newsbin.com

Is anyone else having problems downloading from NewsDemon? I've been with them for three years and they've had nearly perfect retention going all the way back 4000 days requiring me to draw from a fill server by less than 500MB in that time. Starting last week every file I attempt to download is producing nothing but "430 no such article found" errors. NewsDemon customer service first told me their recent migration caused article numbering to change and I'd have to delete groups, re-download headers and purge cache. I explained to them I don't store groups/headers and almost exclusively use NZB search utilities. To this they quickly changed their reasoning to retention. This to me held no water considering their amazing completeness up until one week ago while now everything, older than a week ago, I attempt to download returns a "430" error. I should note I was able to get one file complete off NewsDemon. This file was a very recent 5 day old posting, post NewsDemon server migration.

I just had a thought that maybe the NZB search utilities are providing archived info thereby making them useless for use with NewsDemon? Could this be possible? If so, do these services rebuild databases at any point in time?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

I really don't have an answer for you but I can point you somewhere that maybe you can get an answer.

Original announcement on Reddit here

If you can get the ear of Greg from NewsDemon on Reddit, maybe you can get an answer. He's there as "greglyda"

Thanks Dexter!

Appreciate that link. So far it has been Andrew who initially suggested the article numbering change due to server migration, followed up by Brent with the inexplicable retention defense. I'll see what I can do to sway contact with Greg.

I'm just afraid that if my thought of indexers feeding us archived search returns is correct and NewsDemon did indeed change article numbering this would in essence make them useless to anyone using indexers, especially those like me that use them almost exclusively.

Article numbers only apply to headers. The NZB files you get from indexers use message id's which are globally unique per post and consistent across servers. If you are getting 430 errors on post download request based on message id, the server just plain doesn't have the post. This can either be due to it falling off the edge of retention, or the post was removed due to a DMCA takedown request from a copyright holder (or something else is messed up with the Usenet provider).

Thanks again for your insight dexter!

As per what you are saying I can only conclude NewsDemon has something going on that simply will no longer work for me. While with them for the past three years I rarely (maybe once every two weeks) ran across a posting I could not download while in-between there were hundreds always with complete availability. My target downloads have not changed but with 100% unavailability (430) from NewsDemon of any articles sourced via NZB indexers and older than a week, while my Usenet-News block fills them all complete, I think it's time to look at UNS. Really is a shame because, until that switch was flipped, NewsDemon was a rock solid performer for me.

Well, it wasn't public before but, NewsDemon was using UNS for their backend until Dec 1 (through Omicron). I've known this for years but couldn't really say anything publicly but now it is out since NewsDemon mentioned it on Reddit.

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Your advice dexter has put me back on the road to normalcy. Signed up with UNS and ALL downloading has resumed with 0% missing articles. Great to have Newsbin humming along once again.

Same for me I'm afraid.
I had great service and value from NewsDemon for about 4 years but I can barely find a complete post now.
Have switched to UNS and all good again.
Thanks for the UNS suggestion