The Usenet Megathread - No invite discussion!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Usenet Megathread - No invite discussion!

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inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Grayham posted:

He made a comment on one of the pull requests a few days ago so I guess he's not dead.

I don't have full visibility into what's going on behind the scenes, but from what I've been told the slowdown with SickBeard recently was due to Midgetspy going on vacation, and then some work around figuring out how they might be doing some project reorganization once he came back, so other people would have push rights on the "main" repo.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2011 16:15

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 15:16

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Whilst farting I posted:

Does this mean it's automatically going to start using par2 and unrar 64bit versions, or that they were removed because they were never used? There's nothing at all in the forums about this and since my question really is more about performance if 32bit were being used instead, I figured I'd post this here instead of their forums.

We know 64 bit par/rar is worthless because par and unrar are i/o bound not ram/cpu bound, but some people REALLY REALLY REALLY thought they needed it, so we included the binaries and set it so that we'd use these builds on 64bit Windows. Turns out our bit detection on certain versions of windows was hosed, so we never actually used the 64bit binaries. So here we months later and someone finally told us it was busted so we fixed it.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2011 03:52

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

haywire posted:

Switched to 443, and bam, proper speeds again! Thanks SuperNews!

We just had two users in #sabnzbd with the exact same problem.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2011 19:23

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

oRenj9 posted:

I'm looking for an newsgroup reader in the traditional sense. Does anyone still use these? I love SABnzbd and use it all the time, however, there are times that I want to browse the newgroups. I had the free trial of NewsLeecher, but the $20 price tag is a bit steep for something that should be free by now. I tried Thunderbird, but it is slow, doesn't support "right-click->highlight similar posts" nor the ability to create NZB files from highlighted threads.

There's nothing I know of that:
1) Does what you want (binary oriented, still deals with headers, has grouping functionality)
2) Is good
3) Is free

Have you considered using Mysterbin's "browse" feature?

# ¿ Sep 19, 2011 04:47

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Vinlaen posted:

Do the Windows versions of Sick Beard and Couch Potato support auto-updating via Git? (like the Linux versions)

Nope, you're stuck manually upgrading on Windows. I'm not sure you can even do it if you use Git to download it on windows, unless you also have commandline Git in your $PATH.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2011 00:16

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

The Modern Leper posted:

Actually was coming on to ask: is there a easy place to scan/read single newsgroups?

Mysterbin is your best bet. They have a browsing mode + raw search.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2011 19:56

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

ambushsabre posted:

edit: also maybe I'm dumb, but according to wikipedia 1080p is a standard HDTV resolution. Can someone explain this for me?

1080p is a resolution, but barely anything is actually broadcast in proper 1080p. On Fios for instance, the best their set top box can even push is 1080i/720p. Many other cable providers can only do 720p.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2011 15:09

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Shroomie posted:

I finally got one of those XS accounts, but it just times out when I test it in SAB.

It looks like XSNews wasn't adequately prepared for what happens when you give out free accounts, and as such are completely swamped. Someone on IRC earlier today said he had luck just waiting a few hours and trying again.

As usual, if you expect good service out of a free account you should prepare to get super frustrated almost immediately.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2011 04:23

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

duz posted:

It was due to the NewzBin lawsuit, categories were part of the reasoning the judge used to rule against NewzBin.

We actually got rid of categories well before the lawsuit went through. First we just stopped shipping with them pre-fetched, but left a "fetch categories" button. Then we nuked that as well. Not entirely sure why people care so much about categories, since they were 100% tied to Newzbin, which has been poo poo for ages.

In other news, SABnzbd recently cracked 3 million downloads via Sourceforge. It took us just under 4 years, and the most recent million took about 10 months.

In other other news, moving to GitHub has had the intended effect of bringing in more collaborators. Thanks to the easier method to contribute code, 0.7 will have a systray icon for Windows, and the config screens will be completely overhauled and unified, two features which have been LONG overdue.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2011 12:29

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Thermopyle posted:

Wtf, I didn't know this happened.

I may hack on the code a bit now. Never did before because I was too lazy to use anything other than Github.

https://github.com/sabnzbd/sabnzbd "master" is 0.6.x, "develop" is 0.7.x-pre.

We haven't officially announced it yet because we've not really gotten rolling with our git-based release procedure, but we're working on it.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2011 19:44

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

necrobobsledder posted:

renicing a process only affects its process scheduling, not its I/O scheduling.

This is correct, and why ionice exists. Unfortunately, ionice doesn't exist for OSX.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2011 16:38

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

duz posted:

Because then you'd be downloading both items at half your speed.

