Popcorn Time Is Back
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I recently fell into this rabbit-hole while trying to organise my music. For music there is Lidarr, which also ID3 tags your music and reorganizes it into folder structures. This is convenient since organizing anything using Plex is a nightmare.
I don't really see why the same code can't be used for both - it seems such a waste of effort to rebuild everything twice for the only slightly different usecases.
You can edit it. The option is in the settings.
It feels great when it all works together.
So I download everything I can't legally access here, and don't have to worry about my IP leaking. Then on my TV I open Kodi and enjoy.
Cheaper than Netflix+Prime+Hulu+Disney+Apple+HBO and pretty low maintenance.
https://gist.github.com/1player/dbdafdd197e1623f5831108fc0cc...
It's pretty simple overall: gluetun is the VPN container, qBittorrent runs inside of it and downloads torrents, Jackett is a torrent search aggregator, Sonarr&Radarr use Jackett+qBittorrent to download movies and TV shows when they release, Bazarr adds subtitles after the fact.
Everything goes into a media directory, which my NAS shares via SMB. Only effort required is paying my VPN subscription and updating the Docker images once in a while.
I used to use https://github.com/dperson/openvpn-client which has a killswitch option as well.
By kill-switch I mean iptables rules that don't let anything out if there's no VPN interface up. So you don't run the risk of leaking torrent stuff through your plain-text connection if the VPN goes down.
Navidrome supports the Subsonic API, so there are a number of native clients compatible with it. I chose Substreamer on iOS. It’s not free, but it’s a one-time cost that doesn’t try and drag you into any subscriptions or anything. There are free alternatives like iSub, but I found their UI lacking & decided Substreamer was worth the few bucks.
I use the android version and it is great.
I've personally had no issues with the *arr's though, running on both Windows and Linux
I have been using it for years, and I'm pretty pleased with it.
I believe the point is that Popcorn Time is/was a shining example of the decentralized web, to the point that it accomplished some of what “web3” claims it is trying to achieve (for a specific set of use cases), and therefore is “more web3 than crypto”.
Retooling on a “web3 stack” would be pointless, because it is already accomplishing its goal without that stack.
Teach me your ways, sensei.
[1] - https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-desktop/blob/dev...
[2] - https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-desktop/blob/dev...
[3] - https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-desktop/blob/dev...
Also, it can be definitely done with ffmpeg.
In many cases this is a pgp signed xml document, which is bizarre as i have no idea what an average person would make of that.
Check out this website that does the IP querying part for you:
"Autonomous (self-hosted) BitTorrent DHT search engine suite."
Anyway, that repo is archived now. But I did find a more modern iteration of the idea: https://github.com/dennis-tra/nebula-crawler
rotating IP addresses made the warnings pointless.
If you put a trivially guessable password are you still liable? Are there still exploits for wireless encryption?
Kind of crazy that there isn't a huge burden of proof required by the accuser.
For example, I asked what happens if you ignore Comcast's Bittorrent warning and someone else on HN said they do indeed terminate your account.
Maybe playing dumb doesn't get you off the hook. Or it reveals you as a dumb helpless open relay. The most I can imagine Comcast doing if you responded to them would be sending over a technician to reset your router password.
Wait, what?? If I want to cancel comcast I should just install bittorrent , and I don't have to negotiate the hassle of cancelling over the phone?
Sometimes the fee can be the remaining service fee - so for a $150/month 24 month plan that's a whopping $3600!
Your ISP knows which IP you have and when.
RIPE makes it basically mandatory to use dhcp in order to recive ip space, even though in most places it is completely useless since 2010, you save maybe 5% because literally nobody turns off their routers
also of course because there is no ip space now, admins put small lease times like 1 hour, or sometimes even less, so you have constant influx of logs and updates
i can imagine those scripts are buggy, misread timestamps and etc
This is for all sorts of legal requests they might get.
in practice it maybe a good thing that mistakes are made
I don't even care that much about torrents or geo-locked stuff, I just trust them more than my ISP.
Setup was incredibly smooth and straightforward.
IIRC Mozilla also re-sells Mullvad's service under a name like (IIRC) FireFox VPN, which, last I'd heard, was still the only way to directly fund development of the browser.
Which is a nice thing but you can't forward ports, and forwarding ports is a big benefit Mullvad has especially for torrents.
> As we said earlier, such campaigns don’t have a terribly strong history of success in the UK. The courts have also previously warned such firms to be very careful about the use of threatening language, given that those being targeted are not yet proven to be guilty of what they are accused.
> Voltage seems to require the letter recipients’ to convince the firm that they weren’t responsible, but in law, the burden of proof is normally on Voltage to prove that the recipient is the one responsible and not the other way around.
Also see:
* https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-its-a-crime-uk-govt-ignored-...
* https://www.lewissilkin.com/en/insights/shipwrecking-online-...
* https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/new-law-to-deter-...
