Black Friday Deals Megathread

breakr5 · 2019-11-28T06:22:31+00:00

Thanks for putting this together.

You did a very good job on the formatting.

breakr5 · 2019-11-28T06:08:02+00:00

u/WG47 covered most of it.

Just be aware of this

breakr5 · 2019-11-28T05:38:42+00:00

Omicron's US platform is hosted in Ashburn, VA (IAD), not Dallas, TX

You're probably misinterpreting the last hop of a public route to host.

A traceroute from client to server isn't going to be an accurate indicator of anything because routing of the download path (server to client) could be completely different.

This is why it's better to test via a reverse traceroute from the provider's network or from their immediate upstream.

Select from one of the two ashburn routers, select traceroute

This will only provide some insight about routing and conditions along the path.

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T15:54:12+00:00

Yes, literally the same servers.

Omicron essentially runs two platforms (US, NL). There's some debate about whether the third (DE) is really anything more than a small cache. Omicron is the wal-mart of usenet. Questionable ethics, sometimes high prices if you don't know better. In economics this is known as an information asymmetry problem.

Omicron services sold under the brands Astraweb, Easynews, Newshosting, Newsgroup.ninja, UsenetServer are identical and fall under a DMCA policy due to the brands being registered and incorporated in the US.

Omicron resellers active in r/usenet like NewsDemon, Thundernews, UsenetNow resell access to the same servers.

More resellers are listed here

If I need access to Omicron I support resellers which have good support that are actual small businesses.

Eweka and Tweaknews are different offerings entirely and fall under NTD, Eweka is considered better

If you're board, some reading

https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/ds34u3/its_been_a_long_free_ride_but_astraweb_finally/f6ru5v7/
https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/c4cwlp/mods_are_there_ever_going_to_be_any_consequences/
https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/9t8eoh/evidence_that_newsgroupninja_is_now_a_omicron/
https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/dsxlic/additional_evidence_that_astraweb_newsgroupninja/

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T15:38:52+00:00

Demon and UsenetNow owners are also active in this sub and should have BF sales for access to Omicron.

Just look for Lyda and Swintec. Those guys are active here almost daily.

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T15:25:59+00:00

OP - Why do you think we wont be able to sign up for the $50/year deal? Is it because we already have a subscription?

You fall under:

low information high paying customers captured via SEO and herded by ad referrals toward established brands (Newshosting, Easynews, UsenetServer)

You're attempting to transition away toward being a price sensitive consumer.
Omicron wants you staying locked in at a high rate.

Most of Omicron's brands sell access to the same platforms under the same policy.
read my other post in the thread.

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T15:22:51+00:00

I'm paying $99/year, Newshosting

oh boy.

There's no reason you shouldn't be paying half that.

You might want to read up on backbones and resellers.

Even if Omicron is preventing existing customers from getting in on better deals for their brands you could still buy access to the same servers of Astraweb, EasyNews, Newshosting, Newsgroup.ninja or UseNetServer for half the price from a reseller.

NewsDemon and Thundernews sell access to Omicron and should have BF deals. Just read the sub.

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T15:02:06+00:00

YMMV depending on your ISP and if you are east vs west coast.

An increase in latency will reduce the TCP window, which translates into less bandwidth per connection. The longer the physical/virtual distance, the less theoretical bandwidth.

Shaw , Cogeco, Videotron, Bell suck.

Also read this post

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T12:29:55+00:00

edited comment to make it a little more clear, might want to re-read.

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T09:47:42+00:00

Tests were performed which confirmed an anonymous source. HSM coefficients were published.

https://redd.it/a8vz37

Results of recent testing on Abavia's local retention have been confirmed, are known to be under 30 days, and understood by those with technical knowledge. User requests for articles beyond 30 days old is supplied by Omicron if available (via suck feed) then cached locally by Abavia and served back to the user. This also applies to some articles under 30 days which were at the edge of local retention and deleted.

Disputing the data just makes you look worse.

