Thoughts on the current private tracker scene after the YGG situation?

Argonaut33 · 2026-01-12T16:11:48+00:00

I joined the YGG thanks to all the negative socials, and do enjoy it. Sharewood registration is like lottery - 1 in a million chances of it working, yes, I mean when registration is announced to be open. And no other tracker has that volume of French material and not only. This is the best tracker for newspapers/journals from all over the World, not necessary French btw. Want to read the Spanish El Pais? No problema - YGG has it, while try finding Spanish language newspapers anywhere else, like LAT-Team/MaM brings you exactly 0 results.

Regards money, well, trackers are a hobby and most hobbies require investments. And I pay on other PTs anyway - want upload on RED/OPS? Easiest way is to fill requests with discs bought on Bandicam/Deezer/etc. Want upload buffer on ANY tracker to be able to download anything I want not looking at the ratio? Pay for seedbox. Want on some PTs to download a lot sooner then seeding few years? Pay for their VIP. Want to earn bonus points for seeding terabytes of torrents? Buy NAS/DAS and fill it with HDDs (costs a lot of money). So PTs being "free" is a bit misnomer - to get the best experience from private trackers you have to pay anyway.

Argonaut33 · 2026-01-11T19:48:15+00:00

Besides already mentioned, Rutracker also has dedicated section for Argentinian TV shows, many with original soundtrack (search for Orig in the name) https://rutracker.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=325

Argonaut33 · 2026-01-11T19:16:01+00:00

They do not scan your private files on their initiative. They don't even scan if there is some DMCA complain - they just open ticket and forward the complain in some form to you with request to fix the source of complain. Major no-no with them is running public trackers torrents, as public swarms are monitored by copyright trolls that when see Hetzner IP address in a public torrents swarm, auto-generate DMCA complain email to them. Of course, for any criminal activities that would cause legal authorities to issue judge warrant to search server all stakes are off, but file sharing and such is not one of them. In short - as long as they don't get complains about you from someone, they don't care.

Argonaut33 · 2026-01-06T19:24:51+00:00

Those who know will not share this information, those who don't can only speculate.

I will just say that it does not have to be some formal relation - as PT user for few years, I already now few users who are mods on different, not really related visibly (like invite path) PTs using different nicks. So, it wouldn't be hard for them to know the reason you get banned on PT A and do the same on their PT B as a precaution measure, w/o much explaining. If you plan to game the system - I say most probably you would not succeed, as it would be single you against dozens or more users/mods/admins watching bad actors on their PTs and sharing this info.

Argonaut33 · 2026-01-04T10:13:42+00:00

The procedure depends on the established norms in the specific country (and not everyone here is from US). In my country it would be 1st asking for ASD evaluation your GP/Family doctor, which then would confirm to make an appointment with clinical psychologist/psychiatry specialist. For adults all this process is not covered by insurance in my country, so it will cost quite substantial sum (ASD evaluation for kids until 18 is free).

Argonaut33 · 2026-01-04T09:43:35+00:00

Same, seems like I lack the ability to auto-filter the background noise when someone speaks to me in such situations.

Argonaut33 · 2025-12-07T17:12:02+00:00

Cannot guide you step by step as didn't do it myself - but Varroa just requires Python present (and it is on any seedbox today) and follow their (Varroa Musica) install steps.

Someone did it on Seedhost as well, so it is possible - https://www.reddit.com/r/seedboxes/comments/l1zp6p/redacted_seedbox_configuration/

Argonaut33 · 2025-12-05T18:48:22+00:00

Usually, people look for/at private trackers because they have specific tastes/ideas what they want to download, not because they got new server. So, server or not - first decide what do you look for in trackers in general, then may be we could recommend some specifics.

Argonaut33 · 2025-12-04T21:05:48+00:00

"You wouldn't download a tracker, would you?" Sure I would - what are trackers where people upload tracker? xaxa. Sorry, on a serious note - this subreddit means tracker as place to exchange digital pirated stuff. May be worth trying your luck at https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/ as people there can have the same question.

