I used to spend a lot of time on news:// protocol back in the 90s, but haven’t touched it for good 20 years or so.

Could anyone point me to a good primer on how to use USENET for piracy? Looking for advice on client software, or webapps, good services worth paying the subscription that will give me access to all the right newsgroups and archives.

Last time I used news, all this stuff was free, so I’m at a bit of a loss on what’s worth paying for.

Btw, I did try looking for answers before turning to Lemmy, but ended up with just a ton of SEO garbage articles designed to serve ads, waste time and provide no real answers :(

  • Tinnitus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    1 year ago

    I went with the yearly unlimited subscription through Frugal. I believe I paid $39.00 for the year, plus it comes with a 500gb block account through Blocknews.

    A good indexer is critical to your setup. Since I just started my Usenet journey a month ago, I can only recommend two: NZBgeek and Drunkenslug. There are many others that I’m sure are worth it, I just haven’t had time to test anything else. NZBgeek might not have open registrations right now.

    I use SABnzbd as my downloader.

    Other than that, one of the best resources I used when getting set up was TRaSH Guides. Endless guides on configuring your downloader, indexers, and much more. Do some research on Sonarr, Radarr, and the other arr programs. Takes a little bit of effort getting it all set up, but makes everything so easy once you’re done.

    • Alt+F4@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      Thanks! At this point I don’t yet know what an indexer is, so I guess I have much to learn!

  • oDDmON@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    1 year ago

    Paid services have consolidated to a great degree. But I’ve been a long time Easynews subscriber.

    They have decent retention, good completion, and are johnny-on-the-spot re. DMCA requests.

    Their real claim to fame is an easy to use browser based front end, so no third party client hassles and it works on mobile.

    That said, MUCH has changed since the 90s, i.e. encrypted posts, the USENET hierarchy is largely broken and good luck finding any current text discussion (looking at you, Adobe, ya skeevy fucks).

    Should you want more, this is a good guide. https://www.cogipas.com/how-to-use-usenet/

    GL&HF

  • DredUnicorn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    My current set up is Eweka (usenet provider) and nzbgeek (indexer). I then run docker containers; nzbget (downloader), radarr, sonarr & lidarr (films, TV and music). I watched a few YouTube videos on how to set them up and have been very satisfied.

    All the downloads automatically move to my NAS, and my jellyfin/Plex servers are pointed at them. The great thing about the “arrs” is that (if set up correctly) they rename and organise your media in a way that makes them easily identified by Plex/jellyfin, so all you have to do is say, I want movie “x” and then 20 minutes later you can watch it via Plex/jellyfin.