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Comment by shric | Hacker News Reader

redacted.ch

I’d rather not listen to music for the rest of my life than do an interview to join a tracker. Not sure why, but I find the whole idea repulsively elitist; I suspect I’m not the only one.

You either do an interview or a member sends you an invite. It's a private tracker just like what.cd was. It's less elitist than most other trackers which are invite only and sometimes lock registrations completely. Unfortunately they have to keep a low profile and pick their members to avoid copyright trolls or being shut down entirely. The test isn't very difficult and there is a public page explaining everything one needs to know. It's more about showing some effort and making sure that you know how to act accordingly on a private tracker

What's the deal? Login but no Sign Up.

It’s a private tracker. You gain access if you pass an online interview in IRC https://interviewfor.red/en/prepare.html

Pale in comparison

People don't participate as much, but we can change that... with participation.

It did pale in comparison at first, but it has become a large and dedicated community on its own. Torrents, staff picks, collages, are all there and plentiful.

The people are great too. I went on their irc and mentioned how shocked I was I couldn't find a certain album by a random band. A user there asked which one it was and it took 90 seconds from the time I said the band/album to the user posting the torrent link. I had looked everywhere online and I didn't find the album. I'm a salty pirate who's been at sea for decades and I couldn't find this album.

Then this user not only finds it in flac, but is able to create a torrent, upload it and shared it in under 90 seconds. It still boggles my mind how he pulled it off.

I don't believe in magic, but this was magical lol

I wish I could meet that guy and befriend him or her :). These are the people I would love to chat with. Sadly, I’m not a member of redacted. Maybe I should try to get in.

are you on there? there's an album I couldn't find anywhere, I'm curious if that tracker has it

Anyone friendly enough on HN to invite a fellow HN nerd?

Redacted is probably the easiest "quality" private tracker to get in to - just take the interview: https://interviewfor.red/en/index.html

I took the interview in the early days, and I "failed" because I didn't rote memorize whether 192 VBR MP3 would trump a MP3 V2 or something like that; "you look it up in the site rules" wasn't an acceptable answer. I get they want to exclude clueless humps, but at some point you're not testing for cluelessness but memorisation skills. That kind of turned me off.

They're selecting for the effort you'll put in to get in as a proxy for the effort you'll put in once you are in. Same way tech companies do leetcode. Has little to no bearing on skill. Only whether you are cut out for this sort of grind.

Yes, I understand it. In spite of uploading hundreds of torrents to what.cd I never remembered the exact rules/flowcharts of things as I just have a poor memory for these kind of things. To this day I can't even recite the full alphabet.

It's their site, they can do what they want with it. And I can have my opinions on the petty bureaucraticness.

they're not testing for memorization skills but for "desire to join the community"

https://pubkey.pm/

Maybe try this :)

I don't have one, but I can send you one if you don't mind paying their fee.

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