Trailblazing Braille Taser

Sounds like you were a 1337 H4X0R back in the day

Sorry, I was writing that in Trump’s voice. I am an American who loves and contributes to open-source :)

Freedom isn’t free as in beer?

If it’s free, then why are we paying for it?

You can also “simply” raw-dog Wireguard. It’s built into the Linux kernel, so you barely have to install anything besides the userspace tools.

Basically, I objected to being reliant on the generosity of a for-profit company. “We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they would be easy.”

This is a rough sketch:

• Create a Linux server. It can even be a VM/container if you get the networking right.
• Create a Wireguard interface and pick a private IP address subnet that won’t conflict with your home subnet: https://www.wireguard.com/quickstart/
• Define PostUp and PostDown rules in your Wireguard config that modify iptables to masquerade traffic from the Wireguard subnet
• Also set net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 with sysctl. (There is probably an IPv6 equivalent but I live in the past.)
• Generate keypairs and configs for each device you want to use
• Set up dynamic DNS, e.g. https://freedns.afraid.org/
• Forward UDP port 51820 to your server
• Install the Wireguard app on your client devices. If Linux, you can just write a client config containing the necessary magic words and start it up with wg-quick.

Boom. Tailscale’d.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten some steps. I have some janky automation that’s broken in a new way every time I try to use it.

I have no opinion of them, but I’m curious why advertising would imply untrustworthiness. Are you saying they’re too eager or something? Spending money on ads is also consistent with a company that’s making money by charging for a service — I’d be more suspicious of free VPNs.

Y’all remember Amarok or am I old?

Oh, in that case all OP needs is cat.

I don’t even capitalize pronouns for gods, why would I do it for you? Wait, are you saying you used to be a god?

Yeah, there really should be some expectation of stewardship in exchange for absurd post-Disney copyright durations.

What does “maintain a lower profile” mean specifically? I think the point of a private tracker is that you don’t need to enable DHT, which effectively broadcasts to the internet that your IP address is trying to download content identified by a specific hash.

Isn’t that the whole point of a private tracker?

I think you mean “$EDITOR”. Gotta have that variable expansion.

Unix -> Linux -> Ferrix?

Oh dang, sorry about that. I’ve used rclone with great results (slurping content out of Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.), but I never actually tried the Google Photos backend.

You could try using rclone’s Google Photos backend. It’s a command line tool, sort of like rsync but for cloud storage. https://rclone.org/

DRM = Direct Rendering Manager, in case anyone else was thinking Digital Rights Management…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Manager

MlT (MlT): please accept this honorary PhD

Cryptocurrency is not necessarily anonymous. Buying bitcoin from a broker leaves a record connecting your payment method to your wallet. Even if you mine them yourself, doesn’t your IP address show up on the public ledger? I guess if you somehow bought bitcoin in cash…

Is there a more private cryptocurrency I’m not considering?

The implications of “magic is data” are fun. It leads to stories like Unsong where you can brute-force enumerate incantations until you find a good one. I also like the concept of Wizard’s Bane. I haven’t read it, but my understanding is that magic turns out to be Turing-complete, and the protagonist creates a LISP evaluator in magic, which enables them to outcast their enemies who are still doing the magical equivalent of writing assembly.