In keeping with history of the "Net" prefix of NetHack, this was posted to Usenet in the rec.games.roguelikes.nethack newsgroup, not a mailing list. Usenet isn't totally dead, it just seems that way from the trendier parts of the Internet. :) That newsgroup is still primary for NetHack.
But sure, there are still more traditional ways to read newsgroups than the Google Groups interface.