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Cake day: Jun 14, 2023

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Racknerd. I have two VPS with them for a total of $25/year. not as feature filled as any of the big players but it’s dirt cheap. Found them on https://lowendbox.com/



HAHA no! Someone literally just changed their twitter handle, display name and avatar, then bought a blue check, and THAT’S IT.


Yeah this unfortunately doesn’t exist the way I’d like it either. I just simply won’t use an ebook reader if it’s just running in the browser. It really needs a dedicated app. There were two awesome ebook readers, one called marvin3, the other I don’t know the name. They both kinda stopped dead end, and since they were unfortunately closed source, even if the community wanted to, we can’t just pick up where the author abandoned the work. one of my dreams is to make a completely floss ebook ecosystem. A central collection/library that can serve to however many clients. A client that’s a full application for ios and android, as well as computers/macs. Also a client for appletv and other tv ecosystems so you can just lay on your couch or on your bed and read without having to actually hold the thing in your hand. Eating popcorn while reading a spy thriller the likes of john lecarre and you will be converted. All of which are as featureful and customizable as marvin. I’d rather not do it myself but it’s just kinda one of those things that really needs to be done!

I’d really love to see the client app have customizable skins/chrome. you could have an elegant woody, a futuristic white tablet, an aged leather bound tome. Or just no theme at all. You could customize the context menu for when you highlight a phrase or a word. Want different actions available on longpress, go for it.

I have written so many pages of features and ideation but haven’t even come up with a name, let a lone started any coding whatsoever 😅

Of course interop would be a central concern. Serve you library to any client that accepts it’s standard api. Add a plugin to the server so it works on whatever client you like! Fully open source so if the project is abandoned, it can be forked an given new life.

…Yeah I really have dreamt about something like this for a looooong time


Different things will work for different organizations. More important than this is whether everyone is on the same page with their workflow in checking PRs. One commit prs might be easy for some workflows and bad for others


Really cool. Anyone know if screenshot + pdf is as good as what raindrop does to archive saved sites? Is it possible to use archive.org or something similar in place or in addition to the builtin archiving?


It says you can only view stats available from radarr or sonarr. Is there anyone who has set it up that can confirm whether you can add to radarr/sonarr from the app, or initiate downloads or anything like that?


So it is! Damn I’ll definitely be using this then. At least until they decide to close the gates and force you into a subscription again. For now though, I’d say it’s the best option. But don’t be surprised when they enshittification continues




It’s in a really unfortunate state. FOSS wise, the only thing I can recommend is navidrome, BUT finding a good app for it is REALLY hard.

One step away from that would be plex pass, which is getting enshittified more and more and will likely never reverse course. But if you just want a good self hosted music player, plex pass is much better than navidrome, to the point where you have to be REALLY dedicated to decide on a navidrome solution over plex amp.

Then there’s Roon, which is as far as you can get from a FOSS solution but is unfortunately the best solution to self hosting and streaming combined, and it has an awesome interface where you can read bios of the artists, select a composition of theirs, view any documented covers or interpretations of it, find out everyone who played on a particular song and what they played, then check out their entire range of output, and so on. There’s unfortunately nothing close to Roon for that experience , but Roon still has MAJOR faults and bugs.

So you get nothing and you’ll have to make do with that :\

BTW I’d be stoked to work on a project that aims to make a FOSS version of Roon. I just want to see those fuckers suffer the way I’ve suffered dealing with that horrible program


I’ve literally never seen a project remotely interesting that has their documentation on discord



Someone installed chimera os already! Should be in YouTube search results

I do think they’ll release an amd version


Hmm that’s a good point. Though I think it shouldn’t be too bad unless under heavy load all the time. I think the CPU is made for laptops. That said it’d definitely have to be doing more than just working as an opnsense box


Also for media creation, using my main pc and nvme as a staging area and moving finished work and archived projects to my NAS is really helped along by the 10g connection I have. Easily saturates it with 6x7200rpm exos drives.



Great info thanks. Definitely agree, it’d be worth it for the lower power draw and lower heat output.

