Eilistraee, Vhaeraun

占師

There are a lot of really dog shit things in the world of tech that can be solved with a bit of time, some stubborn googling and maybe some special hardware and piracy is only the tip of the iceberg. 

Printers are notorious for claiming they’re out of ink when they haven’t come close to the suggested number of prints, and their cartridges literally still have ink in them. So after a bit of googling I found out how to ‘reset’ a cartridges automatic stopping system (its literally 1 physical wheel on the cartridge that you gotta turn back). The only downside is that I don’t get a digital ink monitor, but since it told me it was empty when still half full, I don’t mind. 

Like, you can just jiggle with some shit and solve one of the biggest money making scams in the post-industrial world and I don’t think people realise its that easy. 

Or, like, repairing your own technology. A few months ago, I swapped out my sister’s laptop screen. Did it myself, I removed maybe 4 screws, no vital parts were exposed and it cost me $40. I even got a choice of matte or glossy. 

My point is, any walls that capitalist technology presents you with will be a false one. And one already broken by a dedicated community of interesting people working hard for free to break down that wall.

kids these days will be all “be gay do crime” and dont even know how to watch a cartoon without paying for it smh

IN FAIRNESS

piracy was definitely leagues easier a decade or so ago when thepiratebay was functional, megaupload was still running, and YouTube and Google made only the most cursory attempts to block copyright content. like let’s not pretend that the internet hasn’t got a lot more corporatised in the past decade or so. piracy is still possible and you can and should do it but it’s a LOT harder to do safely and reliably than it was.

^thank u

Sorry, this is all wrong.

1) ThePirateBay is still functional. (It’s not the same pirate bay that it was back in the day, but let’s not get into Theseus’ ship territory. It’s still here and it still works, that’s all that matters.) There are plenty of torrent sites around, more than there were 10 years ago – although overall traffic has plummeted. Now as then, it’s a whack-a-mole game.

2) Why was it “leagues easier” a decade ago? Some countries, not all (not north America, for example), now mandate ISP blocking of torrent sites, but this new complication can be bypassed with one (1) step: a google duckduckgo search for proxies. No government agency or ISP can possibly keep up with proxies, it’s yet another whack-a-mole game. So yes, it was technically easier before, but I don’t see “leagues” anywhere.

3) It was safer before? Are you shitting me? Have you lot forgotten that the legal departments of MPAA and RIAA sued torrent sharers (not even uploaders) and asked for millions of dollars for damages? AND GOT THEM? (By which I mean they didn’t actually get millions since the people they sued didn’t have any, but said people were convicted and ruined and that was the goal in the first place. It was a deeply amoral and cynical scare tactic.) Well they stopped doing that at some point, and focused on hunting P2P and torrent sites. Running a site is certainly less safe today. Using one, though? Depending on where you are, the ISP may be allowed to block you after repeated instances, and that’s it. You’re not getting in trouble with the law or into crippling debt. And either way there’s only a minuscule chance that any of this will come to pass, which becomes zero (0) with a VPN. (Safety of course depends on the country, and in some cases piracy is the least of your concerns. Let’s not get into that.)

4) Ten years ago there was no Sci-Hub, and Library Genesis was in its infancy. If today it’s harder to find PDFs on google, it is orders of magnitude easier and more reliable to find them elsewhere. People just have to unstick their minds from the notion that stuff is either on google or doesn’t exist at all. Geez.

5) P2P still exists. IRC (the sharing channels in particular, #bookz and the like) still exists. Torrenting functions like it always did. All these methods are exactly as easy to use as before, i.e. not necessarily a piece of cake, there’s a learning curve. But it’s the same learning curve it was 10 years ago.

6) So what have we lost? Only YouTube (meh, the film/tv quality was appalling anyway, and music is still there) and direct downloads (at least the permanent ones: there are plenty of them still around, but files expire and you need to keep track of what goes up when. So this goes beyond knowhow, it’s about internet communities. Let’s not get into that either, it’s a huge subject.) It’s a loss, sure, but I wouldn’t call it a terrible blow.

7) And in exchange for that loss, we got streaming sites. This is piracy, too, and it’s much much easier than torrents, and tons of people do it. Any “piracy has declined” narrative either implies that we’re excluding streaming from the discussion for some reason, or is flat out wrong. Ten years ago, grandpa couldn’t possibly torrent a film, and it’s debatable if he even knew how to open the file you helpfully sent him. Now, as long as someone has set up kodi or similar, grandpa can watch it on his tv and it just feels like cable.

8) On why torrents in particular have declined in recent years, see here. It’s a big subject and I didn’t cover all of it, but the main reason is that people had access to easier methods to get what they wanted (some legal and affordable, some illegal and free), so they didn’t need to learn how to torrent. Ergo, they never did. There’s more of course, and there’s definitely a cultural shift too, but that’s a very long story so let’s not get into it. The linked post also includes some thoughts on why torrents aren’t dead and doomed just yet, and ooh, I forgot a very important one: you can’t stream photoshop.

To summarise, internet piracy is NOT more difficult, unreliable, and unsafe today than it was 10 or 20 years ago. For reasons why people (young or otherwise) seem less versed in it, please look elsewhere. I have thoughts on that too, but this is already a very long post, so I’ll just leave you with the best kind of thought. I’ll leave you with a doubt:

ARE people less versed in piracy? Are they really? Or is it simply that 20 years ago, internet users were computer geeks by definition, whereas now everyone’s online? Perhaps the percentage of skilled pirates in the general population remains more or less the same, and the only thing that’s dropped is the percentage of skilled pirates to total internet users. I can’t be sure without statistical evidence, but it’s a possibility.

