Le 25/11/2023 à 22:22, not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) a
écrit :

> To actually get the issue into the newspapers, or at least the tech
> news websites, I imagine organising Usenet users living near Google
> HQ to stage a protest there. Hold up placards with ASCII art and
> Figlet text printed on them. "KILL(file) Google", "save the
> internet's first social network", and so on. It wouldn't need to be
> a big crowd, just tell all the media groups in advance and I think
> nostalgia's so powerful these days that many would be interested in
> covering the story at least from quirky angle.

That sounds nice but you have to live near Google HQ. What about an online
protest ? It might work.

<https://study-online.sussex.ac.uk/news-and-events/social-media-and-campaigning-is-digital-activism-effective/>

On 26 Nov 2023 07:22:41 +1000, not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
>Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
>> In article <5d7556421a45b004b687ccaa7617dbe4@dizum.com>, D <J@M> wrote:
>>>don't know about googlegroups.com, but gmail.com seems "to big to fail":
>> Gmail and Google Groups are almost complete opposites. Gmail is used by
>> millions of people and is very high profile. If something happens to
>> Gmail, it appears in the newspaper and Google management notices very quickly.
>Hmm, no. I think of all the blogs out there written by people who
>host their own mail server, complaining about Gmail unjustifiably
>marking all their mail to Gmail addresses as spam.
>Do Google care? No, they've only announced their requirement for
>DKIM now that they're starting to also apply it to big servers
>from commercial email hosts. Who knows what other pointless rules
>they've put into their terrible spam filter system. Did the fact
>that Gmail users were having thousands of emails from perfectly
>innocent private email servers effectively filtered out make it
>into the newspaper? No.
>Usenet is a tiny niche of Google Groups, from which Google would
>rather everyone switched to their own native Google-only Groups
>that aren't gatewayed to Usenet. Private email servers are a tiny
>niche of email, from which Google would rather everyone switched to
>their own email hosting services. Very similar indeed. Much like
>how it makes me all the more determined never to take either
>action myself.
>To actually get the issue into the newspapers, or at least the tech
>news websites, I imagine organising Usenet users living near Google
>HQ to stage a protest there. Hold up placards with ASCII art and
>Figlet text printed on them. "KILL(file) Google", "save the
>internet's first social network", and so on. It wouldn't need to be
>a big crowd, just tell all the media groups in advance and I think
>nostalgia's so powerful these days that many would be interested in
>covering the story at least from quirky angle.
>Still it might just end up being one nerdy guy walking around in a
>home-made T-shirt, because it turns out there aren't enough
>dedicated Usenet users out there to gather any in one place, and
>that indeed is the problem.

used to live just north of 'frisco from 1965 thru 1970, with protests,
sit ins, posters, music, hippies, hell's angels etc.; bumper stickers
were one primary means of public expression, e.g., "what if they gave
a war and nobody came?", "make love not war", "turn on, tune in, drop
out", "question authority", and many others long since forgotten; but
nowadays, unmoderated usenet newsgroups seem to be the place where at
least some of these heated discussions are currently gaining traction,
and who'd want to jet set out to the bay area apart from jet setters?

On 26 Nov 2023 07:22:41 +1000
not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
> Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
> > In article <5d7556421a45b004b687ccaa7617dbe4@dizum.com>, D <J@M> wrote:
> >>
> >>don't know about googlegroups.com, but gmail.com seems "to big to fail":
> >
> > Gmail and Google Groups are almost complete opposites. Gmail is used by
> > millions of people and is very high profile. If something happens to
> > Gmail, it appears in the newspaper and Google management notices very quickly.
>
> Hmm, no. I think of all the blogs out there written by people who
> host their own mail server, complaining about Gmail unjustifiably
> marking all their mail to Gmail addresses as spam.
>
> Do Google care? No, they've only announced their requirement for
> DKIM now that they're starting to also apply it to big servers
> from commercial email hosts. Who knows what other pointless rules
> they've put into their terrible spam filter system. Did the fact
> that Gmail users were having thousands of emails from perfectly
> innocent private email servers effectively filtered out make it
> into the newspaper? No.

[...]

