Giganews Usage

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Winnow
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Re: Giganews Usage

Post by Winnow »

(ref previous few posts on this thread regarding Astraweb)

After 324 GB of downloads, Astraweb shows that I've used up my 180 GB $25 Pay by Download plan. Not sure how they measure downloads but getting close to double the GBs is outstanding. I'm going to pay $50.00 for a terabyte of data. They take Paypal which adds to their awesomeness and your security without having to give your CC #. They don't even want a name. Just username and password.) Whatever their measurement process is, it's extremely conservative and you'll get at minimum what you pay for and probably a lot more.

Astraweb has been great (fast and complete) and paying for chunks of GBs is definitely the way to go as opposed to a monthly subscription fee.

Added the 1 TB while writing this and it was instant. (downloading the last 3 episodes of Xena season 6!)
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Re: Giganews Usage

Post by Sylvus »

So I've basically given up on newsgroups, as the main thing I used them for was for checking out movies and DMCA has made everything disappear. Though it looks as if people just started "encrypting" the names of posts. Anyone know how to find things now? Feel free to pm me if it's super secret.
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Re: Giganews Usage

Post by Fairweather Pure »

Funny you say this. I think I'm going to dump newsleecher and pay for a VPN instead and just use torrents. There are more, faster, and more current than Newsleecher these days.

I've been getting an unacceptable amount of junk/broken files on Newsleecher the past 4-5 months. I'm even getting password protected shit and I have never gotten a single one before. Now I would say it happens 1 out of every 10 DLs.

So...anyone have experience with a good/cheap VPN?
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Aslanna
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Re: Giganews Usage

Post by Aslanna »

Sylvus wrote:So I've basically given up on newsgroups, as the main thing I used them for was for checking out movies and DMCA has made everything disappear. Though it looks as if people just started "encrypting" the names of posts. Anyone know how to find things now? Feel free to pm me if it's super secret.
It does seem to be super secret since I couldn't find any information on it. But I guess if it was easy to figure out then there would be no point doing it. About the only way to do things now is be aware of what movies or shows are coming out and start checking then as posts usually last a day or two before being nuked. Popular stuff, like just about any HBO show, is usually nuked within hours.
Fairweather Pure wrote:I've been getting an unacceptable amount of junk/broken files on Newsleecher the past 4-5 months. I'm even getting password protected shit and I have never gotten a single one before. Now I would say it happens 1 out of every 10 DLs.
Newsleecher should detect that and at least not download them but yeah it is annoying. However not sure what you were downloading before because passworded shit has been an issue for a few years now.

It's pretty sad though the current state of affairs. People like Winnow who were evangelizing how awesome newsgroups were and how you could use them as basically online storage have made Usenet a bigger target that it probably would have been. Of course providers advertising hundreds (now thousands) of days of retention didn't help matters much.
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Winnow
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Re: Giganews Usage

Post by Winnow »

Use Astraweb, I posted about it somewhere. Pay for a certain amount of data (it's cheap) and don't worry about it.

Newgroups are good for TV shows still, comics, etc. Movies are pretty screwed up right now although Newsleecher helsp with rar within rar detection and you can get a "feel" for which ones are bogus if you do it enough.

I now pay for one or two of the servies (upload.to, rapidgator, depositfiles, etc etc etc) and grab movies and TV shows off the rss logs like:

http://www.rlsbb.com/

It's by the far the fastest and most efficient way to get movies and TV shows now. I use VPN so your download speeds may vary. I use upload.to (ul.to) (UPLOADED) primarily but that can change depending on the season. Download speeds increase dramatically depending on your VPN location using these services. I can max 150 Mbps on multiple connections using upload.to. typical downlaod speed is 15Mbps


edit note: you need to pay for the service to get fast speeds. "free" downloads are slow as shit.
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Aslanna
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Re: Giganews Usage

Post by Aslanna »

Winnow wrote:Use Astraweb, I posted about it somewhere. Pay for a certain amount of data (it's cheap) and don't worry about it.
How is that a solution to what they are asking? DMCA affects all providers if they have any servers in the US and Europe (I think). If anything AW is worse than other providers since they have an automated takedown system in place. Although I'd be surprised if others didn't have something similar.
Newgroups are good for TV shows still
Some shows are removed in a hurry. Good luck finding Game of Thrones if you wait a few days, or even hours, after it aired.
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Winnow
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Re: Giganews Usage

Post by Winnow »

Aslanna wrote:
Winnow wrote:Use Astraweb, I posted about it somewhere. Pay for a certain amount of data (it's cheap) and don't worry about it.
How is that a solution to what they are asking? DMCA affects all providers if they have any servers in the US and Europe (I think). If anything AW is worse than other providers since they have an automated takedown system in place. Although I'd be surprised if others didn't have something similar.

The solution is you pay for a set amount of data that's available until used up so you can still check is there's a valid copy of something on the newsgroups quickly, if not go to plan b. It's not costing you a monthly fee using Astra Web.
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Re: Giganews Usage

Post by Aabidano »

Aslanna wrote:It's pretty sad though the current state of affairs. People like Winnow who were evangelizing how awesome newsgroups were and how you could use them as basically online storage have made Usenet a bigger target that it probably would have been. Of course providers advertising hundreds (now thousands) of days of retention didn't help matters much.
It's long been common knowledge that "poster child" offenders like Winnow are downloading insane amounts then posting/redistributing it to overseas servers; they'd basically have no case when prosecuting anyone with a decent lawyer at this point.

Providers are just going through the motions so they don't become the scapegoat.
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Winnow
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Re: Giganews Usage

Post by Winnow »

If you follow the news, you'll see that Dropbox is creating hash tags for files that are reported as copyrighted. If a file you have posted matches the hash, they disable sharing for that file. I can see other cloud services doing the same thing in the future.

On the flip side, that same hash tag strategy saves me a lot of uploading time with the chinese servers as it recognizes common TV show files etc and posts them to my cloud without the need for me to waste bandwidth uploading them. Of course, all of those could be wiped out at some point if China ever decides to protect copyrights but who cares, they're just movies and TV shows.

Easy enough to zip/rar files, etc if you wanted to change the hash for personal use.
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