Yes. Marxists have a distinction between personal property (your toothbrush, your desk and pens) and private property (a factory or an auto dealership full of cars or a supermarket).

CMR performs better under all workload types.

Shingled Magnetic Recording overlays the tracks on top of each other like roof shingles. This means you can fit more tracks on the same platter which means you can fit more data. Unfortunately this also means whenever writing data you have to rewrite tracks adjacent to the track you’re rewriting which leads to a lot of reshuffling of data which leads to very slow writes when this is taking place (say you edit a file or replace it, delete some and copy over others).

SMR allows more storage for less money but it takes a serious performance hit (right now about the largest CMR disks you can get as an example are about 28TB in size, by contrast you can get 40TB SMR disks so it can significantly amplify storage). It shouldn’t be used for many scenarios. For archival backup it’s fine. For disks that are having data changed on them anywhere near regularly it’s not great.

I want to underline that for USB powered portable 5200RPM disks they’re already slower disks when CMR, so as SMR they get a lot slower in write performance (one I had would drop down to sustained low 20MB/s write speeds when over 60% full). A 7200RPM SMR disk with proper 12V power from a PSU rail or an AC adapter would likely be double that at worst by contrast.

So SMR has its uses, it has its place. It’s just a lot of people who don’t know might use it in places where CMR is more appropriate and would give them a better experience. So by all means if you’re using SMR in back-up disks to your primary ones to create back-up snapshots that are updated infrequently continue to do so, they’re fine for that especially if the tasks are done on machines that can be left running for days while the data is slowly written.

Use the IMDB ID for search in that instance.

The ID is the part of the URL that starts with “tt”. Lots of sites support that and for instances like that it’s the best bet. Do include the double t when searching.

Note: this works via API with jackett. It will probably work otherwise but worth trying the searcher plugins in qBittorrent using this method even without jackett.

Some WD red drives (particularly under 16TB) are SMR. There was a whole scandal with this and you can look up a list. WD Red Pro are always CMR and I think the plus typically are too but you can easily search up a list of SMR models.

SMR in those. Also typically 5200RPM vs 7200RPM speed.

From experience I can say you can’t reliably play back high bitrate content from those. Read and write speeds get bad after you’ve used 1/3-1/2 the drive. Oh 8-14MB/s should be fine. But forget playing a 4K encode at 20MB/s with a 2MB/s audio track.

As backup drives they’re acceptable as long as you can accept much longer write times to refresh data.

Bigger drives with power supplies generally are 7200RPM. Many of the lower capacity ones (under 14TB) are still SMR but you should be able to play back higher bitrate content and get a bit better read/write performance.

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=376035

This is in the hardware section of the Kodi forums. Massive thread near the top. Some technical discussion on pages 225-250 about this matter.

Devices include Vero V, Ugoos, Homatics. (Apple TV is indeed an option as well)

Check the spreadsheet linked on the first page.

I will mention DV is a premium experience and you’re not going to pay less than Apple TV prices for a box that can do it. $150 really isn’t much.

There is DV -> tone-mapped to HDR output stuff but it’s not true DV. That you can do on a Linux mini-pc and so on.

There is no special burner that turns regular DVDs and CDs into M-discs. M-discs were a special product that were special because of the disc itself. This doesn’t answer OP.

Lessons from this were applied when designing BluRay discs which are much more resilient than DVDs.

M-discs are just premium BluRays now. Probably not worth the difference in cost given you can buy two BDs from two different batches for the same price as one M-disc. Just avoid LTH BDs which use quicker degrading components.

M-discs are a meme that were made for and only had relevance in the DVD era.

Open invites sub. While there might be an opening or two this summer most places open at the end of the year or the first 4 weeks of the new year. Patience and planning.

Try checking that sub daily from the week of Thanksgiving through January 10th. Many openings around Christmas specifically. TL (torrent leech) will certainly open and they’re easy as long as you seed.

First we are going to buy something. Mullvad VPN. Its the only VPN id recommend getting. It is 5.50$ or so a month, and if you cancel your streaming accounts it’ll pay for itself now that you’ll be pirating stuff with it.

