https://groups.google.com/g/sci.lang.japan

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.vms

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.text.tex

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.cad.cadence

And Social mediaed every day!
--
Member - Liberal International This is doctor@nk.ca Ici doctor@nk.ca
Yahweh, King & country!Never Satan President Republic!Beware AntiChrist rising!
Look at Psalms 14 and 53 on Atheism ; unsubscribe from Google Groups to be seen
Merry Christmas 2023 and Happy New year 2024 Beware https://mindspring.com

On Thu, 23 Nov 2023 14:27:22 +0000, Tom Furie <tom@furie.org.uk> wrote:
>D <J@M> writes:
>> and none of which eliminates the sacred cow altogether; some admins act
>> as google shills, enablers, defenders, apologists; they make ridiculous
>> claims like "googlegroups has legitimate users", or that its top admins
>> are oblivious to usenet's very existence... what, are they mind readers?
>
>Sure, googlegroups has legitimate users, but so do (or did) many other
>providers with spam injection problems they weren't willing or able to
>resolve. Few admins have a problem shutting off their feed from those
>other providers. Why should Google deserve a free pass? Simple - they
>shouldn't. Just because they're the big kid on the block doesn't mean
>they deserve special treatment.

figures don't lie but . . .

On Thu, 23 Nov 2023 14:27:22 +0000, Tom Furie <tom@furie.org.uk> wrote:
>Sure, googlegroups has legitimate users, but so do (or did) many other
>providers with spam injection problems they weren't willing or able to
>resolve. Few admins have a problem shutting off their feed from those
>other providers. Why should Google deserve a free pass? Simple - they
>shouldn't. Just because they're the big kid on the block doesn't mean
>they deserve special treatment.

It's true that UDP does exist in order to prevent spam traffic from
sites that are severe offenders, but it ALSO exists, and in the past
it was primarily used, for getting admins with spam problems to wake
up and fix their problem. It is a heads-up to the people running the
site to deal with the issues.

The UDP may be effective in the first sense against google, but it cannot
be effective in the second because there is nobody listening to accept a
heads-up. I don't think they actually have any news admin there, I think
it mostly just runs unattended. Maybe there is a janitor who looks in on
it now and then, but he's not going to be able to do much.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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.

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.

Grant. . . .

On 11/23/23 08:27, Tom Furie wrote:
> Sure, googlegroups has legitimate users, but so do (or did) many other
> providers with spam injection problems they weren't willing or able to
> resolve.

Agreed.

> Few admins have a problem shutting off their feed from those
> other providers. Why should Google deserve a free pass? Simple - they
> shouldn't.

Agreed.

> Just because they're the big kid on the block doesn't mean
> they deserve special treatment.

I want to agree.

/If/ the vast majority of your user base is inside of Google blocking it
severs you from your users. That's a bad thing.

/If/ the vast majority of your user base is outside of Google blocking
it is not as painful. That's a good thing.

Grant. . . .

On 11/23/23 10:12, D wrote:
> figures don't lie but . . .

I'd be curious to see said figures if you have them to share.

Grant. . . .

On 11/23/23 11:55, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> I don't think they actually have any news admin there, I think
> it mostly just runs unattended. Maybe there is a janitor who looks in on
> it now and then, but he's not going to be able to do much.

I have direct first hand experience with Google that shows that exactly
that or worse.

Grant. . . .

On Thu, 23 Nov 2023 12:04:32 -0600, Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
>On 11/23/23 10:12, D wrote:
>> figures don't lie but . . .
>
>I'd be curious to see said figures if you have them to share.
>Grant. . . .

of the many thousands of unmoderated newsgroups (e.g., last check 2 Nov 2023
news.mixmin.net http://mixmin.net/active list [2.03 MB] shows 39,385 "y" and
5,936 "m"), 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?

Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
>On 11/23/23 11:55, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> I don't think they actually have any news admin there, I think
>> it mostly just runs unattended. Maybe there is a janitor who looks in on
>> it now and then, but he's not going to be able to do much.
>
>I have direct first hand experience with Google that shows that exactly
>that or worse.

I am not surprised, as I have spoken to many people at Google over the years
and none of them even knew Google Groups existed. Most of them knew about
Orkut too, and knew someone working for Orkut.

The main argument for UDP against a site that has legitimate users is that it
will make the admins of that site stand up and fix the problems to everyone's
benefit, even those of the users of that site. Unfortunately this argument
cannot be made about Google.

