices because they don't know any better. All those "review websites" that are bought and paid by Omicron are easily found via Google and also offer deals. But not those super cheap ones you'll find on Reddit but more expensive ones. The average Joe who did a quick Google search about Newshosting will think that he scored a super awesome deal by getting the service for 8 bucks a month. You'll find r/usenet via Google too but it requires much more effort to actually find the posts that give you access to those super cheap deals. I think that the number of customers that are on any of those cheap deals are rather small compared to those who pay full price or the slightly lower "review websites" price.

Newshosting and XSNews are providers. Head over to the sidebar to read up on providers.
SAB is nzb download software.

Edit: for your user case, I suggest upgrading your newshosting account (or get a proper, new one) while you work out if usenet is for you or not

Astraweb no longer has their own servers. They sold out to Omicron/Newshosting and are a reseller like everyone else.

You don't have to switch back and forth. That's what block accounts are for. You need 2, maybe 3, providers on different backbones.

Remember that Omicron, formerly Highwinds, said they didn’t log when they owned IPVanish but got caught up in their lie when it was found out they did. If you’re worried about your privacy, consider that.

Well, they probably can't block all of the Omicron brands, given that would prevent discussion about most of Usenet, so they would have to really limit it to just individual brands that cause issues. But then what happens when:

• A user has a legitimate question about one of the brands that is blocked? Not everyone asking questions about Ninja is a shill and if Omicron is pushing this hard it is reasonable that people might have questions. Do we block and/or ban every user that mentions Ninja?

• Blocking discussions of one brand won't stop them from posting negative things about other brands. Even if Omicron shills can't discuss Ninja, they can still crap on competitors.

• They will just move on to another brand. So they stop pushing Ninja here and start pushing Newshosting or spin up a new brand to push on Reddit. It won't stop the problem, just give it a different name.

Even then, it wouldn't stop up/downvote abuse.

Banning Ninja discussions doesn't really solve anything.

Omicron doesn't want all of their existing $10 subscribers of Newshosting, UNS, Easynews, etc to become $2 subscribers. That would actually hurt them.

They're doing these deals to try and kill resellers and competition with customer turnover (churn)

Omicron is just the parent company they don't enforce rules for takedowns its enforced by the backbone themselves currently Omicron operates three backbones Newshosting, Eweka and Tweaknews and every one of them is different with each other in every aspect.

Newshosting is a good service but $89.99 a year is only a good price compared to their regular overpriced service fee. The same service can be had from resellers for less than half that price. Newsgroup Ninja is $39.99 a year for example.

Check out the wiki page for direct links.

/r/usenet/wiki/providerdeals

Altopia can be a good alt if they can increase the retention to atleast 30 days and offer a more cost effective rates.

As for Newsguy they don't even offer tls1.2 and their cert is self signed also they are too costly and most probably are hybrid backfilling from Newshosting they don't even have their own network they use Highwinds/Stackpath transit network and even than offer only 1300 days retention.

As for Elbracht they seem to be focused only on their own ISP customers or other German customers as they also have a self signed cert and they are too costly for blocks which are not even non expiry apart even premium-news silver acc cost is 12.78 euro not really cost friendly at all.

Hard pass. I'll be sticking with my $40 a year NewsgroupDirect account that has 3,725 days of retention, 1 Gbps achievable speeds, unlimited bandwidth usage allowed with servers in the US, NL, and DE, an included subscription to GhostPath VPN, and posting allowed.

Your services are very overpriced.

Yes, unlimited is unlimited without any asterisks. Some back-end servers need a specific amount as a limit which normally people don't reach(2tb is nothing), but even if you do they reset it if you ask them too.

I have to ask though, Why Newshosting? Why not say NewsGroupDirect/NewsDemon or ThunderNews or something? NewsDemon and NewsGroupDirect are resellers of NewsHosting and are considerably cheaper. (check out provider deals in the wiki).

See the map r/usenet/wiki/providers/ also FYI Omicron doesn't follow same DMCA and NTD for all backbones HW Media/Newshosting DMCA is different from Base IP/XLned DMCA and Eweka NTD is different from Base IP/Tweaknews NTD.

After years of using multiple accounts I find I no longer need a supplemental block account along with Newshosting or Newsdemon. And this is with Sickbeard and Couch Potato, which are considered past their prime.

For some time I have found NzbGeek to catch every thing I want so I let my Dog subscription lapse. For shows on networks with efficient take down procedures I sometimes need to browse Dog manually but even then a Highwinds provider still has what I'm looking for.

I have developed a taste for foreign language tv shows. Sickbeard often cannot capture these. So I have returned to searching torrents manually, which usually works. Currently I find a bundled VPN service to be more useful than a supplemental block account.

I'm actually spending less on Usenet these days but downloading more. :)

Astraweb's US and EU domains point directly to netblocks for Newshosting and Eweka.

The Astraweb IP are surrounded by IP for other Omicron (Highwinds) owned businesses and resellers that have unique domains resolving to the same Newshosting and Eweka CIDR ranges.

