On Thu, 21 Dec 2023 15:58:51 +0100, Andrew <Doug@hyperspace.vogon.gov> wrote:
>Andy Burns wrote:
>> Andrew wrote:
>>> Slashdot.org is carrying that story today (my timezone) and it is
>>> amazing the number of supposedly tech-orientated people who believe
>>> that crap.
>>> https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/12/20/2147253/the-rise-and-fall-of-usenet
snip
>
>Look at the comment counts on the other articles, should I change the
>Subject above for this reply?
>"Slashdot considered near death - USENET".
>Remember the "Slashdot effect"? That was decades ago.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=slashdot+effect . . . seems the reverse could
happen too, i.e. parroting the popular "official" cover story to attract
the insensate to their mercantile clickbait might also boost their "goo"

On 21/12/2023 11:20, Andrew wrote:
>
> Slashdot.org is carrying that story today (my timezone) and it is
> amazing the number of supposedly tech-orientated people who believe that
> crap.
> https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/12/20/2147253/the-rise-and-fall-of-usenet
> I did not bother complaining to zdnet or the original author, I did
> weigh in on the Slashdot discussion.  Unfortunately it was around 10
> hours after that article was posted and the ill-informed had all already
> posted and moved on.

I like this reply:
<https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23167544&cid=64095553>

Quoting the whole thing ...

"
The whole article totally misrepresents what is happening.

Usenet relies on distributed servers all over the world. These servers
have administrators and one of their main tasks is to filter out the
spam, they talk to each other - often via usenet - and swap Spamassassin
settings - not via usenet because the spammers are watching there too.
Then you have Google Groups. Around 98% (could be more) of the spam in
usenet gets there via GG, and Google simply does not f***ing care. Back
at the start of November, some groups were getting thousands of
thai-language spam messages a day, all entered via GG. That is when the
admins started using spamassassin and I believe the spamassassin
settings the admins use only check messages entered via Google Groups
(although that could be incorrect), they certainly get a higher weighting.
It got to the stage where the consensus amongst the admins was moving
towards ceasing to accept messages input via GG.
Then someone found a way to get a bug-report into Google's system, I
think some Android developers use Usenet and that was how he managed it.
It was less than a week later that Google decided to drop Groups, in a
few weeks time they will no longer accept postings, not even from usenet
servers where the admins actually care.
Usenet is not dead, what is happening here is that the main vector for
spam is closing its doors. My own opinion is that this was never about
spam, it was a DOS attack on usenet.
The reaction to Google's announcement on the forums (newsgroups) where
this was being discussed was rejoicing.

If anyone wants to look at some newsgroups which were being hit really
hard until the 2nd/3rd of November, try
comp.lang.cobol
comp.lang.fortran
comp.lang.c (36314 spams in the first 10 days of October)
comp.lang.c++
comp.arch
sci.lang.japan
news.cyber23.de
There were a fair number of other groups affected. When the admins
started attacking this s*** they sent "delete" requests out to their
peers so they could take out the garbage themselves, a lot of the
discussion in recent weeks is about identifying false-positives and
tweaking the settings accordingly.
I'm assuming Google ignored these requests so it should be possible to
see the damage there.
"

On 12/21/23 16:02, D wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Dec 2023 12:20:17 +0100, Andrew <Doug@hyperspace.vogon.gov> wrote:
>> Julieta Shem wrote:
> snip
>>> Source:
>>> https://www.pcmag.com/news/end-of-an-era-google-groups-to-drop-usenet-support
>>
>> Slashdot.org is carrying that story today (my timezone) and it is
>> amazing the number of supposedly tech-orientated people who believe that
>> crap.
>> https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/12/20/2147253/the-rise-and-fall-of-usenet
>> I did not bother complaining to zdnet or the original author, I did
>> weigh in on the Slashdot discussion. Unfortunately it was around 10
>> hours after that article was posted and the ill-informed had all already
>> posted and moved on.
>
> they are only doing their duty . . . propagating the narrative
>

Do all Dizum anonymous users appear as "D <nobody@mixmin.net>", or are
you just one person who is sometimes very intelligent and sometimes very
retarded?

