Usenet

Is comp.sys.acorn.* totally dead by spams? Seems so.

Google also decleared usenet dead by dropping support for it in next year.

Posts to csa.* have certainly decreased – the last one here was on 14th on csa.apps.
I trapped the recent spam by sending anything with “user-agent: g2/1.0” in the headers to my Spam box – the last one was on 10th.
Never used Google for Usenet!

[Edit @ 11pm] And another post to csa.apps has just arrived here.

It would be good to have some way of linking to posts on csa.* for use in citations. Does anyone recommend an alternative to Google Groups for posts after the cutoff date?

The main reason people have been using Google Groups to access Usenet is that it’s free.
So, for your alternate access, the main question is how much do you want to pay to access something most people don’t use?

It’s one of those things, it was fun, but now they want to force you to pay.

The annoying thing is that the “massive” amounts of UseNet data transferred are about the same as a couple of streamed films per provider (not per user) per day, not to mention that if their NNTP servers aren’t perfectly secure after 40 years (thus requiring no maintenance), there’s no hope. That said, I haven’t checked usenet for ages, but it’s still a better source of relevant information than social media.

So, for your alternate access, the main question is how much do you want to pay to access something most people don’t use?

https://www.eternal-september.org/ is free, just requires creating an account, and is fairly reliable.

Since the Android phone is used for ‘Talky talky’ stuff can anyone recommend a Usenet prog?

If you look back at posts on this topic in comp.sys.android, you will see that there appears to be no such thing as a good Usenet app. Try a few and see what you get on with. Eternal September gets my recommendation though.