I would ideally like to convert the library to h.265 or even AV1 if I can make it work.

Unless you’ve downloaded remuxes (which I doubt), I’d seriously recommend redownloading instead of converting your existing files.

h.265 and especially AV1 take a long time to encode by CPU, and hardware encoding won’t give you any space savings, unless you’re okay with losing much details.

Redownloading is most definitely faster, will result in more space savings for the quality you’ll get. PS: Unless you’ve got data volume limits, but even then I’d recommend slowly upgrading over time. It’s quite simple with TRaSH guides and giving h.265 a higher score.

See my comment here. An open port is only required for TCP connections. uTP/UDP allows the tracker to open up a port temporarily in many cases. This won’t work for those stuck with ancient torrent clients.

That’s partially correct, partially wrong. An open port is required to allow for incoming connections for torrenting over TCP.

For TCP:

If a seed does not have an open port, a potential leech with an open port shares their IP & port with the tracker. The seed regularly asks the tracker for potential leeches. If the tracker provides a leech with an open port, then the seed connects to the leeches open port. This connection then allows the leech to download from the seed.

If neither of seed and leech has an open port, no connection can be established and thus no torrenting is possible.

For uTP/UDP:

If both peers (seed & leech) have no open ports, the tracker can use UDP hole punching to temporarily open up a port for the peers. The second peer can then connect directly to the first peer’s port which has been opened up by the tracker.

This only works for public torrents and with PEX enabled. For private trackers an open port is required.

It worked because the other people you connected to opened up a port themselves.

Edit: In some cases the tracker can open up a port for the peers. See https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/18977148

Yes. If you’ve got enough buffer anyway there’s not much reason to set up Cross-Seed.

Depending on the tracker this can work better or worse. E.g. I was on a tracker with minimal free leech content, so Cross-Seed helped me a lot.

https://www.cross-seed.org/

It takes a bit of time and careful reading until it’s set up.

For matching existing data you need to set up dataDirs and partial matchMode. Ideally your local files are organized (e.g. TRaSH guide) to improve cross-seeds ability to find matches. If you need help there’s a Discord linked on their website.

1337x.to works well too. If you use a website translator, like Firefox Translate, rutracker is great too.

Otherwise, private torrent sites (e.g. TorrentLeech) are the best addition to Usenet.

Keeping ratio is pretty easy if you set up Cross-Seed. It finds torrents matching your local files (e.g. Usenet downloads) and adds them to your torrent client without using additional space or downloading them again.

I […] Always care to have a VPN (Mullvad and Proton) active and also integrate it as an interface in BitTorrent.

If you set your torrent client to only use the VPN network interface, it’s much more likely to be CGNAT. In other words it’s been some other customer.

If you still use BitTorrent, I’d recommend switching to qBittorrent. The former is outdated and ridden with ads compared to the more performant qBittorrent.

Most trackers provide points for seeding torrents. Usually the amount of points depends on the size and the amount of torrents.

These points can be exchanged for “upload” (or other things like an invite), which helps with increasing the ratio.

• epub is the best ebook format. Use Calibre to convert to it from e.g. azw3 (Amazon)
• m4b > mp3. The former is better suited for audio books.
• archive.org for archiving websites

BitTorrent v2 allows for per file hashing, which makes it easier to merge swarms. This could be used to keep individual episodes alive without splitting seeders between season pack and individual episodes.

But given how many tracker staff want to continue doing what they’ve always done, I don’t think it’s big enough of an advantage for them to allow v2.

Just wanted to point out that downloading is no longer a grey area since an EU ruling a couple of years ago. Streaming as well as downloading from unauthorized sources is plainly illegal - you’re right about it being very unlikely to be prosecuted for it.

The one and only a absolutely necessary precaution is preventing your torrent client from accessing the internet when the VPN is not running.
This must be done by binding your torrent client to your VPN network interface. [1]
A “VPN Kill Switch” or similar is not enough to prevent your IP from leaking to law firms.

It’s also a good idea to use a reputable VPN company like AirVPN, ProtonVPN or Njalla VPN.

I’m also german and I’ve been using torrents for years, so this definitely works well for me. A friend of mine’s brother received an “Abmahnung” from a law firm, as well as a more distant person ended up paying around 1000€. I feel like almost any german somehow heard of people getting letters.

[1] https://protonvpn.com/support/bittorrent-vpn/

• ActualBudget for finances.
• Radicale for calendar/contacts.
• Immich for photos/videos.
• Redlib as a frontend for Reddit (LibRedirect ftw).
• TheLounge as an IRC client.
• Bitwarden/Vaultwarden as a password manager.
• paperless-ngx for documents

wine-ge is patched wine which includes many patches proton has that make games work (well).

Also, the developer of wine-ge no longer has their focus on it, because UMU [1] makes it possible to use proton(-ge) directly. UMU is already included in Lutris, Bottles & Co., or you can use it standalone [1].

[1] https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-launcher

First of all thank you for hosting this instance.

PS: Irrelevant rambling without a point below.

I don’t know how French/EU equivalents to DMCA take down requests work and how trigger-happy OVH is. Given services like real-debrid still operate, it won’t be as bad. From what I’ve heard Hetzner is quite strict when it comes to complaints, so I assume OVH is better.

It’s good that you don’t allow direct linking to pirate content. It seems to me that on most platforms communities are closed prematurely to avoid further annoyances/complaints, even if they follow the law (like here).

I do wonder how Lemmy would be impacted by an influx of DMCA complaints. Instances would have to delete the content but I don’t think they have the manpower to do so.

Instances like dbzer0 could also get taken down by complaining to the VPS provider if the instance operators wouldn’t comply.

The group tiers you’re talking about exist and are called trash guides. If you’re only on public trackers the groups might not be as prevalent, but e.g. TorrentLeech is more likely to have them.

The letterboxing with ultra wide monitors might be possible to solve locally with your video player. For MPV there’s the dynamic-crop.lua script, which is not perfect but works quite well.

I’m using mpv with Jellyfin on my PC through jellyfin-mpv-shim.

Edit: For Windows you might want to check out MPC-BE. I’ve found some mentions of “View -> Video Frame -> Touch Window From Outside” but I never tried it.

[1] is a great usenet guide. For automation look at TRaSH guides (Sonarr/Radarr/Prowlarr) and their german section.

If you have questions the discord server in the linked [1] guide is quite helpful. They created the german trash guide.

[1] https://github.com/PCJones/usenet-guide

You could just as easily in the spirit of this community do it with the same name and code, same way they do it for cracked games.

You could, and unless you’re trying to profit off it the original devs likely won’t care.

And also [bank on] pirates to not outright rip them off, which seems to be working for some reason…

They already publish it under GPLv3, they want it to be free (as in freedom) software.

I don’t care about any security concerns. If someone does not want to build it themselves or download from a third party they can buy it for their convenience. Or they can take the risk or find another way to install it.

For example I looked up whether Strawberry is on Winget, the Microsoft package manager for Windows. And look at that, it’s completely free to download by the original developer [1]. @upstroke4448@lemmy.dbzer0.com

They only ask users who are too lazy and want to download through the Microsoft store for payment. I get why you don’t like there being no binaries on their site by them, but they do provide free ways to install it. They just don’t tell you about it.

[1] https://winget.run/pkg/StrawberryMusicPlayer/Strawberry

Edit: For anyone who does not want to click the link: winget install -e --id StrawberryMusicPlayer.Strawberry installs Strawberry on any Windows computer. Officially.