Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

So lately I've been seeing shorts on YT about a D&D podcast that looks mildly interesting and I'm running out of good webnovels to listen to with TTS at work. So I thought I would give podcasts a shot...

They have instream ads... ~~And it's the same damn ad on repeat~~ Not the same ad, that was a Conan podcast I listened to in the past, but still it's like 4 ads in a row. Is there a tool to download these podcasts and strip their ads? I just read that there's a way to download them via rss so that's what I'm going to try now. But manual ad removal might get tedious over a hundred episodes.

I can't imagine with all the nerd centric podcasts that we wouldn't have automated a way to extract ads by this point.

Edit: At this point, trying a number of things. yt-dlp seems to be the best way to do it. If the podcast is available on YouTube someone most likely has already submitted SponsorBlock segments for it. You can then use yt-dlp to download the episode or the whole playlist using this command:

yt-dlp --sponsorblock-remove all --ignore-errors --format bestaudio --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 --audio-quality 192K --output "%(title)s.%(ext)s" --yes-playlist 'PLAYLIST URL'

You can even run it directly in Termux on your Android phone and skip sponsors on the go.

I'm looking for a full PDF editor for use on Linux. Foxit, Qoppa... can't find anything on TPB, AllPCWorld or 4mirrorlink. Even looked on Milkie and saw a link for Qoppa PDF, but no one is seeding it.

Anyone have any ideas?

For context, I want to run a small personal gig (offering stuff on Patreon). Nothing too fancy.

In order to do that, I would need to use the Adobe suite, Windows, some audio and video effects, all requiring a commercial license.

In theory, I start to make money. How would Microsoft and Adobe know that I don't pay for their software?

If I use some audio effects, how would their owners even be able to tell / find my work? We're talking about basic sound effect, like rain, door knocks etc.

I've always been confused by this

I was wondering if a VPN would add any kind of security or privacy if one is connecting to a host with a client/browser that supports DNS over HTTPS and that host supports encrypted client hello. Is there a way for the ISP or anything in between to shape traffic or even know what is being accessed? The only thing that should be visible is traffic between two IP addresses right?

Is there any good sites for audiobooks that aren't behind private trackers? I have a great set up with normal ebooks but my wife's job has here driving for multiple hours a day so she wants audiobooks and I can't seem to find any consistent sites.

This is an continuation of my last post, specifically a comment from @rufus@discuss.tchncs.de:

It will never get recommended. It’s bad for the network and bad for your privacy.

Excluding that doing so is bad for the network, why it is "private" using VPN but not Tor, inferring from common consensus. The main point in the blog post is a protocol level problem:

apparently in some cases uTorrent, BitSpirit, and libTorrent simply write your IP address directly into the information they send to the tracker and/or to other peers

Tor and VPN are both transports what wrap other traffic within. If that statement is true, no transport can save the information leaking nature of the BT protocol itself.

It's been 13 yesrs after this blog was written. Does the claim still holds true?

The head of the Russian department responsible for identifying threats to the "stability, security and integrity" of the internet, has revealed the extent of the Kremlin's VPN crackdown. Former FSO officer Sergei Khutortsev, a central figure in Russia's 'sovereign internet' project, confirmed that 167 VPN services are now blocked along with over 200 email services. Russia is also reported as stepping up measures against protocols such as OpenVPN, IKEv2 and WireGuard.

Late March 2023, Russia augmented its long-burning VPN crackdown with a series of PSAs claiming that using a VPN for security is actually much worse than not using a VPN at all.

One of the ads warned that VPNs somehow obtain users’ passport details, plus their names, addresses, and dates of birth. Another suggested that since VPNs in Russia know everything about their users, spouses might learn about secret affairs, a high price for accessing a social network blocked in Russia, the PSA added.

Just a few months later, those fairly light-hearted ads can be seen in a whole new light.

Russia’s ongoing VPN crackdown appears to be going in one direction; the end of any VPN service that refuses to play ball, consequences for those who dare to discuss them, and potentially anyone who knowingly uses them. The latter may take some time to emerge but in the meantime, Russia is attempting to remove as many as possible from the market.

According to Interfax, during a presentation to the ‘Spectrum-2023’ forum in Sochi last week, the head of the ‘Center for Monitoring and Control of the Public Communications Network’ (TsMU SSOP) revealed the extent of the Kremlin’s VPN crackdown.