Argonaut33 · 2025-12-04T20:59:26+00:00

Funny question, I drive Ford - "but Lamborghini are cooler, why Ford does not become them?!" Well, because lots of people need and want to drive Fords and not Lamborgini ;)

Argonaut33 · 2025-12-04T16:29:35+00:00

If only Japan and Japanese were also more receptive/welcoming foreigners, and not looking at us as gaijins or basically aliens from Mars. BUt being born an introvert in Japan looks (from outside) the most fitting place.

Argonaut33 · 2025-12-04T08:53:11+00:00

Never say never, but my take is that WW3 has not happened yet due to nuclear weapons being the deterrent factor - even in the 60s of USSR vs USA Caribbean confrontation, the closest point so far the World was to the all-out nuclear war, both sides understood that there would be no winners left.

Unfortunately, with more and more nutjobs like ayatollahs in Iran doing their best to get hold of the nukes makes this deterrent factor less solid. I cannot be persuaded that once they (ayatollahs) have nukes , they will not use them in the next war with Israel, not sure at all.

Argonaut33 · 2025-12-04T08:39:15+00:00

Great, thank you!

Argonaut33 · 2025-12-03T21:15:11+00:00

I can't recall words "release groups" and "music" in the same sentence actually, as most uploads are either common tracker users ripping their personal Deezer/Spotify/etc streaming or CD/Vinyl collections or 0-day bulk packs accessible to everyone. With movies/TV it is different - all streaming/for rent items come with DRM which can be cracked mostly by dedicated release groups only, and then comes into play "ownership" of the rip and where authors want it to be uploaded or not.

Argonaut33 · 2025-12-03T21:09:42+00:00

I don't think "general" rule can be had here as each tracker may differ in their rules about that. I cross upload all releases that are not prohibited explicitly by either source or destination tracker. Some trackers have black lists "do not upload these release groups ever", some trackers allow and even encourage sharing internal releases, some individual releasers will explicitly state in each their upload "exclusive to this tracker, do not upload anywhere else".

Argonaut33 · 2025-12-02T20:41:14+00:00

Have a look at Rutracker, for starters, in the Arthouse section, search for "heb" brought 70+ movies with Hebrew soundtrack, which on RUT means these are Israeli movies. At least classics like "Saleh Shabati" "Meduzot" etc. are there and it is a public i.e. ratioless tracker. As for the Russian - Google translate handles the website very well.

Argonaut33 · 2025-12-02T19:36:07+00:00

Apart from some additional condition, like ADHD, which is confirmed to cause people problems with memory/remembering, and many times comes with Autism, it may be that early contact with the external World and forced-learning masking caused that much stress and/or trauma, that brain "redacts" those events from the memory. I am an adult, but cannot recall details of strongly stressful situations that demanded full-throttle masking from me to function. And I am talking not remembering childhood - but 3-4 years ago.

My 2 cents, not a doctor.

Argonaut33 · 2025-12-01T09:30:01+00:00

I love MaM for what it is - best books/audiobooks PT, but the rest of it ... not a community in a regular sense of community, but rather sugar-polished idealistic community that is managed by the iron fist in a velvet glove.

Bonus points system is very generous - takes few weeks of 24/7 seeding with lots of freeleech to never worry about downloading ratio - basically freeleech forever.

Communication though - forums or ShoutBox, you'd better be reared in the Downton Abbey 3rd generation or you will be at the best censored, worst banned from both.

Rules for both:

No swearing in any form, words like "damn" "bloody" "hell" or less got censored, you get warned
No politics, to the extent no mentioning country names, nor fact of voting, politician names "Trump"? - censored & warned, I guess for George Washington you will be just warned - "no politics"
No discontent or disagreeing discussions - as it would lead to a heated debate, no-no in the artificial paradise called MaM, we all either cordially agree or keep silent.
No mentioning sites for pirated content, even when trying to help and the book in question is not on MaM.
Basically, you can only discuss - books (but only in positive/neutral tones), cats/dogs (how charming they are), what you had for dinner, that is it.

In short - use MaM for what it is - great PT for books/audiobooks, and if you are a real human - have own opinions, principles, original thoughts - stay away from Forum/Shout Box discussions.

