Wow, I’ve never seen this before. Thanks for sharing!

For some reason my household fibre connection is about ten times faster up than down. It’s like an anti-ADSL.

Reseed Linux distros as penance?

Good advice, but torrenting is blocked on the free tier. Good advice because at least you can put all your other stuff over a VPN.

I don’t use a vpn so I can’t seed. Sorry guys

Just tested it and you're right. That must be relatively new.

The last drive of mine running windows is currently an offline setup right now because I ain't updating it to windows 11 and ain't connecting to the internet while not getting security updates.

I could do it on that windows 10 drive when I allowed the OS an internet connection, but now I'm dealing with the consequences of not suggesting that my dad switch from windows 10 to MX Linux on his laptop.

Though, I will agree windows would work just fine.

"most of them are (if advertised heavily)" is quite a claim without data to back it up.

At least for the one I tested none of them sent additional traffic over my connection. That's just one data point and I only looked to ones with port forwarding but still far away from your claim.

There are a shitload of VPN tests out there and testing id your connection gets used by third parties for not traffic is even possible for a layperson.

Please stop fear mongering without remedies or specifics.

I still can't understand how they are not being sued to obligation for doing that.

Thanks so much for this.

So like, I'm looking to spend at least $15/month unless I can get a discount via a promo code? Might as well start paying for Netflix at that point. Right now I'm running up $0/month with access to anything I want at top speeds for my high speed connection. I don't know if using Usenet is worth it for my situation.

I do this, and it's lovely. Whole house VPN FTW - guest network for any "sus" devices.

Can't personally argue in favor of ProtonVPN, I'd say avoid that. Mullvad for me, for now, permanently open to even better solutions.

Eh, "thing I really want, but provided for free" combined with "thing we really want you to use, for free" -

We should maybe put fear mongering directly on that, I think. Free things, that cost real money to provide, that cost no money to use - we should maybe fear monger a little.

Yeah that's way more specific and can get behind - I don't even test any "free" VPNs.

I didn't intend to imply that VPNs are free.

Uploading [160 TB of] Pirated Books via BitTorrent [for profit] Qualifies as Fair Use, Meta Argues

Meta also argued that the BitTorrent sharing was a necessity to get the valuable (but pirated) data. In the case of Anna’s Archive, Meta said, the datasets were only available in bulk through torrent downloads, making BitTorrent the only practical option.

“Meta used BitTorrent because it was a more efficient and reliable means of obtaining the datasets, and in the case of Anna’s Archive, those datasets were only available in bulk through torrent downloads,” Meta’s attorney writes.

If billionaires can massively pirate EVERYTHING in bulk for profit, why individuals can't pirate a single item for personal consumption?

Yeah I totally get what you mean. Keep it mind that Usenet was already abandoned in the traditional sense by the time the warez scene took it over. Silver lining is that warez is keeping it alive. We could still keep it going in discussion groups.

Are you still using Usenet as it was meant for? Do you know of any newsgroup that are particularly active to this day?

Good chance I'm just annoyed and arguing with the wrong person, probably even about the wrong thing lol.

My mistake. I appreciate you.

Yeah, I have had some insane ratios, it's interesting what people dig the most 😁

I'm not using it any more and I last time I tried it was overwhelmed with spam. I agree that warez are keeping it alive nowadays. At least it's infrastructure, the soul is gone.

On a side note: There are still a few active BBSs around.

Free proton doesnt allow torrent downloads btw

I have been able to convince more genz to seed than I know adults who torrent at all

Most VPNs don't allow that, and those that do look shady as fuck.

Proton VPN

Just fyi you cannot really stop seeding completely, torrents work in tiny chunks and the moment you have one of them you can provide it to others.

Did you mean to add a zero to that monthly amount?? Because a VPN sub for just a dollar a month is SUPER sus.

Once you've had a legal letter due to an accident and over eager lawyers with easily costs beginning at several thousands you might change your opinion.

And yes, I had that. For 3 hashes of 3 files of a TV series.

No it doesn't. Because it's not an opinion but a description on how to not get into the situation you've described - i.e. about personal security.

