Lol, someone loves the taste of boots

None of this is a likely threat, but is any of it completely outside the realm of feasibility?

Yes. It’s well beyond being worth considering. You’re describing a massive conspiracy where hundreds of people from multiple countries’ governments as well as private corporations would all need to work together without any information leakage. All this to entrap some Canadian programmer who tried to torrent season 2 of a TV show aired in 1990. If any of this was worth doing, it would have been done by now, yet we hear of nothing like this ever happening.

I’ve gone my entire adult life downloading copyrighted material without using a VPN and it’s never caused me any problem. My contract with my ISP confers me a level of trust that I’m perfectly comfortable with. I’m familiar with the Canadian law around this stuff, and how it’s been interpreted by the courts in the past. I am under no threat of financial damages being pursued against me. My ISP has no incentive to log my online activity or report it to foreign authorities. And even if they did, the Canadian courts limit the pursuable damages to four figures; barely enough to pay for the lawyer that would file the suit.

That level of paranoia is a waste of energy. I know that what I’m doing works just fine. Why would some Hollywood studio plant CSAM in a torrent? That would implicate them as well. It makes zero sense. They have better things to do than entrap some nobody in a country whose laws don’t favour them seeking any damages. It would cost them far more in legal fees to come after me than to just leave it alone. The notices they send out are entirely automated and exist primarily as a scare tactic.

If you’re willing to be curious and open minded about things beyond your limited perception and experience, rather than be a know-it-all, I’d be happy to share with you an example email that I recieved recently. I think the language they use is quite interesting.

The law in Canada limits the ISP’s risk exposure and the pursuable damages of the rightsholder. Also it definitely would cost them if they told me “we have not responded to this notice from the rightsholder” and then turned around and did exactly that. That would be a flat out lie to their client. I’d have grounds to sue in a situation like that.

Also, I’ve been doing this for almost a decade and never had any problems. Maybe you shouldn’t assume that your situation is everyone’s situation.

Your ISP has the same access to your data, but they also have a payment account linked to you, and they regularly cooperate with rights holders and law enforcement.

This varies widely by ISP and jurisdiction. I never use a VPN and my ISP doesn’t give a fuck what I download. They forward me the scary letters from the rights holders but they always preface it with “don’t worry, we ain’t no snitch”

I mean if someone is addicted to only playing one really specific MMO or MOBA and it’s not available on Linux I kinda get it. But if you’re the sort of person who enjoys lots of games, not just one, then there’s really no excuse at this point for sticking with Windows

Damn, you’re right. It makes total sense now.

BTW I love your username. If only there were some way to make money off it!

No, I get what you’re saying, I’m just saying that the name for the thing you’re describing, where some fantastical premise is extended logically using more realistic science, is “science fiction”.

We call that “science fiction”, not 100% science-based

I’m still stuck on “science-based”

100% science-based dragon MMO

I wish more devs would just use Steam Workshop. It’s incredibly painless on Linux.

Edit: the word “just” seems to be triggering some people. Rest assured I meant it as in “just do it already”, and not “just do this and nothing else”

Seconding Beelink. I have one of their SER boxes as my solution to smart tv and it works great

The nice thing about torrents is how lightweight they are. If one thing goes down, ten mirrors of that thing can pop up to take its place.

Nothing. It’s fine. I can’t fathom why people are out here paying for their piracy. Seems like it defeats the purpose. I still find everything I ever want on the same sites I’ve always gone to.

It’s above your pay grade. If I were you, I’d reach out privately and suggest that the customer seek a competitor’s product that has the features that want, and tell them that there is no desire within the company to support free software or self hosting.

Yeah my 2016 build still holds up pretty well. It’s a 970 and 8gb of RAM (but I gave it a big swapfile) and it’ll still run basically any game. I’ve never much minded medium or low graphics settings anyway

I bought it rather than upgrading my gaming PC which I built back in 2016. So it’s my primary gaming machine now. I use it every day.

But it’s less than 15,000,000

Oh shit, that was turned on. No idea why it was though, as I normally use per-game profiles. Thanks for the suggestion!