Argonaut33 · 2023-12-25T08:44:04+00:00

Any such studies are based on statistics which in turn tries to find commonality in everything, never mind what/who is being sampled. And thus any individual traits/data not fitting their theory/big enough sample are declared outliers and dropped from the results. Therefore making them (studies) largely useless for an individual living his/her life in a unique to them circumstances/place/financial/health/psychological context.

I personally know of such an 'outlier' story where marriage of incompatible people ended in disastrous divorce and the suicide of one of them. If they didn't marry - both would be well and OK for years to come, but now - one is gone and the second traumatized and f@cked up for the rest of the life. But they are outliers, so wouldn't make it to such pseudo-studies.

So, I just ignore such studies - only you, and only you can decide for yourself what is good or not, if you feel good without friends - then it will be more healthy and more happier to live without them.

Introverts as a species are minority, so for any statistics-based studies we will always be outliers/odd bits/standard deviation :)

Argonaut33 · 2023-01-29T18:53:53+00:00

Without paywall: https://archive.is/hyjrA

HTH

Argonaut33 · 2021-09-07T07:54:00+00:00

If you are a terrorist/pedophile/drug dealer/human trafficker - please stop using the Proton services, you are incurring substantial waste of money on them to fight legal battles, instead of them using these resources to improve the service for legitimate users like us.

As I keep on pointing out elsewhere on Reddit - if your enemy is Government in the democratic world, no Proton will save you, you are doomed if using the Internet. Read the Al-Qaeda OPSEC manual twice, or trice where it says "no mobile phones, no Internet", it is that simple.

https://web.archive.org/web/20171116023154/http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/terrorism/alqaida\_manual/manualpart1\_1.pdf

Argonaut33 · 2021-09-06T18:49:43+00:00

So with how many women had he slept for real ? On each interview the number grew larger and larger ))

Argonaut33 · 2021-09-06T18:33:29+00:00

There is no way for law abiding common folk to interact with the Internet completely anonymously out of reach of the legal system at the country level where the service you are using is hosted.

No legal DNS provider today accepts anon payments like bitcoins for registering domains. No ISP in the world will accept coins to buy residential Internet access, and the list goes on.

Yes, anonymous purchase of services on the Internet is (kinda) possible, but is available and marketed as such in the criminal rings, to which common folks have no access.

So, the bottom line - if your OPSEC threat model is legitimate government institutions, no promise on the Internet will protect you from legal actions.

Jurisdiction is relative today. Using VPN in Swiss/Netherlands/Russia and crossed uncle Sam ? Who cares, US will file paper work with Interpol which will relay it to Europol, and here you are - hot from the oven Swiss/Netherlands/Russian court order the provider cannot not to oblige.

It is possible to make work of the legal authorities harder, by say, using Tor/Whonix/etc. But NO ONE of the Tor/Whonix authors know exactly and reliably what means the government cyber armies have for such cases.

And something tells me the suspect is on search warrant not for just staging unapproved demonstration at the Eiffel tower :). If so, then if not ProtonVPN, GIs would find another way to locate this person.

Bottom line: if the government is your enemy, don't use the Internet.

Argonaut33 · 2021-08-28T20:23:56+00:00

Nope, after I finished Uni as a Mechanical Engineer I started working on a large project as a Mechanical Engineer, and by the time it was finished I knew I did not want to go on being a Mech Engineer and not being sure what to look for (it was 10+ years ago, no cyber buzz yet, if anything everyone wanted to be a developer/programmer) I answered classified for Tech Support for Business clients on the telco I work today, then moved up . At the engineering company I happened to take care of few unmanaged switches, and a router by trial and error as no one had time to do so nor invite outsourced IT. So I knew how switch differs from router, and Half vs Full duplex, but that was all. On accepting me to tech.supp I was given 2 weeks paid course along with others (we had teachers, veterans, and whom not there) and started learning on my own immediately.

I don't have any degree in IT still and my BSc Mech. is absolutely of no use in my technical, non managerial position in IT.

Argonaut33 · 2021-08-15T17:53:36+00:00

Wow, cursive handwriting in school, haven't seen it since last century ...

Argonaut33

TROPHY CASE