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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 6th, 2023

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  • can they be added to the search function in qbittorrent?

    Nearly all can. All the one’s you’d want anyways work with Jackett. They don’t work via direct plugins but just run Jackett, follow its instructions and connect it to qBittorrent and you’re good to go searching just the same as before. Some annoying ones occasionally require setting up another software like Flaresolver but for the most part the big easy to get into ones that open their doors annually work without that.

    While there will likely be some openings throughout the year the fact is most trackers open in the period from Thanksgiving/late November through early January. TL opens then basically every year, a number of more exclusive trackers do open signups then, some for only 24 hours so get an RSS feed of that and remember to sign up IMMEDIATELY as soon as you see a post as the post on reddit may have been made 22 hours into a 24 hour open window, you just don’t know. TL though at least tends to stay open for several days. So if you have no luck before then, wait until that time of the year and then check daily or even twice daily if you can, once before bed, once earlier when you get up or lunch or after work, whatever.


  • Nah. Such permanent guarantees are not legally enforceable, if a company really cares about it they’ll structure themselves in such a way as to make it very hard to change by having veto voices in their ownership structure who are for such things and will not allow a change, by writing language that requires some high majority of agreement of these owners that’s hard to come by to change such conditions.

    At best you get it in a contract when you use the software but guess what, that contract can and is overwritten as soon as you use a new version of the software with a new contract, feel free to use the old one full of one-click machine compromise vulnerabilities forever if you’d like but in reality you have no choice but to update and accept the new contract.


  • Um what the fuck.

    Input information THROUGH the browser and they’re granted a right to that info worldwide license to use that? To use what I type into my url bar? To use what I search? To use what I type into forms on websites? This is a more all-encompassing spying license than I think even Google has. This is absurd. This is a spyware license not that of a browser. Not only that, any files I upload, their names, any files I download their names.

    Maybe they’ll sell information on who looks like they’re doing filesharing, or porn habits, or those with politics a certain US administration present or future may not like.

    This is unacceptable.

    People saying “oh but it’s just to use the web” well part of the way they word it, all they have to do is insert spyware/adware or AI as they commonly call it these days and suddenly oh look at that, your normal use of the browser and how the data is used includes sending it all to us or our partners for the purposes of AI/ads, etc. One tiny little change, an addition no one will remark on or notice in future and suddenly this takes on very dire implications.



  • What they told you is misleading.

    Transcoding and burning in subtitles for Plex and similar only happens in some cases if your streaming device doesn’t support image based subtitles. Plex themselves could fix this on a lot more devices but don’t.

    10 years ago it was the case that there were a LOT of issues with anything but text subtitles. These days it depends. If you’re running it directly off a smart tv (bad experience anyways, not recommended) it’s likely to be an issue. If you’re using an Android streaming device or Apple TV or gaming console there’s a good chance the subs just work.

    Truth is lots of things can force transcoding with Plex including using certain audio formats in certain media containers. Most of these days picture subs work. If you can get text subs it’s not a bad thing but I wouldn’t go through the hassle of doing flawed OCR unless you can confirm it’s an issue you’re experiencing with your setup.



  • It’s alright. Not anywhere near as nice as say TL in retention and breadth/amount of content available but they have a fair amount of zero-day scene RARed stuff as well as some non-RARed stuff. Not as much free leech as many other trackers either, if you sign up I strongly recommend trying to grab stuff while you have sitewide to build a buffer.

    Oh and they do have pretty regular problems keeping the site up. People regularly get API request failures and the website can be unreachable for hours or more. Not a bad tracker but I wouldn’t suggest using it as your only resource unless your needs are very specific such as only wanting day-one scene access.


  • They’re US vassals. They don’t care about soft power just enriching themselves as much as possible while avoiding drawing US ire and being taken out back to be killed for competing too successfully. (See plaza accords when Japan did this)

    In other words their power doesn’t come from a positive view by westerners but by loyalty to Washington’s geopolitical interests. They’re never going to change anything because they can’t overcome US-centric media and its power.

    No amount of cultural popularity will help them if they’re turned into a villain for being a threat to the US’s interests. Similarly it’s not necessary for them to have good PR for soft power in the first place because of their subservient position. Their interests are tied to that of the US so displacing the culture power of the US with their own at no profit doesn’t benefit them and no individual corporation or capitalist is going to forgo profits for some vague hope of their country having more leverage as a vassal in 20 years.

    Japan is viewed favorably because the US forced them to commit economic suicide in the 90s and the hate campaign let up. We are 35 years out from massive racism and fearmongering about Japan pushed by the media which relented and created this space only after they were brought to heel. Look how many Asian food places in the west still say “no MSG”. That was driven by western media reporting, racism, and fearmongering and clearly is still stronger than any anime fan feelings of positivity towards a normal ingredient.

    Also wasn’t that guy their puppet dictator first leader who presided over numerous atrocities with a regime full of Japanese collaborators?








  • My problem with this in spite of the dire situation they face if Google is forced to cut funding by anti-trust court rulings (or not even forced but they make paying off Mozilla a moot point so they stop) is that they become an ad company. Ads become tied to their CEO compensation, to the salaries of the people who develop it.

