PiraHxCx

Just some old thread someone sent me today :)

This weekend, meeting a lot of people, I noticed how hard it is for us to communicate and organize stuff. Some have Instagram, some have X, both are shitty places not designed for group conversation. Some have Discord, some have WhatsApp, some don't use the phone, some have no social media, and everything requires you to either provide an email or phone number, create an account, etc, so I thought maybe it would be easier to have something like an IRC room, but it's been more than 20 years since I last touched IRC and I'm sure there must be newer alternatives around.

Main functionality I'm looking for is casualness (no acc needed) and stored live chat. The ability to pin stuff would be great, maybe create sub rooms and have private chat as well. Do you guys know anything like that?

If I keep all incoming connections blocked, but also all outgoing connections blocked except my browser (no MS/Win service is communicating with anything online), would my attack surface be just the browser? So it wouldn't matter if Win is not updated?

I only buy games when they are at least 75% off and at most $10 in my currency... I didn't buy any games for like 2 years or so, but early this month I bought Frostpunk, SiN, Red Faction, Mars: War Logs, and The Technomancer and already beat them, so I got these today (not feeling like playing anything that requires too much attention).
I have played Aliens vs Predator, Dredd vs Death, and FEAR before though.

Or have to go through great lengths to escape.

In my country you can't buy any medicine without showing your ID... I mean, you technically can, but if you are registered they "give" like an 80% discount, so everyone thinks it's a great deal, not realizing that's the normal price, they are just pretending you can still go and buy a simple cold medicine without sharing your ID, phone, email, and street address with the drug store and whoever they decide to sell that information to, you just have to pay absurdly more. Yeah, you can lie about all the other information, but not really about your ID number. Probably soon, to get the "discount", you are going to have to verify your email or phone number as well.

I always remember WannaCry as a reason to keep Windows updated (no, I wasn't affected by it), but every new update is full of AI bloat :S
I keep all the communication with the mothership blocked and open just the Wuauserv, Bits and few domains just for updates, and every new update that are new services trying to call home, and this one update sitting here waiting for me to allow internet access I read the content and it is very descriptive about "Copilot+ PCs unique features", "AI-Powered experience", "Accessibility and input" (they added AI to a bunch of stuff), "User interface and experience" (more AI and widgets), then they say they added this Windows Hello and Windows Share that I don't even want to know, and for security all they say is "Critical security fixes are included to help keep your system protected against emerging threats." but to get this I need to get all their AI crap that might be a bigger security and privacy risk than whatever "Critical security fix" they included :S

From Andor s02e06. They were explaining how the relics in the room are used, but they skipped that one.

So I was looking for this file and a guy found it and sent me a link. There were two download options, both full of ads. I managed to download from the second link, but what really baffled me was the first one: TeraBox.

First thing, I couldn't find any way to download the file. This crap actually wanted me to download a .exe to install their software so I could download the file from the internet, so obviously I said fuck it and tried the second link instead.

Then I told the guy who gave me the link that TeraBox was sketchy as fuck and I hoped he wasn’t actually using it, and went to search for more info about TeraBox. Apparently the program is full of ads, and wherever you click it tries to make you upgrade to premium and throws more ads at you. Its bandwidth is complete crap, but hey, it gives you 1TB of free cloud storage, yay!

TeraBox was created by Baidu using a subsidiary in Japan, later they changed the name and the name of the Japanese company as well to try not to look affiliated with Baidu.

Anyone here old enough to remember hao123, their browser hijacker that would fuck up you registry and shit just to reinstall itself through Windows Services after being uninstalled, already knows Baidu is pure cancer, and it’s hilarious if you check videos of people testing their antivirus - that manages to be more of a malware itself than McAfee. This Chinese-Google ethics make Google itself look like Mullvad, and they want you to download and install their .exe just so you can download files from the web lol

Yeah, that guy I mentioned was using TeraBox and thinking it was great, and apparently a whole lot of people do. 1TB free \o/ (although, looking at Reddit and Play Store - where it has 100m+ downloads - everyone complains files don't sync, they disappear, even after buying premium they still see ads and the speed is still crap, they don't reward whatever bonuses they promise, and support is nonexistent... so shit doesn't even work properly...)

I'm all for making tons of accounts to use Google Drive/Mega/Dropbox/etc to distribute files, even if they have crappy privacy practices, you don’t need to share any real information with them anyway: use a VPN and a secure browser to create your account with a disposable email and that’s it, whatever info they gathered doesn’t matter, let them host stuff for you at their expenses... but TeraBox? Ouch, that's insanity.

I don't care much about mobile gaming, and when I play something to kill time on it, it's often Minesweeper, Sudoku, Dominoes... back when I first got an smartphone (2019) I tried out several games, mindnumbing idlers, big-IP gacha-crap, they all look pretty much the same and looking at the store today I can't find anything that looks remotely interesting... I mean, I just saw this one Tomb of the Mask but then at the reviews you see people saying this game used to be good but now it has aggressive monetization on everything.

I remember having some good time with Autochess, an Elder Scrolls card game and some Warhammer 40k games, another fun game I played for a bit was Magic Rampage, and I also really liked Stranger Things: The Game (I just saw it was renamed to Stranger Things 1984), but it has been some years since I last played so I don't know if they became an Ad hell as well.
Back then, I bought two games: Solitairica - which I recently reinstalled and it's still great. And Rebel Inc. - which I also recently reinstalled but they released several packs of premium content so everywhere you tap they are trying to sell you something... and since I last played they also added a new difficulty setting that is looking very p2w and it's quite sad. Night of the Full Moon is another game I liked a lot, I tried to buy the full game back then but I was getting an error in the store and gave up, I might buy it now.

Two of my favorite sites got banned yesterday, Divinicide and Omnipresence, as always there is no warning nor explanation.
Always keep your site backups updated.

edit: Gotcha. Thanks peeps.

I wonder how much storage I'm going to save converting my mp3 library to opus

edit: Win11