Jack of random trades at random times that randomly catch my interest for a random amount of time.

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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: February 12th, 2025

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  • At the moment I’m torrenting and seeding through qBittorrent but now I have a bit of streaming through Torrentio via Stremio w/ realdebrid. I do a lot of older shows that seem to be hurting for seeders, as I like to rewatch my favorites.

    Completely true. The most power consumption usually comes from the screen, unless you’re compiling something from source on the daily and ramping that CPU to 100%. Even then, screens have come a long way from the CRT power guzzlers. Running through SSH will negate screen cost and seeding takes nothing except network, which at the moment is still unlimited (barely, thanks to ISPs being allowed to throttle you now).

    I do have a little XP system sitting in the attic. I last booted it up a couple years back and was impressed it ran, is it hadn’t been turned on in nearly 14 years. The problem is space, unfortunately. I have barely any space left in my tiny apartment for even a headless tower to run.

    My PC runs and seeds nearly 24/7, barring some system restarts (I distro hopped to base Arch and am still settling in and changed prefs). One of the first things I learned in my PC Repair class was that turning your computer on and off is actually worse for it, especially if you aren’t running spinning drives.

    According to my teacher, cooling down and heating up the PCB in your rig causes hairline fractures over time. One day you’ll flip that switch, a pulse of electricity will go through them and something will be toast. Not to mention you’d run up more of an electric bill. Like how a purely gas-driven car uses more fuel from starting and stopping. I’ve always left my PC on and, like I said, even my 14 year old setup still runs fine.





  • Even late 00’s. I started young enough to know that old song and dance. Disgusting behavior, imo. The underpaid suddenly have their lives ruined, jail time, and millions in debt just because they sought a way to save a little money. Family lives ruined for what would be considered pocket money for big corp. The people that sell pirated content, sure, but they’ve destroyed people that were just using it.

    Which is why I’ll never stop being a pirate. They’ve made examples of us for years by slaughtering the already destitute. Now the masks are coming off and their outstretched hands for your money, money that the common people don’t have in a repression, isn’t even subtle anymore. Those that never even looked to piracy are now seeing why its been done for years as subscriptions and buying content become more and more greedy.

    Its a double edged sword, really. We need more people to realize and see the greed that’s rolling off these companies. That will, in turn, get a lot of piracy tools outlawed and we’ll have to get really sneaky and fly under the radar for a bit (much like the '90s and '00s). Imo, its a necessary evil. I’m just upset because I know we’ll lose more good people. And trust will be at a low soon. I remember the rumor that YIFY sold out because every tracker for YIFY rips was suddenly infested with feds and being watched closely.



  • Honestly I just use my card. They can track my payments, but there’s still nothing outlawing payment (yet) for services and they can’t prove you’re using those services for illegal purposes. However, realdebrid offers payments through crypto, not sure about the other debrid services.

    Its so much faster to stream using debrid than over torrent, and as another mentioned here it taxes the network less. I’m 50/50 on it, because I’d much rather promote seeding what you take, but Stremio with the Torrentio addon setup for debrid is the fastest method with the most coherent UI I’ve used to date, and it lets you continue from where you left off, a lot like most streaming services.



  • Yeah, I remember the streaming ability. I never used it for that, I liked it because it was more focused on ratios. Then they started enforcing ratios which you could skip by paying. Basically your download rates would be cut unless your ratio was good. My ratio was always high, but I couldn’t really stand how they started muscling people.

    I think they tried backpedaling, but most of the scene had already moved back to uTorrent. That’s probably why they changed the name to Vuze. This was all a long time ago though and I’m at the age where I’m finally starting to lose some memory of my younger days. They say it’s downhill from 50, but really its downhill from 30.


  • I’ve never looked into private trackers, tbh, but I may keep an eye out and see what is possible. I’ll stay in with the community and maybe something will pop up, but I’m pretty happy with public. I’ve known my way around torrent safety since '07. The only cease and desist I’ve ever gotten was because of my ex at the time.

    From what I understand, private trackers are something that sort of comes to you rather than asking for them. Back when Demonoid was by invite only (I haven’t been there in a long time so I’m not sure how it is now), I made friends with the right people and got in early. I managed to stay in because I was a good seeder and well trusted.

    Oh wow, I missed a lot. I guess Deimos went missing? Then it looks like Demonoid got a sort of community fork, but it doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Huh. I’m reading that the fork didn’t focus on private trackers as much as just getting the old crowd back, it seems. Wild how things have changed.




  • I had to opt for AirVPN, but it could be a ticking disaster (see this reply here).

    However, unless you’re willing to pay a year for something, everything else is pretty high in price. AirVPN at least let me go for three months at the same price as Mullvad.

    I had my eye on Windscribe, but just couldn’t get behind $9 on a month by month or a year being the next step up for $5. It is an option if you can swallow the $70 for a year though. I just don’t like that business tactic on principal.

    This community has a lot of VPN recommendation threads too. You might be able to find a thread if you search the community.

    Edit: If you do opt for AirVPN and are on Linux, I recommend running it through Eddie. Open Eddie, find the logo on the top left, click and find port forwarding. It will take you to the AirVPN port forwarding page where you can login and set a P2P port.