> To actually get the issue into the newspapers, or at least the tech
> news websites, I imagine organising Usenet users living near Google
> HQ to stage a protest there. Hold up placards with ASCII art and
> Figlet text printed on them. "KILL(file) Google", "save the
> internet's first social network", and so on. It wouldn't need to be
> a big crowd, just tell all the media groups in advance and I think
> nostalgia's so powerful these days that many would be interested in
> covering the story at least from quirky angle.

But this would send the wrong message (especially your 2nd slogan) as in ,
usenet depends on Google. It does not. It would be a more useful and
rewarding thing to do to help users of googlegroups move to other ways of
using usenet. Even creating alternative web interfaces to usenet would be
worthwhile for those who for some reason can't use the usual usenet access.
Actually even advertising usenet without any reference to Google would be
more appropriate. Like having placards saying "Discover the internet's
first social network" , "Be in control of your user experience" and things
like that. Don't make Google sound more relevant than it is.

Note that the situation is not analogous to email because on usenet the
majority of users do not use googlegroups whereas with email only a
small minority (or so I'm guessing) of users run their own server.

--
vlaho.ninja/menu

On Sun, 26 Nov 2023 07:23:33 -0000 (UTC), Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
>On 26 Nov 2023 07:22:41 +1000
>not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
>> Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
>> > In article <5d7556421a45b004b687ccaa7617dbe4@dizum.com>, D <J@M> wrote:
>> >>don't know about googlegroups.com, but gmail.com seems "to big to fail":
>> > Gmail and Google Groups are almost complete opposites. Gmail is used by
>> > millions of people and is very high profile. If something happens to
>> > Gmail, it appears in the newspaper and Google management notices very quickly.
>> Hmm, no. I think of all the blogs out there written by people who
>> host their own mail server, complaining about Gmail unjustifiably
>> marking all their mail to Gmail addresses as spam.
>> Do Google care? No, they've only announced their requirement for
>> DKIM now that they're starting to also apply it to big servers
>> from commercial email hosts. Who knows what other pointless rules
>> they've put into their terrible spam filter system. Did the fact
>> that Gmail users were having thousands of emails from perfectly
>> innocent private email servers effectively filtered out make it
>> into the newspaper? No.
>[...]
>> To actually get the issue into the newspapers, or at least the tech
>> news websites, I imagine organising Usenet users living near Google
>> HQ to stage a protest there. Hold up placards with ASCII art and
>> Figlet text printed on them. "KILL(file) Google", "save the
>> internet's first social network", and so on. It wouldn't need to be
>> a big crowd, just tell all the media groups in advance and I think
>> nostalgia's so powerful these days that many would be interested in
>> covering the story at least from quirky angle.
>
>But this would send the wrong message (especially your 2nd slogan) as in ,
>usenet depends on Google. It does not. It would be a more useful and
>rewarding thing to do to help users of googlegroups move to other ways of
>using usenet. Even creating alternative web interfaces to usenet would be
>worthwhile for those who for some reason can't use the usual usenet access.
>Actually even advertising usenet without any reference to Google would be
>more appropriate. Like having placards saying "Discover the internet's
>first social network" , "Be in control of your user experience" and things
>like that. Don't make Google sound more relevant than it is.
>Note that the situation is not analogous to email because on usenet the
>majority of users do not use googlegroups whereas with email only a
>small minority (or so I'm guessing) of users run their own server.

myself only a novice interested in learning more about how news servers
operate, this faq seems very informative:

>Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
>Subject: INN 2.x FAQ
>Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2023 08:01:03 -0000 (UTC)
>Organization: The Eyrie
>Message-ID: <FAQ-faq-1700553662$6492@hope.eyrie.org>
>
>Last-modified: 2023-04-17
>Posted-by: postfaq 1.17 (Perl 5.28.1)
>Archive-name: usenet/software/inn2-faq
>URL: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/inn.html
>Posting-frequency: monthly
>This FAQ is intended to answer frequently asked questions concerning the
>current versions of INN (INN 2.x and later) seen on news.software.nntp.
>It should be referred to in preference to the old INN FAQ, which only
>documents versions up to 1.7. It mostly covers INN 2.3 and later; earlier
>versions of INN may behave differently or use different configuration
>files.
>If you're reading this on Usenet, this FAQ is formatted as a minimal
>digest, so if your news or mail reader has digest handling capabilities
>you can use them to navigate between sections. In rn variants, you can
>use Ctrl-G to skip to the next section; in Gnus, press Ctrl-D to break
>each section into a separate article.
>...
[end quoted excerpt]