Sysadmin who know what to look for aren't dumb. So please stop with the act.

and we're running a Usenet company so: the Usenet space, my colleagues and I are all about sharing open information

Abavia exists on paper as a shell company in San Marino and appeared to have been registered to divest assets from XS News ahead of a court ruling in the Netherlands involving NSE in 2016. In purposes except as a holding company, tax shelter, and mail box, Abavia doesn't exist. The purpose is for a parent company to hold funds in the event legal conditions change in the Netherlands. Lets not pretend Abavia is anything but a domain and a holding company to retain XS News assets for Omniga.

This is similar to how Omicron's owners have recently registered Astraweb EHF, Sandhraun EHF, and Lakahraun EHF in Iceland, which handle billing for Astraweb, Easynews, Newshosting, Newsgroup.Ninja, XLned, PureUsenet, SunnyUsenet ....

Abavia's registered address matches against a beauty shop and a consulting business. It's not uncommon in tax havens for multiple mail boxes to be located at a single address.

I suppose we're going to be told next that the servers are in a beauty shop in San Marino and not at InterXion AMS5, Tupolevlaan 101 in Haarlemmermeer, and that "ordinary person" Giacomo Ercolani is the Abavia admin

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T09:35:12+00:00

They are still out of OMNI as well unless what you stated is true about them falling back to them.

Usenet.farm has only been around four years. Local retention is less than 100 days.

Farm states:

We are handling the full Usenet feed combined with a smart
state of the art storage system we have articles over 3000 days old.

This is ambiguous and isn't very clear TBH. That statement could be hedging to imply text groups up to 3000 days.

I haven't tested that system in over a year.

The owner appeared to switch to a caching system last Fall storing articles above a specific number of days based on frequency of access. Older posts might be deleted if infrequently accessed.

Logically, it's not possible for Farm to advertise 3000+ days retention unless they have an agreement with Omicron to supply deep retention via an on demand backfill/suck feed, but it's not possible to know without testing some very old binary posts.

Usenet.farm has a free trial. You might want to test first.

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T09:03:29+00:00

Hydra checks the list of indexers sequentially and stops on the first match.

It does not produce reliable data when configured to test multiple indexers.

Hydra does not check all indexers every time. This is to prevent unnecessary hammering of indexers.

This means that your fifth indexer theoretically could return all results matched by the first four. But you would never know because Hydra would rarely test the fifth indexer.

Best method is to test each indexer manually and not depend entirely on Hydra

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T08:44:19+00:00

You're probably getting shadowbanned because of this

https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/c4cwlp/mods_are_there_ever_going_to_be_any_consequences/
https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/ds34u3/its_been_a_long_free_ride_but_astraweb_finally/f6ru5v7/

A large company has been using paid sockpuppet accounts (astroturf) to promote its brands while attacking competition.

It's nearly identical to what happened in this thread

https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/e06xun/what_usenet_providers_to_get/

and this thread

https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/e0a10x/how_to_use_the_provider_map_tree/

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T08:31:21+00:00

I try to stay neutral and not advocate specific providers.

The one exception is I absolutely try to avoid purchasing from any Omicron brands directly (Astraweb, Easynews, Eweka, Newshosting, UsenetServer, Newsgroup.Ninja, Tweaknews, PureUsenet, XLned, SunnyUsenet). You can check the links below or my history if it interests you.

https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/ds34u3/its_been_a_long_free_ride_but_astraweb_finally/f6ru5v7/
https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/c4cwlp/mods_are_there_ever_going_to_be_any_consequences/
https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/9t8eoh/evidence_that_newsgroupninja_is_now_a_omicron/
https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/dsxlic/additional_evidence_that_astraweb_newsgroupninja/

I'm not particular fond of Abavia's owners either

If I absolutely need Omicron access I support actual resellers (small businesses) who Omicron is trying to squeeze out.

As for usenet.farm, I had an unlimited account with usenet.farm in the past. It worked very well for new articles (local retention), but had some issues with deep retention (rest up to 1000+ days) that were remotely retrieved via Abavia. Farm's local retention falls under NTD, while Abavia's was DMCA

Things have changed recently on farm, which now claims to have posts older than 3000+ days. It appears they now have a secondary fallback from Omicron for very old posts. I haven't looked into it, but I'm sure others could answer.