Then you have stuff like this: https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2020/09/17/uk-police-take-un...
The fact that prosecuting authorities tend to go after distributors rather than consumers is simply due to a value-for-money calculation. There is no formal or informal decriminalisation of consumer piracy, if they could find a cheap way to go after everyone they would - and they likely will, sooner or later.
surely you can find stronger evidence than the police taking the unprecedented step of contacting - contacting, not arresting, or fining - a few tens of thousand in one region of the country?
THIS HAS BEEN BLOCKED BY THE HIGH COURT
or some shit. and then at that point you find the other domain that isn't, or just type in the IP. It's all very shallow
Also, people using stuff like IPTV and the likes are routinely cracked down on, with jail sentences and all.
I honestly have no idea how you could come up with a sentence like that. The UK is among the most piracy-restricting countries in Western Europe, because of the massive influence of a certain media-baron over the political landscape among other things.
10 years ago is a long time
So you gotta make sure you use a VPN that doesn’t out you to the authorities, and, can’t be made to do so.
(Side note: US seems like such a dystopian place nowaday... wasn't it "land of the free" or smth. And I'm comparing to like developed countries in Western Europe and Asia, not freakin Russia or Afganistan!)
You're just repeating the scaremongering that VPN providers use to sell their insecure s, please stop!
You want privacy mainly and that's orthogonal to security.
If privacy is not enough and you need secrecy... well, just use your botnet as a VPN and from that get to Tor! (You do own a botnet in this case, that's what you need the secrecy for :P ...otherwise you'd have specialists hired for this at your disposal, or you'd be the specialist providing it to someone else).
VPN doesn't hide your ip, it only makes it harder to look up. I don't think VPN protects you like people think they do.
I don't say you shouldn't use one, but I will say that the most popular VPN providers are probably already backdoored by the US government.
Has anyone reviewed the source for possible unintended or intended side effects?
I have this in combination with *arr stack, and even the non technical family members use it without any issues.
I think it is worth looking into private trackers for anyone a bit more interested in media than the average person.
- There is almost no need to use any VPN service on these sites.
- Quality control is unmatched; many sites have strict rules on what can be uploaded and general standards of uploads. Often this means that each torrent has mandatory screenshots for video quality comparisons, consistent track orders for bilingual releases, MediaInfo/BDInfo to allow you to know the contents before downloading (e.g., codecs, languages, audio channels, bitrates, etc.), source information to know what version of a film or series you're watching, and full ripping logs in the case of CDs/vinyl, etc.
- There are also usually limited slots for torrents in a particular group (e.g., on some sites, a single film may have one or two 1080P encodes, one or two 720P encodes, one remux of the Blu-ray, and one untouched disc unless there are multiple significantly different masters available), meaning lower-quality releases will be trumped, removing the need to compare releases and pick. You can be confident you are downloading something decent on the first attempt.
- There is a tremendous amount of obscure, foreign, and rare content that cannot be found on public sources or streaming services. As an anecdote, take Ma vie en rose, a Belgian movie I wanted to watch. It wasn't on any streaming services with English subtitles, the American DVD was out of print, and the only HD release at the time was a Blu-ray for the Japanese market without English subs. While it was impossible to find on any public tracker or streaming service, I immediately found someone who took the effort and money to buy the DVDs for the subs, manually OCRed them to SRTs, purchased and ripped the Japanese Blu-ray, and remuxed it with the newly created English subs into a nice, single MKV for easy consumption.
- Almost everything is well-seeded. Private trackers usually incentivize long-term retention of downloads, so regardless of how old something is, you can usually still download a copy.
- The community. Many complain about opening up Netflix to a sea of overwhelming, infinite choices and being stuck just trying to pick anything. An advantage of the niche-specific private trackers compared to streaming services, public trackers, and Usenet, though, is that there are usually "collages" or lists of some sort where users will maintain what is essentially those IMDb lists or the random top-10 article-spam you'll find on Google, except it's all hand-picked content by people who are seriously, genuinely, and perhaps overly interested in the topic you're browsing. I rarely struggle to find something to watch/listen to because I can dial in a specific thing I am after, and someone will usually have already put in the effort of curating a list of the best content I have never heard of.
- And again, with regards to the community, the knowledge is cool. For anyone interested in the technical side of some of these topics, a lot of discussion and information is, unfortunately, locked up on member-only forums (not to mention the resources - e.g., for those interested in anime encoding & fansubbing, some of the Chinese trackers, in particular, are so valuable, be it for the untouched DVDs/Blu-ray sources or the guides and tools).
I am not that out of touch (I hope); I am just passionate ;-) Consume what you'd like, how you'd like, but I thought it might be worth proselytizing a little while I have the opportunity!
They have a ton of lossless audio, and you generally have choice in terms of which version of something you would like (e.g., an older release, if you don't like the remasters [1], or want specific deluxe/international editions -- Japanese CDs often come with bonus tracks). They also have very helpful curated collections of similar music and such.