I’m a beginner homelabber with just a NAS and a repurposed alienware laptop. I’d be able to offload all containers I’m running onto the ms-01. Also 4k video can be really hard on the CPU so even if it’s overkill for just 4k video, that headroom is of course helpful, especially if you’re running multiple containers, or even if you have two or more people in the household streaming simultaneously


I use 10g between my main pc and my nas. It’s amazing. I use nvmes for triple a, intensive type games, and almost everything else gets installed on the nas. There’s great use cases for 10g.


This looks like an amazing little box that can do almost anything. I'm wondering how people feel about the pricepoint $679 early bird $839 msrp I'd love to grab one to use as a router/firewall, plus run any homelabbing containers I have on my NAS. How's the value proposition stack up? Price looks great to me considering the cpu and connectivity it offers. Edit: Additional info [serve the home sponsored video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3j4aEAZR7w) sponsored but still really really informative. There's a section near the end going through a tons of ideas of how to utilize the pci slot, including epanding nvme storage, external sas, extra networking etc. seems you can get over 40gb extra throughput from that port. [Forum thread for pci slot compatibility ](https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads%2Fminisforum-ms-01-pcie-card-and-ram-compatibility-thread.42785%2F)
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artvee is freemium - you can probably download anything on there that’s free off of wikimedia.


Totally agree, who knows when Google will pull the plug. I don’t see this being very profitable for them. I already have a favorite artwork that’s been removed, Two Sisters by Renoir. There’s no legal reason I can imagine that they’d have to take it down so it’d have to do with ongoing deals they have with museums.

And that sounds like a cool project. Take a look at this:

https://dezoomify.ophir.dev/

At the top there’s a browser extension and a desktop application. You can enter a url from google cultural institute and it’ll request each image that constitutes the whole.

More info on the githubg: https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify

Another project more specifically aimed at google cultural institute: https://github.com/mewforest/google-art-downloader

And there’s this one: https://github.com/piotrantosz/google-arts-crawler

Dezoomify is the most recently updated. I believe with a script, you’d be able to create a list of artworks you want full prints of and have it download them one by one.


Google Cultural Institute is just plain awesome. SUPER high res photos that let you zoom in to your heart’s content. Right now in the front page you can color in hokusai’s great wave. You can explore lots of famous museums using google street view. It’s really incredible and totally free.

If you want to bulk save high res artwork of artists, not sure tbh. I’m certain there’s a way to download the high res images on GCI though

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/dance-at-le-moulin-de-la-galette/rQEx7CtGiKE3yg here’s a good example. You can zoom way in and see the impasto brushstrokes and even the canvas behind it. What’s weird is that this version seems way darker than any other pictures you may find online. Not sure what’s up with that as it appears they took great care to make the photo




Sus. They had a vpn promotion on the read me. Check the main branch. It defaults to rm which is cleaned out


Cross platform, a long as it’s mac or linux lol.




I think any official integration wouldn’t be smart. Working on interoperability and a plugin to link them that way would be far smarter. This guy likes decentralization but wants to combine two very different concepts and products lol. I get it though and I love that idea. The other thread also mentions open library which is a legal version of what op posted



Kindles allow loading epubs nowadays btw. You can even add epubs from one of their websites. I like to sideload mine to get features that kindle epubs have that sideloaded ones don’t, like scrolling the text instead of having to flip pages


Nice link. Would probably be one of my first places I look for any classic literature. Though it seems fairly limited from just the few searches I did


I made a community !pkms@sh.itjust.works for all sorts of things related to PKMS aka personal knowledge management systems. I added some of my favorites resources there.

You may like orgpad: https://sh.itjust.works/post/8295637


Automation for books is kinda weird. It’s not like a TV Series where new episodes come out every week. I wanted to like readarr but I don’t see the utility. Anna’s Archive and IRC are your best options.


Anyone have anything that works on Apple TV? I have some invidious app or other that basically never works, at all.


Eh, at least they added support for it. Good for them. Still looking at this app with some skepticism but so far seems to be doing what it sets out to do.


