Brickfrog

I still use Virtualbox, configuration is way easier with the GUI

To be fair you can pair KVM/qemu with any GUI manager and have a similar interface to VirtualBox/Hyper-V/VMWare/etc. virt-manager (https://virt-manager.org/) is a popular one for example, I just started using it and it seems to work well for what I need.

Normally I’ve been using VirtualBox but for whatever reason it asks me to recompile the kernel on Debian 13 just to launch. Meanwhile qemu just works.

Don’t know if this helps you but did you already try changing Disk IO Type to Simple pread/pwrite (in advanced settings)? It was meant to address some issues with disk read/write + RAM usage. Not something that affected me all that much but could be worth a look.

Was mentioned in the 5.0.1 release notes and in the github pages

https://www.qbittorrent.org/news

https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/pull/21300

Beyond that I’d echo the other comment, try to just change settings you actually need to change. Oftentimes people make a whole ton of settings changes in their torrent client and then can’t figure out how to get it back to normal.

Not quite what you’re asking but if you buy your music on Bandcamp (or just have a Bandcamp account) you can “Follow” artists there. That tells Bandcamp to send you email alerts every time that artist releases an track/album on Bandcamp.

It’s one of the main ways I find out that new music gets released and it sort of works since I was probably going to buy it at Bandcamp anyway.

https://interviewfor.red/

https://interview.orpheus.network/ (might not be doing interviews right now per the other comment)

Never needed to use this but have seen that tools like https://github.com/fedarovich/qbittorrent-cli are able to export lists of loaded torrents in various formats, it might do what you want.

e.g. if you’re going to load the output in LibreCalc then you probably want to export a list in csv format most likely (the project’s wiki mentions it https://github.com/fedarovich/qbittorrent-cli/wiki/Output-Formats).

so when choosing which content to purge, I want to just sort by Ratio in qBittorrent and start purging anything older than 30 days that isn’t getting uploads. The problem is, more often than not I’m cross seeding the same content across multiple trackers, so although a specific torrent on a specific trackers may be performing poorly, that doesn’t mean the same content isn’t performing well on another tracker.

Something to consider for the future, you could re-work how you are storing your torrent data and hardlink all those cross-seeding torrents in their own folders. So if you do a full delete of one torrent + data it won’t actually affect the torrent + data of other torrents. If you have it split out like that then you could even try to automate the whole process of deleting old torrents with tools like https://github.com/Hundter/qBittorrent-Ratio-Manager or https://github.com/Mythic82/Qbittorrent-auto-delete

On Linux it would be something like

cp -al /home/barnaclebill/mytorrents/trackera/thismovie.2025 /home/barnaclebill/mytorrents/trackerb/

Would hardlink the same torrent data in two places so that torrents for trackera can point to the trackera folder and torrents for trackerb can point to the trackerb folder.

One thing you may want to update - listing Tor’s logging policy as “No Logs” is a bit misleading, that’s really more of a voluntary recommendation for individual Tor exit relay operators.

Tor exit relay operators absolutely can store logs of outgoing connections if they choose to. And technically they could even snoop on non-secure traffic if they choose, there’s a reason you should be using HTTPS if you’re going to use Tor for clearnet browsing.

Of course most Tor exit relay operators aren’t going to do these things but it’s all voluntary, seems incorrect to claim all exit relay operators follow no log principles.

EDIT: Also AFAIK you can’t forward a port from the clearnet through a Tor exit relay’s public IP address back to your own Tor client, Tor doesn’t do port forwarding like that. It’s definitely not needed to run Tor Browser (and Tor VPN I think) but that isn’t needed for any of the other VPNs either, a bit confusing how you listed that one.

Agreed, if OP is going to add Tor in a “VPN” list then may as well add I2P. I2P + outproxies are pretty much the same thing as Tor + Tor Exit Relay. It’s not the best way to utilize I2P but the option does exist.

Then again neither Tor nor I2P should be in a “VPN” list, the whole thing seems more of a VPN provider topic.

This doesn’t answer your main question but I suspect their thinking is that VPN use is already very common in torrent communities. So common that it’s not really a big deal for users to browse the site via VPN if necessary. It’s not really that the staff there is going to do age verification, realistically if necessary they’d likely just block access from whatever states/jurisdictions are giving them issues with age verification.

That aside not too sure if what you’re looking for currently exists. There are a few general torrent sites that also operate Tor / I2P domains, and also the general torrent indexer Postman exists on I2P. The amount of users in Tor / I2P networks is way lower vs the clearnet torrent sites so a hyper-focused torrent site in Tor / I2P doesn’t seem viable but I could be wrong.

Everything normal here. Granted I’m not on a network that blocks Tor so the Tor Browser’s normal startup/connecting routine has always worked fine.

Yes, that’s why qBittorrent’s “Download first and last pieces first” option exists. You’ll be able to stream that .mp4 with its moov atom at the end of the file as long as you download that last piece during the beginning of the download. In some ways that makes qBittorrent a better streamer for .mp4 files vs other methods.

Maybe the other commenter is referring to some other media file type that can’t be streamed.

