solitude

Glad that worked out with AirVPN, they’re the main alternative to Mullvad that I was considering back then. I may still try them in the future. Yeah, I was shocked that Mullvad was so cool about handing out refunds. I’ve read about many other VPNs that wouldn’t consider that. I guess with Mullvad being the official rebranded Mozilla VPN they can afford to let some people go and still have a smile about it.

I can’t recall when it actually stopped working (maybe around 3 months ago?), but here is the announcement: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports

Fairly soon after they removed PF, I searched for a show that was less than a year from release, rated over 80% on TMDB & over 8.0 on IMDB, and pretty popular. I couldn’t complete a full season of it on any one format (720p, 1080p, x264, x265). Probably around 10 incomplete versions in qBit. Never ran into something that bad before, on a somewhat recent show. Started using usenet and had my files within an hour or so, in the format I wanted. I understand and support their decision, but it was a very good feature to have. If your looking for new material, PF won’t affect you. I’ve read people suggest Tailscale as a way to supplement Mullvad (if you’re running a server and want to remotely access it), but I know little about it.

Yeah, Mullvad stopped offering Port Forwarding as well, along with iVPN (I think) and some others. I believe AirVPN is the recommended VPN which still has PF (I may have iVPN and Air mixed up). I understand one of the reasons why they stopped supporting PF (it allowed sick f*cks to share illegal child content with others), but it also pretty much destroyed my ability to find and complete a download of old/er files that I normally didn’t have a problem with, and, like you mentioned, I could no longer seed back. It’s the sole reason why I started using usenet. I could have tried one of the other VPNs I mentioned (Proton & Air, which I believe both have PF) but I chose to stick with Mullvad and add usenet instead, which I’ve really liked.

I should have also mentioned that I otherwise thought your initial post was good.

then it’s not bad to also set a VPN killswitch

At least with Mullvad (and I imagine the other three I mentioned), there is nothing to set. It’s already there in the app, and automatically enabled after install. The only thing that can be done is to turn it off.

This is what I was referencing in the first bullet about network interface

Understood. I was just providing the specific term (“bind” or “binding”), used by VPN companies & users, for anyone else who wants to search for instructions on properly connecting qBit to their VPN.

I agree that Kape did some sketchy shit in the past

It’s not my place to fault or criticize you or anyone else for choosing to go with Kape/PIA (or Nord). I just think people should at least know of their past. For me, there is zero chance of me returning to PIA. Someone tells me the girl I’m interested in cheated on their past boyfriend, or tried to somehow spy on or sabotage him? Zero chance I’m getting involved. Too many other good/better options available. My brother has had no issues dating cheaters. To each their own. None of my business why others make the choices they do.

Any sort of data breach definitely sounds bad but since I haven’t reviewed the details

It’s not necessarily that they had a data breach, it’s how they handled the situation that many people found troubling.

Nord and PIA you can usually get multiyear deals

Same with this. I don’t fault you for trying to save some money. Everyone has their own situation to deal with, and I’ve been “there” before. For me, I’m not rich or a boomer, but I’m old enough now and have enough disposable income that I make decisions that work for my privacy and reliability requirements. I see something that cheap now and I ask myself, “why is that so cheap?” It could still be a good product, but I know enough to at least ask the question & research. I also don’t pay for long term, multi-year deals anymore (I had about six months remaining on my PIA deal when I “noped” out of being a part of Kape’s acquisition), but I still try not to be an idiot and just give away money either. As an example, I buy the Mullvad gift card, with a scratch-off code from Amazon, $29/6mo ($4.83/mo) or $57/12mo ($4.75/mo). No euro exchange rate or transactions fees, etc. My preference is to incentivize my favorite companies to stay in business, providing the service and continual upgrades that I want and expect, like the following:

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/we-have-successfully-completed-our-migration-to-ram-only-vpn-infrastructure

-and-

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/moving-our-encrypted-dns-servers-to-run-in-ram

When people talk about “zero logs,” I’m not aware of anything better than having everything run through RAM. Going out to lunch/dinner or watching a movie is roughly $10 to $20/person these days. I’ll happily pay a couple extra bucks a month for a VPN with this kind of privacy and continual upgrade in service, or from the other three I mentioned (and I believe Mullvad is still even the least expensive of the four). No criticism from me on your choices though.

you can set up a “vpn killswitch” … A lot of VPN client apps have this feature built in.