Why that provider? Mullvad removed port forwarding. Why not recommend a VPN better suited for torrenting that has port forwarding which can massively help in getting better speeds and getting connections at all on all but the most popular torrents? Yeah sure if you’re only downloading the latest TV episode release you’re fine but if you’re interested in something obscure (as Marxists are often wont to be) it becomes a real problem.

AirVPN for example still supports port forwarding and is a bit cheaper than Mullvad per month. They also have sales several times a year where it gets even cheaper.

Would I trust them politically? I don’t trust any VPN company that way. I don’t trust any of them to not be deep cover CIA/five-eyes/zionist intelligence cut-outs or paid off to provide that data to the aforementioned and neither should you.

There are a couple other options with port forwarding but PIA was bought out by an ad-tech company which makes them a little extra sketchy though still fine if you just use for torrenting. Proton also offers port forwarding for p2p specifically but many think they look extra like CIA and want to avoid them, their prices also aren’t quite as good.

I’ll also mention qBittorrent has a search interface right inside it, view: search engine and then click the bottom for search plugins, update all and you can start searching most of the more popular public indexers without having to visit their ad infested sites and wait for page loads. You can add in Jackett as a plugin (configuration details on its github) after installing it and add even more site including private and semi-private open signup like rutracker after creating an account and putting the details in Jackett.

One important thing: NEVER use software or executables you find via these searchers, they include DHT scrapers that scrape for any and all things out there in the swarms and it’s a great way to get malware. You can search for your favorite repack but make sure it’s on a site you know is trustworthy from an account you know is good, you can right click the results and click to copy the url to paste into your browser to check before downloading that it’s a good source. Don’t ever run software where the source you’ve chosen is solidtorrents and I’d recommend against it if the source is the pirate bay as well as they have a lot of malware there too.

They previously sold out email addresses to an anti-piracy law firm which proceeded to extort penalty settlements from the holders of the accounts. This is why their upload bots were banned on leet x.

Of course. The YT-DLP team by refusing to support DRM videos gave Google a huge neon sign that said this is the one thing that will shut them down, the line they won’t cross. Google has targeted the big front end instances with rate limits and blocks and this is the next step.

Our only hope really is that the current YT-DLP team hands the reins over to people in countries that don’t give a shit about copyright and they put back in the ability to download and decrypt DRM protected video.

can they be added to the search function in qbittorrent?

Nearly all can. All the one’s you’d want anyways work with Jackett. They don’t work via direct plugins but just run Jackett, follow its instructions and connect it to qBittorrent and you’re good to go searching just the same as before. Some annoying ones occasionally require setting up another software like Flaresolver but for the most part the big easy to get into ones that open their doors annually work without that.

While there will likely be some openings throughout the year the fact is most trackers open in the period from Thanksgiving/late November through early January. TL opens then basically every year, a number of more exclusive trackers do open signups then, some for only 24 hours so get an RSS feed of that and remember to sign up IMMEDIATELY as soon as you see a post as the post on reddit may have been made 22 hours into a 24 hour open window, you just don’t know. TL though at least tends to stay open for several days. So if you have no luck before then, wait until that time of the year and then check daily or even twice daily if you can, once before bed, once earlier when you get up or lunch or after work, whatever.

What they told you is misleading.

Transcoding and burning in subtitles for Plex and similar only happens in some cases if your streaming device doesn’t support image based subtitles. Plex themselves could fix this on a lot more devices but don’t.

10 years ago it was the case that there were a LOT of issues with anything but text subtitles. These days it depends. If you’re running it directly off a smart tv (bad experience anyways, not recommended) it’s likely to be an issue. If you’re using an Android streaming device or Apple TV or gaming console there’s a good chance the subs just work.

Truth is lots of things can force transcoding with Plex including using certain audio formats in certain media containers. Most of these days picture subs work. If you can get text subs it’s not a bad thing but I wouldn’t go through the hassle of doing flawed OCR unless you can confirm it’s an issue you’re experiencing with your setup.