Yep. With Usenet, you're not just downloading "a thing" you're downloading thousands of articles comprising that thing, and are downloading one article at a time for however many connections you have. The end result should be that you're downloading at your full linespeed. So if you downloaded two things simultaneously you wouldn't get EITHER of them any faster, you'd only have the effect of halving your downstream.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2011 12:28

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Cwapface posted:

Makes me feel stupid for going with Supernews as a cheaper reseller with their 30 connections over Giganews with their 50.

So switch? To my knowledge there's no long-term plan with Giganews, so there should be no problem with cancelling GN and switching to SN.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2011 13:39

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Cwapface posted:

Is it normal for automatic unpacking of big files (say 10GB) to choke the poo poo out of your system? I'm running an i5 2500 with 4GB of PC10600

Processor speed, ram quantity and ram speed have nothing to do with unrar. What's your disk situation like? A bunch of low-power WD Green drives? For unrar and par2 to operate well you need high-end drives, stuff chugging along at 7200 rpm or better like a raptor or something SSD based.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2011 12:39

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Drizzt01 posted:

Not sure if many are still using newzbin but if you are you might want to find something else.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/27/uk-court-orders-isp-to-block-newzbin-2-filesharing-site-within-t/

That's nothing. Check out these two SUPER HAPPY FUN NEWS ARTICLES:

PROTECT IP Renamed E-PARASITES Act; Would Create The Great Firewall Of America

E-PARASITE Bill: 'The End Of The Internet As We Know It'

tl,dr: Should this bill become law, basically everything ever will become a felony.

PS: Contact your congressional representatives.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2011 01:48

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

crspyjohn posted:

I setup a special monthly usenet plan for all you somethingawful members hope you enjoy it.

I really should have told you this when you emailed me, but my mailbox frequently moves at a breakneck pace.

SH/SC isn't the place to sign up and advertise stuff at. That's what SA-Mart is for, and they have very specific rules about how and when you can advertise stuff.

Also, you're just another Highwinds reseller, right? What differentiates you from all the other Highwinds resellers?

# ¿ Oct 28, 2011 12:36

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

.Ataraxia. posted:

Anybody have any experience in dealing with throttling issues?

1) Make sure you're using SSL
2) Make sure you're on an HTTP port like 80 or 443, NOT 119 or 563 which are specifically for NNTP traffic

If you're still getting throttled your ISP is loving retarded and is absolutely throttling all traffic, even traffic it should be respecting (like, SSH tunnels used for remote administration), get a new ISP.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2011 12:50

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Milky_Sauce posted:

The only other thing confusing me is I am getting this message a lot from nzb.su:

"Service Unavailable

Your maximum api or download limit has been reached for the day"

Is this a limit set from nzb.su or is it the UsenetServer package I bought? I thought if there was any download limit it would have been monthly, not daily?

You said it yourself: you're getting that message from nzb.su. Their free account has a daily api hit limit, so that's every time you download an nzb from them via sabnzbd. For a small donation they'll bump that up to a pretty ridiculously high level. Details should be on their site, or you can go bug them on irc.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2011 18:08

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

kazmeyer posted:

Is it just me, or do these guys have like 7 days retention tops? I've pulled a couple of newsgroups and I've yet to see anything much older than that.

I haven't bothered getting an xsusenet account, but we've heard pretty terrible things in #sabnzbd. Even just being able to reliably connect to them is apparently a feat.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2011 04:06

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

EC posted:

I could have sworn there was a way to set priority of the unrar.exe process in the Windows build. When it runs now, it runs as Low, which can sometimes hangup the extraction process on my server for a couple of hours. Is there a way to change that? I swear I've looked at every menu item ever.

In Windows it isn't in the app, you have to go into task manager while unrar is running, and set the priority of rar.exe.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2011 13:38

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

tomm posted:

Whenever I restart my computer SABnzbd doesn't start up itself despite being in my startup folder. And then when I start it up manually, it changes port, which is annoying because it doesn't let me change it back, then I have to reconfigure SickBeard.

Don't use the startup folder. Reinstall sabnzbd using the installer build and tell it to automatically start.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2011 14:43

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

neongrey posted:

The only sad thing is that I share my internet connection with family, so I need to self-throttle if I don't want them to kill me. But, man, letting it go at full speed before they started getting up this morning was a thing of sheer beauty.