The most unfortunate point, on the gripping hand, is that there really aren't
any other tools available to us other than the UDP.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 11/23/23 12:55, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> I am not surprised, as I have spoken to many people at Google over the years
> and none of them even knew Google Groups existed. Most of them knew about
> Orkut too, and knew someone working for Orkut.

I find that somewhat surprising. I worked at Google for a while and we
used Google Groups weekly, if not daily for internal things. But that
is Google Groups proper, not the Google Groups interface to Usenet.

I've heard the Orkut name before, but I don't recall what it is off hand.

> The main argument for UDP against a site that has legitimate users is that it
> will make the admins of that site stand up and fix the problems to everyone's
> benefit, even those of the users of that site. Unfortunately this argument
> cannot be made about Google.

I don't think enough people at Google know about Google Groups Usenet
interface, that it's sending so much spam, much less care about the fact.

The culture that I saw outside of my team was too much "what do I need
to do to get my next promotion". And once the promotion was achieved,
all care for the former task was gone.

While at Google I tried to find people that administered Google Group's
Usenet interface and failed surprisingly spectacularly. Mostly because
it's not a dedicated team but rather an also ran part of the larger
Google Groups by people that don't care about Usenet.

Based on what I experienced and witnessed, I think that Google Groups
Usetnet is largely frozen in time from 10+ years ago and will only get
worse before it's discontinued. Even if that discontinuance is simply
that Google Groups goes through a re-vamp and Usenet doesn't make the
feature list any more.

> The most unfortunate point, on the gripping hand, is that there really aren't
> any other tools available to us other than the UDP.

UDP won't persuade people that don't care.

Google is far more concerned about the amount of spam email entering,
and to a lesser degree leaving Google.

Even if Google had a magic solution that was 1,000 times better than
anyone else, the fact that they send 1,000,000 times the email than
almost everyone else means that they send 1,000 times the spam than
almost everyone else. The math simply is not in the recipient's favor.

Grant. . . .

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.

Once that's done I'll get a count of the number of messages in the news
spool.

N.B. this process has been going on for more than a week.

So, can a news administrator get a count of messages from this year that
have @googlegroups... in the Message-ID: and / or References: headers?
Yes. Is it easy? Not really. Is it annoying and tedious to do? Very
much so.

Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
>On 11/23/23 12:55, Scott Dorsey wrote:

>>I am not surprised, as I have spoken to many people at Google over the years
>>and none of them even knew Google Groups existed. Most of them knew about
>>Orkut too, and knew someone working for Orkut.

>I find that somewhat surprising. I worked at Google for a while and we
>used Google Groups weekly, if not daily for internal things. But that
>is Google Groups proper, not the Google Groups interface to Usenet.

>I've heard the Orkut name before, but I don't recall what it is off hand.

Named for its creator, it was a social networking site popular in India
and Brazil that Google shut down a decade ago, according to its
Wikipedia page. I never saw it.

>>. . .

On Thu, 23 Nov 2023 15:40:06 -0600, Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
>On 11/23/23 12:55, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> I am not surprised, as I have spoken to many people at Google over the years
>> and none of them even knew Google Groups existed. Most of them knew about
>> Orkut too, and knew someone working for Orkut.
>I find that somewhat surprising. I worked at Google for a while and we
>used Google Groups weekly, if not daily for internal things. But that
>is Google Groups proper, not the Google Groups interface to Usenet.
>I've heard the Orkut name before, but I don't recall what it is off hand.
>> The main argument for UDP against a site that has legitimate users is that it
>> will make the admins of that site stand up and fix the problems to everyone's
>> benefit, even those of the users of that site. Unfortunately this argument
>> cannot be made about Google.
>I don't think enough people at Google know about Google Groups Usenet
>interface, that it's sending so much spam, much less care about the fact.
>The culture that I saw outside of my team was too much "what do I need
>to do to get my next promotion". And once the promotion was achieved,
>all care for the former task was gone.
>While at Google I tried to find people that administered Google Group's
>Usenet interface and failed surprisingly spectacularly. Mostly because
>it's not a dedicated team but rather an also ran part of the larger
>Google Groups by people that don't care about Usenet.
>Based on what I experienced and witnessed, I think that Google Groups
>Usetnet is largely frozen in time from 10+ years ago and will only get
>worse before it's discontinued. Even if that discontinuance is simply
>that Google Groups goes through a re-vamp and Usenet doesn't make the
>feature list any more.
>> The most unfortunate point, on the gripping hand, is that there really aren't
>> any other tools available to us other than the UDP.
>UDP won't persuade people that don't care.
>Google is far more concerned about the amount of spam email entering,
>and to a lesser degree leaving Google.
>Even if Google had a magic solution that was 1,000 times better than
>anyone else, the fact that they send 1,000,000 times the email than
>almost everyone else means that they send 1,000 times the spam than
>almost everyone else. The math simply is not in the recipient's favor.
>Grant. . . .

