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.

deleted by creator

If they have to have a lot of channels then $120 isn’t the worst price (I have relatives who pay twice as much as that a month for cable) though you could perhaps try and check into whether they could switch to a streaming linear TV service like DirecTV Stream with one of their lower tier packages to save some money while retaining a cable-like experience (there’s also Sling, Hulu+Live TV, YoutubeTV, FUBO, etc, many of which have packages with many of the top channels for $60-$80/month).

Fact is to save money you need to be willing to give things up. If you’re moving from a premium cable package with a ton of channels to a few streaming services you’re going to lose things and potentially a lot of things. You’re going to lose access to live news channels, you’re going to lose access to specific programs on some networks that don’t have streaming service equivalents (I know for one older person I knew the fact they couldn’t get and watch Lifetime and Hallmark movies within any reasonable time-frame of their premier meant they were not interested in looking into streaming any further to replace their cable).

More than that though most old people hate change, they were used to a certain way of things and they’re afraid and perhaps get confused or frustrated with this new way of doing things. It’s simply more comfortable for them to use the old satellite system they’re used to and its interface and way of changing channels than doing something new where they have to think of how to do something or get frustrated or ask for help. Which is why I do think trying a streaming cable replacement like those I mentioned might be your best bet. It would still save some money.

Yes. It’s incredibly powerful but easy to use for a basic purpose like editing a line or converting formats.

Open the web subtitles in subtitleedit. Change format to ass (advanced substation alpha). Save and re-embed using mkvtoolnix.

Positioning of multiple lines works well with ass and VLC shouldn’t have an issue reading and displaying. Not sure if YouTube includes the positioning data in their subtitles though. You could recreate that in subtitle edit (free software btw, dk web domain I believe) but it would be a bit of an annoyance.

edit: Corrected domain name. Not German, but nikse is it as OP has suggested

“Killing Hope” was written by former intelligence officer Bill Blum (think that was the name) and details such operations (though not limited to socialist countries).

I’ll try to find some links on the subject and edit my reply to include them but it may be a day or two.

All the big pirate sites use them though. Even private ones like TL. If they don’t they get DDOSed. They all turned it on over the past year or so after being badly attacked.

Did you reply to the wrong person or do you just have reading comprehension issues?

It should be considered illegal if it was used to harm/sexually abuse a child which in this case it was.

Whether it should be classed as CSAM or something separate, I tend to think probably something separate as a revenge porn type law that still allows for distinguishing between this and say a girl whose uncle groomed and sexually abused her while filming it as while this is awful it can (and often does seem) be the product of foolish youth rather than the offender and those involved all being very sick, dangerous, and actually violent offending adult pedophiles victimizing children.

Consider the following:

1. Underage girl takes a picture of her own genitals, unfortunately classified as the unhelpful and harmful term “child porn” and she can be charged and registered as a sex offender but it’s not CSAM and -shouldn’t- be considered illegal material or a crime (though it is because the west has a vile fixation on puritanism which hurts survivors of childhood sexual trauma as well as adults).

2. Underage girl takes a picture of her genitals and sends it to her boyfriend, again /shouldn’t/ be CSAM (unfortunately may be charged similarly), she consented and we can assume there wasn’t any unreasonable level of coercion. What it is unfortunately is bound by certain notions of puritanism that are very American.

3. From 2, boyfriend shares it with other boys, now it’s potentially CSAM or at the least revenge porn of a child as she didn’t consent and it could be used to harm her but punishment has to be modulated with the fact the offender is likely a child himself and not fully able to comprehend his actions.

4. Underage boy cuts out photo of underage girl he likes, only her face and head, glues it atop a picture of a naked porn actress, maybe a petite one and uses it for his own purposes in private. Not something I think should be classed as CSAM.

5. Underage boy uses AI to do the same as above but more believably, again I think it’s kind of creepy but if he keeps it to himself and doesn’t show anyone or spread it around it’s just youthful weirdness though really he probably shouldn’t have easy access to those tools.

6. Underage boy uses AI to do same as 4-5 but this time he spread it around, defaming the girl, she/her friends find out, people say mean things about her, she has to go to school with a bunch of people who are looking and pleasuring themselves to fake but realistic images of herself against her consent which is violating and makes one feel unsafe. Worse probably being bullied for it, mean things, called the s-word, etc.

Kids are weird and do dumb things though unfortunately boys especially in our culture have a propensity to do things that hurt girls far more than the inverse to the point it’s not even really worth talking about girls being creepy or sexually abusive towards peer-aged boys in adolescence and young adulthood. To address this though you need to address patriarchy and misogyny on a cultural level, teach boys empathy and respect for girls and women and frankly do away with all this abusive pornography that’s super prevalent and popular which encourages and perpetuates abusive actions and mentalities towards women and girls, this will never happen in the US however because it’s structurally opposed to being able to do such a thing. Also couldn’t hurt to peel back the stigma and shame around sexuality and nudity in the US which stems from its reactionary Christian culture but again I don’t think that will ever happen in the US as it exists, not this century anyways.

Obviously not getting into adults here as that doesn’t need to be discussed, it’s wrong plain and simple.

