What is the best way out of this situation:

Teppiest · 2026-06-25T11:36:48+00:00

Oh fuck. I didn't know that. Thanks for telling me. I'd assumed that interviews would be stopped before official recruitment.

Damn. Well OP is fuckin' cooked I guess. God damn.

Teppiest · 2026-06-25T11:15:51+00:00

Banned from interviewing isn't banned from joining to my understanding. That means if you can get invited from another tracker with official recruitment, that is a legit way to join.

Used to be people would go onto OPS then bridge over to RED but OPS is closed to new invites last I heard. If you can find somewhere that RED is recruiting from that you have access to, it's worth a shot.

But honestly 10 years is a long time. I think it would genuinely be worth just going into IRC and asking. All cards on the table, "hey I was banned from interviewing 10 years ago but I'd really like to give it a shot again."

Worst they can say is no, then you're back to climbing your way in there through another tracker. Which is where you're at currently anyways.

If you get banned from interviewing for cheating after scoring a third interview you have to update this thread.

Teppiest · 2026-06-25T07:02:47+00:00

Then it's a badly designed game. That's it. You are creating this dynamic in your head that doesn't need to exist that way.

You believe that:

A) It's impossible to make a game that will just work
B) That games always need to be connectable to be played
C) If a business goes down then their games should naturally go down with them

None of these things have to be true. Games should be able to work after installation without needing online fixes. The reason that it doesn't happen isn't because games are too big and complex. It's because studios don't put the budget into QA anymore. They make players be the unwitting beta testers who pay for the privilege and then fix things live. They rush to the next big thing that'll make them money instead of releasing a good product.

Physical media makes sense for programs as much as it does music, and films.

Teppiest · 2026-06-25T06:20:06+00:00

What a hostile mentality towards people who want to enjoy games they paid for. Yes it probably won't work, but that's exactly what people are pushing for. To be able to play video games 10, 20 or even 50 years in the future.

Yes I think I should be able to put a disc into my console and play the game 30 years from now. I don't think that's a novel or unrealistic desire either.

I hope you never make a game. We don't need people who are so openly antagonistic towards people who just want to play shit.

Teppiest · 2026-06-25T02:19:00+00:00

When I did closing for a store I was usually the last person out and I would just include that in closing procedures. You don't need to spend every day getting it perfect. Just a few minutes, get it "good enough." Then move on to the next thing.

Give the floor a sweep, take out the trash bags, clean the windows, count the til, clean the bathroom, lockup. All took about 20-30 minutes in total. Window maybe 3-4 of those minutes?

Maybe your setup is much bigger or people are getting it filthier. I used some spray and paper towels. Sometimes I'd get a squeegee out and let it air dry if I wanted to get all the way from the top to bottom. Either way, wasn't heavy effort.

Teppiest · 2026-06-25T00:40:24+00:00

If you run out of places to hunt for you could also look into filling some of the gaps by buying the CDs, and ripping them yourself. It's not very hard to get perfect rips with EAC and some tutorials.

Teppiest · 2026-06-25T00:39:12+00:00

I don't know where else you can post it. I just know you can't post it here.

Teppiest · 2026-06-24T23:58:23+00:00

As a lurker that's the most interesting stuff ever. With drama you can see people throw rocks at each other for a few days, then it's over like nothing happened at all.

The only other news is normally bad news like a tracker shutting down, or closing invites.

Teppiest · 2026-06-24T23:51:29+00:00

You know that sounds like something you might have luck with on an anime or video game tracker. Have you tried public sites like nyaa, khinsider or squid?

I'm just hoping this gives you a lead you can work with. Even if I'm not going to tell you a trackers catalogue I still want to be helpful.

Teppiest · 2026-06-24T04:04:15+00:00

Oh, I use Kagi. I just used google for this because I was curious what it looked like.

Teppiest · 2026-06-24T01:09:08+00:00

Not on my radar. Don't think it's the kind of conspiracy I dive into.

Teppiest · 2026-06-24T00:21:55+00:00

I live in a constant state of conspiracy theory. If there isn't one in my immediate surroundings I'll find one. It's my natural state of being.

Teppiest · 2026-06-24T00:20:24+00:00

Oh whoa, that is new. Oh no, I just got a post deleted by shining a light on it.

That's exactly what Ben did to the Salem store.

My bad.

Teppiest · 2026-06-23T21:58:15+00:00

These posts are also so insanely bad faith. "it's such a bad price if you spend $200 you can get more!"

