alt.binaries.boneless is a Usenet

Usenet

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

 discussion forum primarily used to transfer binary

Binary file

A binary file is a computer file which may contain any type of data, encoded in binary form for computer storage and processing purposes; for example, computer document files containing formatted text...

 data content, rather than being used for textual communications.

It has the unusual distinction of currently being one of the largest and most active binary newsgroups on all of Usenet, typically receiving tens of gigabytes of new data and over a million new postings each day, yet almost nothing is known of its origins or why it is so popular.

Typically, newsgroup names are functional in that the name is meant to serve as a guideline as to what type of content can be found in the newsgroup. However, boneless is completely irrelevant, and this appears to hold true as a description of the content, which can include fully ripped

Ripping

Ripping is the process of copying audio or video content to a hard disk, typically from removable media. The word is used to refer to all forms of media. Despite the name, neither the media nor the data is damaged after extraction....

 DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

s, entirely ripped CDs or individual music files, images and image sets, as well as software and documents of every content type imaginable. The group's content is likely to be accessed predominantly using NZB files

NZB

NZB is an XML-based file format for retrieving posts from NNTP servers. The format was conceived by the developers of the Newzbin.com Usenet Index. NZB is effective when used with search-capable websites. These websites create NZB files out of what is needed to be downloaded...

 obtained from forums or Usenet indexing services, as downloading group headers would be a highly inefficient process due to the sheer volume of posts made to the group.

On March 31, 2009, NewsBin

NewsBin

Newsbin Pro is a news client used on the Windows operating system. Written in 1995 and distributed as Shareware, it was one of the first news clients dedicated to downloading binary content from Usenet...

 sent out an alert to its users that the alt.binaries.boneless post count is the first to break the 32-bit

32-bit

The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....

 threshold, having over 4,294,967,296 posts. Until then, all newsgroups' post totals could be stored as a 32-bit number. This occurrence might cause compatibility issues with binary news readers that cannot address post counts stored as a 64-bit

64-bit

64-bit is a word size that defines certain classes of computer architecture, buses, memory and CPUs, and by extension the software that runs on them. 64-bit CPUs have existed in supercomputers since the 1970s and in RISC-based workstations and servers since the early 1990s...

number.