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26 Nov 2023 07:22:41 +1000
> not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
>> Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
>> > Gmail and Google Groups are almost complete opposites. Gmail is used by
>> > millions of people and is very high profile. If something happens to
>> > Gmail, it appears in the newspaper and Google management notices very quickly.
>>
>> Hmm, no. I think of all the blogs out there written by people who
>> host their own mail server, complaining about Gmail unjustifiably
>> marking all their mail to Gmail addresses as spam.
>>
>> Do Google care? No, they've only announced their requirement for
>> DKIM now that they're starting to also apply it to big servers
>> from commercial email hosts. Who knows what other pointless rules
>> they've put into their terrible spam filter system. Did the fact
>> that Gmail users were having thousands of emails from perfectly
>> innocent private email servers effectively filtered out make it
>> into the newspaper? No.
>
> [...]
>
>> To actually get the issue into the newspapers, or at least the tech
>> news websites, I imagine organising Usenet users living near Google
>> HQ to stage a protest there. Hold up placards with ASCII art and
>> Figlet text printed on them. "KILL(file) Google", "save the
>> internet's first social network", and so on. It wouldn't need to be
>> a big crowd, just tell all the media groups in advance and I think
>> nostalgia's so powerful these days that many would be interested in
>> covering the story at least from quirky angle.
>
> But this would send the wrong message (especially your 2nd slogan) as in ,
> usenet depends on Google.

With the sole aim of making Google pay attention, that's exactly
the message I'd aim for.

> It does not. It would be a more useful and
> rewarding thing to do to help users of googlegroups move to other ways of
> using usenet. Even creating alternative web interfaces to usenet would be
> worthwhile for those who for some reason can't use the usual usenet access.
> Actually even advertising usenet without any reference to Google would be
> more appropriate. Like having placards saying "Discover the internet's
> first social network" , "Be in control of your user experience" and things
> like that.

You're not going to get much media attention from that because
there's no controversy. Plus I think attracting new users is a
much more difficult aim than simply making Google pay attention
to their Usenet gateway, for the sake of existing users.

As for encouraging Google Groups users to switch to a real news
server, why don't more people who say they're blocking GG posts now
advertise as such, like I do in my sig? A GG user might ignore one
person, or even a small group, asking them to switch to a real news
server. But if they know that half the contributors aren't even
seeing their posts anymore, it gives them a personal incentive to
switch.

> Note that the situation is not analogous to email because on usenet the
> majority of users do not use googlegroups whereas with email only a
> small minority (or so I'm guessing) of users run their own server.

I was assuming that the majority of Google Groups content doesn't
come from Usenet due to all the non-Usenet groups they run, so new
posts originating from Usenet are also a small minority. But that
could well be wrong.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _# | Note: I won't see posts made from Google Groups |