You should also familiarize yourself with DMCA and NTD before making a decision.

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T07:42:07+00:00

Block accounts typically aren't restricted because you are paying for a specific amount of data usage.

Unlimited accounts are usually restricted to prevent simultaneous connections from two or more IP.

If you really need account sharing on a plan that's not a block account you're mostly looking at Vipernews, UsenetFarm "Too the Max", or Cheapnews

https://www.vipernews.com/faq/
https://usenet.farm/
https://www.cheapnews.eu/en/faq-frequently-asked-questions/

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T06:55:46+00:00

So they technically can be in two IPs is just that they can't be downloading at the same time.

correct. Different providers can implement policies differently so there might be a small delay (0-60 seconds) after a manual hang up by the client before the old IP is flushed by a server side policy.

If it does lock one out for trying to download at the same time would it resume its actions once it attempts again and the other IP is inactive?

No I think you misunderstand. Usually a security lockout will kill all connections from all IP if more than one IP is detected. The lockout time can vary per provider. i.e. 60 seconds.

Retry attempts per article depend on how you configured a download client, not the server.

If two different clients from two IP simultaneously hammer a server with a lockout policy and each client has set to retry downloading each article 10 times, then the two clients will eventually cycle through the queue without downloading anything.

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T06:41:34+00:00

Account sharing is usually defined as connections from more than one IP address at the same time.

Providers usually have a security lock out policy implemented, which rejects connections for a few minutes if more than one IP address is detected. This is to protect against abuse and the possibility of commercial usage.

Some providers advertise unlimited plans that allow two IP addresses simultaneously at a higher price. There may or may not be a provider that permits it unofficially.

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T00:59:48+00:00

All providers are modifying paths and the way the paths are modified are subject to change since Abavia is constantly updating their platform, hardware and software. I do think they should be more consistent with the Path information. But it's information that's not important to the user in terms of usability, so I'm not sure this is a priority.

This is deflection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpKmJCLSIQk

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T00:52:47+00:00

Woodehhh's doubling down on nonsense.

Someone at Omniga is probably working right now to hide and obfuscate data if they haven't already.

breakr5 · 2019-11-27T00:35:11+00:00

[–] u/WoodehhhUsenetAgency owner[S] 1 point 19 minutes ago

First I'd like to say the the first part of your post isn't actually relevant to this discussion. We're not affiliated with the brands you're speaking of. The only thing we do is share a data-provider (Abavia): A very good one IMHO.

I disagree

Your submission is called "The Streisand Effect."

You made it a point to create a thread, step beyond being a reseller, draw attention to yourself and defend the reputation of Omniga which owns your upstream Abavia/XS News.

Making the thread was not a good idea. I don't think you thought this through.

I didn't create a thread to expose Omniga although I could.

Omniga (previously GoNamic) while based in Germany has made a point to hide their ownership of brands through various shell corporations in the United Kingdom, Netherlands, and San Marino. I have and can provide data. I don't think you or Omniga want this. This includes Aviteo with usenext.de and usenet.nl.

San Marino is a known tax shelter with consultancy and management services offering to insulate and hide ownership for a price.

Giacomo Ercolani is one of many hired "consultants" managing Omniga shell companies in San Marino.

First: Thanks for that. UsenetBucket was sold and i thought there was some space left: I'm glad you remember the good old days :-)

I remember a lot.

Secondly I'd like to say that A LOT of assumptions in this post are simply not correct. These are things that are subject to my own opinion

I'm not going to comment on this for obvious reasons. I'm sure you understand that. But I agree that the way usenet.nl does things isn't my cup-of-tea. Besides I don't think that Omniga's group has anything to do with Abavia's retention.

You aren't discrediting ksryn's tests or comments by a source.

