i can understand that about crypto. Fwiw, this discussion was posted recently about usenet and crypto, https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/2612428 Others take crypto and several of the ones mentioned take it directly without a processor and have better perf. than the newsdemon system.
the older stuff on newsdemon is hit or miss anyways cause of the way they handle their storage so it will be hard to know if its gone cause they suck or gone cause of takedown.
they all "miss" some content. if it has been taken down from usenet you may just have to look for a repost, seems like everything is reposted 8 different times. if its missing cause its to old then maybe you need the blocknews block for full retention like you said.
Usenight is full speeds only at certain times of the day right? Plus the retention isnt as high so that is probably the price difference. Frugalusenet and Blocknews also take crypto the same way (same owners) and price is a bit more reasonable if you dont need the super high retention all the time but yes i agree about crypto. if you have to use a payment processor for it it sort of defeats the purpose.
no big deal to pay with whatever. could change down the line of course. if paranoid just use crypto or mail them your payment. your providers wouldnt be my first choice, any reason you chose them?
usenet, just get an unlimited plan not a block account.
what you need is the indexer, usenet servers all exchange the same feed which means if something was never posted no one would have it. the usenet servers do not specialize in one particular thing.
BTC you would "probably" be okay but if you are going full anon i think Monero is the only true anon. im not really into crypto so i dont know how true that is, I just see that mentioned a lot that Monero / XMR is a privacy coin. Cash is king though. Maybe the most annon? frugal usenet and Blocknews actually have a cash payment option on the website at checkout, if you are worried maybe ask them the track record for receiving it. If you are doing VPN to, Mullvad takes cash but you do not need vpn for usenet.
well, you can use google groups web interface but that sucks. there is also the eternal september free text access. for premium access blocknews has 5 gigs for 2 bucks which will last forever if you are just reading text groups. 2 bucks (or the free options) are a lot less than what the server would cost to run a lemmy instance.
Know someone to get on or know someone to talk back and forth with? I mean, you could use google groups interface which is awful but still sort of an on ramp to it (and free). Plenty of usenet services out there though. you could pay a buck or two to blocknews.net for a few gigs and now you have "premium" access. discussion groups will take a long time to eat up 5 gigs. the real problem is sorting through to find the active groups not to mention finding decent nntp newsreader software for your platform. actually someone just posted a few days back in alt.fan.usenet some decently active discussion groups. got to start somewhere i suppose.
alt.culture.usenet:
alt.fan.usenet:
alt.obituaries:
alt.privacy:
alt.tv.simpsons:
ba.broadcast:
comp.ai:
comp.arch:
comp.compilers:
comp.dcom.telecom:
comp.infosystems.gemini:
comp.infosystems.gopher:
comp.lang.c++:
comp.lang.c:
comp.lang.forth:
comp.lang.misc:
comp.lang.python.announce:
comp.lang.python:
comp.lang.raspberry-pi:
comp.lang.tcl:
comp.misc:
comp.mobile.android:
comp.mobile.misc:
comp.os.cpm:
comp.os.linux.announce:
comp.os.linux.misc:
comp.risks:
comp.sys.apple2:
comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action:
comp.text.tex:
comp.unix.shell:
gnu.emacs.help:
misc.legal.moderated:
misc.taxes.moderated:
news.admin.moderation:
news.announce.important:
news.announce.newgroups:
news.groups.proposals:
news.groups:
news.software.readers:
rec.arts.drwho:
rec.arts.movies.current-films:
rec.arts.sf.tv:
rec.arts.sf.written:
rec.autos.sport.f1:
rec.aviation.soaring:
rec.bicycles.tech:
rec.food.cooking:
rec.games.backgammon:
rec.music.beatles:
rec.music.classical.recordings:
rec.radio.amateur.antenna:
rec.radio.amateur.boatanchors:
rec.radio.amateur.equipment:
rec.radio.amateur.homebrew:
rec.radio.amateur.misc:
rec.radio.amateur.moderated:
rec.radio.amateur.policy:
rec.radio.amateur.space:
rec.radio.info:
rec.radio.shortwave:
rec.sport.rowing:
rec.woodworking:
sci.astro:
sci.electronics.design:
sci.electronics.repair:
sci.logic:
sci.physics.relativity:
sci.physics.research:
talk.origins:
uk.comp.sys.mac:
uk.radio.amateur.moderated:
uk.rec.sheds:
uk.sci.weather:
Usenet is still there. IMO, we should be trying to funnel the most techy users among us over there and maybe it could be resurrected for discussion once again. Right now it is more or less users talking to themselves.
Here is a good list of active groups, i am sure there are more. of course plenty of binary groups are active to. if one you like isnt that active, why not try to revive it?