I don’t care what quality the things I’m downloading are so long as the file size is small enough. There are very few acceptions to that rule. Biggest one is if someone tried to edit shows using AI to enhance them by upping the resolution. Had one series I was so looking forward to watching after a long time torrenting that I had to delete because you could easily tell an AI (or someone who doesn’t have a clue what they’re doing) tried enhancing the resolution and made it unwatchable for me.

Edit: Damn, reread and I wish I could get 5mbps in the apartment complex I’m in! I’d be lucky if my download speeds spiked to 1mbps. All this with what is supposed to be the best ISP in the area, which is also an absolutely shitty company (xfinity).

That’s a theory I can actually agree with. Sounds plausible enough to be true, given what we know about large corpos.

I know I’ve seen that on 1337x and was absolutely disappointed. Don’t remember what I was looking for, but definitely a shame.

It’s absolutely amazing how we went from the majority of people not knowing how to use a computer in the beginning of computers to everyone knowing how to do at least the bare minimum on a computer in the 2000s to now circling back to the majority of people not knowing how to use a computer because pretty much everything they do can and probably is done on a phone. It’s also real scary to think since I’d assume most of us Gen Z-ers aren’t properly able to object to privacy eroding tech bills because we’re too tech illiterate to understand the impacts.

Similar way is how I ended up finding out about Mindustry. Found it on F-Droid and liked it enough to buy it on Steam when I found out it’s available there. Definitely a good idea if done right.

Same. There’s one game I liked well enough after demoing it that I bought merch for the game to support the dev, alongside having bought the game on Steam. If a game is worth the price and is a quality game, I have absolutely no problem going from demo to buying it if I can.

…you better figure out how to pirate both an old copy of Windows and the final version of Adobe Pacemaker…

Don’t you threaten me with a good time! Finding a Windows copy is the easy part, even if it’s debatable how safe the copy is. Pagemaker sounds like the hard part.

You could replace that with just about any other fandom based around a TV/movie franchise and I guarantee it’ll probably be the exact same. I am thankful every day that I don’t join specific communities based around individual show/movie franchises because of how toxic they can get.

Point out to certain fandoms either some major flaw or the fact you don’t like the show and some groups will act like you just committed a 9/11 style terrorist attack on their show. Same thing even goes for creators of the show sometimes. We really need to end fandom culture.

I noticed that because the bookstore at the college I attended now only has cup nissin ramen in paper cups instead of styrofoam. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have noticed at all.

Didn’t know that. Fair enough for them.

Calling open source communism aside, capitalism and those who benefit the most from it probably absolutely HATE the largest open source projects because the more people use those, the less likely they are to use their telemetry based spy/bloatware.

Imagine trying to make a paid video/audio file player in today’s day and age and going up against the titan that is VLC. Or an audio editor/playback program in similar fashion to Audacity. Two of the biggest open source programs that I imagine just about anyone who has used a computer has probably heard of and/or used at some point.

I don’t use it much since I’ve already got it active on the apps I wanted it for, but on Samsung’s Galaxy Store there is an app I’ve never found an alternative to anywhere from my limited searching: Sound Assistant.

On desktop/laptop, turning off individual app/program sounds is super easy, but this is literally the only app I’ve ever seen that allows you to turn off the sound for individual apps on android. Don’t know if other versions of android from other brands or android 14 has that feature natively, but it’s a feature I wish was native to all versions of android regardless of which large brand has made their own alterations to android.

A minor problem, though, as I assume most people probably don’t give a rats ass about this.

I would just love it if I had the bus routes for my city readily available in open street maps, like how goog|e maps does it. I think goog|e maps might be my answer to the question if I can’t find anything worse.

That’s good to know.

I’ll have to quickly check there to see if they have what I need. Thanks.

Edit:

This was a site I got a file that caused Windows Defender to go ballistics ony desktop a few years back. Couldn’t remember the name. Probably gonna find a patch and see what virustotal says.

There used to be a site I looked at a few years back that I don’t recall the name of, but it definitely felt a little sketchy. Same with the one file I downloaded. Set off Windows Defender real quick and that told me to stay away from that site.

Definitely gonna have to look in virtual disc emulating them. I have a virtual disc drive program on my desktop, so I could look into trying to make that work. That, or I’ll try and find the small disc image thing you brought up to save space while trying to make that vde thing work.

Thanks for the info.

I personally don’t see a reason to torrent music when a simple download of a flac or something from yt if I can’t find it anywhere else is usually fine. But I will say I’m more likely to pirate music from large artists/companies because I don’t support large record companies and their shitty practices.

Similar thing goes for things like Vocaloid, UTAU/OPENUTAU, Synthesizer V, DeepVocal, etcetera, songs because the majority of the time the songs I’m listening to don’t have an official download (or a link to a removed file) or way to get it through supporting the person who made them.

I have no idea what to do or how to even get started with Usenet, so I just use a VPN and torrent as needed.

Those are some absolutely beautiful odds if it’s a one off 1% chance of death by pressing the button! Sign me up, Scotty!

Earliest example of me pirating was when my dad used Limewire. I’d like to think I used it as well, but I doubt it since I wouldn’t have known anything to look up.

Otherwise, in highschool I would go to different sites to find cartoons/anime that weren’t available on Netflix (or Hulu back when it was just about the only competitor). This was before I knew what sites were safe, so I probably ended up getting viruses without knowing.