Sergei Khutortsev, a former FSO officer and now a central figure in Russia’s ‘sovereign internet’ project, confirmed that 167 VPN services are now actively blocked after failing to comply with government requirements. Also subject to blocking are more than 200 email services.

Technically this is probably the wrong community for this post, but spirituality it belongs here.

There’s this great ios Shortcut called Avert Paywall With Archive.is that has been working for years but as of ios 17.1 it no longer works because the safari browser that pops up gets stuck halfway.

Does anyone here have enough experience making Shortcuts to fix it? It would be really helpful. Here’s the link to it: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/81c670b532e340e38a35cc62e3e9397d

I have 16TB NAS dedicated to storing TV shows. It is just a cabinet with ryzen 2600 and no graphics card. I have installed openmediavault in it to access it via smb to other devices. I am an absolute noob in setting up a server. Please tell me how I should go on about turning it into a media consumption machine.

P. S: I usually use VLC on android and MPV on linux to consume the media.

I read somewhere that it is possible to rip youtube videos (music only) without the need for converting it into an mp3 as such.

The online conversion process (naturally) results in loss of quality, and (apparently) it is possible to preserve the original video's audio quality via a direct rip. If so, how would it be done and what format would it be in anyway?

thanks

I need to buy one for an old TV i have. I have plex at home and i use also Stremio + real Debrid. If the device offers a controller it would be nice. Thanks!

Ok so I want to download this embedded PDF/document in order to physically print it. The website allows me to view it as much as I want, but is asking me to fork over 25 + tax USD so i can download the document.

Obviously, i don't want to do that, so I try to download the embedded document via inspect element. But, the weird thing is it not actually loading a pdf, but like really small pictures of each page:

So, my question is basically how can I download this document in order to print it?

PdF link: https://www.sbcaplanroom.com/jobs/2477/plans/goleta-sanitary-district-biosolids-and-energy-phase-1-project/?preview=200647

I downloaded a "Linux ISO" which came as a series of *.opus files. My iPhone doesn't recognize them, so I was wondering if you guys might recommend a program to convert them to *.mp3 files.

Ideally a mac or linux based program with a gui. Any suggestions?

So a file I was needing is showing as 9 seeds, 5 peers, but its stalled.

Why is that? And what does it mean for me other than I can't grab it. Is there something I can do on my end, or is it on the other side of things?

I've just cut the cord, so if these questions are basic, I apologize, I am just now learning a lot of this stuff

Hi there,

I’m a newbie here. I have a Raspberry Pi 4 model b. However, I’ve tried to run jellyseer, using Plex Debrid, and then to do the streaming to my Apple TV.

What I don’t know if I should try to use real debrid in another way, or maybe I’m not doing the right thing because I cannot stream properly.

Another concern is about the possibility to install a VPN, I’m using Proton. Should I install a Linux distro first and then, VPN, jellyseer and plex debrid?

Thanks in advance.

I was trying to watch konosuba on crunchyroll and when i opened it on my brave a pop up showed up that i need to have some drm software and whetewer i allow it. i did clik allow and it didint work either way so i watched it on Firefox and there is a thing saying that this thing is drm protected.

Soooo whats the point of this ? Is it supposed to stop you from pirating the content from their sites . If so how exatcly when you can just literaly record screen ? I honestly struggle to understand the purpose of this. Not sure if thats correct community to ask about it but it seems like you guys might know about this

Something overrides my quality definitions in radarr. Prowlarr? How can I prevent that?

If you are a pirate VPN is an essential tool. I am trying to ascertain the popularity of various VPNs in piracy community. In this excerise, I will list several Popular VPNs in the comment if you use one of them just upvote that comment and reply the reason. If you don't find your VPN listed add a comment with just their name. Reply the reason to it. This make it easier to understand the real life user cases.

P.S: I am only looking for paid VPNs please don't mention "free vpn".

https://www.reddit.com/r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH/comments/15qfjh8/we_removed_filecr_as_we_found_malware/

I couldn't find the Flintstones movie from 1994 anywhere but googling it I found it here https://archive.org/details/the-flintstones_202304 and you can either download it via torrent or directly. On top of it it says that the movie is CC0 which means Public Domain. But that can't really be, it's only 29 years old.

That must be pirated, or not?