Advanced pirates, whats a tip others might not know?
I'll start. Did you know you can run a headless version of JD2 on a raspberry pi? It's not the greatest thing in the world, but sometimes its nice to throw a bunch of links in there and go to sleep.
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Usenet is worth every penny
Is there a very good guide somewhere for usenet?
If you're completely new, familiarizing yourself with any guide would be beneficial. A basic search resulted in this and this, which are better than nothing, I suppose. I'd appreciate someone skilled adding their two cents, however, especially concerning common pitfalls and anonymous payment for Usenet providers.
Also curious
Is it? I never used it, i went down the torrent path. Usenet would have to be super easy to use for me to consider paying for it
It is. I torrented for years, Usenet is so much better once setup with radarr/sonarr. So much faster
Yeah but sonarr/radarr works for torrents too. I can see the speed argument tho.
I hear the big downside with Usenet is availability of old or obscure content. Not sure how true this is though as I've never used Usenet myself.
I've used it for 15+ years and it's a huge downside. Older content used to be widely available, but more often then not anything popular is removed within a few months of posting. It is actually pretty great for obscure content that won't get taken down. It's cheap but a whole new thing to learn. It is faster than torrenting directly to your own computer but a seedbox blows usenet out of the water as far as speed. 50-100 MB/s easily (at least using private trackers).
I wonder what the reason for that speed difference on a seedbox is. I'd like to set up a custom server for other things at home so I'd prefer to use that over a seedbox.
They're running in a datacenter in the netherlands with a ridiculous amount of bandwidth. I did find out they're classified as an "isp and web hosting company".
I'd also guess that many of the seeds on any torrent (on a private tracker) are going to also be coming from seedboxes. That might explain why it's so fast too, there is tons of bandwidth between the datacenters themselves. I'm definitely throttled at 100MB/s regardless of how many torrents I've got running (1 or 100), but if they're running 50-100+ instances along with dedicated servers they must have tbps of bandwidth.
So long story medium, unless you can install your home server into a datacenter with a multi terrabit link to the backbone, it will be tough to replicate
Plus the cost of the subscription. You should be using a VPN with torrents which has its own fees, but at least the VPN is useful for more than just that one thing.
Yes but have you combined private trackers with a seedbox? You can't get much faster than like 100 MB/s download. You still have to xfer it to your computer but can do that at your leisure. I find my ISP throttles me if I download more than 1 TB in a month so I keep it at a few hundred GB usually.
I feel you on the difficulty. Mostly it took me just taking a leap into it and deciding that if I lost a little money on it no biggie as I've gotten so much for free over the years. Biggest thing that tipped me into finally trying was black Friday sales from Usenet providers. Getting a pretty dang cheap deal and then fiddling with sabnzb, getting my first download going was awesome. Especially the speeds. And 99% of the things I'm looking for being available. Even really old stuff that is pretty hard to find active torrents of. Would highly recommend.
Just jumped into Usenet a year ago, been torrenting for decades. I concur, worth every single cent spent, and I messed up and overspent when I was setting up…. Still worth it.
Any tips on jumping in? Recommended services, etc
If you are familiar with docker and compose, I would start there with a servarr stack. There is a docker-compose I use called -arr-compose. Has the complete arr stack, including sabnzbd for Usenet downloads. Usenet is a bit weird, you need a server like Newshosting to actually connect to Usenet, that is what you point sabnzbd to. Prowlarr from the servarr stack connects to your indexers. Then you just search and the stack takes care of the rest. Other useful links:
servarr wiki
trash-guides
This is super helpful, thanks so much
I use Usenetic as my client (I'm in a mac). Incredibly easy to set up. I use Newshosting as my provider. You paste a URL and your credentials into a field in the app and off you gib. I like that usenetic has a search built in rather than trawling binsearch for nzb files.
I miss when Usenet subscriptions just came as part of your ISP package. What the hell ever happened with that?
Seems like it was a mix between usenet being a magnet for piracy, which all the ISPs were getting pressure to combat, and demand for usenet cratering - as newer users came on the internet they went to other places (myspace had started which appealed more to young users)
Dang, that'd be cool. Didn't even know that was a thing. Probably before my time on the internet. Mostly got connected in the late 2000s and haven't ever heard that was a thing.
This comment 100% .... You get popped uploading not downloading.
seedhost.eu
I used to agree but retention is a killer for a lot of older content.
For new releases its pretty great though.
I have a tracker on standby for this reason. What indexers were you using? I haven't had too hard of a time finding some older stuff so far.
I was on geek, dog, and a few others. Been considering going back because I'm sick of seeding a bunch of shit.
No matter how good your indexers are you still might not get retention no matter the provider.
100% get 2 providers 2 indexers and setup the Arr stack and never touch it again
Make sure they're not from the same company though.
One of the first things I made sure of
Usenet was great 10-15 years ago but nowadays it's flooded with fake / private downloads and retention is shit simply because the few remaining backbone providers comply with takedown requests. Absolutely useless for older content by any major studio. It's all new stuff which is mostly garbage anyway. We were able to get a ton of "this old house" recently though.
Its important to have a supplemental block account, that won't generally accede to DMCA requests. The big guys will of course, but they don't get rid of the whole file, so you can grab the remainder from the block account. I can't even think of the last time I wasn't able to download something between my main and block account.
appreciate the advice, would make it less aggravating. Which one do you recommend? I'm on newshosting and have no problems that aren't just general usenet problems.
I'm just gonna to invite you to google this and see where it takes you. Might not be up your alley, might be a compete gamechanger: InviteHawk