guessing that many readers will want to save your comments for reference;
this "google doesn't care" assertion seems to be a recurring theme among
practically every server admin who has been discussing googlegroups spam

On 11/23/23 16:46, D wrote:
> this "google doesn't care" assertion seems to be a recurring theme among
> practically every server admin who has been discussing googlegroups spam

There is a very similar and recurring theme in the email community.

Based on what I've seen, Google is:

1) the biggest source of email period
2) the biggest source of spam email period
3) the biggest source of Usenet posts period
4) the biggest source of Usenet spam posts period

#1 & #3 sort of beget #2 & #4 based on simple math.

If Google sends 1,000,000 messages a day email and / or Usenet posts,
and catches 99.9% of the spam, that's still

1,000,000 x 0.001 = 1,000 spam messages a day.

Play with the numbers:
- send more messages
- worse spam filtering ratio
You end up with more spam messages leaving Google a day.

The sad thing is that if they hit 99.9% accuracy in their spam filter
that is far better than many other organizations.

Is it fair to say that a company that blocks a higher percentage of spam
than other companies (assuming they do for a moment) doesn't care? I
don't think so.

Is it fair to say that a company that sends thousands of spam messages a
day doesn't care? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the numbers, numbers
we might not have visibility into.

Is it fair to say that a company that is known for not responding to
spam complaints while sending thousands of spam messages a day doesn't
care? Probably.

Given what I witnessed, my opinion is that the powers that be at Google
don't care what happens on Usenet until their involvement therewith
becomes a (big enough) liability for the company. I assume that Google
will cease to participate in Usenet shortly after it becomes a liability
for them.

--
Grant. . . .

In article <1a16612c70b292e16e24e48a6e6d6edb@dizum.com>, D <J@M> wrote:
>On Thu, 23 Nov 2023 13:03:58 -0000 (UTC), doctor@doctor.nl2k.ab.ca (The
>Doctor) wrote:
>>https://groups.google.com/g/sci.lang.japan
>>https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.vms
>>https://groups.google.com/g/comp.text.tex
>>https://groups.google.com/g/comp.cad.cadence
>>And Social mediaed every day!
>
>easy enough to use scoring filters to delete all incoming articles that
>have message-id and/or reference headers containing "googlegroups.com",
>but it seems that every nntp server admin has their own way of dealing
>with googlespam, all of which is probably more difficult to accomplish
>and none of which eliminates the sacred cow altogether; some admins act
>as google shills, enablers, defenders, apologists; they make ridiculous
>claims like "googlegroups has legitimate users", or that its top admins
>are oblivious to usenet's very existence... what, are they mind readers?
>

Or outright stupid!

SM update

https://twitter.com/dsyadallee/status/1727813482073243769

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fnetknowyeg%2Fposts%2F860937102700619

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7133580075345608704
--
Member - Liberal International This is doctor@nk.ca Ici doctor@nk.ca
Yahweh, King & country!Never Satan President Republic!Beware AntiChrist rising!
Look at Psalms 14 and 53 on Atheism ; unsubscribe from Google Groups to be seen
Merry Christmas 2023 and Happy New year 2024 Beware https://mindspring.com

In article <87sf4w35px.fsf@asus-x205ta.furie.org.uk>,
Tom Furie <tom@furie.org.uk> wrote:
>D <J@M> writes:
>
>> and none of which eliminates the sacred cow altogether; some admins act
>> as google shills, enablers, defenders, apologists; they make ridiculous
>> claims like "googlegroups has legitimate users", or that its top admins
>> are oblivious to usenet's very existence... what, are they mind readers?
>
>Sure, googlegroups has legitimate users, but so do (or did) many other
>providers with spam injection problems they weren't willing or able to
>resolve. Few admins have a problem shutting off their feed from those
>other providers. Why should Google deserve a free pass? Simple - they
>shouldn't. Just because they're the big kid on the block doesn't mean
>they deserve special treatment.

