cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/26316374

I know that this community will fall to the exact same destiny as they all do. 999 posts wanting a Drunkenslug invite and if all the stars align we get a once in a lifetime post of someone offering an invite.

Many of Usenet users don’t actually know they can invite people and help others to their first steps into that scene.

So i beg of you, take a look into your profiles, find those invite buttons and offer them here! They will not be of any use if they just get dusty in your profiles, we need those invites in the community!

There is absolutely nothing for you personally to gain here, other than the satisfaction of helping others.

Thank you all and cheers!

  • mub@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    I’m at the point of looking to pay for a good usenet service. I’ll definitely probably start looking next week.

    • Unmapped@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Check out torbox. Its like a seedbox/debrid but the pro plan also comes with Usenet. I just started using it but seems really promising.

      They have been having a lot off issues lately because they don’t have enough servers yet. They are supposed to get new servers setup this week.

  • HappyTimeHarry@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Does getting an invite mean you can use it without paying? I stopped with Usenet like 15 years ago when my ISP stopped offering it for free. Not really interested in paying another subscription just to pirate stuff but if I can get an invite for free I’d love to check it again and see what all the fuss is about.

    • RandomLegend [He/Him]@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPM
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      3 months ago

      No, an invite is just so you can register. You still have to pay for most indexers. Or atleast you have to pay if you want to use their API access; And that’s what you’d do if you use *Arr

    • Nyarlathotep@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      Once you have an account, either because you got an invitation or reg is open, most usenet indexers have a free tier that lets you grab a few files per day. The invitation alone is not going to give you a premium account for free.

      I do recommend getting on to a couple of good indexers and using the free grabs to see how you like usenet. Personally, I love it, even though it isn’t free. YMMV.

    • RandomLegend [He/Him]@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPM
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      3 months ago

      usenet was used before the world wide web really took on. Nowadays it’s mainly used to host & download movies, shows, games, etc. etc. It’s basically like one of those direct download hosts where you simply download a file. So unlike torrent it is NOT peer to peer and you don’t have to hope someone still seeds it.

      But unlike direct downloaders the whole system is split into two parts. You have your “Usenet Providers” which are the host servers where all the files are stored. You cannot interact with those files directly however. They are all encrypted and fragmented and completely randomly named. What you need to actually download those files are Indexers. Those are sites like Drunkenslug, nzbgeek, etc. They will provide you with tiny little “textfiles” that contain a list of decryption keys and a list of filenames corresponding on the host server.

      You then put those “textfiles” into a usenet download program, here i used SABnzbd, and it will take this list + keys, go to the usenet provider and starts to download those random files. After that it will unpack them, put them all together and ét voilá you have your fully assembled media file.

      Most usenet providers are incredibly fast and can match your gigabit internet if you have it. The one i use for example goes up to 950Mbit/s. That combined with the fact that the files are either there or not, but nothing in between like it could be on torrent is a really really reliable and fast way to download stuff.

      • pedroapero@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        How come those big hosters get away with such infringements? I guess they must be less popular than Megaupload and such

        • RandomLegend [He/Him]@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPM
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          3 months ago

          I don’t think they are less popular.

          But their whole system works different. There is not a single file there that’s called Inception.h265.HDR.mkv for example

          Its all just billions of g24hg54j2k7j6nb2n1n5b5j files with absolute gibberish as content. So you need the nzb files to actually get stuff out of it.

          But the nzb files also don’t hold any copyright infringing material in and of itself.

          So copyright holders have to fight two thing at once

          • pedroapero@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            No matter which encoding is used to store data, the hoster is still responsible for it. On mega, the data is encrypted, yet mega is still held responsible for removing content reported by copyright holders (the decryption keys being included in reports).

            • Shimitar
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              3 months ago

              They get DMCA’d regularly and content get removed on Usenet as well. But the fact that they have to report literally thousands of individual files every time make it slow and inefficient. People will just reload the same item many times and it’s always there.

              Each copy, each single file in which the copy is split needs to be identified and asked for removal. Compared to torrents, it’s a long and complex task.

  • Shimitar
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    3 months ago

    For anybody waiting for invites: i have up and just waited until Black Friday deals and openings: you need to head to “the other site” and watch the deals and opening times and you can get anything you want.

    Also, invites are not free: you still need to pay the subscription!