this post was submitted on 25 May 2023
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@Hirom They seem to support these too
I wonder though if you can also create these files, or you can only use it to unarchive these.
@QuentinCallaghan
Thanks for highlighting this, I reacted without reading the whole article.
It's odd that the article focus on rar. This specific format seems to have brought back memories for this journalist.
@Hirom It really is one of the most popular archive formats on Windows. Because of WinRAR. In fact, the popularity of the formats on Windows seems directly proportioned with software usage over time (i.e. WinRAR, WinZIP - where zip is now native since a long time - 7-zip etc.)
tar.gz et all are really just alien for the vast majority of Windows users, especially the non techie ones.
Rar is still super common in the pirating community. I think they may have told on themselves more than anything :)
I thought it was used in piracy because rar was proprietary and antivirus scanners wouldn't scan contents inside them or something?
it also led to a lot of malware and RAT infections because people
I was curious for more facts other than my dated impressions of the last 2 decades and i found this thread on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2104ih/eli5_why_pirated_movies_are_usually_distributed/
According to this thread, the compression isn't as good as I thought it was. So, TIL! I wanted to make sure to share it since I was spreading some incorrect info - though I probably got it the exact same way I got this, which is "some guy said it on the internet". I suppose I could run some tests to see, though.
nah it actually compressed a lot of binary files in spanned archives better than the more common zip/gzip computing mechanisms. ace files do even better and if you combo the two you can shave off even more.
back in the olden days, it was about compression because "high speed internet" was like 1.5mbps. inertia is still going to play a part, too. i think these days it's just a cultural thing more than anything, though that's just my impression