Freeloaders for you.
--
Member - Liberal International This is doctor@nk.ca Ici doctor@nk.ca
Yahweh, King & country!Never Satan President Republic!Beware AntiChrist rising!
Look at Psalms 14 and 53 on Atheism ; unsubscribe from Google Groups to be seen
Merry Christmas 2023 and Happy New year 2024 Beware https://mindspring.com

In article <6bd563c0fe66760be61330cadcdc59c8@dizum.com>, D <J@M> wrote:
>On Thu, 23 Nov 2023 14:27:22 +0000, Tom Furie <tom@furie.org.uk> wrote:
>>D <J@M> writes:
>>> and none of which eliminates the sacred cow altogether; some admins act
>>> as google shills, enablers, defenders, apologists; they make ridiculous
>>> claims like "googlegroups has legitimate users", or that its top admins
>>> are oblivious to usenet's very existence... what, are they mind readers?
>>
>>Sure, googlegroups has legitimate users, but so do (or did) many other
>>providers with spam injection problems they weren't willing or able to
>>resolve. Few admins have a problem shutting off their feed from those
>>other providers. Why should Google deserve a free pass? Simple - they
>>shouldn't. Just because they're the big kid on the block doesn't mean
>>they deserve special treatment.
>
>figures don't lie but . . .
>

Same with the headers.
--
Member - Liberal International This is doctor@nk.ca Ici doctor@nk.ca
Yahweh, King & country!Never Satan President Republic!Beware AntiChrist rising!
Look at Psalms 14 and 53 on Atheism ; unsubscribe from Google Groups to be seen
Merry Christmas 2023 and Happy New year 2024 Beware https://mindspring.com

In article <ujo46g$eld$1@tncsrv09.home.tnetconsulting.net>,
Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
>On 11/23/23 08:27, Tom Furie wrote:
>> Sure, googlegroups has legitimate users, but so do (or did) many other
>> providers with spam injection problems they weren't willing or able to
>> resolve.
>
>Agreed.
>
>> Few admins have a problem shutting off their feed from those
>> other providers. Why should Google deserve a free pass? Simple - they
>> shouldn't.
>
>Agreed.
>
>> Just because they're the big kid on the block doesn't mean
>> they deserve special treatment.
>
>I want to agree.
>
>/If/ the vast majority of your user base is inside of Google blocking it
>severs you from your users. That's a bad thing.
>
>/If/ the vast majority of your user base is outside of Google blocking
>it is not as painful. That's a good thing.
>
>

Due to GG abuse, I block GG!

>
>Grant. . . .

--
Member - Liberal International This is doctor@nk.ca Ici doctor@nk.ca
Yahweh, King & country!Never Satan President Republic!Beware AntiChrist rising!
Look at Psalms 14 and 53 on Atheism ; unsubscribe from Google Groups to be seen
Merry Christmas 2023 and Happy New year 2024 Beware https://mindspring.com

On 11/23/23 17:19, Grant Taylor wrote:
> Given what I witnessed, my opinion is that the powers that be at Google
> don't care what happens on Usenet until their involvement therewith
> becomes a (big enough) liability for the company.  I assume that Google
> will cease to participate in Usenet shortly after it becomes a liability
> for them.

The following article crossed my path and the last four paragraphs are a
very good explanation of what I was seeing.

Link - Reflecting on 18 years at Google
- https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373

--
Grant. . . .

On Thu, 23 Nov 2023 20:45:39 -0600, Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
>On 11/23/23 17:19, Grant Taylor wrote:
>> Given what I witnessed, my opinion is that the powers that be at Google
>> don't care what happens on Usenet until their involvement therewith
>> becomes a (big enough) liability for the company. I assume that Google
>> will cease to participate in Usenet shortly after it becomes a liability
>> for them.
>The following article crossed my path and the last four paragraphs are a
>very good explanation of what I was seeing.
>Link - Reflecting on 18 years at Google
> - https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373

