Port forwarding would be preferable, but it’s not required. If you don’t have an open port, you will only be able to connect to peers that do.

I’ve bought plenty of games that I’ve pirated. I’m just not willing to pay more than a dollar or two unless it’s DRM free.

The oldest seeded torrent just turned 23 years old a week ago.

You still have to be careful on Linux. Some windows malware can run on Wine. Don’t open any .exe, .com, .bat, .lnk or .reg files.

Watch out for files with two extensions. Some_movie.mkv.exe is guaranteed to be malware. That’s done to trick windows users since the file extension is hidden by default for some stupid reason.

I never used netflix either. Their DRM won’t let me watch in 1080p because I’m not using a spyware infested browser and OS. Back when they had a good selection, my internet was too slow to stream HD video anyways.

I don’t stream anything. If I want to watch something, I will download it. The downloads for the shows I watch are all automated so I don’t have to do anything except click play.

When I go on a trip, I just load up my laptop and phone with whatever I want to watch. That way I don’t have to deal with an unreliable or non existent internet connection. Good luck streaming anything over the WiFi in an airplane. There’s barely enough bandwidth for audio unless they have Starlink.

Not when you’re using Firefox with uBlock Origin. Don’t use any pirate sites without a good ad blocker.

You don’t need cameras to generate subtitles.

You just need a video capture card or dongle for your computer. Preferably one with an S-video input. If these are pre recorded tapes, you will also need a Macrovision remover connected between the VCR and capture card. If you want the quality to be as good as possible, you will need a timebase corrector. Those are hard to find and expensive though. The TBC will also remove the Macrovision.

You didn’t need anything that fancy. You could build a Macrovision remover circuit. The schematics were certainly harder to find before the web, but you could build one up in an afternoon with parts from RadioShack.

Public torrents don’t require trackers. Bittorrent can use DHT to operate completely decentralized.

It is not recommended to run the arr stack through a VPN because cloudflare will cause problems. Only the torrent client should go through the VPN.

MakeMKV is the only cross platform bluray ripper that I’m aware of that will work with any disc. For DVDs, I normally use Handbrake.