M-Discs had merit in the DVD era. It’s a common refrain of those who don’t know the intricacies and read a wired article years ago to claim they mean anything in the Blu-ray era. They don’t.

Standard Blu-ray Discs have all the technologies that supposedly make m-discs so long lasting and as far as media that isn’t continuously updated and hashed from live storage medium to live storage medium (cold, archival storage unpowered) they are about as good as you’ll get.

They are much tougher than DVDs. Of course a variety of things go into how long a disc remains readable and without damage to data including luck with regards to no impurities in the batch. Even m-disc themselves based their longest claims off storage in ideal situations like an inactive salt mine (commonly used for archives by governments). Kept out of sun, away from extreme heat (including baking in uninsulated 120 degree F heat all summer year after year), away from high humidity and away from UV exposure to the data side of the disc as well as scratches and such and they should last a quarter to half a century, some more.

In the Blu-ray era m-discs are just an overly expensive brand.

Did you reply to the wrong person or do you just have reading comprehension issues?

It should be considered illegal if it was used to harm/sexually abuse a child which in this case it was.

Whether it should be classed as CSAM or something separate, I tend to think probably something separate as a revenge porn type law that still allows for distinguishing between this and say a girl whose uncle groomed and sexually abused her while filming it as while this is awful it can (and often does seem) be the product of foolish youth rather than the offender and those involved all being very sick, dangerous, and actually violent offending adult pedophiles victimizing children.

Consider the following:

1. Underage girl takes a picture of her own genitals, unfortunately classified as the unhelpful and harmful term “child porn” and she can be charged and registered as a sex offender but it’s not CSAM and -shouldn’t- be considered illegal material or a crime (though it is because the west has a vile fixation on puritanism which hurts survivors of childhood sexual trauma as well as adults).

2. Underage girl takes a picture of her genitals and sends it to her boyfriend, again /shouldn’t/ be CSAM (unfortunately may be charged similarly), she consented and we can assume there wasn’t any unreasonable level of coercion. What it is unfortunately is bound by certain notions of puritanism that are very American.

3. From 2, boyfriend shares it with other boys, now it’s potentially CSAM or at the least revenge porn of a child as she didn’t consent and it could be used to harm her but punishment has to be modulated with the fact the offender is likely a child himself and not fully able to comprehend his actions.

4. Underage boy cuts out photo of underage girl he likes, only her face and head, glues it atop a picture of a naked porn actress, maybe a petite one and uses it for his own purposes in private. Not something I think should be classed as CSAM.

5. Underage boy uses AI to do the same as above but more believably, again I think it’s kind of creepy but if he keeps it to himself and doesn’t show anyone or spread it around it’s just youthful weirdness though really he probably shouldn’t have easy access to those tools.

6. Underage boy uses AI to do same as 4-5 but this time he spread it around, defaming the girl, she/her friends find out, people say mean things about her, she has to go to school with a bunch of people who are looking and pleasuring themselves to fake but realistic images of herself against her consent which is violating and makes one feel unsafe. Worse probably being bullied for it, mean things, called the s-word, etc.

Kids are weird and do dumb things though unfortunately boys especially in our culture have a propensity to do things that hurt girls far more than the inverse to the point it’s not even really worth talking about girls being creepy or sexually abusive towards peer-aged boys in adolescence and young adulthood. To address this though you need to address patriarchy and misogyny on a cultural level, teach boys empathy and respect for girls and women and frankly do away with all this abusive pornography that’s super prevalent and popular which encourages and perpetuates abusive actions and mentalities towards women and girls, this will never happen in the US however because it’s structurally opposed to being able to do such a thing. Also couldn’t hurt to peel back the stigma and shame around sexuality and nudity in the US which stems from its reactionary Christian culture but again I don’t think that will ever happen in the US as it exists, not this century anyways.

Obviously not getting into adults here as that doesn’t need to be discussed, it’s wrong plain and simple.

Bottom line I think is companies need to be strongly compelled to quickly remove revenge-porn type stuff (regardless of the age of the victim though children can’t deal with this kind of thing as well as adults so the risk of suicide or other self-harm is much higher so it should be treated as higher priority) which this definitely is. It’s abusive and unacceptable and they should fear the credit card companies coming down on them hard and destroying them if they don’t aggressively remove it and ban it and report those sharing it. It should be driven off the clear-web once reported, there should be an image-hash data-set like that used for CSAM (but separate) for such things and major services should use it to stop the spread.

Nothing. It’s an automated. Just stop doing it and it’ll decay with time.

I really like the one I have. A relative has a much older model and it still works fine too.

It’s very responsive and the 4k models are quite powerful and future proofed IMO. If you have an iPhone you can quickly use it as a remote too.

Paired with infuse app it even does local streaming from my media server well.

And it’s cheaper to get this year’s top of the line Apple TV than it is the 2019 Nividia shield pro.