Audioz is widely regarded as the best place for music production software. Why do they delete posts?
For example, the following had been posted and I saved them for later, but now they're gone, and searching for the same doesn't result in them. https://audioz.download/software/242534-download_audio-modeling-swam-solo-strings-bundle-v3725169-win.html https://audioz.download/software/242592-download_audio-modeling-swam-solo-woodwinds-bundle-v3725169-win.html https://audioz.download/software/242540-download_audio-modeling-swam-solo-brass-bundle-v3725169-win.html I can only think of 2 things but would love clarification if any one knows. 1. they found a virus or something malicious in a release, or 2. they got a dmca or copyright takedown Both seem somewhat unlikely R2R has a really good reputation, and there's enough on audioz that if copyright stuff could get anything taken down, the site wouldn't exist at all.
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I just finished using this guide to get Blocky set up. Part 2 shows how to set up the grafana dashboard. I was inspired to set up blocky instead of the other more popular alternatives due to his other video showing that blocky has the best latency of all [blocky vs pihole vs adguard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfBh2VVOVZA)
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CGNAT blocking external access to NAS. Looking to address this plus more.
- For my first goal, I want to get around my ISP's CGNAT so I can access my NAS outside my network. Tailscale doesn't work. Attempting to access my NAS always goes through their relays. From what I've gathered, a VPS is a good way to get around this so I got the basic $1/mo Racknerd KVM VPS. I'd like a performant way to manage this with low latency being ideal. That is my primary goal. From what I've researched, wireguard would be the most performant way to make that connection. I'd like to be able to access my NAS's primary IP or even set up reverse proxies so I can access it from outside the network, without sending all my network traffic through the NAS. I was under the impression tailscale did this but for some reason when I have tailscale active on my macbook, speedtests show major lag over 100ms. - I've heard wireguard was the most performant but anything will do with the goal of accessing my NAS. The maximum I need is to be able to stream 4k hdr/dolby atmos content from my NAS. - My second goal is to set up Unbound, Blocky and maybe have a fallback to quad9. I'd also like my devices to be able to use this externally. I set up a basic version of this today using [this guide](https://github.com/rajannpatel/Pi-Hole-on-Google-Compute-Engine-Free-Tier-with-Full-Tunnel-and-Split-Tunnel-Wireguard-VPN-Configs/blob/master/REASONS.md). However upon more investigation, I've learned Blocky causes much less latency than pihole. I went down a rabbit hole, researching nextdns, dnsfilter, etc. I think Blocky and Unbound will be great, but I'm more interested in the goal than the technology used to get there. I'm primarily interested in a low latency content/ad/tracker/malicious blocker that's available on and off my network. - Would it introduce less latency to run this locally off my NAS, and have a separate version set up in the cloud for when I'm away from home? I'll happily do this if there's any tangible benefit. My routing setup is ISP modem/router -> asus zenwifi router-> 10g switch, then my PC and NAS. All connected by cable. - Is there a way to set this up with the primary goal of having external access to my NAS? I feel like there's a way to kill two birds with one stone with this. Like maybe having the DNS resolve my NAS's internal IP to the VPS external IP which will then forward traffic requesting that IP address to the NAS somehow (not sure how exactly to accomplish this, or if it's possible). - I set this up originally on GCP due the guide I followed mentioning performance benefits. I'd be willing to host all this on the VPS if that's possible, but would prioritize high availability, reliability and low latency, which I believe GCP would give me better than my budget VPS. Strangely, the latency when connected to the current setup, GRC DNS benchmark is showing 100+ ms latency, while with it deactivated I get about 50ms average. - My third and kinda stretch goal is to host my website and side projects with the help of the VPS since I'll most likely not be using all the storage, bandwidth or computing power from just my primary and secondary goals. I currently host using github pages and redirect to my domain using cloudflare. I had my projects hosted on heroku. It seems like there's a heroku free tier popping up and then quickly enshittifying every other week so it just seems more reliable to host it myself. - - It goes without saying that I'd like to have this be as secure as possible as I've read lots of self hosting horror stories. My priorities are security, cost, reliability, performance in that order. I think hosting unbound/blocky on the VPS would make for a more elegant and easy to maintain solution, but I'm not 100% sure of the reliability and performance of Racknerd's budget level VPS offerings. - So to retierate, I'd like to access my NAS which is behind a CGNAT externally, set up ad/tracker/malicious content blocking, and host my website/projects, with security, cost,reliability and performance in mind. I think I want to use something like NPM, pfsense, blocky, unbound, authentik, fail2ban, and wireguard. either divided between free tier cloud hosts like GCP and oracle, and my VPS for less critical stuff like NAS access, or just put it all on the VPS if that's easier. I've done an absolute boatload of research to try and educate myself, which I've not included here because this would make this already lengthy post even longer. That said I'm still very noobish with all of this and appreciate any advice!
