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Comment by hnpolicestate | Hacker News Reader

I have this mentality problem where I don't like using my VPN except when I specifically need too.

To permanently seed some of these torrents I'd have to keep it on all the time. Would have to keep my desktop running 24/7 too?

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I used to be there, until I discovered Mullvad, which is so fast and reliable that there’s no downside to using it permanently. The only time I ever notice is when, very rarely, a particular node is flagged by some website (most often Reddit) as problematic and I have to switch to a different one.

> I have this mentality problem where I don't like using my VPN except when I specifically need too.

This is extremely suboptimal. "I only hide my activity when it's worth hiding" paints a giant target on your back. VPNs as a matter of course protect you from all manner of anti-consumer tactics, and if you don't obfuscate all of your traffic, it tips off surveilling parties to only focus on the subset of traffic that routes through a VPN.

"I don't want to receive DMCA notices passed through my ISP because it might disrupt my service" type use cases don't imply you also care about general privacy concerns or other use cases of VPNs too.

And I'm expressing to OP that they should, especially given the repeal of net neutrality and exposed NSA dragnet programs. Unless we just think a social credit system will magically never make its way to the US and impact every portion of our lives. Imagine getting higher health insurance because your parents browsed websites labeled as unhealthy.

I agree with you. I was more or less describing a negative trait of mine for why I haven't participated in seeding information thus far.

I'm definitely already on a health insurance bad persons list. My employer forwarded myself and other employees terminated over "that thing" to the FBI!

What a load of malarkey. I'm convinced the US will never get free healthcare because healthcare is used as leverage to keep the middle and wealthy class in check while also oppressing the lower class.

I think this is a fine soapbox but also that stating it in this "I think you should care because" style you just did is both better and different than starting by asserting the conclusion from your stance. It's not only more conversational but easier for those who don't already hold your stance to understand how your claim applies to their situation. That's all my example was trying to clarify, not necessarily argue against that people should/shouldn't consider or ultimately care.

Thanks for the clarification of your stance on VPNs and privacy, I appreciate the insight into why one should care.

I appreciate the feedback, I'll take that into consideration!

You don't have to seed 24/7. It's OK as long as (parts of) torrents get seeded regularly.

Exactly. If you seed it a couple hours once a week that still ensures that whoever wants the torrent can get it.

> Would have to keep my desktop running 24/7 too?

You could build a seed box out of a old ARM board running the Transmission daemon and a USB key mounted read only to avoid wear; power draw would be just a few watts and total cost could be less than 50 bucks. The desktop would be needed only when adding torrents or changing configuration from its web interface, although Transmission also has remote control apps running on phones and tablets. If the router permits it, QoS rules can be set up on the router so that the seed box can use all bandwidth, although at lower priority than other machines on the LAN, so that it will never clog the network, which comes handy for example with online gaming.

https://transmissionbt.com/

You don't have to keep it going 24/7. If you connect every once in a while, you will assist clients that come and go for parts they need. You don't even need to have the complete torrent either -- the tracker will know you have those parts and direct clients to you.

I don’t get it. If you do not want to participate in the preservation and distribution of the archive, why don’t you just move on instead of complaining?

Besides, gluetun+chihaya+qbit containers do the job without breaking a sweat, and without ever having to remember that you run a VPN - as it’d only be tunneling the containers of your choice. gluetun is the best image ever made!

They’re not complaining they’re asking a question. I think you completely misread the tone.

Hang on. I think the OP is trying to find a middle ground between their level of comfort and contributing to the project. I think their intentions are positive; they want to help but are constrained by their other needs or priorities.

No I definitely want to. I was stating why I haven't thus far. I support piracy.

Permanently seed is more about the data being reliably available at some point in the future more than continuously seeding.

As for the VPN side you should be able to configure your VPN to always tunnel your torrent app but not always tunnel your entire computer. The best/easiest way to do this varies by the specific VPN application and your OS.

In qBitorrent or similar torrent clients you can explicitly set the vpn network interface they should use. Use split tunneling for you browser or other applications you don't want to use the vpn for.

What I'd do is look at getting some small used PC (the 1 liter ones, tinyminimicro on servethehome, etc.) that doesn't take much power to do it. Cheaper to leave running 24/7 and it's easier to setup to work ONLY if the VPN is up. You can likely even setup virtual machines to do it (i.e. setup an OpenWRT virtual machine that can access the rest of the network as the "wan", but the "lan" to it is all virtual, and doesn't route traffic from the lan to the wan, only the lan to the vpn).

We made a simple way to lock QBittorrent into a VPN in a container [1]. It's probably simple enough to follow what we did in the config script to set it up for your use case (all open source [2]).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrH6Ci_4eig

[2] https://github.com/ipv6rslimited/cloudseeder

Or take an old laptop and use as a seedbox

What's the problem? Seed when you want to seed.

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