Most quality VPNs will have a killswitch built in and enabled automatically, with nothing to setup, but they are notoriously unreliable and can fail. The key term people want to search for is “bind.” You want to bind qBit to your VPN. If your VPN isn’t working, qBit doesn’t have a connection. Most decent, privacy first, “no log” VPNs (Mullvad, Proton, AirVPN, iVPN, etc.) will provide instructions on binding. This is above and beyond their built-in killswitch.

I can recommend PIA, NordVPN

I’m not saying you shouldn’t recommend these, or that people shouldn’t use them, but IMO, people should at least be warned to search for the following, so they can make an informed decision:

1. “kape technologies malware” (Kape owns Private Internet Access, which is why I switched to Mullvad years ago when Kape bought PIA)
2. “nordvpn data breach”

Thanks for confirming that. I must have installed it myself then. Glad it worked. Updates I believe are automatically handled by uBlock. I’ve never done anything with it since installing it and it just works.

If you don’t have it, install uBlock Origin. Uninstall any other adblocker. If you don’t trust me, do your own research, but uBlock is the only one you need. Do not disable it on a website, unless you’re having a major problem on an important website (like banking, something you need to access, but I’ve rarely had that problem). You just need to look where I mentioned and enable the filter. I believe it should already be there, you just need to enable it. I don’t have any other “ByPass Paywall” add-on extensions and I view, but don’t pay for, all sorts of different websites, without paying for them or logging in.

Yes, I believe uBlock Origin already has a bypass paywalls option there, you just need to enable it, check the box. Look for it where I mentioned to find it. I don’t have anything else installed (other than uBlock) and I view all sorts of pay-walled websites, without having to pay or login. If the option isn’t there, install it from the link from me or “@free”.

I wouldn’t disable uBlock Origin, unless a specific website that I need to work is having a problem with it (like my banking website, or one of my usenet websites, etc., something very important to me, and that I trust). It’s very rare that I need to disable uBlock.

To be clear, I’m saying that I don’t think you need to install anything else, because I believe uBlock Origin already has this feature built into it.

Install uBlock Origin (everyone should already have this installed anyway), click on the gears (you’ll see “Open the Dashboard” as you hover over the gears), go to the bottom of the “Filters lists” tab to the “Custom” area, there should be a box you can check for “Bypass Paywalls Clean filter.”

I believe this is the same filter that “@free” posted elsewhere in this thread from Gitlab: https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clean-filters. I can’t recall for sure if it was already installed in uBlock, or if it was something that I added on my own to uBlock from Gitlab, but I believe it’s already there.

You may or may not already know this, but I believe this is already included on uBlock Origin, towards the bottom of the “Filter lists” tab, in the “Custom” area.

EDIT: Someone else told me it’s not installed on uBlock by default. I guess I installed it from Gitlab a long time ago and forgot, and that it just shows up in uBlock now.

There are websites for that, which get used all the time. Basketball, football (NFL & college), MMA, hockey, football (soccer), motor sports, baseball, boxing, etc., along with Firefox & uBlock Origin. Never had a problem, unless it’s been a lessor known boxing or MMA match by a smaller promotion.

Posting to a Piracy community, for people to pay roughly double the price of a normal VPN (like Mullvad), plus there is a setup fee? o_0

I’ll stick with usenet and torrenting for recorded content, and a website (with Firefox & uBlock Origin) for live content.

