Never torrent without 1)a VPN, one that 2)gives you a dedicated IP.

A VPN is great for most things, but not quite enough for torrenting.

This is because (everyone please correct me if wrong) torrenting is peer-to-peer which means that someone seeding to you can see your real isp-issued IP address. They can contact your ISP and whine about you.

If some copyright guardian sets up a honeypot, they could get your identity even if you use a VPN.

The solution is to use a VPN that gives out a substitute IP address they own (and therefore keep private) which then redirects traffic to you.

There may be better ones out there but I haven’t bothered looking ever since I signed up with privateinternetaccess and use their “Dedicated IP” setting.

Not just that, but if I have a question about, say, Linux scripts, then I have to search fifty fucking communities names c/Linux in fifty fucking instances to find a solution.

Just because an instance has the biggest community doesn’t mean it will have an answer. So I do have to look at fifty fucking instances.

I haven’t seen a single viable argument that justifies this irritating and inconvenient situation except i LiKe fEdErAtIoN.

And for the federation fetishists, yes you can have federation AND one single c/Linux across instances.

If you don’t want to read Linux tips from lemmy.naziLinuxUsers.com then just block that instance like you would block a nazi individual on reddit.

This problem is so ridiculously easy, but for some reason the mediocre status quo always has its ardent defenders.

It’s kind of the symptom of bad design.

False choice fallacy. Those are not the only two choices. We can look for ways for lemmy itself to help resolve the issue.

1337x has started requiring you to sign up with your email address before you can download. Not today, FBI

Which leads to polluted water, a blighted environment, and corporations finding ways to rule humanity. No thanks.

Find the hosts file on your machine. Add a line for the domain you want to block, like so:

lemmy.annoyingassholes.com 0.0.0.0

If that didn’t make sense, google the terms I used and you’ll find tons of tutorials.

Oh, I saw the futility of talking to them lonnnnnnnnng ago. You might as well try to convince a christian that they’re wrong. You know why that is? Because they’re both cults.

In addition, there are different levels of socialism. “Some” individual ownership turns people off. “The State owns the house I worked so hard to pay off?” You can have full private ownership of your things AND have single-payer health care, top-tier public education, reining in predatory banks, etc. We want to be Norway, not Venezuela.