CorrodedCranium

I have spent some time recently browsing through the various streaming options listed in the piracy and FMHY megathreads and I am curious which one people prefer.

movie-web for example works great but when you click on a title it goes right to playing where as Braflix pulls up a summary, trailer, and list of actors. Braflix also categories based on the streaming service like Apple+ and Amazon which can be good for content discovery.

Unfortunately you can't click on the streaming service categories to view more and it doesn't list a lot of other somewhat popular streaming services like Shudder. Braflix also doesn't say what whether or not something is a cam rip unlike some sites like himovies.

Some websites also handle sorting better than others or have server problems.

I don't know if people really care or if they just click on the first link they see/use what they've already been using for years.

Content discovery for me is probably the most important factor. I like being able to sort by the IMDb rating and having a section that says "If you like X you might like Y" is also nice.

cross-posted from: https://leminal.space/post/7416619

I've been trying to mimics the functionality of Steam with open source projects. For example using Playnite as my game library manager. One thing I'm having a bit of a hard time with is finding a substitute for achievement tracking. I know achievements aren't for everyone but I find it helps motivate me to power through lulls in longer games and try out side quests.

The closest alternative I have come across is xan105's Achievement Watcher. It started in 2019, got a fair amount of attention 2020 after being posted on /r/CrackWatch by the creator, was added to various piracy megathreads, and stopped development in 2022.

It was a bit of a challenge to setup.

Some steps were:

• Grab my own Steam API so it could fetch data for the achievements.

• Alter Windows 11's notification settings so I could get the achievement unlocked notification.

• Go through the steam_emu.ini files so I could find the correct directories (ex. \Users\Public\Documents\CODEX)

• Using Achievement Watcher to generate the achievements.json and image files and placing them in the steam_settings folder of each game.

Even then I haven't been able to get it working smoothly. For Cities: Skylines for example I can unlock achievements but I don't receive a notification and they only appear after I refresh Achievement Watcher (Control + R). Most modern guides suggest using a Steam Auto Cracker but doing so appears to stop the game from working. I don't know if this is because I am utilizing repacks or if there are multiple forms of DRM at work. I could easily be missing something.

I've read there are compatibility issues with Achievement Watcher and cracks from groups/people like TENOKE.

Considering I own the games I want to play without DRM I may just try to use Goldberg myself.

Some games like Fallout New Vegas allow you to view completed challenges in-game and I imagine there are mods out there that add some form of achievement/trophy/challenge system.

There's also RetroAchievements for older games.

I've got some DOOM WADs I have been meaning to play so I would probably grab Trench Foot, Total Chaos, and the sequel to Ashes 2063, Ashes: Afterglow with a portable install of GZDoom to play them.

After that I'd probably bring Star Trek TOS and a MOBI copy of Neuromancer by William Gibson combined with a portable install of VLC and Calibre in case the computer didn't have applications that support the file format.

What about you?

I wanted to phrase this in a way where it isn't a prolonged or desert island style question where the responsible idea would be to bring Wikipedia ZIMs and educational PDFs. It's just an awkward amount of time to kill. The mid 2000s office desktop stipulation is just an additional challenge so you can't just bring in a copy of Baldur's Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2077.

Edit: By mid 2000s I meant around 2005; the XP or Vista.

I have been thinking about the Cerveza Crista edit of Star Wars: A New Hope that sporadically splices in beer ads and the Toy Story 3 edit alternate ending where they fall into the incinerator and it made me wonder if people have come across these kind of joke versions, in full, in the wild.

It seems like a majority of the time it's just short clips being made and reposted.

I'm not talking about the edits of movies where they do things like decrease the speed of the audio so it gradually desyncs from the rest of the movie or when they replace the entire movie with the Limewire Bill Clinton ad.

I was using Spotiflyer for a while because it worked well and was available through F-Droid but it seems like the creator has moved on to an app called SoundBound that I haven't seen in the megathread or any of the other sites listed in the Other Treasures section.

I was wondering if there is a different Android app people are recommending for downloading MP3s of Spotify playlists. I am indifferent towards audio quality and don't mind missing out on a few Spotify-exclusive songs so if it is using YouTube MP3s that's fine with me.

I feel like with the rise of AI something that anonymizes writing styles should exist. For example it could look for differences in American versus British spelling like color versus colour or contextual things like soccer versus football and make edits accordingly. ChatGPT could be fed a prompt that says "Rewrite the following paragraphs as if they were written by an Australian" but I don't know if it would have a good enough grasp on the objective or if it would start shoehorning in references to koalas and fairy floss.