Plus, having a RED account tends to help serve as a way to get to other trackers (of course, you should genuinely use the site rather than collecting accounts, etc.). RED is also unique compared to a lot of other decent trackers in that they don't require you to be invited by someone else or already have an account on another site; you can sign up by doing a short interview on their IRC [2]. Worth noting, though, that it'd be best to do it on a Friday night or something when you'd have time to waste; all of these sites are run by volunteers, so it can be a few hours of idling before you'd actually get a chance to sign-up.
For East Asian music, like K-pop, J-pop, J-rock, etc., Jpopsuki has the most extensive collection. SugoiMusic is another one, but I haven't checked it out very much.
And although it is primarily an eBook site, MyAnonamouse ("MAM") has a fair bit of sheet music, plus they also do IRC sign-ups.
Other than that, though, Orpheus ("OPS") is another decent music tracker. But realistically, RED tends to have much more available. However, I do think it's a cool site and I do respect how transparent they are, with even the site being open-source [3].
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[1]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war> [2]: <https://interviewfor.red/en/index.html> [3]: <https://github.com/OPSnet>
I wouldn't be surprised if someone else offered an invite. I am sure a fair number of HN people have accounts, but since RED has a relatively easy official route, I would go with that option if it's something you can find the time for; it'd suck to potentially build up an active account somewhere just to end up banned because your inviter also happened to invite someone else who did someone silly, like sell their account, etc.
There are lots of little random smaller trackers that have open signups, which you can usually find on Reddit, as roboyoshi mentioned. They'll vary in quality a lot, though, but occasionally there is something interesting there.
Other than open signups and person-to-person invites, most trackers have some sort of official invitation route. Typically this is just having an account on --insert partnered site-- for X months, don't get banned, have a minimum amount of data downloaded/uploaded.
In addition, as far as useful trackers go that have regular pathways without knowing anyone or having any account on any site, the ones below are the only ones I am super aware of.
IRC invites:
- RED; general music
- MyAnonamouse; ebooks/audio books/sheet music
- BakaBT; anime
- AvistaZ/ExoticaZ/CinemaZ; AZ is great for people who like Asian movies, and they have a Discord where they announce open signups, which is usually a couple of times a month
- Jpopsuki; East Asian music
- M-Team; movies, tv, adult content <-- good pathway into the Chinese communities if you don't have Chinese friends
If any weebs out there end up on U2, jpopsuki, animebytes, etc., I have such an absurd amount of bonus points, so feel free to PM or емаil me and I'll send you a load of credits to get started without worrying about ratios - plznospam |AT| omarassadi.com
There’s a reason those accounts sell for upwards of $500
Best bet for most people is finding a plex server with access to these sites.
In those cases, anyone who wants an account is probably best off just having conversations and meeting new people on IRC/forums of some of these trackers. Both of those sites have a lot of active accounts, so with a bit of mingling, you'll befriend someone who can invite, plus you get to meet interesting characters along the way.
But yeah, I don't envy anyone actively trying to get an account on PTP/BTN. It takes a long time to build up the credits to invite someone, and more importantly, given things like tree bans when someone does some serious offense, you don't want to invite just any stranger.
I think that is the aspect I like the least about private trackers; as a whole, the scene can be a bit elitist and unwelcoming towards new users. I get that it is a difficult balance to maintain, though. On much less important forums, the ban evasion problems are already bad enough as it is, so I can't imagine moderating a place like PTP.
Once you have an invite, all you need is a computer with space and an internet connection. Download a bunch of popular new or older large freeleech torrents and seed for a month. For best outcomes, pay $10 for a seedbox and let it do it - usually faster bandwidth and less hassle.
Total time investment is 1-4 hours, + $10 for a seedbox if you want to accelerate/simplify things.
How do you know it's not a law enforcement honeypot?
I get paranoia; I am the obsessive and compulsive person who literally feels physically gross and uncomfortable if I am not running FDE, etc. I feel that way because I don't like even the idea that someone could be snooping where I don't want them to be. In that sense, everyone has their own tolerance for risk, preferred levels of privacy, etc. I will never judge anyone for being cautious, but I still think a lot of it is still paranoia.
For the average person who doesn't want to receive another abuse report this month because they don't want their ISP to terminate their service, private trackers do tend to solve that part of the VPN equation, at least.
You most definitely need a vpn at least if you are here in Germany.
Now, I've upgraded to a nice 55" OLED, and I can't move away from Blu-ray rips. The sheer size of these rips (~25-70 GB) will burn through my data plan in an hour flat, not to mention that even with a 4G connection, it might be a little hard for a sporadically-seeded torrent to keep up with the bit-rate required for the film to play without buffering.
Even so, great effort bringing it back again; I had great fun with it when I did use it.
It's a completely legal app, that's still updated. But it becomes just like popcorn time after you download a few plugins.
And those plugins are downloadable from within the app itself.
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