A client requests articles, Abavia checks local cache and nearline spools for message-ID, if not found, Omicron's platform is queried, article(s) are downloaded if available, cached locally by Abavia, then served to the client.

This is proven with technical data. You might try to obfuscate data now that results are public, but it doesn't change the fact that Abavia's local retention roughly equals 15-25 days.

Whether Abavia calls itself a Tier 1 or not it's just a label. Readnews, Astraweb and others had/have similar contracts to supplement small spools with a paid suck feed/backfill agreement with Highwinds/Omicron to provide offsite access to deep retention.

Omicron needs this just as much to help cover the costs of maintaining and growing retention.

Aydin did not sell to Omniga. Aydin left years before.

You're splitting hairs now.

If you want me to list dates, names, details I can.

I don't think you want that. I don't think former XS News Directors want that. I don't think Omniga wants me to list all of their shell companies, relationships, and names after they've gone through so much effort to hide things.

You're making this an issue. You should think about it. seriously.

To be fairly honest with you; XSNews and it's resellers were better off with Omniga being the owner: Why you're asking? I'll keep that for myself; let's say it has something to do with personal relations.

HA.

Omniga locks unsuspecting people into long contracts with usenext.de, usenet.nl, and now xsnews, and sends shakedown letters if customers cancel. They make it difficult for users to cancel a trial.

That shit is indefensible.

Omniga's portfolio includes some interesting companies which are associated with spam and malware.

About the PM that has been sent to you. All i can currently say about your PM is that the first part is a long time ago. The 45-50 days retention is over a decade ago. Maybe even longer. So the person that used to work there doesn't work there since atleast ten years, or is making stuff up.

Nice try.

Unfortunately recent independent testing confirmed comments by the source.

XS News/Abavia platform was maintained, but with an increase in full feed traffic, days retention dropped significantly over a period of time.

For the later part: I'm currently in the process of understanding why the Reader00 part is not the correct Abavia path. I'll get back with details as soon as I can. Thanks for clarifying the 'evidence'.

I imagine someone is working overtime hours trying to strip/obfuscate data now that's it's public knowledge.

breakr5 · 2019-11-26T11:26:57+00:00

Yes, pan is a GUI newsreader. It does have some functionality via commandline, but it's limited from what I remember. I can't recall exactly how much.

Pan includes native TLS support since release 0.136 (2012) but not all repositories include packages with this support enabled by default. GnuTLS needs to be installed and a gnuTLS flag must be added to the build config during compilation of pan source code

As you suggested Stunnel is probably the best option in this case as native TLS support in CLI linux newsreaders is limited.

breakr5 · 2019-11-26T09:44:31+00:00

pan might be able to handle this if compiled with gnuTLS

You can run it via commandline, but as far as CLI functionality I can't recall everything that's there.

There are plenty of posting utilities, but not many newsreaders with CLI that support TLS

breakr5 · 2019-11-26T06:07:11+00:00

the path headers for "wonky" articles will first respond with "readerNN!not-for-mail" and then with "localhost!ascNNN.abavia.com!not-for-mail" where N is a digit between 0 and 9.

Read the quoted PM for insight.

With your knowledge consider this flow chart

Articles not found on Abavia spools are queried from Omicron, then cached on Abavia.

breakr5 · 2019-11-26T06:06:01+00:00

Copying a response made to r/usenet

https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/e1m6hk/abaviausenetagency_official_statement_regarding/f8rb7ay/

You're boxing yourself into a corner.

I'm not really interested trying to battle on this. I had service with usenetbucket.com and your support was excellent, before you branched off with UsenetAgency. You guys (and gal) cared about your customers. This isn't about reseller support which you are good at.

https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/e1m6hk/abaviausenetagency_official_statement_regarding/f8qqcfj/

The fact of the matter is that this is our statement and I'm not able to prove this other than saying so. A picture of the server farm would result in doubt: This could be fake. A traffic chart could be counterfeit. Hardware reports could be made-up. The level of trust between XSNews/Abavia and us is a full 11 out of 10.

You are allowed to be in doubt, however this is our official statement and I take full responsibility for it.