(using Tor Browser 13.0.5)
https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373
>2023-11-22 04:29 UTC
>Reflecting on 18 years at Google
>I joined Google in October 2005, and handed in my resignation 18 years later.
>Last week was my last week at Google.
>I feel very lucky to have experienced the early post-IPO Google; unlike most
>companies, and contrary to the popular narrative, Googlers, from the junior
>engineer all the way to the C-suite, were genuinely good people who cared very
>much about doing the right thing. The oft-mocked "don't be evil" truly was the
>guiding principle of the company at the time (largely a reaction to
>contemporaries like Microsoft whose operating procedures put profits far above
>the best interests of customers and humanity as a whole).
>Many times I saw Google criticised for actions that were sincerely intended to
>be good for society. Google Books, for example. Much of the criticism Google
>received around Chrome and Search, especially around supposed conflicts of
>interest with Ads, was way off base (it's surprising how often coincidences and
>mistakes can appear malicious). I often saw privacy advocates argue against
>Google proposals in ways that were net harmful to users. Some of these fights
>have had lasting effects on the world at large; one of the most annoying is the
>prevalence of pointless cookie warnings we have to wade through today. I found
>it quite frustrating how teams would be legitimately actively pursuing ideas
>that would be good for the world, without prioritising short-term Google
>interests, only to be met with cynicism in the court of public opinion.
>[Photograph] Charlie's patio at Google, 2011. Image has been manipulated to
>remove individuals.
>Early Google was also an excellent place to work. Executives gave frank answers
>on a weekly basis, or were candid about their inability to do so (e.g. for
>legal reasons or because some topic was too sensitive to discuss broadly). Eric
>Schmidt regularly walked the whole company through the discussions of the board.
>The successes and failures of various products were presented more or less
>objectively, with successes celebrated and failures examined critically with an
>eye to learning lessons rather than assigning blame. The company had a vision,
>and deviations from that vision were explained. Having experienced Dilbert-level
>management during my internship at Netscape five years earlier, the uniform
>competence of people at Google was very refreshing.
>For my first nine years at Google I worked on HTML and related standards. My
>mandate was to do the best thing for the web, as whatever was good for the web
>would be good for Google (I was explicitly told to ignore Google's interests).
>This was a continuation of the work I started while at Opera Software. Google
>was an excellent host for this effort. My team was nominally the open source
>team at Google, but I was entirely autonomous (for which I owe thanks to Chris
>DiBona). Most of my work was done on a laptop from random buildings on Google's
>campus; entire years went by where I didn't use my assigned desk.
>In time, exceptions to Google's cultural strengths developed. For example, as
>much as I enjoyed Vic Gundotra's enthusiasm (and his initial vision for Google+,
>which again was quite well defined and, if not necessarily uniformly appreciated,
>at least unambiguous), I felt less confident in his ability to give clear answers
>when things were not going as well as hoped. He also started introducing silos to
>Google (e.g. locking down certain buildings to just the Google+ team), a distinct
>departure from the complete internal transparency of early Google. Another
>example is the Android team (originally an acquisition), who never really fully
>acclimated to Google's culture. Android's work/life balance was unhealthy, the
>team was not as transparent as older parts of Google, and the team focused on
>chasing the competition more than solving real problems for users.
>My last nine years were spent on Flutter. Some of my fondest memories of my time
>at Google are of the early days of this effort. Flutter was one of the last
>projects to come out of the old Google, part of a stable of ambitious experiments
>started by Larry Page shortly before the creation of Alphabet. We essentially
>operated like a startup, discovering what we were building more than designing
>it. The Flutter team was very much built out of the culture of young Google; for
>example we prioritised internal transparency, work/life balance, and data-driven
>decision making (greatly helped by Tao Dong and his UXR team). We were radically
>open from the beginning, which made it easy for us to build a healthy open source
>project around the effort as well. Flutter was also very lucky to have excellent
>leadership throughout the years, such as Adam Barth as founding tech lead, Tim
>Sneath as PM, and Todd Volkert as engineering manager.
>[Photograph] We also didn't follow engineering best practices for the first few
>years. For example we wrote no tests and had precious little documentation. This
>whiteboard is what passed for a design doc for the core Widget, RenderObject, and
>dart:ui layers. This allowed us to move fast at first, but we paid for it later.
>Flutter grew in a bubble, largely insulated from the changes Google was
>experiencing at the same time. Google's culture eroded. Decisions went from being
>made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever
>was making the decision. Transparency evaporated. Where previously I would eagerly
>attend every company-wide meeting to learn what was happening, I found myself now
>able to predict the answers executives would give word for word. Today, I don't
>know anyone at Google who could explain what Google's vision is. Morale is at an
>all-time low. If you talk to therapists in the bay area, they will tell you all
>their Google clients are unhappy with Google.
>Then Google had layoffs. The layoffs were an unforced error driven by a short-
>sighted drive to ensure the stock price would keep growing quarter-to-quarter,
>instead of following Google's erstwhile strategy of prioritising long-term success
>even if that led to short-term losses (the very essence of "don't be evil"). The
>effects of layoffs are insidious. Whereas before people might focus on the user,
>or at least their company, trusting that doing the right thing will eventually be
>rewarded even if it's not strictly part of their assigned duties, after a layoff
>people can no longer trust that their company has their back, and they
>dramatically dial back any risk-taking. Responsibilities are guarded jealously.
>Knowledge is hoarded, because making oneself irreplaceable is the only lever one
>has to protect oneself from future layoffs. I see all of this at Google now. The
>lack of trust in management is reflected by management no longer showing trust in
>the employees either, in the form of inane corporate policies. In 2004, Google's
>founders famously told Wall Street "Google is not a conventional company. We do
>not intend to become one." but that Google is no more.
>Much of these problems with Google today stem from a lack of visionary leadership
>from Sundar Pichai, and his clear lack of interest in maintaining the cultural
>norms of early Google. A symptom of this is the spreading contingent of inept
>middle management. Take Jeanine Banks, for example, who manages the department
>that somewhat arbitrarily contains (among other things) Flutter, Dart, Go, and
>Firebase. Her department nominally has a strategy, but I couldn't leak it if I
>wanted to; I literally could never figure out what any part of it meant, even
>after years of hearing her describe it. Her understanding of what her teams are
>doing is minimal at best; she frequently makes requests that are completely
>incoherent and inapplicable. She treats engineers as commodities in a way that
>is dehumanising, reassigning people against their will in ways that have no
>relationship to their skill set. She is completely unable to receive constructive
>feedback (as in, she literally doesn't even acknowledge it). I hear other teams
>(who have leaders more politically savvy than I) have learned how to "handle" her
>to keep her off their backs, feeding her just the right information at the right
>time. Having seen Google at its best, I find this new reality depressing.
>There are still great people at Google. I've had the privilege to work with
>amazing people on the Flutter team such as JaYoung Lee, Kate Lovett, Kevin
>Chisholm, Zoey Fan, Dan Field, and dozens more (sorry folks, I know I should just
>name all of you but there's too many!). In recent years I started offering career
>advice to anyone at Google and through that met many great folks from around the
>company. It's definitely not too late to heal Google. It would require some
>shake-up at the top of the company, moving the centre of power from the CFO's
>office back to someone with a clear long-term vision for how to use Google's
>extensive resources to deliver value to users. I still believe there's lots of
>mileage to be had from Google's mission statement ("to organize the world's
>information and make it universally accessible and useful"). Someone who wanted
>to lead Google into the next twenty years, maximising the good to humanity and
>disregarding the short-term fluctuations in stock price, could channel the
>skills and passion of Google into truly great achievements.
>I do think the clock is ticking, though. The deterioration of Google's culture
>will eventually become irreversible, because the kinds of people whom you need
>to act as moral compass are the same kinds of people who don't join an
>organisation without a moral compass.
>Pingbacks: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
[end quote]

