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Russ Allbery
eyrie.org/~eagle · Personal blog · on HN since 2012
Russ Allbery, a Debian developer and Usenet veteran, writes about software, Kerberos tools, INN news server, book reviews and technical practice.
What HN saysHN links it for Usenet history, the INN news server docs, the kstart Kerberos utility, and his essay on spam and cancel messages.
26HN people shared it
14linked it in comments
20stories submitted
39story points
4 months agolast shared
2012people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1InterNetNews6 people · 2 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 2Rant4 people · first shared 2012
- 3On time management2 people · 4 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 4Learning Rust1 people · 4 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 5Review: Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy1 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 6Python Dataclasses and Typing1 people · 3 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 7Review: Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael C. Feathers1 people · 3 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 8Consensus decision-making in large groups destroys communities and hurts people1 people · 3 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 9Do symbols files make sense for C++?1 people · 3 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 10Review: Coding Freedom by E. Gabriella Coleman1 people · 2 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 11“one of the worst books about programming I've tried to read”1 people · 2 points · first shared 2015 · 1 comments on HN
- 12Effective Altruism and the Control Trap1 people · 2 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 13Using Git for Debian packaging1 people · 1 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 14Interpreting the Debian init system GR1 people · 1 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 15Russ Allbery's "Charity review"1 people · 1 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
iwontberude · 2026-02-25
I am glad I formed an active hacker community on Matrix before the proliferation of bots. I will miss Hacker News but I can tell it's going the way of Usenet in 1993. Much love to dang, I will always remember him and his effort fondly. Today's situation is reminiscent of Russ Allbery's famous usenet rant: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/writing/rant.html
throw0101a · 2026-02-18
Perhaps worth noting that keytab files often need to be refresh as TGTs expire; handy utility to do that:
* https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/kstart/
* https://www.freshports.org/security/kstart/
pjc50 · 2022-11-03
USENET never really solved spam. I remember the statistic that at one point one third of usenet traffic was spam and another third was spam cancels. Here's what people felt at the time: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/writing/rant.html
(the "cancel" message was hilarious since when invented it was unauthenticated, i.e. anyone could delete any post on any group in USENET! This had to be fixed:
https://www.templetons.com/usenet-format/cancel.html )
Also found https://www.gdargaud.net/Hack/NoSpam.html which is a great little time capsule site..
DanBC · 2015-12-22
You could download a news reader (I liked slrn; other people like tin or trn or pan; but there's a bunch of others) and find a free text server.
Or you could download INN and set up your own local group for you and your friends.
http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/inn//
(Perhaps INN isn't the best server to start with! Maybe Diablo is better.)
http://www.openusenet.org/
Tomte · 2025-02-14
You agreed with your peering partners what to send.
See also https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/inn/docs-2.7/newsfeeds.html
buescher · 2024-10-01
We could see it coming, right?, as usenet was taken over by spam and "binaries". https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/writing/rant.html "by God I KNOW what this network is for, and you can't have it" is painful to read today. Note this is from 1998. But why would we think the web would be any different?
asjo · 2023-02-27
I would think INN2 (https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/inn/) is the most widely used - it is still maintained and readily available in eg Debian.
I don't know if you would define it as "modern".
I like Gnus so much that I try to put an nntp interface on most things, but the servers that come out of that are specialized, like Feedbase or my little blog-engine, Lantern.
ta988 · 2022-05-18
https://www.leafnode.org/ is decent if you just need a small instance. https://james.apache.org/ for more entreprisey stuff. And the old but reliable https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/inn/
econbooks · 2020-04-14
Ha-Joon Chang's works
Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Samaritans:_The_Myth_of_Free_Trade_a…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU9DgfOMpmo
Economics: The User's Guide
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/29/economics-the-users-guid…
Jane Jacobs
Cities and the Wealth of Nations
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-394-72911-0.html
mtrower · 2019-02-17
Depending on your usecase, Leafnode might be reasonable.
Personally, when I needed NNTP I sprung straight for INN, but be prepared to educate yourself.
http://leafnode.sourceforge.net/
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/inn/
u801e · 2018-07-28
The standard software package is called INN ( https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/inn/). It should come pre-packaged in upstream repositories for various linux distributions.
cheiVia0 · 2016-10-21
> people are also naturally social
http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html
http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-307-45220-4.html
ksherlock · 2016-02-12
There are moderated groups. The NetNews Moderator's Handbook[1] has technical details (and more) but basically:
'Moderated' means that all postings to the newsgroup go to a mail
address (e.g. [email protected]) instead of appearing
in the newsgroup directly. The postings are then forwarded via
email to a moderator, or group of moderators, or even an automated
program, who decides whether to actually inject the article into
the newsgroup or to reject it as not meeting guidelines spelled
out in the group's charter.
1: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/usefor/other/moderators-handbook
prodigal_erik · 2012-06-07
Spam is absolutely not a grey area. "it is NOT FUCKING ACCEPTABLE for a single post that is from a person talking to other people to be deleted, to be dropped on the uncaring floor to make room for machine generated spew."
—http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/writing/rant.html (actually about Usenet, which was wrecked by the same sort of predatory scum)