On Friday, August 23, 2019 at 8:02:11 AM UTC+9, Jim Breen wrote:
> On Friday, 23 August 2019 02:32:33 UTC+10, John W.  wrote:
> 
> > I am always a bit surprised when Google emails me that an update has been made to this group.
> 
> Is there a Google Group setting for that? 
> 
> I get postings from fjlij, slj, etc. emailed to me by running
> a script called "newsdeliver" every few minutes. It points at
> an NNTP server.
> 
> Jim

Pretty sure the Google Groups setting is how I'm getting these emailed notifications (without any links?), but I think it's basically an orphaned software thing. If the google notices it's still running, they will probably nuke it. I'm assuming they will be able to track it down in that case.

My own reference was basically to the so-called millennials. They never saw usenet in any of its flavors, and wouldn't know what any of this is talking about... 

So let me test and see which of my ancient links still go anywhere...

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt.usage.english seems to work well and the group seems to be quite active, much to my surprise.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/sci.lang.japan responded, but seems to be running a few posts per month.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/android-discussion-forum has nothing for this year, and was quite slow before that.

I think usenet was a good thing, but lacked a sustainable business model when perpetual September struck. I can conceive of one now, but it's too late, as Carole King sang.