You can literally google “watch _____ free online” and find most movies but the third result just download Adblock or popup blocker and you’re golden it truly couldn’t be easier

I’ve been meaning to make a piracy masterpost for awhile and what better time than now?

Materpost: A curated Githup tutorial of links to more torrent sites, software, VPNs, uBlock origin filters, ect. Basically everything you could ever want starting out. Do be warned though it doesn’t appear to have been updated in awhile so a few of the links are dead.

GAMES:

Books:

Streaming:

Computer software:

Other:

Finally someone actually posted links instead of just bitching or saying “it’s easy”

Ok just want to plug the eye a bit more considering I lost a few hours in their yesterday.

the eye has been up since 2017 and in the last four years have accumulated 140TB of data (according to their own reports). Part of their growth is just their own work, part of it is absorbing other archives/open directories that were having issues: I know rpg.rem.uz used to be its own archive - gave way to The Trove, which is having its own issues right now unfortunately… - but now most-all of their content can also just be found on the eye. Same with a few dozen other archives.

And they have ‘old roms, OS systems, roms (non nintendo), comics, books, ect, ect’, but massively more than you might think just based off how this sounds. Like…

They have it all.

If you want to try and homebrew alcohol, go check their stuff. If you want to try and read books that are out of print or otherwise in public domain (and some that aren’t yet in public domain), go check their stuff. If you want to run a campaign and can’t pay for expensive print tabletop books, go check their stuff. If you want to fuck off into the woods to live off the land (or research how that would work for a writing project), go check their stuff. If you’re trying to learn shit about drugs - any drugs, almost - go check their stuff.

Hell, if you want to go read what looks like literally every research paper on coronaviruses from 1968 up to Feb 2020, you can do that too!

As chickenmcnuggies said its a mess and a half to navigate through their collections, partially with how large it is and the fact quite a few folders were once whole other archives since absorbed by the eye…

But goddamn you can lose an afternoon just going through all the stuff they have.

Notable omissions on ebooks: Z-Library has a different collection than Libgen (and possibly larger? I tend to have more luck with weird stuff there); Anna’s Archive is a link aggregator with what seems to be a larger collection than either, albeit also a less easy to use one.

Notable omission on music: Firehawk52’s guide has plenty for learning how to download, but these days, I just use a cracked Spotify client.

“I’ll just rest my eyes” is the biggest lie you’re going straight to snorkmimimi land

“I’m going to sleep” is the biggest lie I’m going to stare at my ceiling for the next three hours

What I like about this comic is that it doesn’t “trivialize” mental health problems in and of themselves. It’s clear that the koala IS genuinely traumatized by what’s happened. But it does emphasize that the mental health problems are a symptom of some real tangible problem that needs to be dealt with immediately.

the priest writing down masurbate. the chorusing nuns. the flash of ankle. we're so back

is this a fandom or a medieval shitpost?

just had a banger of a church service. blogging about it from 1607

how dare you leave this in the tags

Official silly sign

Employer: “Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?”

Me:

I love this because you could mean anyone in th picture, including the bear.

You made this 1000x better

Who wouldn’t aspire to be a stylishly dressed Were-bear with a beautiful nude woman on their back providing musical accompaniment as you drive unwanted trespassers from the steps of your stately residence?

Seems like a pretty sweet deal to me.

Belle: Beast, I have to go back to my father, your magic mirror showed he was sick.

Beast: Really? Let me see…. Huh, actually it look like some guy called Gaston is going to have him committed.

Belle: What now? *Grabs mirror*

Beast: you know that guy? he seems like a douche.

Belle: Beast…. Honey…. you wanna get out of the house for a few hours?

Beast: Against my better judgement, I’m gonna say yes.

*Later*

Belle: FLEE MORTALS, I AM ARTEMIS, GODDESS OF THE WILD HUNT, AND I HAVE COME FOR YOU.

Beast: HEY NOT THAT I’M NOT HAVING FUN BUT WHY ARE YOU NAKED?

Belle: ARTEMIS, GODDESS OF THE WILD HUNT DOES NOT REQUIRE CLOTHES.

Beast: I HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS SIDE OF YOU BEFORE AND I’M NOT GONNA LIE I KIND OF DIG IT.

Belle: YEAH I’M HAVING FUN TOO. HEY ITS LEFOU, GASTON’S LITTLE CHEERLEADER. GET HIM!

Beast: YES MA’AM!

Fairy: *Watching in the distance*: You know I was gonna turn him back, but it looks like they’re having fun so I’ll come back tomorrow.

For those who are unaware, this is an illustration from an actual scene in the first Witcher book in the retelling of the BatB story :D The Beast and one of his many lady friends did this for the lulz every time people came to rescue the “poor maiden” and slay the monster.

and this

Oh no…

which country has the most birds

portugeese

wait

thats a language

portugull

nice recovery

don’t you mean nice redovery

turkey, how did we miss turkey

This machine kills AI

This is the most satisfying story I've read in a long time

*Scrolls past*

*reluctant sigh*

*scrolls back up*

*rebogs*

Im sorry but it is so funny how people outside of tumblr view us. Like why are the tiktokers treating tumblr like some professional ass website you need to do extensive prep before you begin posting on. And the follower farming advice is so fucking funny to me when this is the website where people actively hate getting new followers

Tumblr is the website where you ramble to yourself like a madman until someone decides they like you and put you into their pocket like a shiny rock. That's how you get followers