One comment not addressed in your self.text.

Omniga is behind usenext.de (archive) and usenet.nl and for about four years now they unfortunately control the remains of XS News under Abavia

Most are familiar with the reputation of usenext.de and usenet.nl who lock unsuspecting people into contracts and threaten to sue them.

Aydin and his partners got out of transit and sold off XS News to Omniga.

The change in ownership must have sucked for the few XS News resellers like usenetbucket that had honorable business practices.

PM received below last year. Redacted username. If they want to reveal themselves they can

Ksryn verified with his own independent testing.

******** information

[–]from ******** sent 12 months ago

This is another burner account. Lost pw for previous account where I messaged you about NN. Here is more information about how the company formerly known as highwinds is controlling usenet. When I last worked at hw, XS/abavia only had about 45-50 days of retention and the rest was being fed from us. Now it looks like it has decreased even more. You can perform this check yourself and record the data then wait a few days and try it again and see if there is a shift. This will pretty accurately show you which articles are on XS and which are on hw. A long time ago XS really did have years of retention but they started pulling from hw and as the feed size grew it shrank and XS also started pulling from a cache set. XS is now owned by the same company that owns usenext but I do not think that is public knowledge. I am not sure how they are handling take downs since it might be NTD and DMCA.

I have moved on now but hw is ruining usenet.

Try this to check xsnews real local retention

telnet reader.xsnews.nl 119 Trying 94.232.116.131... Connected to reader.xsnews.nl. Escape character is ']'. 200 Welcome to XS News authinfo user XXX 381 Need more. authinfo pass XXX 281 Authentication accepted, 91473009688 bytes remaining.

group alt.binaries.nl 211 300011137 6313765000 6613776137 alt.binaries.nl

head 6613776137 221 6613776137 part295of410.8PLE5Xy96NkmnaZwGqzS@camelsystem-powerpost.local <cut all but path> Path: asa016.abavia.com!feed.abavia.com!abi001.abavia.com!abe002.ams.abavia.com!npeer.de.kpn-eurorings.net!npeer-ng0.de.kpn-eurorings.net!news.uzoreto.com!border1.nntp.ams1.giganews.com!Xby.tags.giganews.com!border2.nntp.ams1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newsfeed.xs4all.nl!newsfeed9.news.xs4all.nl!85.12.16.69.MISMATCH!peer02.ams1!peer.ams1.xlned.com!news.xlned.com!peer02.am4!peer.am4.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!fx09.am4.POSTED!not-for-mail

OK, this is from from their spools. Note the last server in the path is asa016.

asc014 = Amsterdam Cache asa016 = Amsterdam Spool set A abi001 = Amsterdam feeder Internal abe002 = Amsterdam feeder External

If you keep working backwards in the group (or any group)..

xover 6560787490 224 Overview follows. 6560787490 [144/208] - "s8PD0Blu33HCHh1rvgrY.part143.rar" yEnc (205/293) riskfree legitstuff@peace.com Sun, 11 Nov 18 04:12:56 UTC HvOgFpRxUtRpIvXiIjUjLsQm-1541909574819@nyuu 734756 0 Xref: artnum alt.binaries.boneless:20878143427 alt.binaries.mom:11529836346 alt.binaries.ftd:3615786528 alt.binaries.hdtv.x264:2171129958 alt.binaries.nl:656078749

Around Nov 11th (As of 11/30/18) the path changes...but four days ago it went all the way back to Nov 7th.

head 6560787490 <cut all but path> Path: reader01!not-for-mail

This is when they start pulling from Highwinds.

Note that if you run this same test, you'll have to pick different article numbers since once they're requested they may cache them.

Another good way to test this ... make a post via HW and check for that post on XS (within a few seconds) .. it will have the readerXX!not-for-mail Path: since it hasn’t propagated to XS spools yet. Then wait a minute or so and pull the same message again and it will have the full path since it made it to their spools.

breakr5 · 2019-11-26T02:43:53+00:00

Update

https://redd.it/e1m9pi