What I've described prevents a link between you and your online actions - that's the whole point. It's the defense against surveillance and can be applied on situations with way higher risk than just a fine.

https://vpn.simplifiedprivacy.com/ has a $1/month sub and you can pair it with their https://hydraveil.net/ tool for compartmentalization. Some of their servers are run by known members of the monero community like trusted vendors or market admins. You can also get shared/resold accounts for big vpn companies on https://xmrbazaar.com/ (for example 2 years of PIA for $15 from a trusted vendor https://xmrbazaar.com/listing/xEM5/) or rent a DMCA ignored VPS with monero and set up your own VPN for $7-12/year, you won't exactly hide in the crowd that way but it's better than nothing and should thwart ISP related annoyances.

Okay, I think we're on the same side here, I was just at a technicality.

We need to fix using technical avoidance and fix the law and surveillance.

Go forth and spread your seed and be fruitful and multiply.

Oh yeah! It's sad that users have to have a technical education to use the Internet if laws and what at least I perceive as "right" fundamentally differ.

At least for the moment it's only copy right for me personally - there are countries and laws where this need is way more fundamental :(

Because we don't want our internet turned off, and there are no competitors to switch to.

Its dependant on the torrent you download. If you choose the wrong one that's being tracked, you will get your IP sent to Spectrum in a legal letter eventually.

Wait, really? Last time I looked all the main providers had removed it, and the only ones left looked like they were hosted on a toaster.

Might have to look into that when mine comes up for renewal.

Proton and Mullvad are probably fine yeah. Nord, Surfshark and Express are definitely very sus though, Nord even has known ties to Oxylabs.

Torrenting for personal use is legal where I live so I don't have to use any, I'm just saying be mindful if you do.

IIRC there’s some cheaper ones out there around $5, but it’s been a long time since I’ve shopped for a Usenet service. The way I look at it is I’m not having to pay for Netflix, Prime, Peacock, Disney +, HBO, HiDive, etc. just to watch the shows and movies I want. I do pay for Crunchyroll, but that’s mostly because I don’t want to pull and store long shows like One Piece, but that might change with their recent price increase.

Switch to UseNet. No seedin' required!

Then don't use BitTorrent.

Hit and Run is just bad behavior.

I only seed things that are legal for me to seed. Everything else is seedn't.

Jesus fucking Christ, I didn't realize they uploaded and were able to convince people that's fair use. Torrenting copyrighted content legal now I guess?

I do have a few old programs that I've kept seeding that have like 500:1 ratios

I've never gotten one leeching, it's when I let it seed for a day or 2. I've got fiber so it's pretty fast

The way I look at it is I’m not having to pay for Netflix [etc]

Right, same with my private torrent tracker but for $0/month. I don't think Usenet is for me, I guess. Maybe if my tracker gets nuked somehow, which it hasn't after like 20 years, then I'll have to consider Usenet. 😅

You'r already seeding while your downloading it.

That's not entirely true. 😐

If you're downloading illegal things, but not seeding those, fuck you.

If you don't torrent illegal things, then carry on.

I use torguard, I port forward for soulseek. they setup exactly as you want, you just fill out the request. Been with them 7+ years. I share 0.5 to 1.0 Tb/day on soulseek/torrents. Upload speeds are capped at 5MB/user, 5 uploads at a time on soulseek. 30MB upload cap on utorrent, bound to VPN IP.

I took this screenshot after an update and reboot, so it's not maxed out on speed yet.

Torguard. Almost 8 years with them and love it.

Sharing it is the catch in USA at least.

Everyone: "C'MON, SEED!"
Bugs Bunny: "NO"

For me, Usenet isn't about availability; but speed, risk exposure, and convenience.

Torrents take longer, even with lots of quality seeds and fast network speeds; mostly because of the seeding process. Plus, while you are seeding: you have to publicly expose yourself as a content host, even if just through a VPN. Hosts are what copyright holders target, they don't GAF about the people downloading, they try to take down the hosts to stop the spread. Finally you have to keep the content you downloaded in the format you downloaded, at least until seeding is done.

I prefer to use Tdarr to automatically transcode downloaded content into h265 (HEVC) to reduce it's size. Most content is found in h264 (AVC); converting it, on average, reduces its size by ~30% while maintaining good quality. Overall this step has saved me at least ~7TB so far (Tdarr reports it's saved 4.8TB, but I converted a ton of stuff with Embys convert feature before implementing Tdarr). That conversion can only be done after seeding or the torrent breaks as the original files are no longer available to seed. Usenet removes the seeding step completely, so I can do whatever I want with the files as soon as they've downloaded, which in it self only takes 5min.