    They claim they’re making a better kind of ad network, a privacy respecting kind. The problem is the ad industry doesn’t want less data, they want more. There are no looming laws that would force the ad industry to adopt a more privacy respecting alternative or die and without that the ad industry is going to shun this and it’ll be a failure and then they’ll have a failed ad network that they can either discard entirely or adapt to industry standards of privacy invasion and abuse and continue to exist and then they’ll make another “hard choices” post about having to do that.

    And I can see it now. This experiment will fail and after some pressure from the ad industry and some devil-on-shoulder whispering Mozilla will begrudgingly start to enshittify. Their ad network will become less privacy respecting by tiny little steps, by salami-slicing or boiling the frog, the whole privacy-preserving measurement thing will be thrown out BUT they’ll still claim they respect you more than Google and will at first perhaps but that will erode. Maybe they’ll just implode at some point after that which given Google is being found a monopoly works just fine for Google and the rest of big tech who want a more centralized, locked down browser company that wants to help implement DRM that can’t be circumvented, that wants to help lock down everything on the web to restrict users freedoms to choose what is displayed or if they can save it or record it or copy it to say nothing of blocking ads.


  • Just beware last I checked they’re not very active compared to the reddit. Getting into a lot of trackers on open signups tends to rely on someone posting about it within hours of it happening. Unfortunately less people use lemmy so they’re less likely to post about it here, it’s not like they have some person in all the trackers who keeps an eye out, it’s entirely up to someone noticing and making a post. Some may open for only 24 hours (hawke tends to I think).

    So regardless of where you see something open, if you have a place you want, I recommend signing up immediately within minutes rather than waiting even an hour as you never know how long it’s been open before it was posted about or how soon it will close. Just make sure you read the rules and any newsposts for new users within the first 24 hours if you can as some places may require activity in the first 24-48 hours for new accounts.


  • I’m pretty sure the megathread lists a website that tracks signups though in my experience it’s not as good as the subreddit. You really just have to watch that space. (Focus especially on checking daily through the winter months, in my experience lots of places open up around Christmas though around Christmas is pretty vague, some will open up around last week of or mid November, others early December, others in early January so it’s a patience game). You can create an rss feed for the sub so get just the posts fetched for you when they occur.

    TL is one of the best. If you need help filling some holes I’d strongly recommend the semi-private rutracker. You can sign-up using browser translation tools and then add it your search stack (it has jacket support) and search using English titles. It’s surprising how many seeded BD remuxes you can find there, they even have stuff I haven’t found on any other PT’s below PTP level. As it’s semi-private there are no real requirements for seeding or ratio though they do track that stuff on your account and give little badges for helping seed. Rutracker also as the other commenter mentioned is pretty strong on CD-rips and music. They’re very weak on western TV though.

    LST is really good. Strong requests and great bonuses system just for keeping seeds going. They have freeleech on open signup and there’s a pool people can fill up to enable it routinely as well. Points can be traded for upload credit so even if you don’t succeed in actually seeding you can maintain ratio. Be sure to check out their Christmas advent calendar (TL does this too) for free points, some people get lucky and get millions of points and you’re sure to get thousands, probably tens of thousands just for checking in daily in December and that can easily boost you to enough credits to buy enough upload to get over a TB. Once established it’s not at all a tough tracker though I’d still prefer TL over it if they have the same stuff because TL has a lower size threshold for automatic freeleech and a lower ratio req.

    The AvistaZ network of sites can be pretty good for obscure content but they’re stricter than I’d like as they require login every 60 days and download of a torrent every 3 months or you get banned which seems easy but if you’re not using them for much it becomes a chore you have to maintain and if you’re on multiple of these sites it applies independently. Cinemaz in particularly is good if you have tastes for arthouse, obscure, and foreign films that you’re struggling to find elsewhere. It doesn’t have mainstream releases though. AnimeZ is pretty good for anime though generally most stuff can be found on nyaa or other open sites. PrivateHD is fine, I find myself mostly finding stuff on TL and choosing it over their listings but occasionally they have a better version of something. Their old rules were better, you could go longer with some inactivity that was more realistic.

    If you like old western cartoons then something like Oldtoons would be a great idea to try and get into. That or a general old content specializing tracker though I can’t mention the one I’m familiar with by name as they prefer not to be talked about.

    If you see hawke uno opening up I’d suggest joining them as well. More encode focused, heavy focus on HEVC but they have an awful lot of stuff from their internals including TAoE and HONE and lots of cross-seeding ability as most QxR stuff gets uploaded, no ratio, just points system and you get a bunch at the start, earn more by seeding, keeping a lot of stuff seeding and you’ll never want for the ability to download or worry about running out.


  • Nah the second movie was kind of awful in that it just threw that and other things out for no good reason. The original source book by Philip K Dick (“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”) is explicit that they are androids.

    In my opinion it was not a sequel in the proper sense but more something cribbing a recognizable name to sell movie tickets with vaguely related ideas, themes, setting, and Harrison Ford who will do any movie for lots of money as long as he doesn’t have to put any effort in.

    And they were kind of able to do this because Ridley Scott decided to not use the term android in the film adaptation because he wanted something different sounding and so chose the term replicant instead which doesn’t have the clear connotations that android does but Ridley Scott did pretty clearly intend for them to be androids whereas the sequel threw that and the entire context and larger meaning of the work out in favor of whatever it was they were doing.