In SABnzbd, Config -> Scheduling, set up a throttle Speedlimit Limit/Unlimit or Queue Pause/Resume cycle.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2011 17:47

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

When AV freaks out over SABnzbd, it tends to come down to one of two things:

1) OMG WHY DOES THIS HAVE SQLITE3.DLL?!?!?!

2) WHOA WHOA WHOA NOTHING IN THE WORLD SHOULD NEED ACCESS TO PORT 8080!!!!!!

# ¿ Dec 1, 2011 02:22

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Biowarfare posted:

Do you know where I can find a list of providers to pick from that isn't basically one giant affiliate ad for like the usenext garbage? The one in the OP is missing a fair bit and prices listed aren't up to date anymore.

I wouldn't consider the OP to be "missing a fair bit". What it's missing is the jillion different Highwinds resellers and some obscure providers that primarily serve mainland Europe. The only significant pricing / retention changes that happen are that Blocknews constantly gets cheaper and that all providers are still retaining basically all posts since August 2008.

What do you think the OP is missing?

Also, I fully agree that most "review" sites are effectively just advertising outlets.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2011 02:14

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Biowarfare posted:

"UsenetServer Special - $8/mo, Normal Highwinds retention, SickBeard referral link."
I can't seem to find that plan anymore unless I'm looking in the wrong place.

Oh, looks like Sickbeard no longer has a referral gig with Highwinds. nzb.su has a $10/mo deal with either UNS or Newshosting, complete with some classy scantily clad ladies on the banners.

Biowarfare posted:

Didn't realize that half the providers were just reselling highwinds, though random thought: how hard would it be to apply to be a reseller then sell at cost to goons or something.

Not worth it, since the discount pricing they typically let you go down to only gets you to the same ~$10 pricepoint as everyone else in the industry.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2011 17:44

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Just checked through my SickBeard history. Nearly EVERYTHING has been coming through the SB index. Looks like 90% through SB Index, 5% nzb.su, 5% nzbs.org.

If you haven't enabled SickBeard Index, do it.

For manually searching for poo poo, I go to NZBs.org first but NZB.su is just as good. For raw-mode searching, Mysterbin.com is pretty good.

As for Newzbin, it's really hard to justify a recurring cost for an indexer these days. It was one thing years back when Newzbin was basically the only shop in town, but nowadays there are so many perfectly good free options out there that it doesn't make sense to bother with Newzbin, especially since their retention is so comparatively crap. I mean, didn't they just expand past 200 days of retention?

Between court-mandated filters (which may have been lifted by now, I honestly haven't kept up), recurring fees, crap retention and a pretty large variety of free alternatives, there's no point sticking with Newzbin now unless you're too lazy to look elsewhere.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2011 14:12

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Thermopyle posted:

What's better about it? I have it enabled but looking at my history only one thing has come from there and the rest all comes through nzbs.org or nzb.su...

Free, Zero configuration, no limitations on api hits per day, etc. Try moving it as the top priority indexer and see what happens.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2011 16:20

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Treytor posted:

EDIT: On further investigation I may not have any idea what I am talking about.

Read the OP. This is all explained there. But hey, let's explain it again!

Highwinds service is sold as UsenetServer, Newshosting, Easynews, Eweka, and nearly every no-name budget brand out there, because Highwinds has a massive reseller program.

Giganews service is sold as Giganews and Supernews.

Astraweb service is sold as Astraweb, no one else.

BlockNews service is sold as Blocknews, UsenetNow and FrugalUsenet.

If you're having completion problems, supplement your unlimited provider of choice (all four major feeds have their own unlimited provider or option) with a block provider from another feed.

So, Supernews + Astraweb Block, UNS + Astraweb Block, Astraweb + Blocknews block, UsenetNow + Astraweb Block, etc etc.

Astraweb and Blocknews are the big-name providers of non-expiring blocks, but I'm sure if you went hunting long enough you'd find a Highwinds reseller that does blocks. (but it probably wouldn't be worth it)

# ¿ Dec 29, 2011 17:13

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

SOPA/PIPA would almost certainly kill Usenet service dead. Right now the only reason the US-based companies are still afloat is by virtue of the DMCA complaint/removal process. SOPA kills that and says you can litigate/defund first, ask questions later.

So that kills US service. Foreign service would be killed by simply branding any foreign Usenet host to be a "Rogue Site".

It would likely also be open season on any indexing site, domestic or foreign.