I tried searching online to see if something like this existed and found a few articles from around the 2010s such as Software Helps Identify Anonymous Writers or Helps Them Stay That Way by the New York Times. It talks about stylometry and Anonymouth but it seems like Anonymouth hasn't been updated in years. All recent articles seem to be about plagiarism and AI.

For context what got me thinking about the topic was remembering JK Rowling being revealed to be the author of a mystery novel called The Cuckoo’s Calling. Smithsonian wrote an article about it called How Did Computers Uncover J.K. Rowling’s Pseudonym?. I thought it could make for a neat post here.

It seems like the benefits are having the device lock/wipe itself after a set amount of attempts in case of a brute force attack and not having to run software to decrypt the drive on the device you plug it into.

I included a picture of the IronKey Keypad 200 but that's just because it's the first result that came up when I was looking for an example. There seem to be a few other manufacturers and models out there and they probably have different features.

I am curious what do you think of them? Do you think they are useful? Do you find it more a novelty?

It was an ExplainingComputers video titled Very Useful Small Computing Things that made me think of them.

"WHERE DA FUCK IS DA SITE MOTHAFUCKA?!"

UPDATE 2/15/2024 - This will most likely be the final edit to this section unless something good happens (which never does). The site is not coming back at this point. I already mentioned that my host starting ghosting me the minute the site went down, and I guess commissioning furry art was way more important to them than actually helping me. Just remember that I always had (and still have) people actively working against me who also try to influence others to do the same.

Is an update that was posted yesterday along with the following message.

When you try to search these repacks up on search engines, this Rentry page does not get picked up. I ask those who still even care about these releases to try spreading this Rentry page around. I would appreciate it as most people think I am gone just because the site died.

Gnarly has a lot of decent unique repacks such as his RPCS3 repacks and his Tale of Two Wastelands repack. They are still available on the Rentry site that I linked with this post. The megathread direct download games sections has also already been updated to point at the Rentry site.

Gnarly-Repacks is requesting donations for the renewal bill for their site and I know FitGirl sporadically makes requests for donations as well. It makes me curious what range of expenses do sites like these incur and what they are.

I do vaguely recall The Pirate Bay 2013 documentary TPB AFK talking a bit about their revenue but I don't know if they talked much about their expenses.

I have been using a Pebble Time Steel for years even after their acquisition by ~~Garmin~~ Someone corrected me it was FitBit not Garmin thanks to Rebble, a modded firmware that gives it new life, but I would like a smartwatch that can track my heart rate.

I don't mind using an older device especially if it means a cheaper price. A bonus for me would be if it still had some kind of community around it or a custom firmware like Pebble watches do.

I found an original Moto 360 with a functional battery for about $30 but I am not sure if due its age its functionality would be greatly limited.

Edit: It seems like Garmin and FitBit might be worth looking at. But I wouldn't know what devices to look at or if there have been any major improvements with recent revisions.

Edit: Just an update I bought a Garmin VivoActive 3 used and locally. It seems to have some solid build quality but appears to have significantly less apps and features compared to my Pebble. The heart rate sensor seems to work alright though. I am a dork for metrics so I feel like that should make up for it.

This is in reference to a post titled Amazon Prime Video is able to remove a video from your library after purchase.. The title is kind of self-explanatory and piracy was brought up in the comments. Someone mentioned GOG and Steam granting users indefinite licenses to users regardless of whether or not the game is still being sold.

While I could see that with GOG something tells me that's probably not the case with Steam but I can't find a specific quote to back it up. I can't seem to find an instance of them removing a game from someone's library even when a game was banned in a country like in the case of Disco Elysium and Rimworld being banned in Australia.

I couldn't see Valve removing games from people's libraries without a good reason due to the amount of backlash that would cause but maybe under specific circumstances they would.

On a similar note I was curious if anything in the terms and conditions talks about Steam emulators. There's a section it that says:

“… host or provide matchmaking services for the Content and Services or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Valve in any network feature of the Content and Services, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the Content and Services …”

But I am not sure if I am misunderstanding what it's trying to get across.

I looked through a majority of the Steam Subscriber Agreement but it can be a bit hard to decipher. There could also be comments from Valve staff elsewhere like on Twitter or Reddit that may at least shown their thoughts on the matter.

This might be a bit boring for a lot of people but I am curious about the DRM behind Steam. I feel like people have placed a lot of trust and money into Valve and Steam so I am curious about potential worst case scenarios.

For example using privacy screen protectors or phone cases with a manual shutter over the camera.