On 27 Nov 2023 06:37:35 +1000, not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
>Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 26 Nov 2023 07:22:41 +1000
>> not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
>>> Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
>>> > Gmail and Google Groups are almost complete opposites. Gmail is used by
>>> > millions of people and is very high profile. If something happens to
>>> > Gmail, it appears in the newspaper and Google management notices very quickly.
>>> Hmm, no. I think of all the blogs out there written by people who
>>> host their own mail server, complaining about Gmail unjustifiably
>>> marking all their mail to Gmail addresses as spam.
>>> Do Google care? No, they've only announced their requirement for
>>> DKIM now that they're starting to also apply it to big servers
>>> from commercial email hosts. Who knows what other pointless rules
>>> they've put into their terrible spam filter system. Did the fact
>>> that Gmail users were having thousands of emails from perfectly
>>> innocent private email servers effectively filtered out make it
>>> into the newspaper? No.
>> [...]
>>> To actually get the issue into the newspapers, or at least the tech
>>> news websites, I imagine organising Usenet users living near Google
>>> HQ to stage a protest there. Hold up placards with ASCII art and
>>> Figlet text printed on them. "KILL(file) Google", "save the
>>> internet's first social network", and so on. It wouldn't need to be
>>> a big crowd, just tell all the media groups in advance and I think
>>> nostalgia's so powerful these days that many would be interested in
>>> covering the story at least from quirky angle.
>> But this would send the wrong message (especially your 2nd slogan) as in ,
>> usenet depends on Google.
>With the sole aim of making Google pay attention, that's exactly
>the message I'd aim for.
>> It does not. It would be a more useful and
>> rewarding thing to do to help users of googlegroups move to other ways of
>> using usenet. Even creating alternative web interfaces to usenet would be
>> worthwhile for those who for some reason can't use the usual usenet access.
>> Actually even advertising usenet without any reference to Google would be
>> more appropriate. Like having placards saying "Discover the internet's
>> first social network" , "Be in control of your user experience" and things
>> like that.
>You're not going to get much media attention from that because
>there's no controversy. Plus I think attracting new users is a
>much more difficult aim than simply making Google pay attention
>to their Usenet gateway, for the sake of existing users.
>As for encouraging Google Groups users to switch to a real news
>server, why don't more people who say they're blocking GG posts now
>advertise as such, like I do in my sig? A GG user might ignore one
>person, or even a small group, asking them to switch to a real news
>server. But if they know that half the contributors aren't even
>seeing their posts anymore, it gives them a personal incentive to
>switch.
>> Note that the situation is not analogous to email because on usenet the
>> majority of users do not use googlegroups whereas with email only a
>> small minority (or so I'm guessing) of users run their own server.
>I was assuming that the majority of Google Groups content doesn't
>come from Usenet due to all the non-Usenet groups they run, so new
>posts originating from Usenet are also a small minority. But that
>could well be wrong.

media attention / google attention / newspapers / controversy / ..?
the scripted mainstream media narrative is theirs and theirs alone;
e.g. usenet newsgroups have never once been mentioned on television
or in newspapers (afaik... citations welcome); usenet is autonomous

On 11/25/23 09:21, candycanearter07 wrote:
> So it's basically a legacy feature to them?

For a given value of "feature", sure.

--
Grant. . . .

On 11/25/23 13:22, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Nov 2023 09:25:31 -0600
> candycanearter07 <no@thanks.net> wrote:
>> Or removing the HTML/scriptless version of gmail. It's probably planned
>> like that, since avoiding news about the thing will make less people
>> know about it, and thus there will be less outcry. Hell, I had NO idea
>> until I loaded up gmail one day and noticed the HTML link on the loading
>> screen was replaced with a useless "Help and Support" link.
>
> Are you referring to
>
> Newsgroups: alt.comp.software.firefox,alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.comp.freeware
> Subject: What does Google turning off HTML in 3 months mean for Windows Firefox GMail users?
> Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2023 16:17:02 -0600
> Organization: To protect and to server
> Message-ID: <uevl8u$2918c$1@paganini.bofh.team>
>
> ? If yes then it was announced.

Well, it certainly didn't get much publicity.
Also, I wasn't subscribed to a.c.s.firefox then.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

On Sunday, 26 November 2023 23:55 +0100, D wrote:

> media attention / google attention / newspapers / controversy / ..?
> the scripted mainstream media narrative is theirs and theirs alone;
> e.g. usenet newsgroups have never once been mentioned on television
> or in newspapers (afaik... citations welcome); usenet is autonomous

I agree, in part. Usenet has been largely ignored by network and
cable television news.

On the other hand, historically usenet death penalties have garnered
attention from mainstream press, including the likes of The Wall
Street Journal, Wired, CNet, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times
and others. Of course, they were reporting about active UDPs, the
vast majority of which ended before a single udpcancel was ever
issued.