Console batch file for mkv merge should do that as long as subs are named same as video files (or something consistent like that name +subs).

You’d want to target the sub files not idx. If that fails I’d just do an intermediate step of merging the sub and idx files into an mks file then merging that into the mkv. The gui only needs the sub files added. I’ll try and come back to this though someone else already posted a script that should be able to be adapted to do this.

They’re US vassals. They don’t care about soft power just enriching themselves as much as possible while avoiding drawing US ire and being taken out back to be killed for competing too successfully. (See plaza accords when Japan did this)

In other words their power doesn’t come from a positive view by westerners but by loyalty to Washington’s geopolitical interests. They’re never going to change anything because they can’t overcome US-centric media and its power.

No amount of cultural popularity will help them if they’re turned into a villain for being a threat to the US’s interests. Similarly it’s not necessary for them to have good PR for soft power in the first place because of their subservient position. Their interests are tied to that of the US so displacing the culture power of the US with their own at no profit doesn’t benefit them and no individual corporation or capitalist is going to forgo profits for some vague hope of their country having more leverage as a vassal in 20 years.

Japan is viewed favorably because the US forced them to commit economic suicide in the 90s and the hate campaign let up. We are 35 years out from massive racism and fearmongering about Japan pushed by the media which relented and created this space only after they were brought to heel. Look how many Asian food places in the west still say “no MSG”. That was driven by western media reporting, racism, and fearmongering and clearly is still stronger than any anime fan feelings of positivity towards a normal ingredient.

Also wasn’t that guy their puppet dictator first leader who presided over numerous atrocities with a regime full of Japanese collaborators?

If you just don’t like ads AppleTV works great.

That said if you’re set on something less locked down you might look into Dune-HD boxes. They have some that have a dual OS. One is Android TV (not sure how mod-able) the other is Linux that can have other kinds of apps. They’re virtualized and accessible without a reboot. They have great codec support. Just realize only some of their models have the Android TV dual system thing.

They haven’t updated the models since 2019 yet still charge the same full price on older chips and parts ($200 for the pro). The value proposition has collapsed especially considering they originally didn’t have ads but now do. So they’re just pocketing profit off the decreased costs since then. Frame-rate switching still doesn’t work right. Meanwhile Apple has eaten their lunch in the premium segment with price-dropped Apple TVs for $50 less which get active feature and hardware updates annually.

So I hope Valve does jump in. I’m doubtful the major streaming services would allow their apps unless Valve locks it down though. Though they could do what Dune-HD does and run Linux in a container and another OS for Android TV in another container or something.

How convenient they waited until Congress was firmly in control under both houses of the Republicans and a Republican presidential administration so cutting off funding now would last for all of a month and the zionists conveniently arranged a ceasefire anyways so they can wait.

If they’d said this 2-3 months ago while the election was still on and the funds and weapons still being delivered maybe it would have had some impact. But now they can pretend to care and conveniently all the culpability and blame from Democrats can be moved to Republicans.

Of course I have zero doubt that Democrats will refuse to take even token action for the 1 month they have left of power. They must display nothing but utmost fealty and loyalty to the project of israel. And I’m sure they’re elated that it will be in the end a Republican, not Democrat congress that passes draconian laws cracking down on anti-israel protest and pro-palestinian movements so they can in a few years claim it wasn’t them, bamboozle the masses with talk of being progressive and how that was then, this is now, etc, etc.

Just be thoughtful. Accessibility is not seen as an excuse for breaking copyright. Take precautions.

Also if you’ve never done audio editing I’ll mention audacity the editor has a tool called “auto duck” that’s perfect for lowering the volume of other tracks in a mix when your select track with your voiceover makes noise To enhance clarity of it.

Full disc rips perhaps. Unfortunately many remux don’t bother to pass through such tracks (though some do). Some groups like qxr often but not always may include them when available. Thing is they only really exist for movies released in the past perhaps 15 years from what I’ve seen.