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Piggybacking off the selfhosting email post earlier, does anyone have experience self hosting anon addy?
I'd really like to use the service and in fact I wish I'd been using it forever. But I want to do it right and self host it. It's just, maybe the most complicated thing I've ever seen. Does it require self hosting your own email server as well? If you already own a domain, does that make the process easier? is Anon Addy the only service like this? Also I'd love to integrate with bitwarden, so when I create a new account for some website, I can automatically create a new email address. (idk if there's any reason to do this, just think it could be cool) To piggyback further, I've been wondering if having my own domain would help me get around my double nat issue not allowing me to make reverse proxies. Thanks in advance to the community! Edit: I think I have a solution! Bitwarden actually [has these integrations](https://bitwarden.com/help/generator/#tab-forward-email-3Uj911RtQsJD9OAhUuoKrz) already and it's relatively new. duckduck go just doesn't work. I tried forwardemail and that site is filled with dark patterns so you think the free account is worth a damn until you're already invested time into setting it up. At the last minute it tells you you can't use it with bitwarden on the free account. The others are at least up front about their pricing. forwardemail.net doesn't even have a pricing page. Sending emails from the masked addresses is also paywalled. pretty much all functionality on forwardemail.net is paywalled, but they hide it from you the best they can, so fuck that company. I spoke too soon. There's no option that isn't paid. So I guess back to self hosting anonaddy Edit: I finally got duckduckgo email working with bitwarden integration. It now generates a random email for me automatically! **Edit edit: Found a good solution:** There are two solid solutions I think for this problem: Bitwarden + SimpleLogin integration. Ends up being about $40/year. The SimpleLogin integration is more limited as it just generates a generic hash. Pass gives you more flexibility - it adds the domain followed by a hash. It's cheaper by a few bucks if you pay per year. or Proton Pass ($48/year, or $36/year if paying for 2 years, or if you have proton unlimited ($8/mo), it's included What' nice is that the email address alias generator is built in and has a lot more options. It's cheaper if you pay for 2 years or already have proton unlimited. Both have stellar track records.
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cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/5850736 > This is the resource I've been looking for. I'm working my way through the book but it gets in the weeds *really* early. It's all fun and games and then chapter 4 just hits like a brick wall. Amos does a tremendous job explaining the *why* behind things, in a more wheels to the pavement way.
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[Piped](https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=EVMMoDWN79E) Great watch but to summarize: * Bun beats Node/Yarn for package installation * Somewhat better API/DX in some ways. * Loses poorly in testing performance * Tons of incompatibility issues/performance issues in other areas. General summary: Just don't use Bun yet, seems like it needs some more time in the oven.
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connection/certificate errors from DSM. Package center, QC, and much more unavailable. (Synology ds1621+)
A couple days ago I randomly received this notification email: "System is busy and unable to deliver the diagnostic data. Please try again later." there's no info in the body. When I received the email I checked my DSM dashboard and it was unreachable, but my docker ccontainers were still running and I was able to SSH to the machine. I tried to reset it and it didn't reset for around 20 minutes (i think maybe something to do with virtual machine manager because after logging back in and restarting, this was holding up the restart process). I restarted by holding it down until it powered down and started up again It has been exhibiting odd behavior: I cannot access the package manager, Security advisor, quickconnect, support center, push service under notifications, sign in on the notification > email page on control panel, it does nothing, synology account section of the control panel, active insight, DSM update, all are giving me errors that imply some broken connection, certificate, or networking issue. I tried to update a docker container and I can't access the registry. It's giving me an error: "Error response from daemon: Get "https://registry-1.docker.io/v2/": x509: certificate signed by unknown authority" Trying to access synology photos from my phone also gives an invalid certificate error I have made no changes to my router or system or anything. I can ping all the services here from SSH: https://kb.synology.com/en-global/DSM/tutorial/What_websites_does_Synology_NAS_connect_to_when_running_services_or_updating_software I'm worried that I somehow got attacked. I've