As others mentioned having a good encoder is an issue for AAC. And some skills in using it, tuning, etc.

Nearly all quality releasers now use AC3/EAC3 or FLAC. Tigole is the last one who uses AAC to my knowledge and the rest of the QXR group rolls their eyes at it.

You’re not going to get a meaningful reduction in bitrate and file size with AAC over EAC3/AC3 without loss of quality. We’re talking maybe you can shave 2-300kbps off an AAC version versus an AC3 5.1 track. And it’s tricky. So much so no one other than that one person I mentioned bothers. At least no one accepted in the higher echelons as competent in creating acceptably transparent encodes.

If a source has EAC3 (itself capable of up to halving the bitrate required vs AC3) or AC3 I’d recommend keeping it as they tend to already be efficient. They’re also universally compatible as codecs. Re-encode those big 1500kbps DTS tracks and those even bigger monster lossless Dolby and DTS tracks but I’d leave efficient codecs like AC3 alone.

That said it’s up to you what sounds good. If you’re using lower end stuff and can’t tell the difference after trying a few different test videos with different types of sounds then go for it.

/r/opensignups (sadly the lemmy version seems abandoned at the moment).

Monitor that daily if you can. Torrent leech in particular should be opening their doors soon for open registration (they usually do in spring, if not it won’t be long as they do so twice a year anyways). TL is a great starter and honestly many people will never need more. Very easy to maintain on with great free leech on anything over a certain size which ends up meaning all remuxes and most TV show seasons.

/r/opensignups (sadly the lemmy version seems abandoned at the moment).

Monitor that daily if you can. Torrent leech in particular should be opening their doors soon for open registration (they usually do in spring, if not it won’t be long as they do so twice a year anyways). TL is a great starter and honestly many people will never need more. Very easy to maintain on with great free leech on anything over a certain size which ends up meaning all remuxes and most TV show seasons.

Don’t bother with M-discs. They only provided a meaningful advantage in the DVD era. I’ve researched this a bit myself and consensus at least in the data hoarding community is use 2 Blu-ray Discs from two different batches (bought 6 months apart). Which still comes out cheaper or the same as branded M-Discs. (Though that may be overkill and truth be told as long as you test the disc and it’s data done months after writing you’ll tend to catch any rare bad ones)

Truth is, quality Blu-ray Discs have all the features that would engender M-disc type longevity in the design spec. Just make sure they’re not low to high (LTH) discs which are inferior but always marked as such at least.

Don’t get no-name cheap ones either, get Verbatim, Sony, some other good Japanese brand. For Verbatim specifically their discs marked MABL on the package are better.

Always burn data at lower speeds too, less errors.

Blu-ray remuxes (even a public site like rutracker keeps a lot of English commentary tracks in the fuller size releases), certain releasers like QxR, Sartre, HEVK who tend to include them. Someone called budgetbits on leetx also tends to include them alongside rifftrax. Important thing is to check the media info these include on the website to see if commentary tracks are present.

Disgusting that the shutdown note tried to play off their serious issues with grooming and sexual abuse and claim they did a lot. Fuck that asshole.

Edit: Uh oh I’m being downvoted by his fan boys. The article (and successful lawsuit) say’s exactly what I’m saying and anyone who at scale enables mass sexual abuse of children is an asshole. Omegle had no other uses for most of its existence, hypotheticals sure but as the article mentions in practice it was overwhelmingly full of naked men trying to find women and children to interact with sexually. The site runner was flagrantly negligent.

Gosh I love certain types, you’ll rightly jump on a pastor who looked the other way for sexual abuse happening in his church as being responsible, yet a guy who runs a big website for years full of abuse is taken at his word as a sweet, innocent, helpless, benevolent advocate for a better web because he talks right. (Never mind he deliberately obfuscated the horrors happening on his website with his closing statement which people here ate up. It takes a lot to lose safe harbor)

You are who you say you are to a network though, at least at layer 2.

If you say you’re one MAC address one time and another next time then so you are.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say I’m a device trying to connect to a network. Among other things I tell it “can I have an IP address, my MAC address is Majestic”. It says in turn, sure and notes down Majestic and routes or switches things to me when another device says it wants to reach my IP. In Wi-Fi it basically shouts out it has a packet for Majestic and sends it out onto the air with my unique encryption key I previously negotiated and I am listening for packets for Majestic and grab and process that packet. Now if I go back and connect again and call myself Dull it’ll do the same thing. Those names being stand-ins for MAC addresses of course.

This is simplified of course. And this is why MAC whitelisting is a futile attempt at security.

Most remuxes have commentary tracks passed through. Heck, good encoder groups like QxR, TAoE and many Internal’s retain them.

I’ll agree remuxes generally drop extra video files though you don’t strictly need an iso for those, just a full BD disc dump in folder form which are far more common than ISO’s though far less common than single file remuxes.

