Cracks are usually released separately from the uncracked game files. Repackers take those cracks and package them with the correct version of the game, compress the files and add an installer. Then they upload them to the more mainstream public trackers.

Repacks have several benefits. They tend to be easier to setup and usually more reliable. They download faster and use less data because they are compressed. They are also sometimes packaged with extras like soundtracks, mods, etc.

Fitgirl repacks are known to be more compressed, so the files are a little smaller but take a fair amount longer to install.

I can't believe he said his channel is for the people who can afford to move out of North America. There is absolutely no way he would have been as successful if his channel was only viewed by the less than 1% who can legally and financially move to Amsterdam.

He's not wrong about NA, but he's being a privileged rich dick. Car centric infrastructure isn't hurting the rich anywhere near as badly as the poor.

I think the fact that reddit has never paid moderators in the past shows that they fear setting such a precedent. IAmA has always been a big draw for users and celebrities, yet they never put an employee in charge of it.

Once they start paying one set of moderators, other mods might start to expect something in return for their labor. This especially won't look good to investors who might otherwise like the business model of paying nobody for moderation.

I was one of the people who thought meta joining the fediverse could be good, but that convinced me that we need to keep them out.

Thanks for posting that

In America they are mostly bought because of consumerism and fragile masculinity.

Where I live trucks are at around half the vehicles. My wife and I play a game where we try to spot a truck hauling something that they actually needed the truck for. Most trips I'll see dozens of trucks and zero being necessary.

I wouldn't say I am ashamed, but I cannot believe I liked Insane Clown Posse and thought it was legitimately good music.

We're also in a big vehicles arms race. I'm always telling people about how big vehicles cause more kids to get run over, more pedestrians to die, more damage in accidents, etc. The most common response from giant vehicle owners is that it makes them feel safer in an accident.

In 10 years they'll probably all be driving tanks with stadium lights mounted on top.

Crackers mostly post the cracks to IRC sites, cs.rin.ru, and private torrent sites. Repackers are the main way releases make it to the mainstream torrent sites.

Repacking isn't that complicated anymore, it's more about reputation. There was a time when games were big and internet speed was slow so saving every MB of size was important. Repackers would reencode video files and find other ways of dramatically reducing the file size. Nowadays they don't do a lot of that, but repackers are still important for casual pirates who just want to easily play pirated games and not worry about malware.

I run everything in docker on Ubuntu 22.04 with the exception of Plex, which runs on bare metal on the same server. The server is a 16 core threadripper 1950, with 2 quadro gpu's, m2000 and a p400, 128gb ram, mirrored ssd for system, platter HDD for media, CoralTPU pcie.

I also run Home Assistant on a separate Lenovo MiniPC(forget which model), I did this so I can take down the server for various reasons without losing smart home stuff. Helps with the Partner Acceptance Factor.

In no particular order the server runs:

Calibre-web - Library management

Sonarr - TV series downloads

Radarr - Movie Downloads

Lidarr - Music Downloads

QbittorentVPN - Torrents over vpn, guarantees no leaks

Jackett - tracker management and proxying

Podgrab - downloads podcasts

Frigate - NVR, camera recording with object detection

DoubleTake - Facial recognition middleware, works between frigate/homeassistant and Compreface/Deepstack

Octoprint - 3d printer spooler

Tautulli - Plex statistics

Portainer - Docker Management

Ombi - Media request app, users can request shows/movies and they can be automatically added to sonarr/radarr

MeTube - Webui for youtube-dl/dlp, useful for downloading Youtube videos for offline and ad free use

Spot-dl - parses spotify playlists and downloads them from youtube

I have many of my services open to the internet, but behind authelia w/2fa and a reverse proxy. I haven't had a security issue yet, been running this way for a few years.

I think it's pretty safe as long as you keep them up to date. I run backups weekly and do updates at least once a month.

Using geoip restrictions will also help a lot because you can block most of the scanner bots by denying connections from outside your geographic region. These bots detect what services are open to the internet and then add them to databases like shodan. If a security flaw is found in one of those services, hackers will search those databases for servers with those services running and try to exploit them. If you aren't in those databases they can't easily find you before you are able to patch.

Exactly. Federation means no single instance needs to serve millions of users. If one gets too big and becomes too commercialized, you can move to a different one that shares your values. If large instances cost more per user as they scale up, we just need more instances.

I also think people are vastly overestimating the cost to serve users on Lemmy/kbin. Last time I calculated it, lemmy.world costs were around €0.01/mo per monthly active user. That can be maintained with 1% users donating €1 a month.

A lot of this self censoring is algorithm voodoo. Nobody knows what makes these platforms mark your videos as age restricted, so people do silly stuff like say, "unalive". I've seen many videos where people use the word kill that aren't age restricted.

I was a binge drinker. I would buy a big bottle of whiskey and drink until I fell asleep, then wake up and start drinking until it was gone. Then I'd be sober for a while and eventually binge again.

I had a sort of similar gradual experience with quitting. I was enjoying it less and less, mostly just getting depressed and feeling sick from the constant changes in body chemistry. I went from being blackout drunk 2 days a week to 2 days every other week, and then every month or so. At one point I realized I had been sober for 50 days and decided I needed to be done with it forever.

Now I'm at 200 days and almost never think about drinking. I have basically zero desire to drink, all I can think about is how bad it made me feel.

I don't go to bars or really socialize in person at all. I would recommend trying to find other ways to socialize that don't involve bars, but I have known sober people who can happily hang out with people who drink.

The Deprogram is really good.

That's the thought process that led to everyone driving giant vehicles in the first place. Bigger doesn't always mean safer for the occupants, but bigger is always more dangerous for everyone else. There are plenty of smaller vehicles that have excellent safety ratings.

For most purchases, people really only have vanishingly few choices of companies to buy from. A truly free market might work, but the profit motives that have corrupted our political, legal and regulatory systems has made most markets into oligopolies. These companies work together to manipulate prices, without ever directly communicating in a way that can be punished.

For a free market to really drive prices down there needs to be real competition. When eggs went up in price, they allegedly did so because of avian flu. But that flu only affected a small amount of the production. Cal-Maine, the largest egg producer in the country, lost no egg production at all. Yet they increased their prices massively. If the market was working as you say it does, Cal-Maine would have kept their prices low to capture more market share. Instead they saw that other producer might have to raise prices and preemptively raised their prices.

UPS is preparing to strike because the job has so much mandatory overtime and other pressure for not enough pay.

If when you run a fingernail over it, if your nail catches in the scratch, the scratch is very likely too deep to fix with paint correction(like buffing/polishing).

A proper fix will require prep, painting and blending, which you shouldn't try to do yourself. You could buy a touch up stick that matches your paint to cover the scratch. It won't look perfect and won't last forever without clear coat on top, but it will prevent rust.

Before you decide how you'll deal with this, you can bring it to a body shop for an estimate, most shops will do that for free. Most shops can give you an estimate from photos emailed or submitted to their websites.