been trying to figure out how to connect to this thing with my double nat situation which has made it impossible to access from outside without tailscale. I just don't understand what's happening. My worst fear is that maybe someone hacked in and modified my dsm install to mess with it or something. IDK. I reached out to synology support a couple days ago but they responded with the most generic tech support questions: > > you attempted to access DSM using various devices or web browsers? Are there any indications of hardware-related issues? > > Are there any third-party applications or packages installed on your Synology device that might be affecting its performance? > > Can you access the Synology device's interface directly, or is the problem limited to accessing DSM? > > Have you encountered any recent power outages or disruptions that might have influenced the current situation? > > I saw on [this thread](https://www.synoforum.com/threads/ds-220-connection-failed-please-check-your-internet-connection.10327/page-2#posts) some people having errors that sound very similar but they all got them resolved around the same time
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Am I hosed? docker share deleted - snapshot says it made one last night, but the share is gone. On synology dsm 7.2
is there a way to recover snapshots to a share that has been completely deleted? I tried moving my docker install over to my new ssd volume and used scp to move the @docker folder to the new volume so I wouldn't lose all my containers. I started getting permissions errors, but it seemed I had fixed them by starting the containers with pgid/puid as root, then changing back to the dockerlimited user and starting the containers again. seemed to work fine but then watchtower updated an image and it totally fried that container, with some btrfs can't remove subvolume issue. i couldn't delete, reset or start the container so it was like frozen. i tried to create a brand new container of the same image using portainer and it failed with another ocr init not found error. so i tried a nuclear option of chmod 777 of the entire @docker folder and i still wasn't able to create a container with portainer. it was giving the same error. so I figured the permissions and everything were so screwed up, the only thing to do is start from fresh. I used a docker-autocompose script to make compose files of all my containers and saved them in my docker shared folder. Then i uninstalled container manager and checked the box to delete images, containers and shares. this deleted my docker share and the docker share i created as a backup. I think everything must still be there because even there's no share folders attributed to that volume, storage manager says theres still data on the drive. when i view usage details I see that snapshot is taking what i would expect to the correct amount for a full backup of the share folder i'd had but i can't tell for sure. Still I'm fairly positive the snapshot is my of my docker share. snapshot logs have this line from 5am today: 'Took a shared folder snapshot [GMT-05-2023.07.24-05.00.01] from share [docker] by [scheduler].' How can I recover the share from the snapshot when the share doesn't exist anymore? If I create a new shared folder with the same name, would I be able to use the snapshot then? I'm honestly afraid to touch anything now because it seems at every step I just keep shooting myself in the foot and making things worse. Idk what to do.
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cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/1386745 > Anytype has finally followed through on their promise and open sourced their repositories. Self hosting is now possible though there is no docker container available. > > This is a major step forward for all PKMS and I wholeheartedly congratulate them. > > btw Anytype is free, even their included sync service, which is the best of any offline-first style PKMS I have experienced. Anytype is top 3 PKMS for me, followed by Logseq and SiYuan. They're in good company and now it's only going to improve! > > > Resources: > > [Self hosting documentation](https://tech.anytype.io/how-to/self-hosting) > > [Contributor discussions](https://github.com/orgs/anyproto/discussions)
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Confused - Tailscale allows me to reach the original IP Address of my nas
Is this supposed to happen? I thought it assigned a special ip and that's the one you use. For me I'm able to access my original local ip address outside my network, and from the provided tailscale ip. luckily when I turn off tailscale I can't access either.
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Adobe suite for Mac?
I'm pulling my hair out trying to get lightroom to work on mac. It's fucking impossible, idk wtf to do. Someone please help. I don't know how but I got premiere pro working, but lightroom just doesn't want to fucking work.
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Getting Lightroom working on Mac?
I have premier, after effects, etc running just fine. Lightroom is giving me a ton of trouble, and on most of the megathread sites, the version is a year or more old. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
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audioz.download down? Any news?
Just checked audioz.download and it's not responding. oh god please. LIVE DAMN YOU LIVE. Anyone know what's going on here?
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Plex lays off 20% of its workforce
