If you're one of the very few people who have ever taken advantage of the ability to read USENET news via AMPRNet and the news.ucsd.edu server, you should be aware that that server is failing from old age and will be taken out of service soon. We don't plan to replace it; Usenet itself is fading away. I co-authored the NNTP protocol some 31 years ago; that's a pretty good run for any internet standard.

If you really need your Usenet fix every day, you might want to investigate www.eternal-september.org, which offers free Usenet access (but has very limited resources). - Brian