The process some others have described is called binding. You want to bind qBit to your VPN. qBit will only work if your VPN is active then. Close the VPN (while uploading/downloading) and qBit automatically loses it’s connection. This is above and beyond a “kill-switch,” which is notoriously unreliable. Most decent VPNs have a built in kill switch, but you should not solely rely on it.

I use Mullvad, but here is the Proton page you need to refer to: https://protonvpn.com/support/bittorrent-vpn/

“Binding your BitTorrent client to the VPN interface” and “How to bind the client to the Proton VPN interface.”

To be sure, you should still continue only starting qBit after your VPN is active (obviously don’t have it startup with your operating system).

I’m still testing a few. The following list is favorite to least favorite after a month or so of use:

Skiff (free version - 10GB storage) - Using webmail is easy and straight forward, cell app is about the same. REALLY like that you basically get 4 email accounts (1 main and 3 alias account names), which is different than the others below. With the different aliases, this gives me an option to use Skiff for everything (if I choose to put it all in "one basket” - for personal, business and purchases/spam type uses). No integrated calendar, but significantly larger storage is a big plus. Otherwise, separate calendar app is fine, and they seem to be regularly making improvements. They also just implemented: “Quick Aliases are on mobile! Looking to protect your identity on mobile? You can now claim maskmy.id domains on mobile and use them to create privacy-protecting aliases that forward to your Skiff account.”

Tutanota (free - 1GB) - Using webmail is easy and straight forward as well, cell app about same. Main problem is, I’m never going to say “my email is xxxxx@TUTAmail.com” to anyone I know, especially business acquaintances. Name just sounds like something my mother or grandparents were scammed into using. They just changed the name from Tutanota to Tuta for some reason, so they could have taken the opportunity to come up with something different. However, the integrated calendar is nice, instead of a separate app. I’ve always swiped right to delete an email, but that’s archive on this app, and there is no option to change it. It’s been requested to have this option coded in (which it has been on Skiff) from others for year/s prior and no change has been made, so not expecting a lot of updates / improvements going forward.

Proton (free - 1GB, 500MB before doing 4 “tasks”) - Using webmail, cell app and separate calendar are all fine, I just prefer the other two so far.

Following up with this post, here is the link to the subreddit BF Deals thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/17noby8/2023_black_friday_deal_thread_providers_and/

There is already a deal mentioned in there (which the provider has since said was not intended as a BF deal, or for the regular public, I guess just repeat customers) but I’d encourage people NOT to utilize the UsenetExpress backbone. See the bottom of my other post for stats, compared to Eweka. Again, I like my Eweka provider, but another popular alternative may be the Frugal Usenet w/ UsenetFarm + 300 GB -or- 750 GB Yearly Blocknews Account deals. We’ll see what else BF may bring.

Following up with my other post in here, this is the link to the subreddit BF Deals thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/17noby8/2023_black_friday_deal_thread_providers_and/

There is already a deal mentioned in there (which the provider has since said was not intended as a BF deal, or for the regular public, I guess just repeat customers) but I’d encourage people NOT to utilize the UsenetExpress backbone. See the bottom of my other post for stats, compared to Eweka. Again, I like my Eweka provider, but another popular alternative may be the Frugal Usenet w/ UsenetFarm + 300 GB -or- 750 GB Yearly Blocknews Account deals. We’ll see what else BF may bring.

Frugal Usenet is on the same backbone as Usenet.Farm

I don’t have these providers, but this is the deal that I’ve seen many other people refer to in the sub. It’s listed in the Usenet provider deals list: https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/providerdeals (“Frugal Usenet w/ UsenetFarm + 300 GB Yearly Blocknews Account” -and- “Frugal Usenet w/ UsenetFarm + 750 GB Yearly Blocknews Upgrade”).

