I also still use trn for the small number of groups that I can bring myself to still read semi-regularly.

I was lamenting the (asymptotic) death of usenet to a colleague the other day and asked, "where are all the cool kids these days?" I was only half joking: back when news was the main nexus of interaction for technical communities, it really was where you'd go to find things out and where you could reasonably expect to interact with experts. For example, occasionally the likes of Dennis Ritchie would even post in comp.lang.c; Ken Thompson's MiG-29 flight story posted to rec.aviation is a classic. But those days are long gone, so where do technical communities communicate electronically? I'm told Reddit is the new hotness, but it's just not the same (if for no other reason than that it's totally centralized under the control of a single corporate organization).

        - Dan C.