Plex, the free streaming app, laid off approximately 20% of its staff, TechCrunch has learned, which will affect all departments, including the Personal Media teams. “This is by far the hardest decision we’ve had to make at Plex,” CEO Keith Valory said in a statement. “These are all wonderful people, great colleagues, and good friends. But we believe it is the right thing for the long-term health and stability of Plex.” The streaming app gives users a single destination to upload and organize content (video, audio and photos) from their own server while also allowing them to stream it via mobile app, smart TV or desktop. In recent years, however, Plex has invested in free, ad-supported streaming (FAST) and live TV offerings. The FAST market has become saturated as many companies have entered the space. Plus, the overall advertising industry has taken a hit, making it harder for companies to earn enough revenue. Valory noted in his statement that the company was significantly impacted by the slowdown. “While we adjusted our business plan last year after the shift in equity markets to get us back on a path to profitability without having to cut personnel expenses, the downturn in the ad market in Q2 put significantly more pressure on our business and ultimately it became clear that we would need to take additional measures in order to maintain a confident path to profitability within the next 18 months,” he said. He added that the company is still expected to see 30% growth this year. According to a Slack message from Valory, obtained by The Verge, which first reported the layoffs, Valory noted that 37 employees would be impacted. Additionally, it seems that Plex may have had another round of layoffs earlier this year. Five months ago, a former account executive posted on LinkedIn that they were “affected by company layoffs.” As of January, the company had 175 employees, and its revenue was in the double-digit millions. Updated 6/29/23 at 12:10 p.m. ET with a statement from CEO.
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4k remux hevc vs 4k x265. a side by side comparison
All, I've been deliberating over this ever since I got usenet and got access to easy downloads of 70-80gb 4k remuxes. At first I believed I was getting fake uploads or something, but it seems to be a pattern. The remuxes have extreme noise that's really distracting and actually discards some of the depth information of the scene. on the other hand, the smaller 265/264 files appear to be smoothing out the noise, but also some texture detail. You can see from the comparison above. Note that the noisy version is hdr10 and the non noisy version doesn't have hdr. My question is, is that grain supposed to be so prominent? or is the scene releasing these remuxes pulling some shortcuts just to release a remux? Is this noisy version how it's *supposed* to look? or did they fuck up the encoding? Don't flame me for not knowing. I'm hoping this can be a touchpoint for constructive conversation, and to help other confused mateys on the journey to visual bliss. Thank you **edit**:: [This](https://www.avforums.com/reviews/tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-blu-ray-review.4613/) resource helped me understand. Long story short, this *is* the intent of the director - potentially enhance the period piece aesthetics. I suppose if it looks as crisp and sharp as a movie filmed on the state of the art digital camera, some of the cold war aesthetic would be lost. I get it and I will watch it and enjoy the graininess as the director intended 😂 A couple things that confused me: 1. I know sometimes scene groups take shortcuts and this can really affect quality. For example transcoding x264 to x265. Yes, some groups do this and it's of no use to anyone. My concern was that I may be downloading one of these releases. 2. There are movies from 40-50 years ago with very little to no film grain noticeable. Many remuxes don't have that grain. I'm not big in the filmmaker scene, so I guess it was somewhat a surprise to learn that some filmmakers actually want that grain in there.. Thank you all for your input and I hope this thread can be of use to folks that have this same question. Cheers mateys, happy sharing :)
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Guide: The idiot proof guide to downloading ebooks off IRC. With Pictures and everything!
I'm putting this together because I posted a while ago about using IRC to acquire ebooks on Reddit, and there was a metric shit ton of interest from others in learning how to do it. Much of this info is available on the net, but it can be difficult to track down if you don't know exactly what to look for. Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for how you choose to use this knowledge. This method can and should only be used to download legally available ebooks, as an alternative source in case other services go down for whatever reason. You use this guide *at your own discretion*. Now then, to the good stuff. **Q&A** > Question: Why should you use IRC to acquire ebooks, there are so many different ways to get them! Answer: IRC is the best method to find ebooks. The quality is almost always high, the selection is extensive, and finding and downloading the books is quick and easy. Put simply, unless you happen to have access to a private site exclusively made for ebooks, you probably won't find a better source. > Question: What do I need to make this happen? Answer: A IRC client (I'll be using mIRC for the purposes of this guide, it's the simplest to use and the most widely distributed as well. Besides that, the ability to copy and paste, and a bit of common sense. **Setup** 1. Now then, to begin, download a IRC client. I personally suggest [mIRC](http://www.mirc.com/). 