IIRC, only one Usenet Death Penalty moved to enforcement by udpcancel:
UUNet, ca. 1997. I believe it lasted somewhere around forty eight
(48) hours. Even so, the basis for this UDP centered around their
dial-up rent-a-POP. The scenario involved 1) UUNet selling access to
a variety of Internet Service Providers and 2) ISPs running their own
NNTP servers "authenticating" based exclusively to IP addresses used
by UUNet dial-up. So, if a bad actor signs up for an account at
provider A, which uses UUNet's dial-ups, they could post via the NNTP
servers operated by ISP B, C, D, E, F and G, none of whom had any
ability to track down the bad user account.

Please keep in mind, these ISP servers were full feed servers, rather
than the text only servers around which the bulk of these discussions
revolve.

Then there were problems surrounding unsecured, open servers. As an
example, DNEWS originally came with a web-based control panel, which
was incapable of overwriting any existing configuration. So, the
administrators of these DNEWS boxes, with their faulty configuration
panels, could not turn on authentication. (It seems that some Windows
users, which were running DNEWS with its GUI interface, were not
particularly comfortable

Almost all of the other historical UDP discussions involved the
introduction of high speed Internet and providers operating their own,
very fast, NNTP servers, which had zero facility to authenticate
individual users, ie. no user:pass. At the same time, users on these
primarily cable services began installing proxies on their home
networks. Many of these users failed to secure these proxies, running
them open to the world, with all that implies regarding bad actors.
Of course, these open proxies, running on high speed Internet
connections, on networks running fast-at-all-cost NNTP servers, with
no security beyond an IP check, were hijacked /en masse/, with spam
volume totaling in excess of 100k, daily.

If you really want the mainstream press and broadcast to pay
attention to you, you might want to consider reaching out directly to
them. The likelihood of them stumbling across these UDP calls against
Google, in what amounts to a largely forgotten backwater, to the
population at a whole.

--
David Ritz <dritz@mindspring.com>
"There is nothing worse than having a spare couple of hours and you
can't find an open server to abuse." - Tim Thorne - 26 Dec 1998

On 11/23/23 15:51, Grant Taylor wrote:
> That being said, I am in the process of going through my server and
> removing messages that originated from Google Groups as they were such a
> source of spam and waste of disk space.
>
> Once that's done I'll get a count of the number of messages in the news
> spool.

Since some people seemed interested, I ended up removing about 6,000,000
messages from my news spool.

~27,000,000 down to ~21,000,000

It took many days to run. It finished some time while I was at work today.

--
Grant. . . .

On Thu, 23 Nov 2023 15:51:55 -0600
Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
> On 11/23/23 12:54, D wrote:
> > of the many thousands of unmoderated newsgroups ...
> > ... is there any, preferably easy way for news admins to post totals
> > for all articles in all unmoderated newsgroups containing "googlegroups.com"
> > in message-id headers, and separately for reference headers of replies which
> > also contain "googlegroups.com", e.g., since 1 January 2023 to current date?
>
> Technically yes.
>
> Practically not really.
>
> For starters, the sheer number of messages makes this laborious.
>
> Aside: IMHO moderation is somewhat of a joke and can easily be defeated
> if you know how to do so.
>
> Extracting the list of unmoderated newsgroups would be simple enough.
>
> The rest of the tests are going to be *HIGHLY* dependent on what type of
> news spool you are using; file per message (tradspool in INN parlance),
> a wrapping fixed size (as in bytes on disk) spool file, a database of
> some sort. This gets complicated.
>
> With tradspool, you can look at the file's creation time and have a good
> idea. But only a good idea because articles may come in with delay thus
> appear to have a newer creation time than when they were actually
> posted. So you sort of need to process each potentially qualifying
> message and check the Date: header. -- This is definitely possible,
> but takes time. That time is multiplied by the sheer number of articles
> involved.
>
> I suspect that you will have to process each post to get the Message-ID:
> and References: header. I doubt that any overview database will contain
> them. -- Again, definitely possible, but takes time per message.
>
> Even if you can do 1 ~ 100 messages a second, the sheer number of
> messages is not in your favor.
>
> My personal / private archive server has more than 27 million articles
> going back to late '18. That's a LOT of messages to spend time processing.
>
> That being said, I am in the process of going through my server and
> removing messages that originated from Google Groups as they were such a
> source of spam and waste of disk space.