If you look on the “Usenet Tree” link (https://svgshare.com/i/iG8.svg) it looks to me like FrugalUsenet falls under the Omicron company name (red highlighting), HW Media (Highwinds) backbone, and sold by the Newhosting provider (Frugal Usenet listed as the “resellers”, or maybe, like you said, the reseller here is BlockNews and not Frugal under Omicron).

Usenet.Farm is the company name (green highlighting), “Its Hosted” backbone, Usenet.Farm provider, with multiple resellers listed, one of which is Frugal. I could be wrong, but I think the name of the reseller (showing up in multiple places) may be getting confused as being on the same backbone? The same reseller is selling access to more than just one provider / backbone, but either way, the unlimited annual data plan should be on a different backbone from the 300GB or 750GB block, not on the same backbone. At least that’s what I’ve understood from many others.

so a better block account option would be Newsdemon on the UsenetExpress backbone

I don’t doubt it could be a better backbone, but I don’t see any kind of deal with Frugal for either of those, and a Frugal Usenet w/ UsenetFarm + block deal is what I’ve seen many people talk about on the sub as being a good deal and working really well for them. I prefer my Eweka connection, but I’m trying to provide another very popular option.

Additionally, as I mentioned, I have a 2TB block with the UsenetExpress backbone (from UsenetPrime). In my opinion, it’s garbage. My SABnzbd stats show a 55% availability rate, which agrees with my memory of continually having problems completing files before I got Eweka.

EDIT: stats from SABnzbd

UsenetExpress (before getting Eweka to today):
Bandwidth: Total: 65.8 GB | Today: 0 B | This week: 532 KB | This month: 0 B | Selected date range: 65.8 GB | Article availability: | Selected date range: 55% available of 171K requested articles

Probably about 55% of that 65.8GB of bw used was completely wasted on incomplete downloads, that had to be deleted and downloaded again once I got Eweka.

Eweka: Bandwidth: Total: 1.2 TB | Today: 0 B | This week: 39.3 GB | This month: 4.2 GB | Selected date range: 1.2 TB | Article availability: | Selected date range: 99% available of 2M requested articles

I came here to get away from Reddit, but for Usenet deals, I don’t know where else to track them. I haven’t been on Usenet long enough to go through BF deals yet, but I plan on tracking https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/providerdeals (for provider deals, obviously).

I’ve also seen provider reps post in the main sub (https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/) with “terabyte Tuesday” & other similar type deals, but I can’t recall if I’ve ever seen indexer reps post deals in there (pretty sure they don’t, please anyone correct me if I’m wrong). My provider is Eweka, so I don’t plan on getting any other provider deals, but I’ll still take a look at what’s available. Another good sub to track indexers might be: https://www.reddit.com/r/UsenetInvites/. Example: when Ninja (indexer) opened up registrations (temporarily no invite needed, about a month ago, supposedly very rare), it got posted in both of these subs.

Originally, my first provider wass a 2TB block from UsenetPrime (UsenetExpress backbone) and only completed 55% of the downloads I tried. I was extremely frustrated, and kept asking myself “this is what everyone else is saying is so great?” I did a lot of searching through various posts and then got the Eweka annual unlimited plan, and I haven’t had any real problems since. I later picked up a 500GB data block from BlockNews (doesn’t expire, & although they’re under the same Omicron company name, they’re on a different Highwinds backbone), just in case I ever ran into any future problems. Usenet.Farm (“Its Hosted” backbone) also had a deal that (if I recall correctly) you just signed up for an account and you get a 10GB block for free, and can get a 48% discount (code BDAY2023) when you’re 10GB is gone and you’re ready to sign up for a package (I’m assuming that code expires at some point though). With all these blocks I have, all of my DLs come solely from Eweka (according to SABnzbd stats). So I wouldn’t buy any blocks (depending on who you’re main provider is).