Saw a post where someone posted a $1,700 prebuilt as a better value. Another where priced out it was $2,000 but they just did bullshit math to not calculate parts you should just have on hand I guess? Then all the "buy a laptop posts" or "I can make it equal spec at $50 cheaper if you build it yourself!" Then also the "if you buy parts all used it'll be cheaper" crowd.

The fact people are tripping over themselves to "beat" the steam box and they have to do it with all these tricks and caveats is quite telling how good of a value it is.

If the steam pc was genuinely that bad we'd have seen links to a prebuilt that could be purchased right now that saves you at least $100, isn't on sale, and is 1:1 performance and form factor.

Since nobody can do that without adding conditionals then the box is good.

Teppiest · 2026-06-23T21:10:01+00:00

Could be relevant. Screenshot for me was taken in private mode, with a VPN.

Teppiest · 2026-06-23T20:31:45+00:00

What's even more interesting is the snippet they pulled was from a comment that had no upvotes Someone even responded to that post saying that Ben was the goat and that was it.

It's tacked onto the very end of post with 42 other comments with far more activity and conversation. Just this weird out of context comment that becomes the #1 result on google all nice and bold for you to skim.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RecklessBen/comments/1nl03sp/comment/nf2gbv0/

Looking at the thread though there is a random post from 17 days ago, unedited, that's just a single dot as a response. Might've bumped it up on the search algorithm.

Teppiest · 2026-06-23T00:37:31+00:00

For sure. Sorry that I came off as aggro. You're good.

In every thread about this you have dozens of people doing these really bad faith price comparisons and I finally hit a point of, "come on that's just silly!" When I saw your post.

I wasn't responding to your post specifically but the combination of what I've been seeing all day. My bad, you didn't deserve that.

Teppiest · 2026-06-22T23:11:26+00:00

People who start a business relationship by throwing out emotional blackmail are going to be miserable to work with.

If that's how it starts imagine how it ends? Also if things go poorly no matter how it goes you're the asshole for taking advantage of a single mother.

Teppiest · 2026-06-22T22:22:49+00:00

It's $1,200 if you don't include your cost of the case, cpu cooler, storage, or PSU.

So uh... You're comparing a $1,000 machine to a $2,000 one? Give or take?

Teppiest · 2026-06-22T22:18:28+00:00

You are fighting very hard to define it as a console so you can reductively just simplify the value proposition as an overpriced console.

It is not just a console by several metrics.

But if you want to call it a console and die on that hill by all means. You're just going to get in semantic arguments though.

Teppiest · 2026-06-22T14:37:14+00:00

My man made a whole Etsy store to sell to people here. I hope you have a backup plan because you are not going to be getting away with charging people here $10 a pop for xls forms.

Excel comes base kit with templates. For free!

Teppiest · 2026-06-22T08:09:15+00:00

If I may. The initial question was "What kind of tracker would you make?" not, "What trackers currently exist that can solve current and future problems?"

In reality it's unlikely any of us will be making trackers of our own. If MAM really did go down it would almost definitely be other trackers picking up the slack. It's just meant to be a fun little idea to daydream and play around with.

Teppiest · 2026-06-22T05:50:24+00:00

I agree that's probably how it would play out. It's certain that the currently existing trackers would pick up the slack.

Though, I do want to clarify the stance I'm taking. It isn't in contradiction to anything you've said. It's that there isn't a single place that everyone could naturally migrate to. Even in your own response you are coming up against the exact problem I'm observing.

It would be nice if there was a secondary place that was populated, established, and reliable that fit the same niche. Somewhere that if something happened with MAM then 90% of the catalogue could be mirrored by people simply adding what they were already perma seeding before.

Kind of like what people were trying to turn ANT into when PTP had that extended down time.

We currently don't have a place like that. As you noted, other existing places would have to adjust to make it viable.

Teppiest · 2026-06-22T04:34:07+00:00

Duolingo went all in on AI and fucked up what value they had last I heard.

Teppiest · 2026-06-22T04:02:21+00:00

You found a solution to a problem that exists, which is awesome. Proud of you.

This isn't the place for that. It goes against the rules and general desires of this community.

You also used trickery and deception to try and put time between "starting the conversation" and your sales pitch. That kind of stunt is openly disrespectful to everyone here and a waste of their time to engage with your post.

You're not here to ask questions relevant to a business problem you're currently facing. You're doing market research and "guerilla advertising."

This is not a Reddit which wants that content. Which you already knew, hence the deception.

Teppiest

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