Translation:

You are downloading from

--> Newshosting platform (US)
--> Eweka platform (NL)

Searchtech's Astraweb service is no longer unique.
Whether or not Searchtech Limited sold Astraweb is an unknown at this point.

If I had to guess, Searchtech's long standing payment processing and network problems became too large. They were forced to sell (not seeing indicators yet) or maintain their business, keep customers, shed their infrastructure, resell Omicron services (newshosting, eweka), and let Omicron handle payment processing.

You are overpaying with Giganews and Easynews replace Giganews with Supernews() same backbone as Giganews and Easynews with Newshosting() same US and NL servers but they give access to DE server too and it really helps in terms of speed and get on Tweaknews and (resell Abavia/XSnews after their own retention of about 2 months) both have NL only servers and you are set.

No. is a Tier 1 provider for the first 30 days which actually helps greatly with new releases, after that it is mainly a XS News reseller (which also includes that first month of retention). They also pull articles from Highwinds but that part isn't that good, misses many after 1500 days or so but goes back for 3000 days.

is the cheapest XS News (as far as I know) block provider, and considering they also offer 30 days of retention from their own servers it is the best block to use with Highwinds, Astraweb and Giganews. That they offer both Highwinds and XS News for very cheap is especially important for the last two main account options. At least this is what I think. I am very happy with Newshosting + and Astraweb blocks.

Most people use Sanbzbd because it works well with CouchPotato, SickBeard and Headphones. I use Newshosting as my primary and that comes with its own client, which I prefer as I don't need automation.

I'm looking for the same thing, and haven't had any luck!

I use a variation of your Dropbox method. I manually search for the books, then once downloaded Calibre snags the file and moves it to a library stored in a Dropbox folder. Calibre acts as a server, so can be accessed by many apps (Nook, Kindle, MoonReader, Aldiko, etc.) from outside your network. It takes some elbow grease to get the outside connectivity working properly, but once running does quite a good job.

I am currently having some issues getting past my router, so I found CalibreBox, an Android app that can find and parse your Calibre library in Dropbox. CalibreBox downloads the book files to the device where the reader apps can then add them to their individual libraries. I'm pretty much exclusively Android, so this solution will work for me until I can find a better method.

I wish there was a Sonarr/Plex-type solution for books!

Xnews is an option. Get it here:

http://download.cnet.com/Xnews/3000-12945_4-10026377.html

Make sure your d/l is xnews.zip 697kb. I say this cos there are places advertising Xnews in an installer which is bundled with all sorts of crap. The zip is clean, the app is portable.

When you have your groups - which show msg count - find ones you are interested in and subscribe. Then "catchup", then press enter and the group gets its own tab. Then "special refresh" and select how many headers you want.

If you press enter before catchup it appears Xnews does a "getall". This ought to be configurable, I don't know; I put just enough work in to makes sure Xnews does what you want.

Fast, lightweight, portable, has always been highly regarded.

Edit: Find a group you are interested in and hit Ctrl+Enter: this brings up the "sample headers" box. (I looked at the help file...)

I'd suggest even taking this a step further and firing up a PiHole to handle all of your DNS. Not only can you select encrypted DNS servers (particularly non-Google ones) but it will handle ad and malicious site blocking for your entire home network.

Not only CC customers need worry, if you are on a PayPal subscription and your account is coming up as Cancelled make sure you log into PayPal and cancel the preapproved payment that was setup when you started your NewsDemon account.

Newshosting though remove all files of a taken down release so no chance of completion with help from other backbones in such cases & you will have to find a different version of that release on other backbones.

Cube was reselling Highwinds Media, which is exactly the same server as Newshosting, before Cube switched to Usenet Express.

Frugal is still reselling Highwinds Media, but with limited retention and an added Usenet Farm bonus server.

Two suggestions: 1st - Try other indexers for your failed nzbs. There are quite a few with a limited free mode which is perfect to testing theses failed nzbs. I suggest ninjacentral and tabula rasa. If you can fill your gaps (or more), you can check API and other functionalities.

2nd - Your provider is fine, as Frugal has 2000d (or even more right now) on highwinds, so you don't need another Omicron provider. Eweka with NTD could be a little better, but someone here compared Newshosting (Frugal highwinds base) and Eweka and found little to no difference. Instead I suggest a block from UsenetExpresss, e.g. via Newsdemon, as sometimes they can fill these gaps, even so not very often (that's why no unlimited right now). Viper and probably wont solve your 200-500d gap, because that isn't their strengh. They have other advantages. With frugal you already have access btw.

When library.nu went away it also made me sad. Then i found gen.lib.rus.ec which is also now down. Then there was this!

http://www.moreofit.com/similar-to/gen.lib.rus.ec/Top_10_Sites_Like_gen.lib.rus.ec/

:)

https://nzbgeek.info/ They have a geek seek setup that could eliminate the need for drone and couchpotatoe. Anyway, always open, contributions are 1$ a month and it's really good. As for clients: sabnzbd and Nzbget seem to work w/ all newznab sites and also work w/ nzbgeek's custom/modified newznab.