I’ve also seen a lot of people mention a combination deal of Frugal Usenet (Highwinds backbone, unlimited annual access, but limited retention), but it also has a 300GB or 750GB block with Usenet.Farm (“Its Hosted” backbone, supposedly longer retention period, more similar to Eweka) from Blocknews, for a little cheaper. So that may be another option for people to consider. Either way, I’d recommend not wasting money on UsenetPrime / UsenetExpress, or other data blocks unless you’re having problems.

Just in case anyone is unaware of how backbones work, you should research it, and understand why you don’t want to pay for accounts on overlapping backbones. Good tools for checking are: https://svgshare.com/i/iG8.svg -and- https://whatsmyuse.net/

My indexers are: DrunkenSlug (DS), NZBGeek (Geek), NZBFinder (Finder), NZBPlanet (Planet), NZB.Su (Su), and NinjaCentral (Ninja). So far, Planet and Ninja have been the most disappointing. Planet rarely comes up with something I’m searching for, probably well below 33% of the time. Ninja also rarely shows up with search results. However, the difference is, the rare times I’ve had a problem completing a file, I’ve then attempted to DL from the Ninja index link and I was then able to complete it, but that’s been maybe 3 times? Planet just rarely shows up, to the point I forget I even have access to it. The other 4 indexers have all worked well. If there is another someone suggests, please let me know.

I guess I’ll add, I got an invite to DOGnzb (indexer), but I soon realized you have to “buy” a shirt from them when paying for the account, and then if you want the shirt you just paid for, you have to actually pay for it again. Maybe it’s a decent indexer, but it’s extremely expensive, and I haven’t had a problem with my other indexers, so I deleted the DOG account & never tried it.

I’m not having any problems with my indexers on Usenet. All my searching is through Prowlarr though, if that makes any difference to you.

I never claimed to have experience with Usenet.

Again, I can’t connect the dots for you. You’re combining and confusing two separate issues.

Is this not a recommendation? It’s from the same comment you mentioned SABnzbd.

You previously said: “The whole reason you get a VPN for piracy is to stop you’re ISP from seeing what you are doing.”

The following was my recommendation: “If you were to decide to try Usenet, you install a program called SABnzbd (kind of like qBit, it downloads the files - no uploading, downloading only). It has an SSL connection enabled (Secure Sockets Layer, encryption-based internet security protocol).”

The topic was keeping your ISP from seeing what you’re doing. So, no, Prowlarr was not a recommendation. Prowlarr doesn’t have an SSL connection. The reference to Prowlarr was an explanation that: “they may be able to see that you’re searching you’re indexers (on a program called Prowlarr - searching for a file to DL), but you’re ISP can’t see what you’re downloading on SABnzbd. I still use Mullvad, so I know they can’t see anything I’m doing in regards to searching or DL.”

Is any of this getting through to you?

The thing about being sesitive is probably true.

That’s progress.

I generally don’t like it when people try to lecture to me about something (piracy) I have been doing for way longer than them.

First, as I already explained, it wasn’t a lecture, I was genuinely trying to help, as I have in another portion of this thread. Last, as I already stated, no. You’re delusional.

Honestly the fact you have to use ad hominem like this and then block someone isn’t good.

How am I reading and replying to someone who is blocked? Confusion, fragile psyche, and extreme sensitivity explains the basis for your attempt at reasoning while trying to make your comments appear logical. And you admitted a portion of what I said is true, and it’s affecting how you’re interpreting and replying to comments from other people.

I do not intend this to be offensive, but I’m not sure how else to explain how I feel about this conversation. Again, no offense, but it’s becoming clear to me that English is not your native language, wherever you’re from. You do well, but you’re clearly not fully grasping what is being explained to you by myself and other/s. Maybe that’s an ESL issue, or maybe there is something else going on with you (enjoying arguing too much, confusion, fragile psyche, extreme sensitivity, etc.). I don’t see the point in continuing the conversation with you, as it seems you just want to make up whatever nonsense you can so that you can have the last word. So, go ahead, have the last word. I won’t reply.