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.
>Once that's done I'll get a count of the number of messages in the news
>spool.
>N.B. this process has been going on for more than a week.
>So, can a news administrator get a count of messages from this year that
>have @googlegroups... in the Message-ID: and / or References: headers?
>Yes. Is it easy? Not really. Is it annoying and tedious to do? Very
>much so.

very descriptive response . . . if only to guess in round numbers,
there might be several hundred busy newsgroups that have received
at least one (1) google post/reply so far this year, and of these
several 100s of groups, maybe half of them have received over one
thousand (>1000), & the remaining half under one thousand (<1000);
so if there were about five hundred (~500) newsgroups with google
posts/replies, then 500 x 1000 (arithmetic mean of ">1000/<1000")
equals about five hundred thousand (500,000) google posts/replies;
half a million is quite a bit, but as by now everyone knows, some
of these groups have received over one hundred thousand (100,000)
google posts/replies since 1 Jan 2023, so if that number is added,
possibly one hundred (~100) newsgroups, then 100 x 100,000 equals
about ten million (10,000,000, minus the previous average of 1000
per newsgroup would be 10,000,000 - 100000 = 9,900,000, splitting
hairs), which is added to 500,000 for a sum total of ~10,400,000;
roughly ten and one half million google posts/replies so far this
year, a crude and some might say far too conservative guesstimate,
ten million mostly spam articles from one source, within one year

On 11/24/23 08:17, D wrote:
....
> roughly ten and one half million google posts/replies so far this
> year, a crude and some might say far too conservative guesstimate,
> ten million mostly spam articles from one source, within one year

Yep.