2. Once you do that, install it and open the client up. You should be greeted with a page like [This](http://i.imgur.com/TgSNg47.jpg). 3. The first thing you want to do is write in a name that's unique enough to have not already been taken. For the purposes of this guide, I just choose something random. 4. Once that's done, you want to navigate down to "Ignore" section in the DCC options, and turn the box option to "disabled". This is to ensure that incoming files are not ignored, which is important if you actually want to receive your ebooks. [Example](http://i.imgur.com/sW0wptQ.jpg) 5. Next thing you want to do is scroll back up to the "Servers" tab and pick out a server. For ebooks, I know of two servers that host channels dedicated to ebook downloads. One is "Undernet", the other is "IRChighway". While both have their uses, IRChighway is the one you want to use 90% of the time. The selection is generally more robust, the channels are more stable, and the downloads are faster. You generally only want to use Undernet if you can't find the ebook you're looking for on IRChighway. Sometimes you can get lucky and one will have a book if the other does not. In any case, select you server by finding it in the drop down menu and double clicking it. [Example](http://i.imgur.com/82Cf1r7.jpg) **Actually finding and downloading your ebooks** 6. Once you've done that, it'll take you back to the menu that I originally showed you. This time, click the connect button, and it'll connect you to the server and open a window offering you a chance to join a channel. Now, there are several channels you can join depending the server you're on. On Undernet, you can either go with "Bookz" or "ebooks", while on IRChighway, you can join "ebooks". Type in your channel and hit join. [Example](http://i.imgur.com/LKy6ZJE.jpg) 7. Once you've done that, you'll be presented with a channel window filled with a whole bunch of people typing in seemingly meaningless strings of text, none of them talking to one another. This can be intimidating, but **don't worry**, it's not hard to figure out! It's at this point that you need to know the commands to properly utilize the channels bots. 8. When you join one of the channels I listed, there will be channel bots you'll use to interact with the bots that you will be downloading from. To access the commands for these bots, use the "@" symbol followed by the command you need. To search for an ebook, Use > @Search <book name or author name> This will have the channel bot automatically search through it's index and return you a listing of the books available from the download bots in the channel. [It will look like this](http://i.imgur.com/hGvcGTg.jpg). As you can see, I searched for Romeo & Juliet, and the bot went through its index and returned a list of potential downloads. Click the accept button to have it download. 9. Once you've done that, go into the upper portion of mIRC, click tools, and go to the "received files" drop down. Click it. [Example](http://i.imgur.com/tWAMUPU.jpg) 10. This will open up your mIRC downloads folder, which should contain a .zip file of the list of download options that the bot sent you. Extract it and open it up in notepad. There will be a variety of download links available in many different formats. Find whichever book you're looking for, in whichever format you prefer (I like HTML because they're generally the best formatted and the format is universal for mobile devices) and copy the text string up til the the end of the file. [Example](http://i.imgur.com/sg1vYBd.png) 11. Once you've done that, go back to the mIRC channel window and simply paste the text string into the channel. [Example](http://i.imgur.com/6Q0TwXE.jpg) 12. Click enter, and wait for the bot to respond, and then click accept when a file transfer window comes up. I've highlighted my download query, and the bots response with relevant information for you. It should be pretty self explanatory. [Example](http://i.imgur.com/xz0HFXx.jpg) 13. And you're done! The file will be downloaded to your mIRC downloads folder in a zip or rar archive. Simply extract it and read it! Note 1: You can also use the command > @find <book or author name> To search for your ebook if the channel bot is down or not responding quickly to the @search command. However I do not suggest this, as it gives you a clusterfuck of responses in your IRC client as personal messages. It can work, but only as a last resort. [Example](http://i.imgur.com/tQoL53F.jpg) Note 2: I've used the public domain "Romeo And Juliet" for the purposes of this guide. This book is in the *public domain*, and thus is not subject to any copyright. Once again, I encourage you to *only* download public domain books, but cannot control (and am not responsible) for what you wish to download. Note 3: Edit. Damnit, Reddit fucked the formatting and keeps renumbering my list. Whatever, not a big deal I guess. It doesn't change the content of the guide at all. Just go down the list, everything is in the proper order anyway. So, that's how you download ebooks off of IRC. Not so hard, is it? I hope you find this helpful, I promised this to more than a few people months ago, and I finally got around to it.
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