Tech illiteracy today is insane. I had to help my parents connect up the TV as a kid, and now I have to help my kids connect up their TV/PC. Obviously a lot wrong with that statement (I. E. Not everyone leans techy) but it does make me feel like my age group is the only ones that have a vauge idea what is going on

Definietly not, but it dropped from the ‘mainstream’ knowledge base and people who only knew screaming are ‘discovering’ it now.

They absolutely can of course. However, its easier for them to go after the easier fish that are public and advertise/make profit off work, much the same way a theif will levitate toward the least secure/most attractive house to rob. That said, country makes a huge difference - risk profile between a US citizen and say a Romanian is very different.

• keep a eye on https://redlib.trux.dev/r/OpenSignups/ for sites that briefly open for anyone to signup
• keep a eye on https://lemmy.world/c/opensignups (not as trafficed as reddit sadly, might be better lemmy alternatives around)
• Look for sites that do IRC interviews (MAM, RED, OPS)
• Invite from a trusted friend (Note: I recommend being slow and steady and avoiding invites, its safer to ‘make it your own way’ - You can potentially lose your account(s) if someone youve trusted does something dodgy like buy/sell accounts - you have to absolutely 100% trust the person longterm and anyone theyve invited)
• Never ask for invites, especially publically/DM’s/unsolicited.
• Once into a reputable site and rank up a little through seeding/account time, look for invite/power user forums to request invites to other sites. This is how you branch out over time and ‘recruit’ your way through trackers.
• If your into ebooks MAM is a excelent starting place, its incredibly easy and forgiving and has a good invite section to springboard from (and friendly/welcoming community).
• TL is really good, has lots of freeleech packs, and is open semi-regulary, often when another tracker has issues/downtime.

Info:

• sites/acronym list (exhaustive) https://hdvinnie.github.io/Private-Trackers-Spreadsheet/
• https://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/Private_trackers (older but still interesting/relevant)
• https://redlib.trux.dev/r/Piracy/comments/19bl0dn/the_complete_guide_to_climbing_the_ranks_of/

reAdarr sorry. A radarr shutdown would have sent a lot of us into a meltdown

Really can’t say that’s the case. A lot of PTs have bonuses points and other things for long term seeding, and you can then buy upload or reduce download, or regular site wide free-leech, or free-leech over xGB, or Perma freeleech while you seed 1tb. You can do perfectly fine on a home connection as long as you don’t mind keeping some torrents seeding (like you ideally should be to share back) You can go from open reg PTs to mid or elite teir PTs off a home connection and no seedbox (if you out in some elbow grease).

Stick to private trackers, the risk of being caught is dramatically lower (harder to get it, smaller user base, companies target the big public ones)

Yeah there’s bug fixes I’ve been following for 3-4 years that have no traction, I wouldn’t hold your breath. Considering readar just got discontinued I wouldn’t be totally surprised if the same happened to lidarr.

Mechanics I’ve seen to avoid this:

• Occasional sitewide freeleech
• bonus points for seeding duration irregardless of upload, can be traded for reducing download
• freeleech torrents (only counts upload not download)
• partial freeleech (25/50/75% download counted)
• Timed freeleech (free first 24h)
• Download % counted reduced based on seed size (seed >1tb and everything’s freeleech)
• Reduction of download % counted based on rank
• Forum competitions for bonus points/freeleech tokens
• Freeleech tokens giveouts

Hell, there’s quite a few PT’s that don’t care about ratio and just have minimum seeding times on torrents.

Plenty of these trackers have been running 1-2 decades on 1 or more of these methods just fine.

Almost every site is laughably easy to keep ratio if you read the rules/FAQ, look at some what’s to build points/ratio, read the forums, and don’t go nuts In the first week while your establishing your account

So reading more into it, it’s (currently) only on the bogus copilot+ PCs they were peddling? I’m happily on bazzite, but this is good news for my stubborn mates that haven’t touched copilot+ shit.