That's why I gave up and filtered Google Groups on my server.

I wanted to spend my time enjoying Usenet and communicating with people
thereon. I was tired of spending time shoveling spam.

Grant. . . .

In article <ujqig8$mq2$1@tncsrv09.home.tnetconsulting.net>,
Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
>On 11/24/23 08:17, D wrote:
>...
>> roughly ten and one half million google posts/replies so far this
>> year, a crude and some might say far too conservative guesstimate,
>> ten million mostly spam articles from one source, within one year
>
>Yep.
>
>That's why I gave up and filtered Google Groups on my server.
>
>I wanted to spend my time enjoying Usenet and communicating with people
>thereon. I was tired of spending time shoveling spam.
>
>
>
>Grant. . . .

Exactly why I had enough of Google GRoups!

About time they made that a read-only service!
--
Member - Liberal International This is doctor@nk.ca Ici doctor@nk.ca
Yahweh, King & country!Never Satan President Republic!Beware AntiChrist rising!
Look at Psalms 14 and 53 on Atheism ; unsubscribe from Google Groups to be seen
Merry Christmas 2023 and Happy New year 2024 Beware https://mindspring.com

In article <ujommm$9sj$2@tncsrv09.home.tnetconsulting.net>,
Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
>On 11/23/23 16:46, D wrote:
>> this "google doesn't care" assertion seems to be a recurring theme among
>> practically every server admin who has been discussing googlegroups spam
>
>There is a very similar and recurring theme in the email community.
>
>Based on what I've seen, Google is:
>
>1) the biggest source of email period
>2) the biggest source of spam email period
>3) the biggest source of Usenet posts period
>4) the biggest source of Usenet spam posts period
>
>#1 & #3 sort of beget #2 & #4 based on simple math.
>
>If Google sends 1,000,000 messages a day email and / or Usenet posts,
>and catches 99.9% of the spam, that's still
>
>1,000,000 x 0.001 = 1,000 spam messages a day.
>
>Play with the numbers:
> - send more messages
> - worse spam filtering ratio
>You end up with more spam messages leaving Google a day.
>
>The sad thing is that if they hit 99.9% accuracy in their spam filter
>that is far better than many other organizations.
>
>Is it fair to say that a company that blocks a higher percentage of spam
>than other companies (assuming they do for a moment) doesn't care? I
>don't think so.
>
>Is it fair to say that a company that sends thousands of spam messages a
>day doesn't care? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the numbers, numbers
>we might not have visibility into.
>
>Is it fair to say that a company that is known for not responding to
>spam complaints while sending thousands of spam messages a day doesn't
>care? Probably.
>
>Given what I witnessed, my opinion is that the powers that be at Google
>don't care what happens on Usenet until their involvement therewith
>becomes a (big enough) liability for the company. I assume that Google
>will cease to participate in Usenet shortly after it becomes a liability
>for them.
>
>
>
>--
>Grant. . . .

77000 + posts from Google groups blocked yesterday!
--
Member - Liberal International This is doctor@nk.ca Ici doctor@nk.ca
Yahweh, King & country!Never Satan President Republic!Beware AntiChrist rising!
Look at Psalms 14 and 53 on Atheism ; unsubscribe from Google Groups to be seen
Merry Christmas 2023 and Happy New year 2024 Beware https://mindspring.com

On 11/24/23 10:45, The Doctor wrote:
> In article <ujqig8$mq2$1@tncsrv09.home.tnetconsulting.net>,
> Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
>> On 11/24/23 08:17, D wrote:
>> ...
>>> roughly ten and one half million google posts/replies so far this
>>> year, a crude and some might say far too conservative guesstimate,
>>> ten million mostly spam articles from one source, within one year
>>
>> Yep.
>>
>> That's why I gave up and filtered Google Groups on my server.
>>
>> I wanted to spend my time enjoying Usenet and communicating with people
>> thereon. I was tired of spending time shoveling spam.
>>
>>
>>
>> Grant. . . .
>
> Exactly why I had enough of Google GRoups!
>
> About time they made that a read-only service!

Agreed.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom