I don't remember much of the detail any more, except that it was really meant as a single-user tool so killing the database server was less a problem than it might otherwise have been.

NNTP is at least a session-based thing, so I guess the server could hang on to state mapping article numbers to whatever the unique identifiers are in the DW database (I know not the implementation details of the DW/LJ codebase). Not sure if some/all of the modern GUI clients are going to do annoying crap like Mail.app pointed at an IMAP server opening a hundred connections, but I guess if it's auth-required caching might still work even so.

I'm sure it's all been thought about already. I just hope it works and goes live, because it'd be an awesome way to interact with DW! No need for ad impressions makes it much more possible than it would ever be with most sites, too.