I don’t think LoTR 4K’s changed the extras and behind the scenes from 1080p either so finding disc folder dumps of the old HD releases should suffice for OP if that’s all they want.

Brave words divorced from reality.

Cable companies wouldn’t insert ads, people pay for a premium experience with cable instead of getting their TV free over the air. If they did people would just cancel and watch free tv.

Then later: Streaming companies wouldn’t insert ads, the ability to watch on your time, terms and without interruption is part of the appeal, if they did their customers would leave them and they’d collapse. It would be the death of any company foolish enough to do so.

🤡

Markets and competition will save us cried the fool with no knowledge of history.

If they grow they need to keep growing, if their results are good enough they’ll introduce “limited” tracking for “trusted partners” with limited ads that are “valuable and relevant”. And from there it can spiral more but you’ve already lost.

As revenue, tracking, taking a big yearly check from Zuck or whoever to share your data with them. It’s a good source of revenue and unless this company is privately financed by one weirdo entirely out of their own pockets they have a responsibility to investors to get them ever increasing year over year returns.

Of course the typical thing to do is to get big enough first like streaming. Train the fool consumers to pay for something they’re getting for free, normalize that, grow, then sock them with ads, tracking, inconveniences and train them to accept more and more of it.

Most useful unique website thing rarbg had by far was full mediainfo listing for every single upload on site. You could immediately tell what you were getting and even dead torrents became useful by virtue of retaining chapter data that could be applied to another release.

Also, call me skeptical but IMO without access to scene FTP’s or week-1 access to (and automation on a large scale of re-uploading from) cabal trackers like BTN to get the good content from your site frankly risks ending up just another mirror among many others like lime torrents for existing public net and low hanging private tracker fruit. (If you have mediainfo for all files that adds a lot of value though)

IMO the real need left by rarbg is not for more re-hosting of content many others have but for publishing web-dl’s others don’t have, not of just new series (which everyone does as ep’s drop) but older movies and older series without other good 1080p or 4k releases available. Even today I see many old TV series the only HD releases available are old rarbg packs and this includes across multiple of the biggest PT’s.

Of course I wish anyone willing to run a big general tracker luck (assuming they’re honest and intent isn’t to distribute malware ofc).

Looking up technical specs for the drive it’s often mentioned on data sheets (often as conventional magnetic recording drive or else shingled if SMR). Other than that third parties have compiled lists and many but not all Amazon pages in tech specs mention it if you look closely. Try searching drive-model and cmr and then smr and see what comes up. Beware some drive families different sizes of drive may be cmr vs smr. WD red pro and ultra star DC line are all CMR, WD blues many are SMR. WD black as far as I know are all CMR. WD red (non-pro) can be SMR I believe.

I’ll be honest, the real difference is getting a 7200 vs 5400 RPM drive, particularly one with a larger cache, I’d always go for 7200 except for purely offline backup stuff.

In terms of external drives and shucking, it’s largely a crapshoot. You can try searching what drives others found in a model, however they’re subject to change.

Bottom line: If money is tight and it’s just you, you can absolutely do SMR and 5400 RPM external drives and have a smooth experience as long as we’re talking re-encodes not raw Blu-ray remuxes (I have seen an external 5400RPM SMR drive choke and fail trying to smoothly play a file at 24MB/s bitrate but it worked fine with 10MB/s re-encodes, even those with burst rates of 17MB/s). If you can afford a bit more try to go 7200 and CMR.

https://diskprices.com/

Beware MDD at the top is alleged to sell drives they’ve refurbished which are essentially used but with wiped smart. Other cheap deals… check sellers. If it’s not sold and shipped by Amazon it could be slightly used drives (usually third party sellers do a mix so some people get brand new, others not so much). Also beware third party sellers and Amazon itself often sell OEM drives without warranty. I always check the serials online before opening the anti-static bag to make sure it’s in warranty.

Also: shucks.top

You need to wait and watch for the good deals but they come around multiple times a year.

Also, understand there are certain storage ranges to get these prices. Generally 8-18TB drives are best deals per TB. You pay a premium for 20-22 top size drives as well as for smaller drives like 2-4TB. 14TB seems to be the current sweet spot most of the time.

Lastly. Understand SMR drives are alright for backups but not ideal for streaming high bitrate content from or using to seed files. CMR is better.

OP said money was tight.

And why pay more for less? Over the purchase of 3 hard drives I save enough to get a fourth “free” off the difference in savings.

$4x14tb=$56 for example.

But please. Continue to pay whatever you want. More cheap drives for me.

$20/TB is a bad deal.

You can get WD Red Pro’s on sale twice a year for $16/TB.

Further you can order unused data center and enterprise drives for anything from $11-$16/TB and those things are built to take way more use and abuse than home users can throw at them.

I would not pay above $17/TB for traditional magnetic spinning disk storage.

Literal Scooby-Doo shit. Villains trying to scare locals to get at resources.