EDIT - Haven’t checked but am guessing torrentio also downloads first/last pieces first otherwise it’d be a terrible torrent streamer.

Hmm, having checked “Download first and last pieces first” usually fixes that. e.g. a .mp4 with its moov atom at the end of the file won’t stream unless you make sure to download the last part of the file starting out. Just curious which media file type are you referring to that won’t stream regardless of having the first/last pieces downloaded?

But either way OP using Stremio + torrentio won’t fix that, that’s just another torrent client doing a torrent stream. If it won’t play mid-stream via qBittorrent it won’t play mid-stream in torrentio either.

Since you’re just streaming torrents you could just use a torrent client to download the torrent(s) in sequential mode.

e.g. Load the torrent in qBittorrent and make sure to enable “Download in sequential order” and “Download first and last pieces first”. When the torrent is about 5-10% downloaded you can start playing the incomplete file while the torrent continues to download in the background. Load the file in your preferred media player (VLC or whatever) and play.

They are slightly different, I think people are kind of asking if you are specifically looking for a VPS vs a seedbox. Some people do want a VPS so it’s a fair question.

A VPS implies that you’ll be renting a server and installing/setting up all the software on your own. You’ll probably have some sort of SSH + root access to install things there since you’re doing all that on your own.

A seedbox is more like a pre-configured shared VPS so it’ll already have torrent clients pre-installed along with other software commonly used with torrent clients. Depending on the vendor and type of seedbox you often won’t have root access and/or SSH access, usually the vendor won’t want you to randomly install software system-wide that might disrupt other users on that seedbox server.

PS - [email protected] also exists, a bit quieter there but it’s specific to the topic.

All good answers, one thing not mentioned is that there are smart/managed switches where you can toggle PoE on/off per port on the network switch. Could be useful, sometimes it’s best just to never provide power on any network ports until you know you need it.

My Sony Trinitron served me well back in the day - But no, I don’t miss the CRT era. Just too huge and heavy. And honestly I don’t remember the generic non-Trinitron CRTs being anything special, they were kind of shitty.

Anyways I thought the CRT thing is just collectors/old school gamers looking to display older media on a proper CRT? Obviously people with a lot of space, garages, basements, etc… people in tiny rooms and apartments need not apply LOL.

This whole article seems a bit off.

If I create a new torrent, does CGNAT (carrier-grade network address translation) prevent me from being an initial seeder of that torrent?

It’s not ideal, you won’t be able to seed/upload to any other firewalled (non port forwarded) peers.

But technically any connectable (port forwarded) peers connecting to you will still be able to download from you, so you’d still be able to seed in that sense. That does mean you’re only initial seeding to peers that have their own ports open/forwarded.

I can download and upload in my torrent client just fine, so I know my ISP isn’t (intentionally) blocking and firewalling torrents.

Yup that would work fine, you can participate in torrent swarms that contain other connectable peers and that’s usually how most torrent swarms are. You’ll probably have trouble with the random low seed torrents e.g. a torrent with one lone seed who also has no ports open, that seed won’t be able to send you any torrent data.

Yikes! Yeah if the SSD storage isn’t easily accessible then it’s not worth the disassembly headache.

If that is the case then OP’s only option is to try writing the bootable ISO onto a second partition on the current drive while in Windows and boot off that partition… assuming getting the USB port repaired is a no-go.

Does the Surface Go have a SSD in it? And/or can you install a SSD into it? The specs do imply that it supports SSD so you should at least have a port in there for that. If so, as long as you have a spare machine you can install the Surface’s SSD into another system, then install Linux Mint normally there, then re-install the SSD back into the Surface Go.

I’ve never done that but it’s been mentioned a few times in the Linux Mint forums so apparently that is a roundabout way of installing on a machine without working USB ports. e.g.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=388243

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=361542

Not sure how well Mint works specifically on Surface Go but it’s worth a try, most likely you’d use the same steps to install other distros on there.

EDIT: Without a spare system you might be able to download then write the Mint ISO onto a second partition inside Windows and boot from the Mint installer partition afterwards. Not sure how well that would work but someone else in the forums mentioned it https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=369154

Thanks for the share! It’s not something I’d need to use but I’m all for people sharing their scripts with the community for this stuff :)

One suggestion, you may want to look at re-writing your script to move away from the VBScript (.vbs) dependency since Microsoft is moving towards disabling and eventually removing it from Windows 11 and onward. It’ll likely be disabled by default in 2027 so you have plenty of time.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/vbscript-deprecation-timelines-and-next-steps/4148301

OP’s example use case in the post was with the internet still being up. Building off of that yes, I’d log into the power switch remotely via the internet where I can then power cycle anything plugged into it - for me it was just to restart unresponsive desktops or whatever was plugged into it.

But you wouldn’t need internet to power cycle the internet router itself by using scheduled tasks. e.g. the power switch can check that the internet router is responding to pings every x seconds/minutes and power cycle it if stops responding. (it has other checks/conditions it can use besides simple pings)

That said my own equipment rarely/never needs a reboot so in the case my network loses internet access it usually means the internet is actually down, nothing I can do about that aside from maintaining backup internet if I needed.