Are there ways to use usenet without a payment/subscription?

  • exactly this. I’m sure some of the larger hosts easily spend six figures per month just on the server infrastructure alone

    Usenet is super fast, safe, reliable, automated searching and downloading actually works. I gladly support my host

    • 100% - i get 40MB/s on Usenet, something i could only dream about on torrents…also i am in germany, torrenting is quite risky here.

      When i find something on usenet, it is there…period. I can get it. On torrents? Just because i found a magnet doesn’t mean there is anyone seeding it.

      • No problem hitting 110MB/s on decent German private trackers. Also everything worthy to keep (like highest resolution release available in case of series and movies) has been seeded, even when it’s been uploaded 10 years ago.

        Which trackers did you try? ‘Just because i found a magnet’ sounds like you’ve been on public trackers?

        But I’m with you, Usenet is overall less of a hassle.

    • Are they really? Usenet is from the 70s and build for text posts, which take less than 1kb of storage per Post. Modern Sites allow you to upload gigabytes of data for a few dollars per month. The cost for storage and traffic gas come down a lot

      • Doesn’t really matter what it may have once been considering we’re talking about using it to store and distribute large binaries of today. And yeah, six figures doesn’t sound that far off the target when you consider the storage in petabytes and, more importantly, the bandwidth. Multiply that with redundancy and multiple locations in general and you’ll easily hit six figures.