Why only 100 messages a second tops ? You only need to parse the header and
remove posts where the Message-ID ends in @googlegroups.com .I mean , that
is what you need to do just to identify googlegroups messages without caring
about the date although I don't imagine that adding date processing slows
down things that much. It seems to me that a modern computer should be able
to process at least thousands of messages per second. What's slowing things
down ? Is it parsing the messages or fetching them from somewhere like the
hard disk ? In what programming language is the processing software written ?

--
vlaho.ninja/menu

On 11/28/23 05:19, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> Why only 100 messages a second tops ? You only need to parse the header and
> remove posts where the Message-ID ends in @googlegroups.com .I mean , that
> is what you need to do just to identify googlegroups messages without caring
> about the date although I don't imagine that adding date processing slows
> down things that much. It seems to me that a modern computer should be able
> to process at least thousands of messages per second. What's slowing things
> down ? Is it parsing the messages or fetching them from somewhere like the
> hard disk ? In what programming language is the processing software written ?

Processing the incoming stream in real time is fairly trivial. We have
a number of tools to do that.

It takes time access and process 27 million messages. A non-trivial
amount of that time is going to be waiting on physical I/O from a drive.
-- My many GB news spool lives on spinning rust. -- Directory
traversal is another issue. The more files that you have in a given
directory, the slower that directory is to access, independent of the
underlying disk. The free.usenet directory / newsgroup had 1,776,615
files / articles in it.

--
Grant. . . .

On Mon, 27 Nov 2023 22:05:06 -0600, David Ritz <dritz@mindspring.com> wrote:
>On Sunday, 26 November 2023 23:55 +0100, D wrote:
>> media attention / google attention / newspapers / controversy / ..?
>> the scripted mainstream media narrative is theirs and theirs alone;
>> e.g. usenet newsgroups have never once been mentioned on television
>> or in newspapers (afaik... citations welcome); usenet is autonomous
>
>I agree, in part. Usenet has been largely ignored by network and
>cable television news.
>On the other hand, historically usenet death penalties have garnered
>attention from mainstream press, including the likes of The Wall
>Street Journal, Wired, CNet, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times
>and others. Of course, they were reporting about active UDPs, the
>vast majority of which ended before a single udpcancel was ever
>issued.
>IIRC, only one Usenet Death Penalty moved to enforcement by udpcancel:
>UUNet, ca. 1997. I believe it lasted somewhere around forty eight
>(48) hours. Even so, the basis for this UDP centered around their
>dial-up rent-a-POP. The scenario involved 1) UUNet selling access to
>a variety of Internet Service Providers and 2) ISPs running their own
>NNTP servers "authenticating" based exclusively to IP addresses used
>by UUNet dial-up. So, if a bad actor signs up for an account at
>provider A, which uses UUNet's dial-ups, they could post via the NNTP
>servers operated by ISP B, C, D, E, F and G, none of whom had any
>ability to track down the bad user account.
>Please keep in mind, these ISP servers were full feed servers, rather
>than the text only servers around which the bulk of these discussions
>revolve.
>Then there were problems surrounding unsecured, open servers. As an
>example, DNEWS originally came with a web-based control panel, which
>was incapable of overwriting any existing configuration. So, the
>administrators of these DNEWS boxes, with their faulty configuration
>panels, could not turn on authentication. (It seems that some Windows
>users, which were running DNEWS with its GUI interface, were not
>particularly comfortable
>Almost all of the other historical UDP discussions involved the
>introduction of high speed Internet and providers operating their own,
>very fast, NNTP servers, which had zero facility to authenticate
>individual users, ie. no user:pass. At the same time, users on these
>primarily cable services began installing proxies on their home
>networks. Many of these users failed to secure these proxies, running
>them open to the world, with all that implies regarding bad actors.
>Of course, these open proxies, running on high speed Internet
>connections, on networks running fast-at-all-cost NNTP servers, with
>no security beyond an IP check, were hijacked /en masse/, with spam
>volume totaling in excess of 100k, daily.
>If you really want the mainstream press and broadcast to pay
>attention to you, you might want to consider reaching out directly to
>them. The likelihood of them stumbling across these UDP calls against
>Google, in what amounts to a largely forgotten backwater, to the
>population at a whole.