Would Usenet itself live on? Probably, but it wouldn't be anything like it is today. Just like the Web.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2012 01:30

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Be realistic, people. If any site gets blocked from the root DNS, that site can safely be considered dead unless it's already a super-secretive organization. If users who are on alternative DNS are the only ones left, then bam, overnight you're reaching only a tiny fraction of your previous userbase. Add all the extra legal exposure SOPA brings to the table and pretty much everything will be Done.

Odette posted:

Don't these companies just run out of the Caymans anyway?

Nope. All the major feeds (Giganews, Highwinds, Blocknews, and *probably* Astraweb, but I can't be 100% certain there) are US-based companies subject to US law. Could we bypass DNS blocks? Sure. Would a company survive a nation-wide DNS block? Probably Not.

inpheaux fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Jan 1, 2012

# ¿ Jan 1, 2012 04:39

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Vykk.Draygo posted:

What's the current probability that SOPA and it's cousin will pass? It seems like the big name supporters are slowly turning their backs on it.

No one loving knows. The House seems to want to just pass it because their corporate masters say so with little regard for what will happen, but that was before the mass exodus from GoDaddy and pressure that caused Nintendo, Sony and EA to at least go on record changing their minds about the bill.

We'll know soon, though! It's back on the table in January.

Edit: We're having the wrong discussion, though. Should SOPA become law, systematic destruction of Usenet is the least of our problems.

inpheaux fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Jan 1, 2012

# ¿ Jan 1, 2012 04:45

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

SABnzbd has a history RSS feed, and has had it for ages now.

http://url/to/sabnzbd/rss?mode=history

You'll need to add whatever auth stuff if your sabnzbd installation is password protected, iirc.

Edit: And Sickbeard can automatically notify an XBMC install directly when it finishes something.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2012 16:54

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

FISHMANPET posted:

I've got UsenetServer, and there's a file, and it was damanged, and needed 88 more parts. I got a Blocknews block account, and now I need 26 more parts. Any other recommended block providers? A little googling led me to NewsDemon, is that any good?

NewsDemon is Highwinds, as is UsenetServer. If parts are missing on UNS, parts will be missing on NewsDemon. Try filling with a block from Astraweb.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2012 05:44

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

mrmcd posted:

It sounds like MU was pretty flagrant in only pretending to respond to DMCA takedowns, unlike most Usenet providers, but given the sheer volume of data going through usenet every day, it seems like once the **AAs decide to bring the hammer down they can pretty much claim any infringement is your fault and you intended to profit from it.

Until laws change I wouldn't be worried at all. The quantity doesn't matter, what matters is what you cited: how you conduct your business. If a company operates within the confines of current law -- promptly comply with DMCA requests, don't encourage piracy, don't reward piracy, etc -- then there's nothing anyone can do to them.

"Having a bunch of pirated poo poo" isn't what killed MegaUpload. What killed MegaUpload was how they responded to DMCA complaints and, you know, little things like paying their users to upload pirated poo poo.

kri kri posted:

Didn't they just shut down usenet.com which wasn't an actual provider?

IIRC, Usenet.com was an independent company with their own news feed, not a reseller. They were nailed because their website clearly promoted their service as a means to pirate material, and when confronted about this they tried to HIDE the fact that they did that.

FCKGW posted:

Don't forget Newzbin as well.

Newzbin was largely faulted for how they helped their userbase and possibly because their site was user-edited. They had support tickets where instead of just helping with technical problems, they were helping users find specific content. This was very similar to some of the emails cited in the MegaUpload indictment, where you've got people asking "OMG PLZ HALP ME FIND TEH SOPRANOS IN FRENCH LOL?".

# ¿ Jan 21, 2012 01:31

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Kontradaz posted:

Either the quality of usenet is lower than I had thought, or blocknews is pretty much a terrible usenet provider. Either way, after having to slog through many failed downloads and random slowdowns of speed with blocknews, I really recommend that you guys stick with providers like supernews rather than block ones. I don't know why, but my experiene has been pretty terrible.

I've never personally had problems with Blocknews in the past, but as Shy mentioned, I use it as a fill-server. Some people in IRC have complained that Blocknews has been having trouble over the weekend, though, so it might be that.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2012 03:01

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Lusername posted:

Would it be possible for them to catch you that way?

That's pretty poo poo circumstantial evidence, and way more effort than any ISP would put forth. Your ISP would have to be tracking all things downloaded through all indexers, analyze the nzb itself for the size of the payload, and be ready to do some math based around transfer from your usenet host, which would end up fuzzy because SABnzbd doesn't download 100% of the data supplied by an NZB.