Bottom line I think is companies need to be strongly compelled to quickly remove revenge-porn type stuff (regardless of the age of the victim though children can’t deal with this kind of thing as well as adults so the risk of suicide or other self-harm is much higher so it should be treated as higher priority) which this definitely is. It’s abusive and unacceptable and they should fear the credit card companies coming down on them hard and destroying them if they don’t aggressively remove it and ban it and report those sharing it. It should be driven off the clear-web once reported, there should be an image-hash data-set like that used for CSAM (but separate) for such things and major services should use it to stop the spread.

Yes. Though I wouldn’t want to know the exact day if I could help that. Knowing the year or month would be enough to plan. To have a will. To say the things I want to say to those I care about. To make peace with the end. To do what I can of a bucket list and to feel a bit more secure up to that point not worrying about death.

According to the email they sent me:

https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/18730324957213-How-do-I-back-up-my-cloud-saves

You can do it from gog galaxy. No idea if the game has to be installed though :/

What are you average file sizes for movies and series?

Movies? 4-8GB for most 60-120 minute features. TV shows. For live action 800MB/episode, 500MB/ episode for animation. For hour long stuff probably 1.2-1.6GB/episode.

What would you do? what’s your target size for movies and series? What bitrate do you go for in which codec?

HEVC 10 bit. I target in the 7000-9000kbps bitrate range generally. For animation that can be as low as 3000-5000kbps. Sometimes a bit higher for very grainy old films, occasionally a little lower for grain less modern digital camera work that hasn’t had digital grain added.

If you want to maximize space savings without losing quality you have to understand what needs more bitrate and what can do with less. Across the board you could do something like CRF 20 but you’d have outliers where you don’t get enough bitrate and those where you still end up with rates of 14,000kbps.

The above is for 1080p content.

If you can stand HD video content at 2-3000kbps more power to you but on a large TV I can tell. I think even being reckless and not caring about future-proofing less than 6000kbps is a bad idea for anything but TV shows. Even those I think outside animation you want minimum 2000kbps for 1080p.

Nothing. It’s an automated. Just stop doing it and it’ll decay with time.

Well re-applying thermal paste is a big matter. I’d try stressing it and seeing if you can force it after cleaning the vents.

So do things to stress the processor and see if you can force it to happen repeatedly. If it is a thermal issue you should be able to cause it by inducing high load. If you can’t it points more towards other issues. A fault in RAM or the motherboard for example, a loose module or connection, etc.

And just FYI if you need more help in future this community isn’t intended for it. Try posting in a tech or computer help community for a better chance more people engage.

Randomly or after a set time of use or intense use? Could be processor is overheating past safety thresholds (new thermal paste could fix this IF that’s the issue).

I’d try cleaning vents and fans before changing thermal paste though. Could be they’re clogged and not working right.

Failing that it could be multiple things. But I’d try to address cooling being adequate first. Make sure vents are unobstructed during use. Use it on a flat hard surface, clean the vents with a vacuum and/or canned air duster.

As others mentioned having a good encoder is an issue for AAC. And some skills in using it, tuning, etc.

Nearly all quality releasers now use AC3/EAC3 or FLAC. Tigole is the last one who uses AAC to my knowledge and the rest of the QXR group rolls their eyes at it.

You’re not going to get a meaningful reduction in bitrate and file size with AAC over EAC3/AC3 without loss of quality. We’re talking maybe you can shave 2-300kbps off an AAC version versus an AC3 5.1 track. And it’s tricky. So much so no one other than that one person I mentioned bothers. At least no one accepted in the higher echelons as competent in creating acceptably transparent encodes.

If a source has EAC3 (itself capable of up to halving the bitrate required vs AC3) or AC3 I’d recommend keeping it as they tend to already be efficient. They’re also universally compatible as codecs. Re-encode those big 1500kbps DTS tracks and those even bigger monster lossless Dolby and DTS tracks but I’d leave efficient codecs like AC3 alone.

That said it’s up to you what sounds good. If you’re using lower end stuff and can’t tell the difference after trying a few different test videos with different types of sounds then go for it.

/r/opensignups (sadly the lemmy version seems abandoned at the moment).

Monitor that daily if you can. Torrent leech in particular should be opening their doors soon for open registration (they usually do in spring, if not it won’t be long as they do so twice a year anyways). TL is a great starter and honestly many people will never need more. Very easy to maintain on with great free leech on anything over a certain size which ends up meaning all remuxes and most TV show seasons.

/r/opensignups (sadly the lemmy version seems abandoned at the moment).

Monitor that daily if you can. Torrent leech in particular should be opening their doors soon for open registration (they usually do in spring, if not it won’t be long as they do so twice a year anyways). TL is a great starter and honestly many people will never need more. Very easy to maintain on with great free leech on anything over a certain size which ends up meaning all remuxes and most TV show seasons.

Don’t bother with M-discs. They only provided a meaningful advantage in the DVD era. I’ve researched this a bit myself and consensus at least in the data hoarding community is use 2 Blu-ray Discs from two different batches (bought 6 months apart). Which still comes out cheaper or the same as branded M-Discs. (Though that may be overkill and truth be told as long as you test the disc and it’s data done months after writing you’ll tend to catch any rare bad ones)

Truth is, quality Blu-ray Discs have all the features that would engender M-disc type longevity in the design spec. Just make sure they’re not low to high (LTH) discs which are inferior but always marked as such at least.

Don’t get no-name cheap ones either, get Verbatim, Sony, some other good Japanese brand. For Verbatim specifically their discs marked MABL on the package are better.

Always burn data at lower speeds too, less errors.