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 had a physics class that required Mathmatica and a stupid expensive textbook. The professor said the college forced him to use those because the college gets a kickback for it. Luckily he was awesome and told everyone that we could buy the much cheaper older version of the book and pirate the software.

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 recently watched, “Russia 1985–1999: TraumaZone” and greatly enjoyed it.

It’s about what it was like to live in the Soviet Union at the end of communism and then the end of democracy. The story is entirely told with footage from the time.

I’d like to also recommend my two favorite documentaries about labor unions, Harlan County, USA and American Dream.

I’ve had issues that I’ve been able to work around.

I have previously had the error, “settings could not be applied”, which I worked around by uninstalling my YouTube updates, installing the recommended version and clearing revanced manager data. I now get an error about not being able to load the original APK. I work around this by deleting the two apks in /data/abd/vanced before patching.

I’m rooted and have to repatch on each reboot. Not complaining, just want to share my experience in case it helps others.

I love revanced, and feel so thankful for it. I can’t afford YT premium, without revanced I would miss out on so much great content.

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.

Rsync everything besides media to a Storj free account. I also rsync my most important data(docker compose files,config files, home assistant, a few small databases) to Google drive.

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.