Richard Harnden wrote:
> On 21/12/2023 11:20, Andrew wrote:
>>
>> Slashdot.org is carrying that story today (my timezone) and it is
>> amazing the number of supposedly tech-orientated people who believe
>> that crap.
>> https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/12/20/2147253/the-rise-and-fall-of-usenet
>>
>> I did not bother complaining to zdnet or the original author, I did
>> weigh in on the Slashdot discussion.  Unfortunately it was around 10
>> hours after that article was posted and the ill-informed had all
>> already posted and moved on.
>
> I like this reply:
> <https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23167544&cid=64095553>
>
> Quoting the whole thing ...
>
> "
> The whole article totally misrepresents what is happening.
>
> Usenet relies on distributed servers all over the world. These servers
> have administrators and one of their main tasks is to filter out the
> spam, they talk to each other - often via usenet - and swap Spamassassin
> settings - not via usenet because the spammers are watching there too.
> Then you have Google Groups. Around 98% (could be more) of the spam in
> usenet gets there via GG, and Google simply does not f***ing care. Back
> at the start of November, some groups were getting thousands of
> thai-language spam messages a day, all entered via GG. That is when the
> admins started using spamassassin and I believe the spamassassin
> settings the admins use only check messages entered via Google Groups
> (although that could be incorrect), they certainly get a higher weighting.
> It got to the stage where the consensus amongst the admins was moving
> towards ceasing to accept messages input via GG.
> Then someone found a way to get a bug-report into Google's system, I
> think some Android developers use Usenet and that was how he managed it.
> It was less than a week later that Google decided to drop Groups, in a
> few weeks time they will no longer accept postings, not even from usenet
> servers where the admins actually care.
> Usenet is not dead, what is happening here is that the main vector for
> spam is closing its doors. My own opinion is that this was never about
> spam, it was a DOS attack on usenet.
> The reaction to Google's announcement on the forums (newsgroups) where
> this was being discussed was rejoicing.
>
> If anyone wants to look at some newsgroups which were being hit really
> hard until the 2nd/3rd of November, try
> comp.lang.cobol
> comp.lang.fortran
> comp.lang.c (36314 spams in the first 10 days of October)
> comp.lang.c++
> comp.arch
> sci.lang.japan
> news.cyber23.de
> There were a fair number of other groups affected. When the admins
> started attacking this s*** they sent "delete" requests out to their
> peers so they could take out the garbage themselves, a lot of the
> discussion in recent weeks is about identifying false-positives and
> tweaking the settings accordingly.
> I'm assuming Google ignored these requests so it should be possible to
> see the damage there.
> "
>

Thank you, thank you (bows).
Yes, I'm Vlad over there. There's a lot of the underpinning technical
stuff I don't understand but I have been following the debates here and
that is where a lot of that posting came from.

The Doctor wrote:

> In article <um171h$qr8s$1@paganini.bofh.team>,
> Andrew <Doug@hyperspace.vogon.gov> wrote:
> >
> > Slashdot.org is carrying that story today (my timezone) and it is
> > amazing the number of supposedly tech-orientated people who
> > believe that crap.
> >
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/12/20/2147253/the-rise-and-fall-of-usenet
> > I did not bother complaining to zdnet or the original author, I
> > did weigh in on the Slashdot discussion. Unfortunately it was
> > around 10 hours after that article was posted and the
> > ill-informed had all already posted and moved on.
>
> Stupid as stupid can be!

Stupid is as stupid does...

On Thu, 21 Dec 2023 19:01:01 +0000, Richard Harnden <richard.nospam@gmail.invalid> wrote:
>On 21/12/2023 11:20, Andrew wrote:
>> Slashdot.org is carrying that story today (my timezone) and it is
>> amazing the number of supposedly tech-orientated people who believe that
>> crap.
>> https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/12/20/2147253/the-rise-and-fall-of-usenet
>> I did not bother complaining to zdnet or the original author, I did
>> weigh in on the Slashdot discussion.� Unfortunately it was around 10
>> hours after that article was posted and the ill-informed had all already
>> posted and moved on.
>
>I like this reply:
><https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23167544&cid=64095553>
>Quoting the whole thing ...
>"
>The whole article totally misrepresents what is happening.
>Usenet relies on distributed servers all over the world. These servers
>have administrators and one of their main tasks is to filter out the
>spam, they talk to each other - often via usenet - and swap Spamassassin
>settings - not via usenet because the spammers are watching there too.
>Then you have Google Groups. Around 98% (could be more) of the spam in
>usenet gets there via GG, and Google simply does not f***ing care. Back
>at the start of November, some groups were getting thousands of
>thai-language spam messages a day, all entered via GG. That is when the
>admins started using spamassassin and I believe the spamassassin
>settings the admins use only check messages entered via Google Groups
>(although that could be incorrect), they certainly get a higher weighting.
>It got to the stage where the consensus amongst the admins was moving
>towards ceasing to accept messages input via GG.
>Then someone found a way to get a bug-report into Google's system, I
>think some Android developers use Usenet and that was how he managed it.
>It was less than a week later that Google decided to drop Groups, in a
>few weeks time they will no longer accept postings, not even from usenet
>servers where the admins actually care.
>Usenet is not dead, what is happening here is that the main vector for
>spam is closing its doors. My own opinion is that this was never about
>spam, it was a DOS attack on usenet.
>The reaction to Google's announcement on the forums (newsgroups) where
>this was being discussed was rejoicing.
>If anyone wants to look at some newsgroups which were being hit really
>hard until the 2nd/3rd of November, try
>comp.lang.cobol
>comp.lang.fortran
>comp.lang.c (36314 spams in the first 10 days of October)
>comp.lang.c++
>comp.arch
>sci.lang.japan
>news.cyber23.de
>There were a fair number of other groups affected. When the admins
>started attacking this s*** they sent "delete" requests out to their
>peers so they could take out the garbage themselves, a lot of the
>discussion in recent weeks is about identifying false-positives and
>tweaking the settings accordingly.
>I'm assuming Google ignored these requests so it should be possible to
>see the damage there.
>"

23 february 2024 is only 63 days away and counting . . . the predicted
">98%?" spam-reduction could translate into many other servers picking
up at least some of the slack, and beefing up existing troll farms, to
fill the void . . . sort of meet the new boss, worse than the old boss