wow! uber-comprehensive answer . . . so the "usenet death penalty"
(udp) has been reported in mainstream press but not too much else

On Mon, 27 Nov 2023 23:22:59 -0600, Grant Taylor wrote:

> On 11/23/23 15:51, Grant Taylor wrote:
>> That being said, I am in the process of going through my server and
>> removing messages that originated from Google Groups as they were such
>> a source of spam and waste of disk space.
>>
>> Once that's done I'll get a count of the number of messages in the news
>> spool.
>
> Since some people seemed interested, I ended up removing about 6,000,000
> messages from my news spool.
>
> ~27,000,000 down to ~21,000,000
>
> It took many days to run. It finished some time while I was at work
> today.

Wow, that's a lot of messages!

I've been working the past couple of days to add such stats to my nocem
search page. Currently it only shows number from "yesterday". It is
interesting to see these numbers (to me anyway).

On 11/28/23 10:16, Retro Guy wrote:
> Wow, that's a lot of messages!

Yep.

> I've been working the past couple of days to add such stats to my nocem
> search page. Currently it only shows number from "yesterday". It is
> interesting to see these numbers (to me anyway).

Yes. Though I might choose "depressing" as the word.

How much time and effort are some miscreants inducing multiple other
people spend?

At some point, the time simply is no longer worth the effort for a
finely targeted approach. Eventually a more blunt approach will be used.

People's time is worth more than anyone thinks it is.

--
Grant. . . .

On Tue, 28 Nov 2023 12:39:57 -0600, Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
>On 11/28/23 10:16, Retro Guy wrote:
>> Wow, that's a lot of messages!
>
>Yep.
>
>> I've been working the past couple of days to add such stats to my nocem
>> search page. Currently it only shows number from "yesterday". It is
>> interesting to see these numbers (to me anyway).
>
>Yes. Though I might choose "depressing" as the word.
>How much time and effort are some miscreants inducing multiple other
>people spend?
>At some point, the time simply is no longer worth the effort for a
>finely targeted approach. Eventually a more blunt approach will be used.
>People's time is worth more than anyone thinks it is.

certainly more than all the money in the world could ever buy . . . but
that's another type of discussion . . . six big ones is a lot of google,
and then there are the myriads of replies that quote all or part of the
op's typically spammy and verbose texts that give a new meaning to ugly

On 11/28/23 16:24, D wrote:
> ... then there are the myriads of replies that quote all or part of the
> op's typically spammy and verbose texts that give a new meaning to ugly

Ya....

That's one of the things that I like about Cleanfeed in that it looks
for blocked senders in the body of a message. So the following type of
things is filtered.

On Tue, 28 Nov 2023 12:39:57 -0600, Grant Taylor
<gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:

As sure as I say that, I see that my new computer isn't sending those
types of quote headers. I'll need to whack it about the bits to get it
to do that.

Grant. . . .

On Thu, 23 Nov 2023 12:00:36 -0600,
Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
> On 11/23/23 08:06, D wrote:
> > they make ridiculous claims like "googlegroups has legitimate
> > users"
>
> I have first hand experience of having valid Usenet
> interactions with Google Groups users.

Agree with you, Grant.

> I also have first hand experience seeing tens / hundreds of
> thousands of spam messages from Google Groups.
>
> Yes, Google Groups does have legitimate users.
>
> But I'm now of the opinion that the ratio of such low signal to
> such high noise makes Google Groups not worth tolerating.
>
> > , or that its top admins are oblivious to usenet's very
> > existence... what, are they mind readers?
>
> I have first hand exposure to Google's corporate culture and
> what they value to know that Usenet is not going to receive the
> care and treatment that we want it to receive from them.

Appreciate your always helpful wisdom. That said, a couple of my
longtime groups have contributors using GG. As such, I filter out
the spam with my client on a per group basis. If GG feeds get
dropped across the board in peering processes, I'll be sad (and
will redouble efforts to get said GG users to change)--but I'll
understand the need for the greater good.

--
Ted Heise <theise@panix.com> West Lafayette, IN, USA