So, like, you might download a 1.8Gb NZB from an indexer in the clear. But that gets added to your Queue that's already 23Gb. And of that 23Gb SABnzbd only actually moves 20GB due to all the parity stuff it already has. At what point did you download the 1.8Gb they "saw"?

It's more likely that -- if anything -- the kind of "retribution" you'll face regarding Usenet is "hey you downloaded like, just a complete assload of stuff all at once and brought our network to its knees, quit that". And maybe they'll throw in a threat of "and we saw it was all going to a usenet server, we can't prove what you were downloading, but seriously quit that".

inpheaux fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Jan 29, 2012

# ¿ Jan 29, 2012 19:24

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Biowarfare posted:

Err, yes they can.., especially in the US

Note that while they CAN do this, they don't go out and actively police what's being downloaded. Under current law, any actual litigation would have to be initiated by a rights holder. With torrents it's easy for a rights holder to roll on into a torrent with several thousand peers and send out blanket requests to all the ISP's they find to initiate the process. With Usenet there's no way for a third party to see what you're doing, so there's no one available to bitch at your ISP.

Still a good idea to use SSL, though.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2012 23:44

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

LaserWash posted:

I hate that I'm constantly having to chase down the next best indexer and thought this might be the solution.

It's going to be cheaper and easier to just use nzb.su. Seriously. Especially since you apparently have to pay for the plus version of Newznab to get access to all of their super advanced special regexes used for grouping.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2012 00:33

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Flashing Twelve posted:

Any tips for increasing my usenet speed? I get about 1.2mb/s on a well-seeded torrent but my usenet speed hovers around 610-670kb/s constantly, so it could definitely be improved. I'm using Astrawebs main SSL server with two backup servers (astraweb ssl europe, astraweb ssl us) through sabnzbd. My router has no QoS enabled and my ISP doesn't throttle (though it's SSL so it shouldn't matter).

Increase connections until it stops resulting in speed bumps. Increase article cache to 120M.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2012 00:09

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 15:16

inpheaux: Jul 12, 2001

Druuge Fuel posted:

1. Is there any security risk of not connecting to SABnzbd via SSL?

There's zero risk if you're running SABnzbd locally, unless you're scared of people sniffing traffic from inside your computer. If you're connecting to SABnzbd remotely and aren't using SSL, someone could technically sniff your login credentials and gain access to your SABnzbd instance.

Druuge Fuel posted:

I'm having trouble figuring out how to create a certificate and make Google Chrome "trust" SABnzbd.

Getting Chrome to permanently accept self-signed certs is a colossal pain in the rear end. You have to do it at the OS-level, since Chrome doesn't maintain its own list of trusted certs.

Druuge Fuel posted:

2. What are your preferred indexing sites? I paid for nzbmatrix (currently down for me) and signed up with NZB.SU as well as the NZBclub search engine. Is there any merit to the invite-only sites like NZBS.org?

NZB.su + some raw-mode indexer (mysterbin, etc) should be sufficient for pretty much everything. Don't hold your breath for NZBs.org to open any time soon, invites have been closed for years, and won't likely re-open until they finish their "beta" site. It's effectively the same as NZB.su, anyway.

Druuge Fuel posted:

~~For torrents, I prefer Demonoid which is invite-only and could trade invites if you wanted.~~ edit: Hmm, it looks like registrations for demonoid are open to the public now. Not sure how long it's been that way.

Demonoid has been open-reg for a pretty long time. And even while it was "closed", it was never closed enough to be considered "safe".

Druuge Fuel posted:

3. Newsreaders. Are there any newsgroups with actual information and discussion?

https://groups.google.com. You'll either find a group that's actually out on Usenet, or some other group just on Google Groups. Good luck, though, Usenet has become a pretty desolate wasteland for discussion. And even before it was a desolate wasteland, it was full of spam, crazy people and highly opinionated idiots.

Druuge Fuel posted:

4. How do you "queue" things using SABconnect+ & Sabnzbd? Does "priority" matter?

Click buttons? Priority just means where it gets added in your queue. Think of the queue as being split into three layers, High, Normal, and Low. By default, stuff just gets put into Normal, which is sorted by age (oldest first). By setting something to priorty of "High", it will jump ahead of all the Normal stuff, ignoring post age. Same with the "Low" priority, that will let you quickly send something to the bottom of your queue.

"Force" is a special category which is like High, but it ignores pause state. It means "seriously download this immediately, I don't care if I told you to pause the queue".

# ¿ Feb 12, 2012 07:06

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Usenet Megathread - No invite discussion!

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